When my partner Reid and I were first getting together, he lived in New York and I lived in LA. When he visited me, he would stay for a few weeks at a time. I lived in an apartment that I still think of fondly. It was the top floor of this prewar building in Hollywood. I called it the Penthouse. My door opened up onto the roof, and I had a 360 degree view of Los Angeles. My writing nook overlooked the Hollywood sign and Griffith Park. The window over my kitchen sink overlooked Paramount Studios, Beverly Hills, and on a clear day, you could see the ocean. That happened twice in five years, but you theoretically could see all the way to the ocean.
Reid and I had an open relationship from the beginning. We had sex for the first time in a five-some. It was love at first strap-on. And though we had other lovers and it was all on the up-and-up, in the first few months of our relationship we were in heavy New Relationship Energy mode, which meant we were spending a lot of focused one-on-one time with each other, and we weren’t having a lot of sex with other people.
One morning during one of Reid’s visits, I’m getting ready to go to work, and Reid says, “Hey it’s my friend’s birthday today, so I was going to invite her over and give her a, y’know, special ‘birthday present.’ Would that be okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Just so you know, though, I’m only working a half day, so when I come home you two might still be…doing it.”
“That’s great!” he says. “She’d love to meet you!”
“Okay, great! I would love to meet her!”
As I leave the apartment, I pat myself on the back and think, Our first negotiation! We are excellent at non-monogamy!
I go to work. I come home.
As I’m walking up the stairs, I hear some sounds. Sex sounds. And talking sounds. In fact, it’s ardent sex and moaning followed by energetic, lucid conversation, and then back to ardent sex moans, and back to lucid conversation. I stand at the door, key in hand, waiting for the ardent conversation. On the first cogent phrase I hear, I unlock the door and head in.
I see Reid, my new lover, face down, buried in the pussy of Nina Hartley, the most famous porn star in America.
For a split second I feel like William H. Macy in Boogie Nights, except for the whole murder/suicide thing.
Nina Hartley, thoroughly naked, looks up at me, waves, and says, “Oh you must be Allison! It is so nice to meet you!”
Reid springs up, covered in sweat and with Nina Hartley all over his face. His sex hair is all crazy. He bounds over to me like a 250-pound golden retriever, his metaphysical tail wagging. “Welcome home! I love you! Do you want to smoke some hash?!”
Now, for those of you who are contemplating opening up your relationship, I suggest the best possible things to say when your partner comes home to find you fucking someone else are:
1) Welcome home!
2) I love you!
3) Do you want to smoke some hash?
Trust me, I’m a sex and relationship educator. Just put that one in your back pocket for a rainy day.
Because I’m not a moron, I say, “Yes, yes I would like to smoke some hash.”
Reid and Nina lead me into my kitchen, both buck-naked. Feeling a little over dressed, I strip down to my bra and underwear.
On my kitchen table, Nina has set up a rig. It’s a pin/button thing like you’d wear on a denim jacket, resting on the flat end with the pin sticking up straight. On the end of the pin is a ball of hash. Overtop the whole thing is a wineglass. Nina demonstrates how to light the hash until it smolders, place the wine glass over it all, let the bell of the glass fill with smoke, then slide it to the edge of the table, where you lean down and inhale the now cool and delicious smoke.
This is technology I have never seen before. I’m delighted. And before long, I’m super-duper high.
Thus, I proceed to stand nearly-naked in my kitchen with the most famous porn star in America and my new lover, getting totally lit on Porn Star Hash.
This relationship has a future, I think.
Nina and I start chatting, and I ask her a question I love asking new friends, which is “What’s the most picturesque sex you’ve ever had?”
I like this question because it doesn’t have to be good sex. It doesn’t even have to be sex with someone you like. It just has to be pretty. We’ve all had pretty sex, even if it was terrible in every other way.
Reid tells a story about a castle in Tuscany with olive oil covered bodies that is both hot and gustatorially stimulating.
I tell a story about sex on a balcony overlooking the Pyrenees. The sex was mediocre in every way, but the view was stunning.
Then Nina tells her story. She gets a wistful look on her face. It is so obvious in this moment that for Nina sex is her ultimate expression of self. She tells a detailed story of a night fifteen year prior, in a villa. The light of the full moon streamed through the open window and illuminated her partner’s perfect cock. She was so overwhelmed by the beauty she knelt before him and worshipped his cock.
It’s at this point I need to raise my hand. “Pause!” I say. “I was a lesbian until about three months ago when I met this guy, and I spent most of my time trying to keep dick away from my face. So I’m not familiar with this ‘cock worship’ of which you speak. What is it?”
Little did I know that question, “What is ______?” is the Nina Hartley genie-in-a-bottle phrase.
Nina isn’t just a porn performer, she’s an educator. Her mission in life is to spread the gospel of great sex through as much of the media as she can. So when I ask, “What is cock worship?” she wordlessly takes my hand, grabs a glass of water, and leads me into my living room. Over her shoulder she calls, “Reid, dear, would you mind lending us your cock?”
Because Reid is not a moron, he follows.
Nina lays Reid down on the living room floor and kneels in front of him with the glass of water. She proceeds to teach me about fellatio.
Because she’s a consummate educator, she explains penis anatomy, which I’m not that familiar with, and draws analogues with vulvas, which I’m super familiar with.
“So you know how you can tug on the inner labia and it doesn’t hurt? It can feel good? That’s like scrotal tissue,” she says. “And you know how you can put pressure on the internal clitoral structure to generate pleasure? You want to do that to the inner root of the penis.”
Prior to this, I had liked penis enough when it was attached to a person I liked, but I never cared all that much about the nuance of them. Now, though, kneeling next to Nina and watching her work her magic, I said, “Teach me everything.”
She’s doing the whole strokey-stroke and the licky-lick and the jerky-jerk. The sun sets and fills the whole room with brilliant orange light.
Nina sits up and says, “Would you like to try?”
Sure, Nina Hartley, I think. I’ll give my boyfriend a blow job in front of you. That’s exactly what I want to do right now.
I kneel in front of Reid, open my mouth, and lean over. I hear a knock at the door.
Let me remind you. I live on the top floor of a five-story walk up. No one ever knocks on my door. I don’t get trick-or-treaters. I don’t get UPS guys. It’s hard to even get the super over to fix anything. So when there’s a knock, I am startled.
I creep to the door, leaving the chain intact, and ease the door open a few inches. Standing on my landing is a girl. She is maybe eleven or twelve.
Plumes of pot smoke rush out the door. Nina Hartley is sucking on cock just outside the girl’s range of vision. I wedge myself in the small opening of the door and think, This is how Allison goes to jail.
It’ll be a story you tell your friends about that slutty moron who corrupted a minor by sheer stupid luck.
The girl rushes ahead with her pitch. “I’m collecting signatures for Youth Leaders in Obama’s America. If I get enough signatures, I get to go on a free trip to Washington, D.C., to meet the Obamas.”
“That’s great,” I say. “But I can’t help you right now.”
“No! It’s a program for underprivileged urban youth interested in science and engineering! All you need to do is sign, and I’ll get leadership training and a college scholarship, and I’ll get to have dinner at the White House!”
This is a good thing, I tell myself. Don’t fuck this up for this sweet, smart girl because your apartment is full of hash and porn stars.
“Okay,” I say, glancing at my half naked body wedged in the door frame. “Do you have a pen?”
She hands me a pen, and I crane my arm down to sign her sheet.
“Great!” I shout, handing the pen back to her. “Say ‘hi’ to Malia for me!” I slam the door and lock it.
By now the moon is rising over Griffith Park. Reid is lying on his back, stoned and blissful. Nina is leaning over him, tracing her hands up and down his torso.
I kneel next to them, and Nina hands me his cock, saying, “Would you like to suck him together?”
Yes, most famous porn star in the world. Yes I would.
She wraps my hand around the shaft and says, “One thing that’s fun when you have one cock and two mouths, is you can kiss through the cock.”
That is so romantic.
Nina and I lean in, our mouths on opposite sides of Reid’s cock, and we start making out.
My eyes start out closed, but I open them and see Nina’s cascade of blonde hair. Beyond Nina’s head is my picture window with the full moon rising over Griffith Observatory.
Fuck the Pyrenees, I think.
FUCK THE PYRENEES!
This is the most picturesque sex I’ve ever had.