By COREY LEVITAN
Is there a more romantic way to spend a wedding anniversary than at the AVN Awards?
Initially, I saw a conflict between covering the annual Las Vegas porn extravaganza and celebrating my 11th anniversary, which fell on the same weekend. Then, I realized that I could combine the two, and use the opportunity to have porn stars offer us some marital guidance.
After 11 years, our sex has—how should I put this?—reached something of an ecstasy plateau. And porn stars are people who fake ecstasy for a living.
What could possibly go wrong?
An answer arrived the night before the awards, during a mad 10:30 p.m. dash through Kohl’s because my wife insisted that she had nothing to wear. Whenever “What do you think of this?” is asked in a dressing room, the husband must always pop his eyes open and scream: “Amazing!” I knew this rule well. Yet, when I opened the door to find her modeling an old-woman dress, the word couldn’t come fast enough for believability.
“Fine,” my wife yelled, throwing the hanger to the floor. “You find me something!”
If you recognized this as a trick, then I am not as smart as you. What I found was porn-star short and tight with a black and white frilly skirt. And it only made matters much, much worse.
“Just because I’m agreeing to go to the porn awards doesn’t mean I’m dressing like a whore in public for you,” my wife scolded me. “Never in a million years would I wear something like that! Is that who you think I am?” (It was almost besides the point that I had accidentally chosen a bathing suit.)
My wife ended up borrowing a dress from her friend’s 19 year-old daughter and looked amazing in it. But the dark cloud the Kohl’s incident formed over our pre-awards/anniversary dinner remained, and was seeded further by a text I received as the main course arrived. Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
There aren’t many things worse than interrupting an important dinner with your wife to text, but texting a porn star is probably one of them. So is responding to the text by leaving your wife by herself because the porn star wants you to meet her somewhere else immediately.
But I was working, and my wife knows that my job sometimes requires me to do things I really don’t want to—such as flirting with porn stars. So I walked out to the designated spot to meet Tasha Reign, who informed me she was ready for our interview. (I provided my phone number to the team of AVN publicists and asked for whomever I could get for some quotes. Reign was the first to text.)
This interview probably would have gone better if I knew who Tasha Reign was. I love watching porn, I really do. But my relationship with it is such that I do my business and turn the computer off, ashamed of myself. I don’t want to know the names of anyone involved. I don’t even want to think about what I just did.
I mean, not only did I not know Tasha Reign’s body of cinematic excellence—which I later discovered includes Tasha’s Pony Tales, Anchorman: An XXX Parody, and Reign Over Me—I had already forgotten her name since reading her text. And asking well-known interview subjects to identify themselves is pretty much the professional journalism equivalent of leaving an anniversary dinner with your wife to disappear with a porn star. You don’t do it.
Insulted, and rightly so, Reign ignored me to chat with four sharply attired men standing nearby who didn’t ask, “Who are you again?” When she finally re-established eye contact, after 15 long minutes, I asked if there was any way she could possibly follow me back into the restaurant and help my wife and me with our sex life—and possibly even sing her “Happy Anniversary” to make up for my disappearing act and prove that she’s the real star of my show tonight.
“I don’t think so,” Reign replied, and the fact that “Happy Anniversary” isn’t a song wasn’t even a factor. “Tonight is our Oscars, you know,” she explained.
She was correct. Everywhere at the AVNs, men in tuxedoes and women in glittery gowns are interviewed by reporters who ask about the motivation for the movies they are nominated for. Inside the venue, boom cameras swirl and millions of dollars of production value pop as hosts sing, winners deliver weeping acceptance speeches, and audiences marvel at close-ups of full penetration as though they are scenes from 12 Years a Slave. (Which reminds me, kudos to 12 Inches a Slave for taking the well-deserved AVN for Clever Title!)
I don’t know about the Oscars. But this is definitely the Golden Shower Globes.
For some reason, the quarter-hour I abandoned my wife to spend with a porn star was not an issue in the moment—although I suspect it may come up in the divorce proceedings.
Chanel Preston lost the AVN for Female Performer of the Year, but she was definitely the top-performing porn star in this article. She was much friendlier and more helpful than Reign. But that’s probably because I wasn’t stupid enough to forget her name.
“Sit down, face each other, and talk about your fantasies, no matter how weird they are,” Preston told us. “No judgment whatsoever. Just express it and you can figure out a fantasy that you can live together. Even if you fantasize about having an octopus on you.”
My wife and I used to be adventurous. Before our daughter was born four years ago, we even made a sex tape—although making and watching it were too different experiences, and we wanted to vomit watching ourselves. But, strangely, in 11 years, we’ve never had a serious conversation about our sexual fantasies. (Usually, she says “another husband” and changes the topic.) Advertisement – Continue Reading Below Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
We also got some advice from Tara Morgan, 23-year-old girl-on-girl performer and star of Seduced by Mommy 9. It was definitely one for my personal yank bank to hear Morgan tell my wife: “When you completely release all discomfort and accept the situation of being leashed, that’s when you experience true release.”
I expected my wife to be revolted by advice given by someone half her age whose career consists entirely of eating vagina on camera. And maybe she was only shaking her head to be nice, but she was digging the vibe, and the attention I was paying her again.
We didn’t score seats to the awards, only standing room at the bar in the back. But I was spotted by a friend who texted and invited us to sit at his table full of horny Las Vegas strip club executives.
From here, we got to see Best Female Performer winner Anikka Albrite thank her mom (who was seated in the audience), Tia Tequila not show up to collect her trophy for Best Celebrity Sex Tape, and Ron Jeremy get paraded through the audience to meet all three female members of the adult-video industry that he hasn’t yet banged.
By the time Adriana Chechik and Manuel Ferrara won for Best Anal Sex Scene, my hand was so far up my wife’s leg, we qualified for our own award. I whispered in her ear what I intended to do as soon as we got back to the room I rented at the Hard Rock.
“I expected to be really disgusted by all this,” she said. “But I’m kind of turned on.”
Of course, judging from the sound of the female shrieks and headboard thwacking in the room next door, we wouldn’t be in the running for any “best post-AVN hotel sex” awards. But it was great FOR-US sex. In fact, at one point, I had to stop because I thought the wrong head would explode.
In our throes, we agreed to try a bunch of new stuff together—at least the next time we can afford an overnight babysitter—and, after 11 years, we finally had that sexual-fantasy discussion.
She doesn’t want me revealing them to you, but think of us the next time you’re standing by an octopus tank.