Of course, I couldn’t much complain about the way they’d chosen to deal with the admittedly weird news that their only boy was making a living in the skin trade. Essentially, they’d settled on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with me—-live and let live—and I liked that just fine. So when they called me up to announce they were coming to visit me out west, I wasn’t quite sure how to react.
“They’re holding the American Psychoanalytic Association conference right there in Westwood,” my dad said. “Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?”
“That is wonderful, David.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, boy. And try to stop calling me David. It sounds odd to me. Your mother and I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to spend some time with you.”
“Well, I’m sort of busy, but... I guess.”
“All the way across the country and all you can say is, ‘I guess’? Come on, cheer up! We’ll take you out to dinner a few times. Are you eating?”
“They have food out here, David.”
“You know, I just don’t understand it. Why can’t you call me 'Dad’? What in the hell is so burdensome about saying the word Dad?”
A few evenings before my father’s conference was scheduled to begin, I greeted them in their hotel room in West LA. They looked good: my father tall and bearded and gangly and impulsive, you could see it in his eyes; my mother smaller and rounder and calmer and darker. Despite whatever I did to discourage them, my parents still seemed to like me very much. Their beaming faces shone when I came on through the door.
“How was your flight?” I mumbled, untangling myself gingerly from my father’s warm embrace.
“Just fine,” my dad said.
“We like Los Angeles,” my mom chimed in.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You’ve been here for about half an hour.”
“It seems like an interesting place,” my dad said.
“Interesting? That’s like your favorite word,” I said testily. It was. He used it to describe everything.
“So maybe it is my favorite word!” my dad said, his smile a bit tenser.
“We’re just very glad to see you, Sam,” my mom explained.
I sat down heavily on their hotel bed, resisting a loutish teenage urge to turn on the TV. “Well, I’m still alive, as you can see.”
“Yes!” my mom exclaimed, laughing.
“Have you been enjoying yourself?” my dad asked.
“In what sense?”
“Have you been able to establish a group of friends? A type of community?” My dad was crazy about community.
“I guess so.” Did Gus count as a friend? Did Bert the Lover?
“Do you miss Santa Cruz much?” my mom asked. “I wasn’t crazy about that place,” she added.
“What’s wrong with Santa Cruz?” I asked, defensively.
“It was a bit slow.” She grimaced. “Los Angeles is a real city. It has more resources for a person like you.”
“Well, I’ll drink to that.” I flashed them a grin and lay back, testing their pillows. “We got some great resources out here, for a guy like me.”
“That’s very funny, Sam,” said my dad. “Let me just ask you a question. How long do you intend to keep on doing this?”
“As long as it takes,” I said, smiling.
“As long as it takes to what?” he said, crossing the room, hovering over me and folding his arms. “Would you mind explaining exactly what it is that you’re trying to do?”
“It’s complicated, Dad,” I said, sitting up. “I told you that.” How do you explain to your parents that you are completely revitalizing the face of modern urban pornography?
“Try me,” he said in his most patient tone. “I guess what I’m trying to wrench out of you is this: what is the damn point?”
“David,” my mom said. “Don’t start. We just got here.”
“Is this art?” my father demanded. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That to you, this is art?”
“Yes!” I said vehemently. “Why is that so difficult for you to believe?”
“Because I cannot imagine for the life of me how porn can be art! How is it art? Tell me that!”
“I don’t know,” I said stubbornly. “It just is. That is,” I amended, “if it were done right, it could be.”
“Can we get something to eat, please?” my mom asked, tired.
“You two have all weekend to go over this.”
“Yes,” I sighed. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“Fine,” my father said, satisfied. He had made his point. “How about sushi? I bet Los Angeles has some very good sushi.”
It really was difficult to explain to them why I wanted to be in porn. I mean, what was I going to say? Well, Dad, I want to be famous and admired for my art even though I don’t have enough talent to do that and also I deeply loathe the idea of a desk job and hey, by the way, I don’t mind a cutie with incredible legs pushing her superb golden ass into my face until I can’t breathe. Okay? My parents didn’t want to acknowledge my sexuality any more than I wished to acknowledge theirs. No one wants to see their son getting a blowjob on grainy videotape. It can cause short-circuiting in the brain.
And yet, in a way, this whole ordeal was good for us. I was a pretty private kid growing up—I hated to talk to anyone in my family about what I considered my personal life. I never brought a single girl home, never once spoke about any of my crushes, kisses, or teenage romances, not even to my older sister, with whom I was rather close. Now, in a geyser of retribution for all my years of silence, it was all boiling over in a very public way. To their credit, my folks were dealing with it better than I had imagined. Apart from a little squabbling, they never explicitly asked or ordered me to get out of the game. They clung hopefully to the flimsy lie that I was only filming porn, and not participating in it, but then, I encouraged them to that end. Frankly, I was scared to conflate my own family and my sexuality. There was this hip artist I’d met, Leigh Ledare, who’d made the beginnings of an art career by photographing his mother naked and giving blowjobs to guys. It seemed sort of dark, even to my standards.
But maybe Leigh’s pictures were just a more truthful take on familial dynamics than I could stomach. Certainly, the family had its place in porno—it just wasn’t usually referenced in quite so overt a manner. Now I could almost hear my poor parents wondering, We must have done something wrong .. . what was it?
I couldn’t explain it myself. The Freudians might have gone for an early-childhood explanation: my foray into porn constituting a search for the emotionally distant mother’s elusive breastfeeding nipple. But I had to say that my own relationship with my mother was a lot less tortured than by all rights it should have been. She was a sweet, funny, loving lady. A bit avoidant, maybe, and certainly not the type to dig into her own feelings with a trowel, like the old man was apt to. All in all, though, I felt quite fortunate to have such a solid and sensible parent around to counterbalance the more unpredictable (and sometimes more exciting) emotional wallops of my father. As far as I could tell, I did not want to photograph her naked.
The following morning, they picked me up in their rental car, and we headed down to San Diego, to the zoo.
“Nice place you’ve got there,” my mom said, laughing.
' I like it,” I said shortly.
“Good friends with the neighbors?” my father asked.
“They’re my best friends in the whole world, Dad. Before I found them, I was lost.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. You know, a community serves a simple but very vital function.”
“Sam, do you need any shoes, or anything like that?” my mom interrupted.
“I’m fine,” I groaned. “I am, Mom. All my needs are taken care of.”
“That pet shop looks rather eccentric,” my father said, his eyes twinkling mischievously.
“You’d be surprised,” I mumbled, grumpily. “They’ve got an iguana in there that would knock your socks off.”