Paris, me, together, on tape

I have been under siege for about a week by e-mailers offering to sell me a sex tape featuring Paris Hilton. I thought it had something to do with a French hotel and was somewhat taken aback by the idea that everyone in the place would be included in one raunchy tape, but then I adjusted to the notion and shrugged. Nothing the French do will ever surprise me.

It wasn’t until I picked up a copy of the Star tabloid that I came to realize that Paris Hilton is a person. Not just any person, but America’s newest party girl and heir to the $3.8-billion Hilton hotel fortune. In addition to which, she is not unwilling to show as much of herself as legally allowed.

The videotape being offered for sale supposedly shows her having sex with her then boyfriend, Rick Solomon, in a Las Vegas hotel room. Paris, 22, has a younger sister, Nicky, who is also not reluctant to let it all hang out, although to the best of my knowledge, she is not a part of the video.

I haven’t seen the sex tape, although I did log on to a Web site that featured Paris in a bikini, revealing nothing more than one sees on the beach at Malibu. The site was advertised as free, but to see Paris doing things that your mother would never allow, you had to pay. There are no free lunches or free sex tapes.

Paris is featured on the cover of the Star in the kind of come-hither pose that causes pacemakers to demagnetize. We are lured to Page 38 by a caption that says, “Paris Hilton’s Sex-Tape Scandal.” That’s where I learned that Paris is party girl of the year and that she is a great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, who founded the hotel empire.

“Why in God’s name would anyone want a tape made of them having sex?” my wife, the moral one in our family, asked. I didn’t say anything, realizing that whatever I said would probably get me into big trouble. I looked out the window and hummed a little tune.

She waited for a moment and then said, “I can see what’s going through your twisted little mind. You’d like to star in one of those things, romping about in the nude and doing unspeakable things.”

The truth is, while I can imagine what a sex tape might involve, I’ve never actually seen one. Friends saw the video that involved Pamela Anderson and her then husband, rocker Tommy Lee, and the tape that featured Rob Lowe and a teenage girl, but I somehow missed out. The only dirty pictures I ever got to see were still shots of a naked Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

I have a feeling that there’s a publicity agency out there somewhere that specializes in making sex videos for actors and actresses who are about to embark on new careers or whose current careers seem to be running aground. Scandals make stars of those who otherwise might have little to contribute to the world of entertainment.

Take Paris Hilton. As far as anyone can determine, she is devoid of any specific talents, other than removing her clothes and doing whatever she might have been doing on that 45-minute tape. That deficiency, however, meant nothing to Fox Television, where talent is never a requirement. She is featured with fellow socialite Nicole Richie in a reality series called “The Simple Life,” in which they live with a farm family in Arkansas and are forced to (gasp) shop for food and sleep in a room with (oh, no!) flies. I can’t imagine sex or frontal nudity in Arkansas, but this is Fox, so who knows?

I’m not saying that Paris hired someone to shoot the video and then to secretly release it, knowing that sooner or later it would be made public. But it certainly has made her an overnight sensation for guys like me whose erotic fantasies have been heightened by the very notion that the tape exists. I can visualize myself in a hotel room when the door opens and Paris Hilton walks in with a camera crew, followed by a duck, an agent, two publicists and a nun. I have this funny, anticipatory grin on my face as I watch them preparing for the shoot, when suddenly my wife, who can detect sin a mile away, enters. She says, “And what, may I ask, is this all about?” I assume a startled expression and look around as though I have no idea what they’re doing there. I say, “I don’t know. I must be in the wrong room.” She sighs and says, “You’re in the wrong world, Elmer. Let’s go home. I’ll make you some warm milk and we can turn on the Disney Channel.”

Oh, well. Popeye, Goofy, the Good Fairy and Paris Hilton. Not a bad combination. Just don’t forget the duck.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.