In August 2001 I fulfilled a fantasy and had one date with a porn star, an unforgettable experience that was subsequently chronicled for Salon.com as "My Date with Suzi Suzuki."
And yes, as the opening paragraph said, "I had sex with Asian porn star Suzi Suzuki. Several times in fact. In Room 404 of the Boulder, Colo., Ramada Inn." (Salon link here)
But there was more than sex. We also shopped for Navajo rugs, browsed for sex toys, took a leisurely ride through the Rocky Mountains above Boulder, Colorado and talked about jazz, and jazz singing (she's had serious voice training), modern Japanese literature, Bijon friese dogs (Suzi owns one), rug and bead weaving, and porn industry friends of hers, including since-failed Nevada gubernatorial candidate Mimi Miyagi.
When Suzi left Denver International Airport the next day for her San Francisco home I realized that in a little more than 24 hours she'd morphed for me from fantasy fuel to someone I'd enjoy staying in touch with and knowing a little bit better, and not just necessarily in the Biblical sense -- though that, of course, had even more appeal now that I'd actually done the deed with the real deal and not solo via Internet or VCR.
This is the rest of the story or Part II; In Which Our Hero Takes a Porn star to the Rolling Stones and Learns He Has Made Her Shortlist for Surrogate Fatherhood.
Suzi kept in touch, especially after the Salon story hit the Internet two months after our date. She told me her website's traffic, which had not been overwhelming, realized a gratifying spike. Business for her photos, memberships (a modest $10/month), videos and even her personalized underwear -- men's and women's -- blipped and briefly boomed. It also eventually landed her a spot on an upscale New York panel discussing sex and the Internet, part of which was featured on National Public Radio.
As chance had it, I was driving when I heard the report on NPR nearly a year after our assignation. There it was, Suzi's familiar singsong voice, albeit more of a sing-song-sound byte.
I pulled my aging slagheap of a piece of shit excuse for transportation over to the roadside and listened. Damn, I thought, the woman who made "Suzi Bungholeeo" and "Bangkok Boobarello" is sharing rarified air space with the likes of upscale NPR icons such as The Car Guys, Terri Gross and Scott Simon. Yes, Suzi had arrived, albeit briefly.
We exchanged e-mails she'd sent me hand drawn Asian New Year cards and birthday greetings. She even waived my Suzi Suzuki membership fee and at one point honored my photo request for her to pose provocatively with a Navajo rug purchased on our date. I was thrilled to see it on her weekly picture updates, which following her brief Salon-driven business boom were slowly becoming increasingly less weekly and more monthly.
The pictures were also (I had to face it) beginning to look a little shop worn. It was clear Suzi's porn career was on the wane so I asked her if she'd considered writing an autobiography. I offered to edit and/or ghostwrite it. The response was a polite "maybe."
And it came to pass that the Rolling Stones were scheduled in Denver on February 1, 2003. More than a Suzi fan, I am a chronic Stones fan, having seen them nine times since June 16, 1972 when I watched stoned and slack-jawed as Mick whipped the stage with a silver studded belt under a blood red spotlight for "Midnight Rambler" in Denver Coliseum, a venue normally used for livestock exhibitions. It was an unlikely combination: Their Satanic Majesties reigning amidst the commingled odors of dope smoke and dried cow shit.
Times have changed, of course. What cost me about $12.75 in 1972 after standing in line for 9 hours sustained on Bugles and Boone's Farm apple wine could be mine again for ... oh, a couple hundred bucks via credit card on the Internet from the comfort of home. And I had an idea. Why not.take a porn star to a Stones concert. How perfectly appropriate. So I shot an e-mail to Suzi and held my breath. The reply was sweet and prompt.
Dear Peter,
Thank you for the wonderful offer. I have several ideas about trying to do the concert for the Rolling Stones.
On the 3rd of February I am going to Tucson for a bead and gem show so I have one idea to drive to Denver and then to drive to Tucson. I am worried about the weather because it may snow. The other way is to fly to Denver and then fly to Tucson and my friend is driving me back from there to San Francisco.
Thank you very much for asking me to the Rolling Stones. It is such a wonderful and nice opportunity and it will be nice to see you again.
Love,
Suzi
It was a lock. But, like my previous assignation with Suzi I still had to worry about transportation. You might call it performance anxiety, as in four-wheel performance. So as before, I rented a vehicle that didn't look and perform as if it had served as the 18-year rumpus room for a blood orgy of Visigoths and benzene snorting badgers.
February 1 debuted under gray clouds, snow flurries, cold winds and the grim news that the space shuttle Columbia had disintegrated on reentry, killing all seven astronauts. Not exactly an auspicious day. But my reservations for one night for two at Denver's venerable Oxford Hotel were in order and despite the weather, Suzi's flight was on time.
The last time I'd seen her she'd been dressed in sort of casual porn star attire, braless under beige loose weave cotton sweater, a long wrap skirt that parted for saucy flashes o' thigh and red lips that looked as if she could suck a banana out of its peel without splitting the skin. This time I did the proverbial double take when we met at the United luggage carousel. Sans makeup and in a stylish down parka she looked like a Japanese college student on winter break.
Hauling her two bags -- she'd packed for winter in Colorado and Arizona, two different beasts -- I found "my" car.
"It is different than before?" she asked. "Uh, yeah," I replied. "Oh," she laughed. "I remember in your story. Your real car is not so good and you wanted to impress me."
"Yeah, my normal one is not exactly first class date bait. Which might explain why you're my virtually my first since our date."
We checked into the Oxford, had an early dinner and repaired back to our room to dress for Keef and Mick. I threw on a vintage looking shirt festooned with oversized photos of the Brian Jones-era Stones and some other largely dead luminaries such as Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Jim Morrison.
Suzi emerged from the bathroom, not as a fresh scrubbed college student but a tastefully slutty Stones fan -- white blouse tied at the midriff with generous cleavage, sprayed-on low rise blue jeans and spiked heel boots.
"Perfect," I said. "Promise that if Keith invites you backstage I can come, too?"
"I like Charlie better," she said. "He's the quiet one. And I like his big band." I was impressed. Only die-hard Stones fans knew of drummer Charlie Watts' "other" band, a classic 40s-era big band. Suzi also knew that original bassist Bill Wyman exited the band in 1993 and -- damn it -- I wasn't her virginal Stones experience. She'd seen them in Tokyo in 1990 on the Steel Wheels tour.
The show itself passed nearly in a blur. Aside from seeing them up close on the "B-stage" walkway for stripped down versions of "Mannish Boy," "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" and "Brown Sugar," and guest act Jonny Lange's guitar sound going dead as he stepped forward to solo with Keef on "Rock Me Baby," I recalled only an admiring male sitting next to Suzi on my right who nudged me when she took a quick restroom break before the show began.
"Nice," he said in one of those confidential guys-only tones. "Your wife? Girlfriend?"
"Yeah, well, my date," I said. "Good friends. We're staying at The Oxford tonight."
"She looks kinda familiar..." he mused.
I thought quickly. "Yeah, she's done a little, uh, acting, commercial work. Some small film, video stuff. Playing Asian hookers and geishas, mostly. But she's more into jazz singing. That and weaving rugs and beads."
"Weaving?" He looked a little startled. Just then Suzi returned, flashed him a smile and settled in comfortably with me as the house lights dimmed, the welcoming din began and the Stones kicked into "Street Fighting Man."
Back at the hotel we flopped on the bed and rehashed the show. She admired Mick's physique at nearly 60. Looking at my developing paunch approaching 50, I quickly changed the subject to her musical aspirations. Suzi had brought a small desktop CD player and she put in a demo disc she'd been working on with an eye towards an eventual musical she said she was writing.
Her future seemed a bit vague and after we'd gotten down to carnal knowledge - a satisfying albeit tame performance compared to our last encounter that involved a sex toy and her inserting a Latex-gloved finger up my ass as I came - we cuddled afterward and I pushed her a little bit for her future plans.
"I'm thinking of getting out of the business soon," she said. "And I want to have a child." Then she turned and looked at me directly. "You're not the kind of guy who only likes Asian women, are you? Not one of those guys?" The fact that she made a living based largely on "those guys" was an irony I politely ignored.
Well, I hedged some, maybe I just prefer Asian women. I'd confessed as much in the Salon story. I did some quick calculating. Two ex-wives, one Asian, one Jewish. A total of four serious ex-girlfriends: two Asian, two white. "Uh, my track record is strictly 50/50 at this point," I said reciting the stats. "I could go either direction. Versatile. You'd tip the scale, though. But, no, it's not like I'm clinically stuck on Asians."
"I'm thinking of having a child," she said again, looking even more serious. "Would you think of being the donor? Do you have any strange, bad medical history?"
I thought of my own Amerasian son. He turned out fine. A bright, funny guy -- worldly, even then at age 17, but also someone who'd be a just a bit shaken by news that he suddenly had a half-sibling by his dad and a porn star.
Still I was floored. And, yeah, somewhat flattered. "No. No weird medical stuff. But uh...how did you plan to do this? Like have me jack-off in a cup or on a slide and donate it to you? Have you asked any other guys?"
She had. Suzi was sounding out potential donors after evaluating their qualifications. It wasn't clear how many or what the qualifications were, other than to perhaps be Yellow Fever-free.
I was almost afraid to ask more, fearing I'd jeopardize my chances with an admission that I had been a chronic bed wetter as a child. Her plan was to raise the child herself with no strings attached, no financial or emotional involvement required by the lucky X-Y donor.
"Um, well, okay. I'll think about it, too. Let me know, you know, if ... " I trailed off.
Suzi laughed and said she would, though it was the last I heard from her on the subject.
I took her to the airport again the next morning so she could rent a car and go skiing before driving to Arizona. I had a job interview in the late afternoon and, even with a porn star thrown in, would no more go skiing than I would let a chimpanzee perform dental surgery on me with a rusty spoon.
We kissed good-bye and, except for a slightly panicked call I got from her about three hours later asking for directions to the ski area, it was the last time I heard her voice.
At year later Suzi made it official, quit porn and closed her website. I'd gotten wind of it early in an e-mail from her, but for fans taken by surprise she left a parting message on her website:
"After a lot of thinking about it I have decided that I want to close my web site for the time being. There are a lot of reasons but the one that is most important is that I made a promise to myself about seven years ago that I would only do the adult business, the video and the pictures, for five years and at the end of the five years I would stop. Well it is now about seven years and I think it is a good time to stop."
No mention of any children, though. In 2005 I shot an e-mail off to her from my new location, Hong Kong where I'd found new employment and more Asian women in one subway ride to work than I'd seen in my previous 50 years. I asked her if she was still thinking about writing a book and asked about her musical. Her reply came quickly, from another city and with another identity -- her real name.
Dear Peter,
Congratulations on your job! You must be so excited to be in Hong Kong. Do not worry about the autobiography. As matter of fact, I was thinking that I'd better write it by myself and hire an editor later. But now believe it or not, I am a real estate agent in (a major western US city). It's my 6th month here and my 7th deal has just gone into escrow.
See ya!
K---- "Suzi" P-------
I sat back and sank briefly into a reverie, a porn cliché about a nymphomaniac real estate agent seducing the unwitting client. Or vice versa. I wondered how many of her customers knew that the diminutive Asian woman talking excitedly about kitchen and closet space and quality neighborhood schools had also made a movie called "Butthole Whores." I mused briefly about moving from Hong Kong back to the USA to house hunt Suzi's new city. But, nah, I thought, never happen.
I'm happy for you Suzi, I thought. But, damn. We could've made a good baby together. I swear.
