Shoes! I Love Shoes

I asked Lainie if she thought the porn shops would still stock the prosthetic vagina/rectum of our late porn star friend, Anna Malle. Of course they will, she said. Anna would have wanted it that way.

My ex-girlfriend Lainie and I were both sad to hear that Anna's body had been torn apart in a car accident in Las Vegas two weeks ago. At the time of her death, Anna and her husband, Hank Armstrong, had retired from the business and taken straight jobs (Anna worked for the Bloomingdale's bridal registry). The following was to appear with video clips we shot for a porno site, but the ax fell on that operation, and it never ran. Anna's memory lives on not only in our hearts, but in the rubber replicas of her torso that men are still sliding their stuff into, even in death.

You guys don't mind if I get changed right here, do you?

Anna Malle doesn't wait for an answer. She seldom does. Off comes the top, revealing two enormous silicone globes, their nipples pointing up. She shimmies out of tight leopard-print pants, and there it is, the famous pink pussy that's been immortalized as a vibrating sex toy that men actually stick their dick in and make sweet love to.

And her husband, Hank Armstrong? He's standing a few feet away in the kitchen of this one-bedroom apartment in Soho. I shoot the shit with him as Anna slips into her porn-star uniformblack-leather mini, pink baby T, clear stilettosin the living room. When Anna is ready, she and Hank get comfortable on a couch, under the glare of a hot light and in the sights of a video camerahome, sweet homefor an interview for a porno Web site.

Anna Malle is a beautiful brunette firecracker. She's a self-described total Midwestern girl, an improbable-sounding tag for a fading plastic-enhanced bombshell who gets it on for a living. The Iowa native met Detroit-born Hank while dancing at a strip club where he tended bar, on the gulf coast of Florida.

We had sex within the first hour of meeting each other, she says, but then we fell in love.

Hank and Anna aren't afraid to discuss the inherent negatives of porn.

Once you cross the line and make your first video, you can never take it back, says Hank.

My two sisters totally disowned me, says Anna.

They recently celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary. They are an anomaly. And neither of them has that delusional Hollywood-speak manner that a lot of stars in this business have.

Exactly how old Hank was when they met is a little hazy.

Anna: Subtract. Subtract 11.

Hank: Thirty-five, 30. I'm 46 now, so subtract 11.

Anna: Thirty-something. We have no idea. Yes, it's 35.

What is definite is Hank and Anna's love of sex.

We tell people all the time that we got in the business for the wrong reason: because we like sex, says Anna, her gorgeous brown eyes lit up, her sharp, distinctive, perma-grin jaw easing out each lovely word. And we do.

Hank and Anna are distinct from other porn couples for two reasons: They entered the porn-movie business as a couple, and they did so as swingers. A few months after they met, while they were still working in the strip club, they had sex with another couple that had come into the club to see Anna dance. For them, swinging is about wanting to sleep with other people and see each other with other people. (Anna swings both ways; Hank is a straight shooter.)

I enjoy seeing Hank enjoy sexual pleasure, says Anna. But she's quick to point out an essential trait of their relationship: We know the difference between sex and love, you know.

Jealousy, of course, is the big question I have for people like them. Most couples in this business will perform intellectual gymnastics in explaining why there is no jealousy at allas do Anna and Hank, until I press them and they admit that they, too, suffer from life's basest emotion, just like any other poor bastard who carries his heart on his sleeve. Most of us are horrified at the thought of seeing our significant other getting it on with someone else; swinging porn stars are a different breed. Sex for them is business and pleasure. And the business of pleasure makes certain demands on one's self-confidence and security. But Hank and Anna experience jealousy on a more esoteric level than do the rest of us.

If Hank were to have sex with a girl that I knew was totally just trying to break us up, then it's really bad, says Anna. We could never have a girlfriend. There could never be another Hank and Anna.

I just know where her heart is, and I don't see a threat to be jealous, says Hank.

Anna and Hank are not long for this industry. Anna is in her late 30s. As incredible as she looks now, she'd like to bow out gracefully in three to five years. I don't want to read anything from someone seeing me at the porn convention'Sure wish she'd kept her clothes on.' I never want to read anything like that. They are exploring several entrepreneurial ideas. For a while, they considered opening a bar in their home base of Las Vegas, before they decided that the extremely labor-intensive and red-tape-strewn pursuit was not for them. Now they're talking about a chain of adult-video and accessory stores.

Shoes, I love shoes, says Anna. So I have to have shoes, whatever I do. I'll have to have shoes, and sell them, too.