by Patrick Bard
“I don’t think it warrants seeing a shrink,” Sebastian tells Marie. “He’s getting fat because he’s in front of his computer day and night.”
“Still…,” Marie mutters, looking stubborn.
It’s a look Sebastian knows well. He reaches a hand out to reassure her.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. No more laptop. No more smartphone. No more internet. If he needs to research something for school, he’ll use our computer, under our supervision. Period. He’ll be forced to find something else to do, no?”
Marie pulls her hand away from Sebastian’s. The creases on her forehead deepen.
“It’s not enough,” she says. “I’m willing to put off taking him to see a shrink, but we have to talk to him about this. We have to explain that pornography has nothing to do with sex in actual relationships, or with the pleasure adults share with each other. We have to tell him that it’s a fantasy. That—”
“And are you going to be the one telling him all this?” Sebastian cuts her off. “Without blushing?”
Marie hesitates before answering. “We’ve never spoken about it, you and I, but…have you watched pornos?”
“Well, yeah, like a lot of teens I watched one or two with friends. Cassettes,” Sebastian says, doing his best to appear casual. “There was no internet then. You?”
Marie fiddles with the packet of sugar that she left on the side of her saucer.
“No. What’s it like?”
“Lame.”
“If it’s lame, why do people watch the stuff?”
Sebastian shrugs. Around them, waiters are clearing the tables.
“I have another idea, Marie. Lucas is a good kid. He’s great with Cuddles. Has always been responsible. What we need to do is empower him. Put everything on the table. Do you remember the documentary we watched on TV not long ago?”
“Do you mean the one by the porn actress who blew the whistle on industry practices?”
“That’s it. That’s the one. I thought it was a good documentary.”
“What’s your idea?”
Sebastian takes a swig of his beer. A foam mustache sticks to the down above his upper lip. He puts his glass on the table and licks the bitter foam off with his tongue.
“We treat him like an adult. Instead of lecturing him, we could replay the documentary and talk about it afterward. Not make a big deal out of it.”
Marie rubs at an imaginary stain on her cup.
“I guess we’d avoid a lot of awkwardness,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. But promise me that if that doesn’t work, whether he wants to or not, we’ll take him for a consultation. His behavior isn’t normal.”
Sebastian puts his hand out again, palm up, as if to seal a pact.
“Let’s do that and see where it goes,” he agrees. “We want our son to deal with this.”
14
That afternoon, when Lucas gets home from school, nothing happens at first. It’s like any other day. Cuddles greets him with purrs and rubs himself around his legs, and Lucas changes the cat’s litter box. Then his parents return from work at the same time, around six-thirty. Usually his mom arrives first. His father never before seven-thirty. Lucas doesn’t think anything of it, especially as his dad knocks on his door and calls out a casual “hello.” For a moment, he paces his room, not daring to go downstairs. He tells himself that his father’s coworkers must not have been able to get his laptop or phone up and running, otherwise Sebastian would have already gone ballistic. Relieved, he goes to join his parents downstairs. Marie is busy preparing a salad. He gives her a quick kiss and mumbles a vague “Hi, Mom” before opening the fridge door to get a Coke.
“You shouldn’t drink so much of that stuff,” his mother says behind his back.
Things are exactly as usual, he thinks. He daydreams about the moment when he’ll be able to reconnect. He’s in a hurry now that the danger seems to have passed. He’s getting off scot-free. They’ll buy him a new phone, a new PC, and it will be over. They eat dinner without mentioning Lucas’s computer woes and Lucas helps to clear the table.
“How about watching something on TV with us?” his father asks him, sounding strangely impersonal. “I downloaded it today.”
A warning bell goes off in Lucas’s head. At the same time, he tries to persuade himself that his father’s invitation has nothing to do with the content on his hard drive. It can’t be that. His father would never have taken this approach.
“I have an exam tomorrow,” Lucas mumbles. “I should study some.”
Without responding, Sebastian connects the family PC to the flat-screen TV like he does every time they watch a movie. His mother is already sitting on the couch. Lucas notices the tension on her face. She doesn’t look like someone who’s about to look at an episode of her favorite series.
“Well, huh…I’m going up, then,” Lucas says to them.
“No, you’re staying.”
Sebastian’s unequivocal tone tells him that it’s pointless to argue. Suddenly, his throat dries up. He skates along the tiled floor until he reaches an armchair and plops down into it. It’s near the sofa.
“Have you ever watched an X-rated film?” his father asks him, sounding detached.
What’s going on? He can’t possibly be about to watch a porn flick with his parents! He sighs, clearly on edge, hoping he won’t have to answer as a title appears on the screen: Pornocracy: The New Sex Multinationals. Feeling increasingly ill at ease, Lucas starts fidgeting in his seat.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asks cautiously.
Sebastian dims the lights, as if to avoid meeting Lucas’s eyes, and takes a seat next to Marie on the couch. He doesn’t answer.
The next hour proves to be one of the most trying in Lucas’s life. Deep down he always knew that many of the scenes were staged, totally fake, but he would never have imagined this.
This is a documentary on the working conditions of young women who are porn actresses. A string of testimonials that turns his stomach upside-down. Super-gross things that he doesn’t want to hear, let alone know about. It’s obvious that someone at his father’s office managed to open his hard drive. Otherwise he can’t see why his parents would inflict such a litany of horrors on him. The enemas, and the vomiting, the physical blows. The split lips and other horrific medical and self-administered numbing agents so powerful scenes are possible to film. The houses where the underpaid actresses from Eastern Europe are confined. The abuse of anti-inflammatories. Girls who’ve been watching porn since age eight and who film with actors they watched when they were still little girls. The interviews are one thing. The statistics are quite another. More than a hundred billion pages of porn are opened each year online. That means fourteen pages per human being on earth, which includes babies and old people. Suddenly, Lucas feels like he’s a drop of water in the middle of the ocean. His small, sheltered world crumbles.
When Sebastian switches the light on, Lucas finds it difficult to control the flow of bile coming up his throat.
“So?” his father asks.
Lucas stares fixedly at his sneakers. He would like for the Earth to split open. He would like to vanish. He would like to die. To be dead. To no longer hear, see, or bear the weight of shame that invades his every pore. He doesn’t know what he can possibly say. His mother doesn’t say a word either, just sits watching him.
To break the silence, his father launches into a monologue:
“Well, Lucas, I don’t need to tell you that Jerome opened your PC and your Samsung. You already know that. And you know that we know. No need to talk about it, but we wanted you to see this documentary so that you’re aware of what happens to these poor girls. You get it now, right? You realize what they have to put up with? It’s all totally fake and it’s revolting as well. Is this registering, Lucas?”
With
out lifting his head, Lucas nods with his chin. He feels a tear fall down his cheek. He wants to get up, badly, to run away. He wants this to stop, and fast, and to be left in peace. But Sebastian continues to harangue him, again and again, hammering into him like a nail in a coffin.
“And the photo of you naked, what was it for?”
Lucas stops breathing, like he’s got a fish bone stuck in his throat. He can’t answer, not in front of his mother.
“What was it for?” repeats his father.
In the prolonged silence that follows, Lucas hears himself mumble, “A girl.”
Sebastian cups a hand to his ear. “I didn’t hear that, Lucas. What did you say?”
“It was for a girl at school,” he says, barely any louder.
“Damn it! I can’t believe it!” His father explodes, getting up to pace the room.
Finally, Marie speaks up.
“That’s enough, Seb. I think Lucas got the point. Right, Lucas? Do you understand that you’ve done something stupid?”
Lucas nods as he sniffles. Marie reaches out a hand and rests it gently on his cheek. Lucas recoils as if she’s just burned him.
“Look, he’s shaken. I don’t think he’ll start with that again, Seb. I think he’s gained an awareness of things.”
“I just don’t get how you could have spent years at it,” Sebastian says.
“Leave him alone now,” Marie pleads.
Seizing the opening, Lucas leaps from the armchair.
“Stay put, Lucas, please. We haven’t finished.”
But Lucas ignores his father’s order and rushes to the staircase in desperation. He keeps his focus on the open door of his bedroom, which seems to be farther and farther away with each stair he climbs, his heart beating like a tight fist in his chest. As he plunges into the reassuring obscurity of the hallway, he finally inhales a gulp of air, slams his bedroom door shut with his foot, and throws himself onto the bed, sobbing. Cuddles comes over purring and rubs his whiskers against Lucas’s moist cheeks. A moment later, Lucas recognizes his mother’s footsteps in the hallway and hears her come to a stop outside his door. She taps it with her fingers.
“Lucas?” she says softly.
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. After what seems like an endless amount of time, she walks off and Lucas falls into a deep, dense slumber as if submerged under a tide of molten tar.
15
Marie walks off with regrets. As she goes into the bathroom, the soles of her slippers scrape against the floor. She takes a long shower, like she’s trying to wash off lots of mud. When she enters her bedroom, Sebastian is already under the covers. She shivers as she slips between the sheets and puts her icy feet on him.
“Ohhh! How can you have such cold feet after showering?” he yelps, burrowing deeper into the bed and laughing.
“Do you think we got through to him?” Marie asks.
“You saw how ashamed he was. I think it was a good lesson.”
“Even so, are you sure we shouldn’t talk to Dr. Ducros?” Marie insists.
Julien Ducros is their new family doctor. It paid to move and change physicians. The one in Bagneux was as old and incompetent as the new one is young and up-to-date on the latest medical developments.
“Listen, Marie, Lucas is just a teenager who’s a little lost, who eats too much, who doesn’t exert himself physically, and who spends too much time on the internet. There are millions like him.”
“Do you means millions who watch porn all day long?”
“That or other stuff—online games or what not. What he needs is a girlfriend.”
Marie shifts her body. “Maybe. But it doesn’t prevent depression, something I know about. And we both noticed how much weight he’s put on.”
“Lucas isn’t depressed, Marie. It’s not hereditary.”
“You don’t know that and neither do I.”
Sebastian props himself up on one elbow and turns to Marie. “Stop being afraid. Stop feeling guilty,” he tells her. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to give him back his devices. Jerome cleaned them up. We should have installed a super-sturdy parental control on his computer a lot earlier. Something like Xooloo.”
“Can’t we still do that?”
“Marie, he’s sixteen!” Sebastian answers brusquely.
Marie feels stupid. She frowns. “I don’t care! We could still give it a try.”
“It’s not realistic.”
“A parental control isn’t realistic, consulting a doctor isn’t worth it…everything I suggest is no good. It seems only you know what to do.”
* * *
• • •
When the judge will ask Sebastian why he objected to taking Lucas to a child psychiatrist, he will remain silent. And when the judge will repeat the question a second and third time, Sebastian will still be unable to formulate the reason for his refusal. He will be unable to explain that he didn’t want to start down the same road he had been on with Marie. Because he no longer had the strength. He will also be unable to justify why he forced Lucas to watch a traumatizing documentary on pornography. He will merely explain that he wanted to guilt-trip his son, in hopes of making Lucas reconnect with reality. He will claim that he had not fully grasped the scope and reach of Lucas’s addiction.
16
Lucas wakes up with a start in the middle of the night. He dreamed that his parents were chasing him out of the house because Cuddles had been run over by a car—all because he hadn’t taken good care of him. He glances around the bedroom for the tomcat but doesn’t see him. He calls out to him in a whisper. The house is quiet. Cuddles is not there. He must have gone out through the cat flap Sebastian installed when they moved in. Lucas has always heard that like lionesses, she-cats are the ones who hunt for game to bring back to their den. But in spite of his handicap, and of being a tomcat, Cuddles is a surprisingly good hunter. He usually comes home in the early morning. Still, after his nightmare, Lucas is uneasy. His throat feels parched, like someone poured sand into it. His cheeks burn. He wonders if he has a fever, and then the scene from the previous night plays out in a loop in his mind. He would have liked to waste away. To burn before his parents’ eyes. Yes, he would have preferred that a hundred times over to the shame his father inflicted on him.
They will never look at him in the same way. He feels sure his parents will never love him like before. To them, he’s become a sex-obsessed maniac. And his father’s old friend knows. Soon everyone at his father’s workplace will know too. If one of the employees talks about it in front of their son or daughter—a lot of them attend his high school—it’s over. He might as well be dead. He tries to free himself from the imaginary cast-iron weight oppressing his chest, but without success. He gets up and gropes his way down to the kitchen without making noise. He opens the fridge door, grabs a bottle of Coke, and gulps down several swallows. The sugar rush that courses through his body offers him relief. He rests his forehead against the fridge door and sighs. He shouldn’t have come home. He should have grabbed Cuddles and withdrawn as much money as he could with his bank card and hopped on a train. Never to return. But a train headed where? And to do what? The world around him seems to be shrinking a little more each day since he’s been deprived of his devices. He puts the nearly empty bottle back in the fridge door and closes it with his heel. In the dim light he tiptoes out of the kitchen. As he crosses the living room, he notices that the PC is on. Except for special circumstances he is not authorized to use this PC since he crashed his own. And his father changed the password. To log on to the network, Lucas now has to check with him first. Those are the new rules. But after viewing the X-rated actress’s documentary last night, in his fury, his father seems to have forgotten to turn it off.
Lucas moves closer to it in the dark. He feels the heaviness of the silence and as if in defiance, he strikes the
spacebar. The screen lights up.
His first move is to cut off the sound of the PC. He sits down, opens the browser, and searches the browsing history. His father has not erased anything.
He clicks on the link to the documentary. He’s not doing anything wrong, that’s what he tells himself, even if he knows all too well where all this is leading. If his father came upon him, he would find him trying to track down information on the documentary, right? That’s what he tells himself as he opens the documentary director’s Wikipedia page. The filmmaker started out as a well-known porn star in France. Then, according to an article, she became a director of “groundbreaking” porn movies with a feminist bent. Could there really be some respectable X-rated movies? Lucas wonders as he clicks on a link that brings him straight to a porn clip. He doesn’t quite see how the video is any different from the thousands he’s viewed, but he’s relieved to find himself in familiar territory. Bits of information from the previous evening float in his mind: Porn gets 68 million search requests per day. Thirty million people are looking at a porn video at the same time that you are.
There is one fact that, more than the others, he knows is absolutely true: Masturbation accounts for only 14 percent of time spent by those who visit porn sites; the remainder is spent searching for the right video to jerk off to.
Soon, however, Lucas forgets the horrors revealed in the documentary. Or rather, he wants to forget. In order to think about something else, he lets himself gradually slip toward a compilation of clips, then on to his favorite sites, once again feeling excited and reassured, increasingly hypnotized, at last in the fantasy world he knows so well. It feels good. He can’t resolve to abandon his wanderings on the web. Not even when the cat flap opens and Cuddles returns, exhausted from a night on the prowl. Suddenly, he hears the alarm clock go off in his parents’ bedroom. He has just enough time to erase his browsing history, put the computer to sleep, and go back upstairs as quietly as possible. In his room, he gets under the bedcovers and waits to hear the familiar noise of the toilet flushing, which signals that his father has gotten up. He’s so relieved to have resumed his routine that he falls into a peaceful sleep.