Love Love

  We met at Monty’s birthday party. It was 1971, and Grace Kim, that’s your mother, was invited by Vince DeGuardi, the photographer. It was just a couple of weeks after we had our movie premiere at the O’Farrell Theatre, so both Rick and I were semicelebrities. That’s where the movie Behind the Green Door was shown a year later. It was when everyone saw Deep Throat and the concept of pornographic films became more palatable to the general public, a time dubbed the golden age of porn. I can’t agree. As usual, the past is often seen through the forgiving filter of nostalgia, and what I remember about that time period is nothing of the sort. Drugs were everywhere, the mafia was involved with both the backing and the distribution of the products, and as it was a time before AIDS, there was no regard for the sexual well-being of the actors. At the same time, the movies back then had larger budgets and longer shoots, so the claim isn’t entirely unfounded. The Internet has both been a blessing and a curse, making for easy delivery of materials but also bringing in an enormous wave of free amateur porn, but it’s not as if the adult film industry is the only one that has suffered at the hands of new technology. Look at what’s happened with record companies.

  Sorry I went off on another tangent, son. It’s not often that I talk about my past, especially to my own blood. Which reminds me—I haven’t told you that you have a sister. Half sister, I suppose, but blood is blood. When we see each other again, I’ll be sure to get you in touch with her. She wants to meet you. Denise lives in Oakland, just a few BART stops away.

  Your mother was eighteen years old when we met, and she was a beautiful girl. The photo that you have is from 1973, and by that time, she’d spent almost three years working in the industry, and it destroyed her. She didn’t admit it to anyone, especially herself, and her cause of death was determined to be an accidental overdose, though I think it was as accidental as someone dying of lung cancer after smoking three packs a day for his or her entire life.

  When I met Grace at the birthday party, her feet never touched the ground. There is no better way to describe her youth, her air. Here was a girl who knew how to have fun, whose hair was so long and so dark that it touched the small of her back.

  I know an orgy sounds like some weird, kinky thing, but it’s nothing more than a lot of people fucking at the same time. You might think there’s all sorts of swapping going on, like some kind of a naughty square dance, but in the numerous orgies I’ve partaken in, that’s actually pretty rare. This will sound strange, but it’s more like the thrill of watching a great movie in a crowded theater versus watching it at home by yourself. What’s special is the shared experience of the moment, that you’re not alone. Nobody thinks about this because, well, it’s not something that normal people ever have an opportunity to think about in a different way, but sex is a lonely thing. Yes, it certainly is less lonely than masturbating, but have you ever considered the fact that when you are orgasming, you’re almost always experiencing it by yourself? As everyone knows, simultaneous orgasms between two people only exist in romance novels. In the real world, if the girl is lucky, she gets off before the guy does. When you’re in a room with a hundred people groaning with pleasure, bodies dripping with the sweat of lovemaking, it’s guaranteed that there’s somebody else reaching their climax at the same time as you. There’s nothing that makes you feel more human.

  So that’s how we met, at Monty’s birthday orgy. Human bodies fell around us like trees, female legs spread wide and reaching for the sky, grunts of pleasure echoing all over the house. At eighteen, Grace’s body was as fresh as a summer’s morning. Touching her skin was like getting high; never would I meet another woman who’d have that kind of an effect on me. I can still remember her inner warmth, like an all-encompassing embrace. That was the magic, Kevin, that our bodily union was like a hug. We felt so safe with each other.

  Sharing in this very intimate act with other people is why I’ve stayed in this business. Most people have a very low opinion of the kind of work I do, and maybe you do, too. But I believe I’m doing some good in this world, for this world. There are men out there who would never be able to get a girl to bed, ugly men, disabled men, obese men, shy men. But they’re still men, and they need an outlet. That’s why there’s pornography. Maybe a husband isn’t getting the frequency of sex he desires from his wife, so instead of having affairs or getting a divorce, he beats off while watching one of my movies. We’ve all been conditioned by religion and society to be shameful of sex for too long, so it’s not going to change overnight, if ever. Even though pornography has become more mainstream, America’s Puritanical roots will never allow us to enjoy our lives without guilt. But that doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying.

  Because what I do, son, what I do is an expression of freedom. I’m not talking about some Larry Flynt–First Amendment soapbox but rather the act itself. It’s something that didn’t occur to me until many years later, but when you’re naked and there’s this girl who’s naked and there are cameras whirling and people all around you, watching and filming this very primal moment—I wish I could convey to you how free you feel. There are no rules, it’s animal, it’s the very essence of life.

  I’m sorry to say your mother and I were in only one film together, and the only reason why it even got made was because Monty owed a Chinese opium dealer some money and wanted to appease him. Unlike most folks, who wanted to see interracial couplings, this guy wanted to see two Asians going at it.

  That reminds me—I forgot to tell you that in about two-thirds of my films, I played a Mexican, which I could get away with, with my dark skin and my convincing accent. With a bushy mustache and darker eyebrows drawn in, I became Juan Grande. So if you ever come across some vintage porn starring a Mexican who could pass for an Asian, it’s probably me. Not that you would find any of my old movies. Most of those films were stolen or trashed. It wasn’t like we were making The Godfather or Gone with the Wind, safeguarding our masters in vacuum-sealed vaults.

  Our film was titled One Night in Bang Cock, the name of the city intentionally misspelled. That was the name of Grace’s character, Bang Cock, and it was filmed mostly in Monty’s backyard, at night, hence the title. Monty’s backyard was as manicured as a golf course, so it made for a suitable backdrop. The story was that she was waiting for her husband to return from a war, but she was this nympho, so she ends up having sex with everybody—the mailman, the gardener, the girl babysitter. It’s actually a pretty funny movie, because the whole time, she’s in false agony, like, “I miss you so much, husband,” and then the next minute, she’s blowing the exterminator. But the last twenty minutes of the film is just us. The costumers had me in a samurai suit, with the sword and the armor and the iron helmet that was like having a house on my head. It took a good five minutes for me to just get out of all of that gear, but was it ever worth it. Being on camera with my future wife—it was the spring of 1971, a full moon rising high in the night. When you look back on your life, son, can you find a single moment that makes life worth living? Maybe it’s sad, that of all the years that I’ve lived on this planet, I can shrink down the best of my life to a single shard of time. But I’ve lived that scene many times over in my mind, us sixty-nining on the grass, then I’m on top and not even seeing the cameras anymore, your mother’s breasts cupped in my hands, her nipples as hard as erasers, our bodies moving as one, and now the director is screaming because he can see it on my face, it’s something he’d never yell at a professional like me, but there I am, breaking the only unbreakable rule in this business.

  That was you, son. I know it was you because nine months later, you were born.

  The movie paused, his father’s mouth frozen in midword, looking as if he’d encountered some mild, pleasant surprise. Kevin lifted his elbows to see if he’d accidentally pressed a button on the remote, but the remote was in Claudia’s hand.

  She pointed it at the TV and clicked the power button, the light extinguished, the room darkening.

  “Claudia?” Kevin said.<
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  She looked as if she wanted to kiss him, and that’s what she did, her lips pressed against his, moist and full. She tasted like salty caramel, and it was as if some switch had been thrown, more in his pants than his head. He wasn’t exactly turned on, but he wasn’t exactly not turned on, either, and that was more than enough. Kevin returned her passion in equal measure, holding her close, pulling her closer. She unbuckled his belt; he unbuttoned her blouse. Her hands were as scratchy as a cat’s tongue, raising goose bumps when she ran her palms over his chest. She laughed, and he laughed, and they were on the couch and then the floor and then back again, her hair in his mouth, her fingernails digging into the flesh of his ass as she yanked him onto her, into her, through her, their bodies melding into a single creature. Wasn’t that lovemaking, a flesh connection? At the core of it, that’s what fucking was, a man and a woman joined at the front of their respective hips to achieve a symbiosis of sorts. He’d always enjoyed the physicality of it, the well of pleasure filling up before the grand release of orgasm, and now, as Claudia rode him like a mechanical bull, her breasts bouncing with every pump, it occurred to him that his appetite for sex was something else that ran in the family.

  He never used to be so ruminative during sex, but it’d been like this since Alice, and now he thought of her, the last time they made love. She was on top but facing away from him, leaving him with the view of her backside as she rocked rhythmically down and away from him. It wasn’t his favorite position because he enjoyed seeing her face while they were doing it, and this was exactly the opposite, as anonymous as sex can be between two people, especially for her, since she was turned away completely.

  For a second, Kevin thought Claudia was going to strike him, but she slammed both hands by his ears instead.

  “Holy Jesus Christ!” Claudia screamed. “I’m coming, oh my fucking God, I’m coming!”

  An orgasmic tsunami, hot waves of vibrations through a gush of sticky wetness. And just like that, he was on the edge himself. He wrapped his arms around her thighs, squeezed her and pumped into her, his movements no longer his own.

  Was it this good with Alice? Maybe in the beginning, but if so, he honestly couldn’t remember. With Claudia slumped over him, her breath as ragged as his, he hugged her sweat-slick body and realized he was doomed to forever compare every new woman to the love of his life. At the same time, he knew he was being melodramatic—there was life after Alice, whether or not he wanted to recognize it. Because this was what that afterlife was: making love in San Francisco, meeting his porn-actor biological father. He needed to open his eyes and consciously experience what was in front of him.

  “I’ve always been a messy fucker,” Claudia said. “When it’s good, that is.”

  Kevin looked up at her. “I like messy.”

  When she ran her hand through her hair to tame the wildness, Kevin found her self-consciousness endearing. She lay down next to him on the Oriental rug, shoulder to shoulder, arm touching arm. They stared at the chandelier, crystal teardrops twisting lazily.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You could’ve said no.”

  “I suppose. But why?”

  She giggled. She propped her head on his chest and walked down the expanse of his stomach with her index and middle fingers, her paint-spattered nails barely grazing the surface of his skin. Her finger-feet waded through the jungle of his pubic hair, digging and lifting through the thicket. She held his limp penis between her thumb and index finger and flopped it back and forth.

  “It’s one thing I’ll never know, what it’s like to have one of these.”

  “If you keep doing that, he’ll wake back up.”

  “Really?”

  “It might take a little while, though. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “Are you one of these guys who names his penis?”

  “No, but I do say him and not it. Come on, it’s a penis. Of course it’s a him.”

  They watched him grow back in size; it was like seeing a time-lapsed photograph of a flower blooming.

  “I’ll miss this,” he said, “when I’m old.”

  She wrapped her hand around his shaft, and the enclosed warmth made him harder.

  “It’s just sex, but it’s so much more, isn’t it,” Claudia said. “It’s power, it’s life, it’s everything for a man. No wonder all those boner drugs have been a godsend for big pharma.”

  “I don’t know if it’s everything, but it is more than just sex.”

  She climbed on top of him again and kissed his lips, her hair falling over his face like a million little hands, and she sighed ever so slightly when he slipped inside. She was warm and wet, and he cradled her ass in his hands as if he owned her. She laughed and rocked and threw her head back, her hair still a tangled, untamed mass.

  “I have to say,” she said, “it—I mean he—is quite a trooper.”

  After they showered together and noshed on cold leftover pizza, they returned to the couch and turned on the television. His father came back exactly as they’d left him, except now it was they who were different.

  “We look like him,” Kevin said, and it was true, in their matching his-and-her bathrobes, the white terry cloth plush like a fresh towel.

  She picked up her glass of water and took a sip. “This was a little weird, huh? Because when you really think about it, we fucked because your father and his sex stories turned us on.”

  Kevin leaned back and slung his arm over his eyes.

  “Can I just blame this on you?”

  “Of course you can,” Claudia said. “But it does take two to tango, and as I recall, it was you and I who tangoed. Naked. Like right there, where that wet spot still is?” She pointed with her bare foot. “I’ll have to get that rug cleaned.”

  “I bet this would make him proud. If I told him that watching his movie led us to this.”

  Claudia nodded. She filled his empty glass with the decanter of water sitting on the side table and handed it to him. “Are you okay? I can’t even pretend to imagine what’s going through your mind.”

  Kevin took a long drink. He wanted to know what he was feeling, but all he could sense was the cold water going down his throat and settling into his stomach. A deep chill spread through his body.

  “Let’s finish this thing,” he said, and he clicked on the remote.

  To this day, I still remember the first moment I held you, marveling at your impossible, tiny hands. Everything about you was so small and yet so fully formed, a human being in miniature. Of course that’s what babies are, but when you see your own, it really is true, your life changes. For seventeen days of my twenty-second year, I was a father. On your birth certificate, we put down Norman, but we called you Little Man. That was, as I’ll always remember, your name.

  We couldn’t keep you, Kevin, because we weren’t ready, it was as simple as that. For two weeks we pretended we were, but your mom was still taking a cocktail of drugs, and I knew I couldn’t do this alone. One day we had to rush you to the ER because you wouldn’t stop crying, and when the doctor looked at you, he asked one of the nurses to get a bottle of formula. It turned out that we’d forgotten to feed you and you were just really, really hungry. Your mother had thought it was my turn and I’d thought the opposite, and you were crying so loudly that we panicked like frightened children ourselves.

  So we gave you up. I’m not going to lie and tell you this was a difficult decision. We knew there was no other way, and we were still young enough to fool ourselves into thinking that there was a future ahead of us. Grace died two years later, a day shy of her twenty-first birthday. To wake up in the morning and find the woman you love dead in your own bed—it’s a day I wish I could erase from my memory banks, but I can’t.

  Here I go, getting ahead of myself again. To this day, I’m not exactly sure how the transaction transpired because Grace did it alone. We had a horrendous fight the night before, because she wanted to keep you, even though she was in no condition to. So if you want to
blame someone for your abandonment, blame me. When I threatened to leave if she kept you, it was she who disappeared for two days. When she returned, you were gone, so I didn’t even get a chance to say a proper good-bye. All she told me was that you were in good hands, that you would be raised without prejudice and as if you were the couples’ own baby. She would never bring you up again, even though she thought of you every day for the rest of her days.

  She just got worse from that point forward.

  Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t as if every day was misery. There were many moments of happiness, especially after a long day of shooting. Many people find it surprising that a couple who make porn movies can stay together in a normal relationship, but what those people forget is that sex is not intimacy. It can be, and it often is, but they are not mutually inclusive. Passing a box of popcorn while watching Three Days of the Condor, listening to her breathing as she drifted to sleep, sweating in the kitchen as we cooked up our favorite dish, duck à l’orange—these became our secret couplings. That’s not to say that we didn’t have sex—I don’t think we ever went a day without fucking. To some eyes, we might have been sex maniacs, but would they reserve the same judgment for Michael Jordan if he shot hoops every day? If you’re good at something, you do it because it gives you pleasure.

  But your mother was unhappy. For most of her life, she’d been unhappy. A fair number of people who come into pornography do so because they were sexually abused or suffered some other form of childhood trauma, and so it was with your mother. She hated to talk about her past, but eventually I pieced together that she had an uncle who started touching her when she was eight years old and it just got worse until she ran away at sixteen. In this business, there’s a decent chance that you’re working with somebody who’s emotionally damaged, and here’s the thing: If you’re fucked up coming into it, you’re not going to find any answers here. If anything, it’ll just fuck you up more. The business drew your mother in, sucked the life out of her, and shit out what remained. Left her in the toilet is what it did.