All through the summer of 2014 I had been jokingly asking couples about the chances of us having a menage-a-trois with me. The response varied from disgust to a laughing rejection. I spared no one my query and no one accepted the challenge.
The ludicrous proposition was strictly a joke, but last weekend I attended the screening of the first 35 mm adult entertainment film JOY.
My good friend Sharon Mitchell had starred in the DEATH WISH take-off.
The producers Distribpix.com had flown out the founder of AIM Health Center to speak to a full theater of 1970s XXX film buffs.
Most of the fans at the Anthology Cinema were in their 50s and 60s. The veterans of the wicked White Way of 42nd Street were starstruck by Sharon's presence. My two guests were my godson Fast Eddie and his university friend, Jean Namur. Neither young man had been to an X-rated movie and I introduced Sharon to the twenty-year olds.
Fast Eddie said the retired actress looked young.
"Hell, Mitch, you look good for any age," gushed a frail bald septuagenarian. "I can't wait to see this film. 35 mm and full-screen. I hate TV porno."
"Thanks for coming." Sharon posed for a photo with my guests.
Other young men and women were in the audience. They were devotees to the genre of 1970s blue films. From the short Q & A session before the filming these neophytes revealed their devotion to the history of XXX films such as THE OPENING OF MISTY BEETHOVEN and BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR.
The event's organizer asked everyone to take a seat and the cinema lights went dark for Harley Mansfield’s, 1977 classic with Sharon cast as a reverse rapist in a New York of dark alleys and empty trains. Her crimes lead to a spate of copycat sexual assault on men by her devotees. The viewers in the theater laughed throughout the film. It was funny.
After the lights came up, Fast Eddie and Jean Namur biked off to Pratt Institute. They had graduate engineering classes in the morning.
"Thank Miss Mitchell for us."
Fast Eddie knew how to be polite.
The second Q & A was longer and I waited for Sharon. We were getting drinks together.
Old friends and stars had popped out of the woodwork.
I knew none of them.
"I need a drink," Sharon whispered to me.
"Me too."
We ended up at Planet Rose, a karaoke bar on Avenue A.
The owner was Sharon's friend. He bought us drinks. Steven Morowitz of Distribpix got the next rounds. Sharon basked in the glory of another night of fame.
"It was great being a movie star again, but watching me in JOY was like watching my granddaughter on screen."
She introduced me to the king of the peepshow loops.
He had stories of Times Square.
Strippers, porno actresses, fat boys, dirty cops, bag men, and connected producers.
"Just don't tell anyone these stories," he cautioned me and looked around the room. "Some of those guys are still alive."
"You got it." I can hold my sand as can any one of 'Us'.
A small blonde man rocked on the mike singing Judas Priest. Sean came from Tulsa. I told him about passing through town in the 1970s.
"I drank with the Speare Sisters." They were good girls and true to their church, but liked a good time in the speakeasies of that Bible Belt city.
Sean loved Sharon.
He danced cheek to groin with her.
Out west she lived near Big Sur.
Crystal Creek was a small town.
She liked the big city.
Same as Sean.
I saw my opening and joined the two, as a fat girl sang Taylor Swift's YOU BELONG TO ME.
Her voice was brutally flat.
I liked it.
Sharon loved it.
Sean loved it too.
Technically nothing happened, but this fully-clothed encounter was as close as I was getting to a menage-a-trois this summer or any season to come and that was probably a good thing.
For everyone who said no.
There was only one yes thanks to the magic of JOY.
Fotos by Daniel Karpus and Peter Nolan Smith
To order JOY, please go to the following URL
http://www.distribpix.com/film/joy/overview
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