Sarah & Gam do Brisbane Sexpo

We arrived at the CityCat stop just in time to miss the one we needed

So I wasted time by snapping a 4-shot panorama of the view

...From where we were sitting.

I have to be honest. Belladonna was the reason I changed my mind about not going to Sexpo this year. Maybe I was jaded, maybe now that I know what a good lube is and what makes a good vibrator and what kind of porn I like I didn't think there was anything more that Sexpo could offer.

But this year, Brisbane Sexpo had Belladonna, and boy am I glad we went!


We had planned on going early to avoid crowds, but Gam got called up for a job interview, and by the time we'd spent an hour on the bus there and back I was too buggered to get in for Belladonna's 1-2pm appearance. We wound up going in around 4.30pm to have a wander around before her next appearance at 5pm. When we went in we chatted briefly with the door guy. As we walked away he called us back and said "When you get your photo taken with Belladonna, promise me you'll make it interesting, ok? At the Melbourne Sexpo all the girls were doing this [at which he mimed lifting up his top], but in Brisbane all they do is this [at which he smiled a particularly stilted smile]. Ya gotta do something interesting!". We laughed and promised we'd try. I had a feeling he probably just wanted to see boobs, but you can't blame him- signing up for a job as a door guy at Sexpo I suppose he hoped there'd be boob in it somewhere!

Not long after we got in I found I couldn't help myself when we found the fleshlight stand... I bought a couple of these as a birthday present for Gam a few years ago and since then they've come out with a 'crystal' (i.e. clear) sleeve and insert, which I thought would be great not so much for Gam's benefit as mine (i.e. a great show!). So that became our first purchase. [expensive but worth it -gam]

"And if someone tries to attack me, I'll just hit them over the head, like this!"

Then we wandered past a couple of vibrator stalls where guys explained the ins and outs (bad pun not really intended) of various new vibrators. One guy tried to sell me an 'orgasm cream'. He didn't seem to want to believe that I don't actually need an orgasm cream. The vibrators were all a lot cheaper than my last one, a green iVibe rabbit on which the vibrator motor died (booo) after maybe a year or so, so I was tempted into getting one- I figured at least for that price it won't be too bad if it dies or isn't very good. Waterproof would have cost more, but while waterproof is good there's not much point to it if I'm sitting in front of the computer watching porn. Besides, the waterproof one was... smaller. [the orgasm cream guy was a full on carnie, i mean he wanted us to buy his showbag now and tried to convince sarah to put some of the cream on her nipples (!) because that would show how good it was. i suggested she try the inside of her wrist in case she had a reaction to it. it was pretty funny. we also saw some all male revue, geez, those guys have muscles on their muscles... total gym heads, and while they were hanging around their stand waiting to go on stage they were dancing around practicing their choreography. i asked sarah to get a pic with them holding her up but it fell on deaf ears, sorry MB!]

Director Pierre Woodman (L) and his ass (front, centre)

At 4.58pm we wandered over to the porn stars' stage. There were two or three porn stars there- Sophie Paris, Roxy Jezel and a pretty brunette whose name I can't remember. There was a trickle of people trailing through to have a picture signed or fork out $15 to have their photo taken with one of them. Roxy Jezel was absolutely miniscule... that's one thing that most porn stars have in common- they're pint-sized! Dana DeArmond showed up not long after that, took off her top and started signing pictures. I don't think I've seen any porn with her in it, and she looked a hell of a lot prettier than any pictures I've seen of her- plus she had nice, small natural boobs. A couple of minutes after 5pm and we were looking at our watches wondering when Belladonna was going to show up... a guy with a microphone announced she'd be here "in a couple of minutes" and that meanwhile everyone should get cracking and have their photos taken with the girls present at the discount price of $15 each (full price was $25). A crowd had gathered by this time, and it was pretty clear they were there for Belladonna. I even felt a bit sorry for the other girls... I'm sure if there was no charge everyone would have wanted to have their photo taken with them, but Gam and I were saving our $25 for Belladonna, and I'm sure everyone else was too. [sarah got talent spotted several times by the guys on the stage who kept pointing her out and having a whisper to each other, i should have told them i was her agent!]



We joked that she was too popular and obviously acting like a diva, showing up late. But there was plenty of entertainment in the form of the few people who were getting their photos done or various parts of their anatomy signed (backs, boobs, arses). And every few minutes the announcer would encourage people to come up and hand over their money for a photo with one of the stars present and no-one would move...

Eventually Belladonna did show up, to cheers. She was wearing a black tracksuit or something, but changed into a pair of white tights and a purple triangle bikini top. She was so little. I knew she was short, but I expected her to be a bit stockier. She is also insanely pretty in real life.

Once Belladonna had shown up, a queue quickly formed full of people wanting to fork over money to have their photo taken with her. Anyone else and I would think it's a bit ridiculous forking over that kind of money for a single photo, especially when we're broke (don't mention the sex toys...) , but Gam and I figured this may be a once-in-a-lifetime thing and were all too happy to line up. We were close to the front of the queue, but there were probably 10 or so people ahead of us, so a kind of musical chairs arrangement was made along the stage, where someone would sit with Belladonna and the people in the queue behind them would sit with the other porn stars on the stage- Sophie Paris and Dana DeArmond (Roxy Jezel had headed off by that time).



Once again, I felt a bit bad for the girls; with everyone knowing full well that we were all there to see Belladonna and not them I anticipated it being a bit awkward. That turned out not to be the case at all. Sophie Paris (whose name I believe is pronounced the French way so it rhymes) had a European accent rather than the American one I expected, so we asked where she was from- Hungary, as it turned out. She told us she started out as a fashion model, which was entirely believeable given her extremely slim figure and pretty face. She started her porn career in Europe too. She hadn't seen much of Brisbane, but said she would take a look around on her day off on Monday before flying back home (to the states? I forgot to ask). Gam recommended she take a CityCat ride as a nice way of seeing the city. She signed a picture of herself for us, though I've got to say she looks absolutely nothing like her picture. Nothing whatsoever- she's much prettier without the 'porn star' makeup.

Then everyone was told to move on, and all of a sudden we were sitting next to Dana DeArmond, who was in the middle of jokingly hitting on the good looking black guy manning the till. She was in the middle of listing the names of all the interracial movies she's done, so we asked who was her favourite guy to perform with- she named Sean Michaels and a couple of other guys I can't remember off the top of my head. We talked about how little most of the porn stars are- she referred to herself as 'big' when actually she is what most people would consider pretty normal (a slim 5'8, same as me). She also plugged her boyfriend, who is also in porn and goes by the name of Daniel (one name only?). He apparently does 'a lot of MILF stuff', and appears on a cheesy site called MILF Invaders or something like that. We're going to check it out for a laugh. She also signed a picture of herself for us- once again it looked nothing like she did in real life... she was also a lot prettier than her picture. More exotic, plus she had neat bobbed hair.

Meanwhile, Belladonna greeted every fan like a friend she hadn't seen in a long while. A big hug, a kiss on the cheek- and not any of that horrid fake-hug-air-kiss where you don't really like the person. I'm not a hug person, but I've learned to do it because that's the done thing... but the way Belladonna greeted everyone was just beautiful. There was only one other couple in the queue ahead of us, and that was a really skinny goth dude and a big curvy goth girl. The rest were mostly 20-something guys. No single girls. Belladonna's interpersonal skills are, I have to say, pretty bloody awesome. It must be hard to make two people feel as if they're carrying on a conversation with you alone when you're actually in front of a crowd of people with cameras and whatnot, but she achieved that. I've got to admit to being a bit starstruck. More than a bit starstruck. She is utterly beautiful. Porn star makeup doesn't seem to do anyone any favours, and if she's beautiful with the makeup trowelled on, then she was positively stunning with what was probably less makeup than the average girl would wear on a night out- she had on a pretty green eyeshadow with some black eyeliner and I can't even remember if she was wearing lipstick- I was too busy looking at her eyes and hair. How someone touted as the dirtiest girl in the business could look so damn angelic I don't know.

She seemed really pleased that we'd brought along some of our DVD sleeve inserts for her to sign- we didn't bring the whole DVDs in case we weren't allowed to take them in. We told her how hard it was to get hold of Fashionistas over here (we were surprised to see one guy in the queue ahead of us pull out a Fashionistas DVD to sign) and she said she'd heard the same thing from quite a few other people (it took me some serious online hunting to find Fashionistas, and I bought it as a birthday present for Gam and hid it under a pile of my clothes for several months until his birthday a few years ago... highly recommended even for people who aren't into fetish stuff- we're not, and it's probably our favourite DVD). I asked if she gets recognised in the street at all- she said it happens a bit in the US but not so much here, and in the US she gets recognised most often when she's doing her grocery shopping- so she occasionally takes DVDs along to give fans who recognise her! She strikes me as being very dedicated to her fans- taking her time when talking to each of them, including us- despite having made it as one of the biggest names in the business.

The highlight of this year's Sexpo visit.
Will get to tell our grandkids one day- "Your Grandpa and I met Belladonna one day, and she bit my arse!"

When we were going to get our photo taken by her hubby, Aiden, she asked us "naughty or nice?", upon which we told her what the doorman had said to us and asked her to suggest a pose- which she did. It took 3 goes- on the first one I blinked, on the second one something else was wrong (probably I looked like an idiot because I was trying not to blink!), and the third one was perfect. [also belladonna told me, 'your girl is seriously hot' to which i replied, 'i know!' and i got to see belladonna slap sarah's arse lol!] We also asked Aiden for his autograph- he seemed a bit taken aback, saying "but I don't have an autograph!", but he took one of Belladonna's pictures and signed it for us:

What Aiden looks like when he gets up in the morning...
actually what he wakes up next to in the morning, the lucky bastard!

We figured it was pretty cool getting his autograph... Belladonna talked about how wonderful he was, so we figure they're like a team. Most people would consider that any guy lucky enough to shack up with Belladonna would have struck it lucky, but if they've got what Gam and I have got then they've both struck it lucky. All the best to them.

Our only disappointment was getting home and realising that while Belladonna had spelled Gam's name right on the photo card she autographed for us, all our DVDs now have "Sarah & Gab", because she spelled it wrong after getting it right the first time. Nooo! Still, they've all got her autograph, which is what we took them in for. Heh. she also said she may be back in Australia, possibly even Brisbane (though not likely, is my guess), in October this year, so perhaps we can chase her down and get her to correct it then!

First one- spelling is fine!

And all of a sudden our porn belongs to me and 'Gab'- oops!

After talking to Belladonna we walked off the stage and into the path of a Courier Mail reporter whose name I forget, who asked us if we would answer some questions about why we went to see Belladonna... or something. He assumed we were boyfriend and girlfriend, not married, but we corrected him. First question was "Okay, which one of you is the Belladonna fan?"- to which we replied that we both were. Pretty dumb question though- if only one of us was a fan, why would we both go to meet her and have our picture taken with her? Other questions were What do you like about her?/Why do you like her movies... followed by what we do. Gam told the guy he'd rather our names weren't used and his reply was something like "Oh, we probably won't", which we took to mean "Gotcha!", so we're going to try and keep an eye on the Courier Mail over the next day or so to see what they have to say. I don't know if the guy accosted everyone who came off the stage or just us, or what he was hoping to hear.


The last thing we bought was a $5 DVD of what purports to be Deep Throat. We figured if it wasn't then it wouldn't really matter...

View of the Brisbane CBD above the South Bank ferry terminal sign.