When I get the call that one of my clients needs me, I spring into action, especially when they dangle a free trip to Los Angeles! My client, Payton Sin Claire, who, after a hiatus from shooting to get her license in massage therapy, committed herself to a month in porn valley, and hearing that I wanted to come out there, was generous enough to fly me out. I in turn, would book media, take her on a few go-sees (aka introducing her to people at Vixen and Penthouse Magazine) and enjoy some one-on-one time together during Pride weekend.
I hadn’t been to Los Angeles in a few years, so I was excited, not thinking how excited I would get going out there by myself, because the men and women of Los Angeles are DTF, which stands for “Down to Fuck.”
When I tried to watch the popular David Duchovny Showtime series, “Californication,” I thought, this is ridiculous, LA women and men don’t just walk up to people and offer them dick or pussy. The character of Hank Moody turned me off as the tortured druggie-alkie writer whom women can’t resist throwing themselves at. I mean, every time he leaves his house or even when he doesn’t, gorgeous women, mostly younger, basically put it on a silver platter for him, just because he’s a tortured druggie-alkie writer. I wasn’t buying it. And then reading that the character of Hank Moody was inspired by the writer who is my everything, Charles Bukowski, I found it ludicrous. Charles Bukowski was an acne-scarred, burping and farting alcoholic, who was down and out from skid row; a blue-collar man who worked at the post office until he was 55 years old. But this ugly produced the most beautiful poetry of the 20th century and one of the most perfect books ever written, Post Office, my Catcher in the Rye. His women were drunks too, and one of them died from it. And he didn’t get his true due until the last ten or fifteen years of his life. His writing though, also showed women in LA who were DTF because he was a unique genius, but these women were hippies, nutjobs, bottom barrel strippers, and the occasional rich ladies who reveled in slumming with this dirty old man.
“But LA is really like that. Everyone here is so sexually lit up and open,” I was told by Kelly Shibari, a beautiful BBW performer and a fellow PR maven who was a big fan of “Californication.” She found the show very accurate, aside from the Hollywood cleaned-up version of what a writer is. And I thought of her words on this trip to LA because I found that she was right.
When I’ve gone to LA in the past, it’s been when I worked for companies like Penthouse Magazine for the Pet of the Year, and I’d be too focused to pay attention to anyone’s signals. When I’m focused, I’m focused. Armageddon could be going on all around me and my eyes will be glued to my laptop or phone trying to get shit done. And the last time I went, I was with my husband and giving him all my extra energy between events and radio shows. But this time in LA was different for some reason, and it began in the Lyft from the airport to my hotel.
My Lyft driver was a young, cute, biracial boy, amiable and chatty. And nosey. He googled my name when we were stuck in traffic and said, “Oh you’re in adult entertainment! No way! No way who do you know?” He then went on to name a few porn stars he’s had sex with, whose names I didn’t recognize, because let’s face it, not every porn star is an actual star, which is why I call the non-stars, “porn performers.” I dropped a few client names, and he got even more excited and asked me how he could get into the industry. “I’m not huge, but I work hard, and I’m always ready for action,” said Mr. Lyft. I nodded my head and said, that helps, maybe one of those girls you already had sex with could request you for their next scene. I noticed he was checking me out in the rearview mirror and then in that congested LA traffic, turned all the way around. “Do you perform too Lainie? Have you ever?” I shook my head no and told him I wasn’t the performer type at all, but I love what I do a lot. He gave me the kind of rogue, crooked smile that only comes from good looking, charming men under 30 who get laid a lot. “I’d perform with you, Lainie, with or without a camera.” I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, not because I’m so hot, but because merely talking about this subject with a woman who works in the industry is enough to get the average dick rock hard. “Yeah, you want some of that MILF action, huh,” I said and laughed a you-silly-boy laugh. When I finally got to my hotel (hot damn that traffic in LA is brutal), Mr. Lyft wished me a good trip and told me that he’s now following me on Instagram and that I should follow him back and so should my porn star clients.
This became the theme of my trip, getting randomly propositioned in a straightforward LA way. As a New Yorker, you notice how everyone’s guard is down in LA, and if you’re not interested the men are very comfortable and good-natured about it. Like women are like buses: you miss one, there’s another one coming in fifteen minutes, and it’s all good. While, in New York City there’s an intensity. People don’t like to waste even five minutes of their time, and no thank you means, maybe you can sell me on the idea some more. And then there’s the anger of rejection. Women in New York get, the “Fuck you, you ain’t shit anyway,” or “Fuck you, I was nice, you’re a stuck-up bitch.” Or they try to pressure you until you break down and give them something, anything, to get them the heck away from you. Plans in LA are made to be broken. Everyone is an hour driving distance away from everything, not including traffic, so it’s either going to happen right now, or it’s not going to happen at all, and that’s cool. Especially when you live in a city where everyone looks pretty good.
When Payton and I stopped at an old-time Italian restaurant bar to recharge after losing ten gallons of sweat at the Pride Parade, I realized I was starting to feel like a single lady (no, no, I didn’t stray, not even for a second I’m committed), but I needed to go on a real vacation, and fast, with my husband, who is more attractive than any of these men, and is the best kisser in the world. Holiday with your partner is the natural antidote for a wandering mind. I highly recommend it.
I remember every vacation I’ve ever been on with or without a man, because on vacation you leave your uptight worrywart bullshit at home and you’re suddenly game for anything. You even wear clothes you’d never wear at home, like sarongs and flipflops, brightly colored flimsy things. Clothes that say, I’m festive and fun and DTF. I’ve had great vacations with girlfriends in my 20s where I held up an entire bus full of tourists because I was getting banged by the cute driver in the bushes of the beach, or I took a Swedish student back to my all-inclusive hotel only to find that I wasn’t supposed to let anyone in my room who wasn’t wearing a wristband or the time I had the Mexican version of Ethan Hawke fall for me after one passionate tryst and insisted he be my vacation boyfriend. Single lady vacations are all about that; it’s the subject of many cheesy movies and rom-coms. This is where tourist women always have the advantage over tourist men. Those men have to compete with the local, exotic hotties who know where the cool places to hang are and the more sexual, adventurous women always go for that. It enhances the vacation experience.
I once dated a guy who used to work for cruise lines giving art lectures and then selling the art at inflated prices. I never heard of such a thing before, and found it fascinating, especially knowing this guy knew dick about art. He was just a former radio disc jockey who used his speaking skills and quick study mind to move product. Because he was attractive, I asked him how much action he got on these cruises. I imagined it was quite the pussy buffet. He told me that indeed it was a job that brought him much easy sexual pleasure, but that you had to be careful and play it smart. “You never have sex with someone at the start of a cruise because a lot of women will think you’re her cruise boyfriend and expect to hang out with you after you get off work the entire time,” he told me. “It can get awkward, and some women get upset when they see you with another woman the next day. You can get into trouble at work and so forth, so I usually saved it for the last few days when there’s nothing else to say but so long and thanks for the memories.”
Vacation dating could be the best casual dating of all scenarios when you think of it. You’re in a good mood. You’re in a city or country far from home. You’re all sexed up from fresh air, rest (depending on where you choose to get away from it all) and you both walk into it knowing there are no strings attached, “we’ll always have Hawaii.”
Couple vacations are a must. I know many couples who conceived their first child while on vacation, couples who had had trouble conceiving because the pressures of everyday life were left behind and it was just the two of them. My parents would bring us on vacation, then ditch us with relatives for a few days so they could scamper off to a nearby city to walk around on topless beaches and get to know each other as people again and remember that they had real names other than Mom and Dad. I hated it when they did that, but now I see they cared about keeping their relationship solid outside of their children, and I respect and admire that.
I love going on vacation with my husband. Like me, he loves adventure and escapes from reality. We go to bed early so we can spend long evenings making love instead of having a race to the orgasm because we both have other things to do, like go to work or get a decent night’s sleep. We hang out in the hot tub for hours, making out and sipping fattening drinks that we work off going back to the room again for more fucking, then taking a nice long swim afterward. We buy each other silly gifts and take long walks to nowhere. We role play pretending that we just met at the resort. David breaks out his Mexican wrestling mask and becomes “Blanco Negro” the macho man. It’s a beautiful time, and even when I’ve been stricken with some bacterial infection that makes me poop neon yellow, it’s still romantic.
Going on vacation is also a great way to find out if you’re compatible. I’ve been on holidays with Mr. Wrong yelling at me because I didn’t know how to read the map, or ridiculed because I’d drank a lot and wanted to take a nap. Also, someone who makes the trip another job, and my life must be as regimented if not more so because we will die if we don’t see a Mayan cave or the Eiffel Tower. I go on vacation to chill and decompress so when I return I can work my ass off non-stop for another six months. But that’s just me.