LOS ANGELES—The address on the call sheet is on a major artery, but here in the shadow of the Convention Center it’s down to a capillary: narrow, with one lane in each direction, and crowded because of the Laker game that just ended this late afternoon. In a warehouse repurposed as a studio, Michael Vegas and Siouxsie Q are shooting the second of their Bottom Floor orgy series.
The spartan second-floor loft—white walls and ceiling, unpainted wood pillars, polished cement floor—is a hubbub of activity. Performers in various states of glam prep—hair in curlers, sweatpants—line up to fill out paperwork and pose for ID pictures. Techs put together rigging, pipes clanging on the cement floor as they are laid out for assembly. Penny Barber, in curlers, surveys me with a don’t-I-know-you? look. Siouxsie Q welcomes me, asks if I’m okay with being on camera (“Sure”) and sends me to the paperwork table. A lot of BDSM gear laid out on a table next to a cage the size of a phone booth. A PA retrieves a pack of cigarettes with a lighter rubber-banded to it. A DJ sets up in the corner. Lasers test, flashing designs on the wall. A side room with a craft table with water and high-energy snacks is filled with performers dressing and undressing. I wanted a bottle of water, I think I’ll wait until it’s less crowded.
Codi Vore steps out in a fishnet top and garter belt, with fishnet stockings. Codey Steele shambles around in an Adult Time t-shirt, Kink hoodie and Vixen sweatpants. He told me years ago that as a male performer, he didn’t have to do a lot of prep for a scene. Still true. Two performers scream at each other in recognition.
“We built this space for our community,” Vegas tells me. “Our community loves to have sex in public. I have seen so many of my friends devalue their rate so they have a chance to do live sex performance, because it’s inherently part of our nature—but it was always at the expense of comfort. People who are putting on these other large-scale sex parties are not paying performers what they’re valued. They are not taking care of them, and it’s fake. When there’s somebody who can pay their way in, you have to put up a wall as a performer and block them. This party is all adult-film performers and a very close, adjacent community, so the level of comfort lets people drop their guard and be in a real space where they’re really performing for themselves. You’ll see. It’s magic. It’s different. It’s a lot of fun.”
“I’m excited,” Connie Perignon says. “I think this is the most people I’ve ever had on set. The energy here is really high. I’m excited to be here. I’m looking forward to how everything plays out.”
Casey Calvert struts by in shiny black leather. Penny Barber, curlers gone, is in a shiny leather-look top and black skirt. Vegas hangs a THE BOTTOM FLOOR neon sign over the DJ station. There’s an ADULT TIME neon sign in another corner, near a step-and-repeat backdrop and a table full of lingerie. A woman in shiny black leather with a horned Maleficent headdress taps away on her cell phone. A PA hangs a pink pig mask on a frame with chains holding a body sling at hip level. Vanessa Vega walks by with cherry blossoms tattooed on her ass. A roll of Magnum condoms on a chair. A couple snuggles together on a curved sex chair and I instinctively look to see if I’m blocking a camera as I walk by. Aiden Starr watches Alison Rey take phone pictures of lube bottles on a table.
“I missed the first time they shot this, and I was disappointed to miss it,” Sophia Locke tells me. “Michael Vegas didn’t know that I had done similar things for Kink.com back in the day. When I mentioned that—and begged them to be a part of it—they said they’d be happy to have me. I have plans with a Domme woman here to control me for the evening. It’ll be fun. It’ll make for a really good party.”
“We have 34 players here tonight,” Siouxsie Q announces, leading into the group consent discussion, first laying down some ground rules: “No nudity outside. If you have to go outside for a smoke, be street-legal. No alcohol or drug use. No slapping. No misgendering. No water sports, no blood, no peeing on anybody today. Squirting is not pee. If you’re going to squirt, let us know so we can get it in the shot. Please don’t spill the lube, it can be hazardous.”
Siouxsie Q then goes around the room with a sheaf of consent forms, introducing everybody in the room and enumerating their do’s and don’t’s.
“No bottoming or ass play.”
“No spitting in my mouth. It’s okay from the neck down.”
“No tongue in my earhole.”
“Light choking only.”
“I’m on my period. Watch for blood. If you see something, say something. Help a
girl out.”
“No tit-slapping or grabbing please. They’re new. [Round of applause]”
“Don’t lean on my chest. I have a super-vascular chest, it’ll leave a mark.”
“No rough fingering, and don’t slap my fucking face! No electricity.”
“No hair pulling.”
“I’m a super-heavy masochist. Beat the shit out of me.”
“No oral. I did my first blowbang the other day and I’m still kind of sore.”
“I hate praise. Don’t be nice to me.”
“I know a lot of you, I’ve interviewed some of you, some of you I don’t know. If you’d like to talk to me for the article in AVN, please do.”
As everybody files to the paperwork station to sign their consent forms, internet content providers grab their cameras and start shooting their own content. Watching from the sidelines, Lilly Bell tells me, “I’m looking forward to being a voyeur. I’m a big watcher. I think it’s really fun to enjoy and see there are so many types of humans here. It’s cool to see what’s going to happen. When I walked in I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to play today.’ But now I’m seeing what’s going down... I’m probably going to play. It’ll happen. There are so many people it’s fun to play with here.”
Performer Christian Wilde, dressed in leather chaps, walks up and introduces himself. “I’m super-excited to see what develops, I’m super-excited to see what comes out of the evening. I’m excited to watch different people do different sorts of dirty, naughty things. I’m excited to do dirty naughty things to lots of different people. I’ve been doing this for some 17 years, mostly in the gay industry, but I’ve worked on the straight side. I do everything. Performer, director, website owner, all the above. I’ve performed with everybody.”
Codey Steele tells me this is his second Bottom Floor shoot. “I was a principal in the first one: me, Seth Gamble, and Siri Dahl. For this one, one of the scheduled performers couldn’t make it work, so I’m doing this one, too. The scene will be me, Zariah Aura, Christian Wilde and Little Puck. We’re going to try and put three penises in all of her holes. We’ll see how that works, but Puck is excited to have all the dicks in all the places. This is the largest cast I’ve ever been a part of, even including an entire movie with extras. This is the most happening at one place in one scene. It’s always been something I like: a sex club environment. Multiple genders, different orientations of people, all having fun together. I love that kind of thing and I’m a true exhibitionist so being at the center of it is amazing for me.”
After the creators finish their content shoots, a brief break is called for makeup and costume retouches. Over pizza in the break room, I chat momentarily with Little Puck but she excuses herself to prep for her scene. Dammit. Connie Perignon reclines in the sex swing and Vega unrolls a condom over Perignon’s spike heel and tries to insert, but they can’t get the angle right.
It’s gotten quiet since the content creators finished shooting, the loud sex sounds replaced with quiet chat, but there is an air of anticipation as last-minute adjustments are made.
When it’s time, the curtains are drawn, the lights and lasers come up. The music starts. Vegas fires up a smoke machine, releases a small cloud into the room, then shoulders his camera. “Action!”
We’re off.
Vega and Charlotte Sins recline on a couch, Codey Steele walks up, drops trou, goes in. Alison Rey kneels in front of a guy, starts to blow him, spits out a loose hair. Vega puts a wand vibe to Monique Miles’ clit as her head rolls back. Right next to Miles, as Steele keeps fucking, Lilly Bell walks around them with a plug-in vibe, looking for a handy outlet. She grabs a paper towel, parks the vibe on a bench, heads over to Miles as Vega lies back and Steele turns his attention to her as Sins mouths her clit. Perignon, bent over a table, vocalizes as a guy plows into her. Penny Barber flogs young sub Sam Solo with I DESERVE EVERYTHING Sharpied on his back. Codi Vore watches somebody give a slow, teasing blowjob to a trans woman, then moves over to teasingly kiss a trans man.
A vid cam and stills cam captures Steele fucking Sins from behind with Vega underneath as Bell buries her face in Miles’ cleavage, then bends over for Miles to flog her. (“I’m probably going to play. It’ll happen.”) Barber has pulled down the sub’s pants and is cradling his caged cock with one hand as she swats his ass with the other. Nicky Zeal, wearing a strap-on, fucks real-life partner Zariah Aura in the ass. A woman on her knees gives a no-frills blowjob, then bends over to get fucked.
Through a glass window, I see Coco Lovelock blowing a trans woman—or maybe a cis woman with a strap-on. Tough to tell in the dim light. Sophia Locke, on all fours, fellates a strap-on as Christian Wilde takes her from behind. Siouxsie Q walks over to me and says with a frustrated grin, “We have four cameras, but it’s not enough.” Steele is fucking Bell in a mish as Sins and Vega hold her legs apart. He holds a wand vibe to her clit and her face clenches in pleasure. Bell breaks into a laugh they all share, then gets up on unsteady legs as Perignon takes her place on the bench. Vore is eating Zeal’s pussy as Aura straddles his face and fucks down into his mouth. Alison Rey is riding a guy on the curved lounge and Miles is hanging from the sex swing, swinging as two women eat her pussy. Vore and Zeal hug and separate.
Vore leads Miles on a leash to a bench, then grabs a flogger. Aiden Starr blows a guy in a shiny black gimp suit as Calvert fists him up to the wrist. Bell and Vega walk around, looking for something—someone—to do. The cameras follow Little Puck as she heads to the center of the room. She gets on all fours on a padded table with Aura, blowing her as Steele takes her from behind, then gets in front for some of the oral action. She flips on her back, jerking Aura and Wilde and squealing as Steele pounds into her. Elsewhere, the gimp guy noses into Sins’ pussy. Wilde is face-to-face with Puck. She raises her hips, and Steele goes in to her pussy, pulling a plug out of her ass and setting it aside. Aura lies down, Puck gets on top of her, Steele heads into her ass. D.P. She mugs into the camera, takes Wilde into her mouth.
Airtight.
Steele and Wilde trade places, and Steele places his cock low so Aura and Puck can both suck it. As the camera moves in, Puck howls “Thank you for fucking my ass!”
A few feet away, Calvert, hanging upside-down with her hands cuffed behind her back, gives blowjobs to guys who walk up to her as the crowd chants “Suck! Suck! Suck!” A PA walks up, nudges me. “You’re in the shot.” Oops. Sorry. I move. The gimp guy is eating Perignon in the sex swing, then moves on to fucking her as the chains clink. Close to Puck’s center stage, Rey and two other women are taking turns blowing a guy stretched out on a padded bench.
Siouxsie Q makes a general announcement: “Let us know when you’re near a pop and we’ll get a camera over to you.” Two cameras move over to Puck’s quartet as the gimp guy is cleaning off Aiden Starr’s breasts. One guy pops on another guy’s boot and Haskell Holland licks it off the boot, and the cock. When Aura pops on Puck’s face, she deep-throats her until she howls with pleasure/pain and the clapboards clack, indicating the scene is over except for the valedictory bye-byes into camera.
“God, I love my job,” Sophia Locke says. “I wanted tonight to be a fantasy fulfillment free-use situation, and I gave the reins to a dear friend of mine. She did such a fantastic job of leading me around, planning exciting things for me. I never knew what was happening next, but I knew I was in good hands. I truly enjoyed myself. I’m fuckin’ pumped, still. Adrenaline pumping through me.”
Puck finds me and picks up our pizza conversation as people are hugging good-bye. I ask her about the triple-pen: “It was like a warm, comfortable bowl of soup on a cold winter’s day,” she says. “A flailing pile of bodies, sweaty, stinky, but very soothing. I feel very well-fucked. Very happy. It was extremely wholesome, and I mean that as a double entendre. ‘W’ optional.”
Rey introduces me to Andrew, her civilian friend who was the centerpiece of the three-way blowjob. He’s got a grin that is going to take a couple of hours to fade. “It was the first actual sex party I’d ever been to, and it was unbelievable. I had the time of my life. I have her to thank for it all, because I was her plus-one. It was wonderful.”
“We got compliments,” Rey adds. “We were told, ‘He put on a great show every time the camera was around.’ And the girls said I picked a good one. It was very fun. As a performer, bringing your civilian partner into this space, into a play party, can be a little nerve-wracking. Especially one with cameras. Your reputation is on the line. But I trust the hell out of him, and he’s very good in bed, so I wasn’t too worried.”
Photography by Inamorata Photo & Mad Creativity
