“The lunar eclipse is this Saturday, Eddie, and my friend is having a naked party,” she said on the phone. Tara’s father was a famous musician from England, which made Tara a socialite. Once, her British rock star father and I sniffed cocaine off a skull key in the bathroom of Dublin’s. Everyone knew about it, and my popularity skyrocketed as a result.
“Is Manson going to be at this one?” I hoped the answer would be yes. At the last party I had gone to with Tara, a Tuesday night thing, the goth musician Marilyn Manson had left an impression on me. It was in regards to a joke he had made about men and women who stare at their own fecal matter. According to Marilyn Manson, doing so was a characteristic of homosexuality. I had this nagging feeling in the back of my head, secretly wondering if the reason I got bored while having sex with Rachel had something to do with the fact that once or twice I had stared at my own poop.
“No clue if Marilyn is going to be there, Eddie,” said Tara in that drowsy affectation of hers. She was on first name basis with hordes of celebrities. And she was asexual. “But you still want to have an orgy, right?”
“Why?”
“Be ready at 9pm sharp.”
Ever since the breakup with Rachel I had been telling anyone who would listen that I was ready to spread my wings sexually. To me, that meant having sex with more than one woman simultaneously. I intensely channeled that desire. Even O’ Grady, the Irish dean at my Jewish high school, knew about my plans. I wasn’t sure how it was going to happen, but it was going to happen. And now, in the form of the daughter of a British rock star, Eros was answering me.
She wouldn’t tell me where the party was. Just that it wasn’t far from my parent’s house, and that if I wanted to, I’d be able to have easy sex with multiple women simultaneously. At a quarter to nine, I was slowly getting dressed, carefully picking out the perfect outfit for my first orgy.
I still had some Bar-Mitzvah leftovers. Versace ties with pink and yellow tones, knitted with lions. Dressy shoes from boutiques on Rodeo Drive. The outfit I self consciously picked was a glittery shirt from a store called Politik in the Beverly Center, and Italian boots from mom’s favorite store in Beverly Hills, Cesare Paciotti.
Five minutes after Tara and I agreed to meet, at 9:05pm, I stomped over to mom and Len’s master suite to negotiate my curfew. Parents. They were the final hurdle to clear before an orgy. And to make matters worse, Len had just returned from a business trip to Moscow. They were both home. And I would need permission from each.
Len was on the bed when I walked into the master suite, pot belly sagging in his Hanes, shaking his head at the TV as he waited for a business call to come in from Russia.
“What are you watching, paps?”
“Idiot Al Gore.”
“What about Clinton?”
“Who finished the caviar, Eddie?”
“Ursula threw it away,” I said, referring to the hunchback who was our Polish housekeeper. “I think it was spoiled.”
“Spoiled? How much is your mother paying her to ruin my caviar?”
“I don’t think Ursula is auditioning for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” I said lamely. For a few seconds it was quiet. “Stepping out of the house for a bit. Mom knows where I’m going.”
“Where are you going?”
“Mulholland Estates, to my friend Tara’s house. And I’m sleeping over.”
“You’re staying here tonight,” Len said. “I want to kiss you tomorrow morning before I leave to Moscow.”
“Come on,” I said. “Can’t you kiss me now?”
Len’s phone rang. “No later than midnight,” Len said, before disappearing into the phone call. As I stomped across the hallway toward the guest room, I was already plotting. Len traveling all the time did have perks, and one such perk was the ability to pit mom and Len against each other when it came to matters of curfew. On this particular evening I was lucky. Mom was passed out, asleep on the couch when I popped my head into the guest room. I hit the light switch so she wouldn’t have to. Halfway out my eye caught the Danielle Steele novel on her navel.
The moon was a shiny omen, a sign of the good fortunes that lay ahead. Dressed like a gaudy chandelier, Tara was waiting for me as I raced down the hill toward the Escalade. I passed the basketball hoop and feigned a swish. Ace, Tara’s personal driver and bodyguard, was smoking weed in the Escalade, and I could smell it. Tara was snorting cocaine from the lip of a Parliament Light.
“Yo, Ace,” I said. “After you’re done hot-boxing in front of my parent’s place, can you tell me where we’re going?”
“Nice try, Aids.”
Aids, that was Ace’s nickname for me. Never had an explanation for why he called me that, and I never thought to ask. “Step on it, Ace,” said Tara.
We cruised east on Mulholland with the windows up so the wind wouldn’t mess with Tara’s hair. “Hook a left on Wonderland,” Tara said ten minutes into the drive. And poof, like magic, we were at the destination.
The entrance to the Spanish Villa was guarded by a bouncer who Ace knew well. There were no people outside, which was a sign that we were in the right place. After our names were checked off the list, the iron door was cranked open. Entering, we had to walk carefully so as not to accidentally slip into a koi pond surrounding the entrance. Luckily, the moon provided just enough light.
Once inside, it took me a second to adjust to the surroundings. Dim torches lit the foyer. Little by little, details clued me into my location — plaques and plaques of platinum records. Tattoos. Long-haired men and short-haired women. In my expensive Cesar Paciotti boots and shiny button-down from the Beverly Center I looked like a European waiter, and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst this middle-aged crowd of regulars at the Rainbow Room.
A familiar face gave Tara a kiss while we were still in the foyer. Tommy Lee, the drummer of Motley Crew. I recognized him immediately by the oily black hair and a Mighty Mouse tattoo on his shoulder. Everywhere I looked there was evidence of the drummer’s famed hard-partying ways. Not just naked women, naked men too. Despite everything, the ambiance was casual. Had what every other party on a Saturday night in Los Angeles had. Drugs, bartenders, and music. In our case, heavy metal, and also a crystal blue saline pool.
By the time I got over my initial shock and settled in, Tara was following our gracious host, Tommy Lee, up the stairs. I raced after them, yelling — but didn’t get far. At the bottom of the staircase a body guard was putting the fear into anyone who dared make their way into the private quarters of the famous musician.
“Tara, where should I meet you?” I screamed from the bottom of the staircase next to the body guard. She didn’t hear me over the loud heavy metal banging out of Tommy Lee’s home entertainment system. However, I had an objective. It mattered more than having a reliable friend, and I planned to do something about it. Forward I proceeded on my quest to have an orgy.
Tommy Lee was born in Greece and only lived there for a month before his mother and American father began their journey to the States in 1962. Lee’s father was in Greece fulfilling his duty as a US Army captain when he fell in love with Lee’s mother at a banquet he was invited to by a mutual friend. Since David Oliver Bass, Tommy’s father, only spoke English, and Vassiliki Papadimitriou, his mother, spoke Greek, the couple communicated in silly hand-signals for years before they could speak the same language. Less than a year after they met, after Tommy’s father completed his military tour in Thailand, the Bass family was in West Covina, California.
By the time Tommy’s sister Athena was born, his parents were no longer using dictionaries to communicate with each other. When Tommy was four, his father bought him a drum set, his first. From that day on, David Bass disagreed with his son’s pursuit of a career in rock music only once, when Tommy dropped out of high school to pursue the record deal that had just been given to his newly formed band, Motley Crue.
A few steps from the staircase where Tara had ditched me, I found a bar. So I went over to it for some liquid confidence. On the way witnessed public sex. Standouts included two rocker-types in their 30s, with craniums as bald as bottle caps, being attended to by women who were confident on their knees. To this day, I have never seen oral sex like this. The women were criss-crossing from one to the other and exchanging saliva. I stayed long enough to watch both men ejaculate. Afterward, I really needed a drink. The bars inside the house were packed, so I headed to the pool-bar, where not only would I be able to have a drink, but the soothing lunar eclipse could help me relax. I had always had a relationship with the moon, and knew that to accomplish my objective all I needed to do was stand beneath it and wait for the confidence to rush in. For extra confidence, I popped a Ricola.
Ace was at the pool-bar when I got there. I successfully ignored him until finishing my first cocktail. Now that I was loose, I decided to approach. So, I ordered a Jack-and-Coke and carried it over to him by the diving board. With Ace, I had learned not to show up empty handed.
“Ace?”
“Whaddup, Aids? Why you leave the party?”
“Have you ever had an orgy, Ace?”
“You gay, Aids.”
“No, I’m just — how do you know that someone in there doesn’t have an STD?”
Ace perked up. “Yo, Aids, you want I go to the party while you wait with the Escalade?”
“One disease and the whole party could potentially be infected.”
“That ain’t the way STDs work, Aids.”
“What’s your favorite Motley Crue record, Ace?”
“My favorite what?”
“Motley Crue record.”
“Never heard of them.”
“You realize we’re at the drummer of the band’s house right now?”
“This white boy music aint for me, Aids.”
“I wonder what Tommy Lee’s parents are like?”
“You serious?”
“Do you think they’re divorced?”
“Yo, that’s mad personal, Aids. Don’t go digging into someone’s business like that. Especially when that somebody is the host of a party giving your little ass house tequila.”
“Sorry, I just thought that…”
Ace was laughing. “I’m gonna tell you a secret, Aids. Hear me out. I like Tara and the rest of her friends out here; and this might sound nasty, but you don’t fit in with them.”
“I mean, Tara and I haven’t been friends for that long, but I really like her so far.”
“Should I shut up or keep going?” Ace said. I lit his cigarette. “These bitches, they never gonna do nuthin’ with their lives, Aids. They’ll go to parties and get divorces and will die without achieving anything of substance.”
“Tommy Lee is a rock star.” I said.
“Look around, Aids. There’s a reason he’s the only one. That’s right, Aids, motherfucking substance. Motherfucking substance, Aids.”
Tommy Lee’s first tattoo was a depiction of Mighty Mouse that he got after he dropped out of high school. Even though his parents begged him to graduate, Lee was compelled to give up his education. Lee’s mind would wander in every class except math, which like music, used symbols to solve complex problems. Most of all, leaving high school would allow Lee to put his hard-practiced drumming skills to the test in the real world. Mighty Mouse was an easy choice for Lee’s first tattoo. It was a cartoon he watched on TV religiously since he was a child, enamored with the righteous mouse, and his cartoonish bravery. Tattoos became the way for Lee to manifest the things he most loved and wanted in his life, including women.
Shortly after Lee’s divorce to Heather Locklear, he fell in love with Pamela Anderson. It was at a Sunset Strip club that Pamela Anderson partly-owned, on a night when Lee claims he wasn’t looking for romance. Lee’s friends had a booth, a bunch of guys covered in tattoos, and who, according to Anderson, all looked similar in their wallet chains, wife-beaters, and sagging dungarees. Anderson tried hard to keep her distance, but Lee’s persistence prevailed, and soon they were in Mexico together, celebrating a marriage obtained in a five-day Ecstasy binge that began at a Cancun Senor Frogs. Anderson found Lee mysterious, and over those first five days when everything seemed like it was possible, and love was as fresh as limes in a Tequila Sunrise, they spent countless hours communicating over the hidden meanings of Lee’s tattoos; just like Tommy’s parents, who used goofy hand symbols to connect with each other in Greece.
There I was, fourteen years old, going from room to room filled with naked women, in search of an orgy at Tommy Lee’s hillside castle a year after his divorce to Anderson. Yet, every time I approached a group of girls, something stopped me. It was paranoia. The fear of getting an STD, nagging at me like my grandmother. It was that I was the youngest person at the party, that I would’ve been more comfortable if there were people my age. I leaned against walls, a tactic I used on a daily basis in high school to project confidence. As I went from one wall to another, leaning here and leaning there, I watched men as they stood on the sidelines plotting their fantasies by combining one woman with another woman, matching and mismatching until the right combination appeared. Once it did, off they went, and before long they were in a bedroom, or on the kitchen table, crying out in ecstasy next to a plate of condiments. Watching other men’s eyes lusting after women was making me nauseous. Not to mention the audible orgasming all around me. By the time I sat down on the bench outside, where steam from the pool obscured my view of the lunar eclipse, I was exhausted and still sexless.
“Wow, Eddie. How drunk are you?” Tara was smoking a Parliament Light on the bench right beside me. Can’t say how long I was asleep on that bench before Tara found me. But it was long enough to go deep.
“How long was I out for?”
“Tell me everything,” Tara said. “How did it go?”
“You first,” I said.
“I just watched movies with Tommy.” I had a hard time believing it. That Tommy Lee would be throwing a sex party, a few months after his break up with Pamela Anderson, to watch movies upstairs with a prude. “We should probably get going,” I said. “My parents are going to get pissed if I stay out too late.” For a few seconds Tara applied chapstick, reading me with her ample blue eyes. She could tell that I was full of it.
Tara dragged me across the backyard toward the front door. I was already planning the excuses for why the orgy hadn’t happened, when Tara pushed me through a curtain. There was still one final surprise. It was on the other side of the foyer in a dark den. There was special music playing in the den. In Tommy Lee’s Hollywood Hills castle. Before my eyes could adjust to the darkness, my ears were adjusting to the pre-recorded sounds of an Amazonian rain forest. And then came the moans. The moaning of women. Of grown men. So I did that leaning thing. Leaned easy against a wall. It was made of something fuzzy and the unexpected softness of it made me trip. And then while on the carpet my calf was touched. On the shag carpet, where bodies were everywhere. Naked body parts. And before anything happened I ran.
Physical attraction was a driving force in Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s relationship. But surprisingly they never rushed anything, not even their first kiss. For cover girl Pamela Anderson and for rock star Tommy Lee, it took five full days before they had intercourse. Once at it, though, it never stopped. The mirror they installed above the bed in the master suite of their Malibu home, after getting hitched, and the grand jacuzzi, and the sex swing, only made it better.
Not long after Lee and Anderson celebrated Tommy’s 33rd birthday at the house in Malibu the two had redesigned and landscaped from scratch, they decided to have children. While trying to have kids, they had the best sex of their lives. The couple’s first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but soon after they gave birth to boys, one year apart from each other in age. Children put a new pressure on them, a pressure exacerbated by the constant barrage of paparazzi that followed them wherever they went. By the time a sex tape stolen from their home was released, the couple was struggling. A divorce was the only way to protect their children from further damage. In Tommyland, Tommy Lee’s autobiography, he keeps a cool head when writing about the break up. Despite the painful divorce, and all the money wasted on lawyers and mediators during the process, Lee describes a split that salvaged a friendship between him and Anderson, and that ultimately made for the well being of their children.
During the ride back home to my parent’s house no one spoke. Tara sat up front. Ace kept his focus on the road ahead. And the darkness was only broken by streaks of moonlight.
Halfway up the stairs, back in my parent’s house, I could already hear Len’s snoring. It sounded like microwave popcorn popping. As the snorts evolved, I timed my steps so that they wouldn’t wake a light sleeper. At three in the morning, I would be in significant trouble if caught past curfew. Sleep, that was my only objective. I walked into my room, lost my pants, and crashed on to the bed.
“Ow,” said the warm body I landed on. “You’re sitting on me with all of your weight.”
It was mom. She quickly apologized for the misunderstanding and stumbled toward the guest room.
Source: reddit.com/r/gonewildstories/comments/7tgv7z/my_first_orgy_an_awkward_teenager_at_tommy_lees