My Father, the Pornographer : A Memoir (9781501112485)

by Offutt, Chris

  Prior to this, I had kissed three girls from other counties and believed I could acquit myself well, but Tessa explored my mouth like she was planning a topographical map. Her body pressed against mine, her hands were on me, and I became lost in a delirium of desire. She took off her shirt, then her pants, the dim light outlining her body. I could not believe I was actually seeing a naked girl. Tessa quickly removed my shoes, then dragged off my pants and pushed me back on the bed. I could feel the softness of her chest, the smoothness of her skin. She put her arms around me. We rolled over and I held her as tightly as possible. I frankly thought I was going to die. Nothing had ever felt better, and I wanted to prolong it until I did die.

  I bucked my hips and squirmed like a salamander, trying to stay on my knees and elbows so as not to mash Tessa too much. I mainly just hoped for the best. She put one arm across my back and the other on my hip and began to assist my maneuvering. After a while, during which I lost all sense of time, our activity slowed.

  Enduring the fatman’s touch had instilled in me the habit of ignoring all sensation and withholding any reaction. As a result, I was unable to climax with Tessa. However, my father’s books had taught me about female anatomy to the point that I could provide her with ample pleasure several times. She started putting on her clothes, and I did, too. When we were fully dressed, she said, “You’re better than guys three times your age.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She opened the door and we stepped into the hall, blinking against the sudden light. At the elevator I heard the sound of an opening door. Down the hall, my father stepped from a room. He said something low and a woman responded with laughter. Dad closed the door behind him and straightened his hair.

  I pushed the elevator button repeatedly, fearful of getting caught. Tessa and I descended to the lobby without talking. Dazed and happy, I wanted to remain in her company, but she avoided me for the rest of the con. I didn’t mind. I’d finally had sex.

  Chapter Nineteen

  DURING MY senior year in high school, my father and I were in perpetual conflict. Instead of talking, we avoided each other. My misery wasn’t entirely his fault, but he’d taught me to blame others for my misfortune, and I dutifully blamed him. He seemed to regard every word I uttered as a challenge to him. Perhaps it was. No one else stood up to Dad. I protected my siblings, but nobody protected me. I was on my own and I knew it.

  Dad was forty-two, at the height of his porn career. The house was mired in tension, seething with sexuality. John Cleve presided over everything with a tyrannical intensity. We still ate supper together, but the family scattered immediately afterward. My sisters and brother stayed in their rooms. I roamed the woods at night, fearless and hoping for trouble. A friend had an old car, nearly indestructible, unable to reach high speed. We began wrecking it on purpose for excitement.

  A long argument between my father and me ended with us in separate parts of the house. Dad stomped into the room where I stood and handed me a note. I saved it for years, committing it to memory:

  Your need to have the last word makes it impossible to talk with you. Here, then, is mine.

  The next day I took the military aptitude test. It was the first year the ASVAB was unilaterally administered by all the services. Each branch received the test results and competed for the top candidates. I was inordinately proud that my score was the highest in the state. It didn’t occur to me that the military test was not that difficult and academic standards for Kentucky were not very high.

  Each branch actively recruited me. Having never seen an airplane, I ruled out the air force. I eliminated the navy because I didn’t know how to swim. I never fully understood what the Marine Corps did, since “marine” meant water, but they were ground troops. I settled on the army because the recruiter told me I could wear a short-hair wig instead of cutting my Southern-outlaw hair. He explained that since the Vietnam War was over, I wouldn’t have to take orders if I didn’t want to. I believed his lies and enlisted.

  My ASVAB scores were high enough that a different sergeant arrived, a stern man who represented Military Intelligence. Originally from Texas, he said he’d been the same at my age, brimful of brains with nowhere to aim them. The army, particularly intel, helped him reach his potential. He hinted that after my service, I’d have opportunities to work for the government in an interesting capacity. His implications and vagueness impacted me more than the overt sales pitch from the other recruiters. I left that meeting with a clear vision of my glorious future: paratrooper, army intel, college on the GI Bill, then the Central Intelligence Agency.

  I’d grown up with Vietnam as just another television show and was disappointed when the war ended before I got a chance to fight. Watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. influenced my plan to join the CIA as much as reading Harriet the Spy and Kipling’s Kim. I began consuming histories of the clandestine services and espionage novels, studying them as textbooks for my future occupation. I invented secret codes and practiced the use of invisible writing with lemon juice and milk. Spies trusted no one and disregarded authority. They often came from a family in which duplicity was accepted and normal, thus easing the transition to professional skulduggery. My insecurities were an asset: I wanted to be liked. I needed to believe in something larger and more important than myself. Patriotism was as good a fit as any.

  My motivation for military service was unrelated to family tradition or duty. I was reckless and young but mainly angry. I wanted to jump out of airplanes with a rifle and shoot people. I wanted to get out of Haldeman and far away from my father.

  Though determined to leave, I felt like I was abandoning my siblings. I became anxious about my future letters home. I didn’t want to worry them, but failing to correspond would increase their concern. I began planning countermeasures, settling on disinformation as the best strategy.

  The periodical area of the Morehead library contained several years’ worth of Reader’s Digest, which had a monthly section called “Humor in Uniform,” composed of anecdotes contributed by veterans. I stopped attending school and went to the library, where I read dozens of these stories. Basic training was ten weeks long, and my plan was to send two letters home per week, relating incidents from Reader’s Digest as if they were mine. Most had the ring of truth and a lighthearted intimacy that would ease my siblings’ worry. I subdivided the brief narratives into specific categories—lousy food, clothing that didn’t fit, bad weather, hateful chores, and the sergeant’s unreasonable anger. Within two weeks, I had compiled a notebook of humorous episodes, transcribed and organized into sections, complete with a title page that said “Letters Home.”

  Because I was underage, my parents needed to sign the induction papers. After supper one night, I told them my plan and presented the legal documents. There was no discussion, no suggestion of finishing high school or going to college. My mother said nothing. Dad asked if I was sure. I nodded. He signed the form with his customary and well-practiced flourish, as if inscribing a book to a fan, and left the table dramatically. Mom silently watched him go and avoided looking at me.

  I’d been an honor student throughout high school, with straight A’s in English, history, and science. Teachers had fawned over my intelligence since first grade, even the ones who beat me. I was a strong candidate for scholarships to top colleges around the country. But no one—not a single teacher, parent, or family friend—encouraged me to further my education. My future lay exclusively in my own ignorant hands and that of the U.S. Army.

  In May the recruiter drove four of us boys to Lexington for the induction physical. We didn’t talk in the car, all of us nervous, the recruiter abruptly serious. We hadn’t seen this side of him. Gone was the jocular charisma, replaced by grim purpose. We joined a hundred or so other boys in a large facility the size of a gymnasium with an array of medical personnel. Metal racks covered by cloth were separated into sections for various tests. We stripped to our underwear and moved in slow lines: pulse checked, blood taken,
mouth and ears examined, testicles squeezed while we coughed. We laughed our way through all of it. Occasionally an examiner culled someone out and sent him to get dressed. We looked at him with scorn—he wasn’t up to snuff, no longer one of us. Those boys appeared sad, walking with their heads lowered in defeat. We speculated as to the reason: too fat, too short, too dumb, too fucking ugly! Our jokes concealed the lurking fear that any one of us could be next.

  After a few hours I was pronounced extremely fit: good heart, vision, and hearing. My upper and lower extremities functioned with no defects. I was disease-free, with fine circulation. A doctor pulled me aside, and for the next two hours I urinated into a plastic canister again and again. I thought it was a special procedure reserved for future spies, a test of endurance, and I refused to complain or ask questions. The other boys in my group moved on, leaving me alone to supply samples. The last doctor said: “Albumin in your urine. No branch will take you.” Standing in my underwear, I became so upset I began to cry, then felt humiliated for having done so. I didn’t cry again for fifteen years.

  During our long car ride home, the three other boys chattered and laughed and beat on each other. The recruiter regained his former cheer. He told dirty jokes and allowed us to smoke in the car. I sat against a door, face pressed to the window. I didn’t see the land go by or listen to the others. Awash in despair, I felt like a failure, as if I’d let down the recruiter. Worse, I had no idea what to do. I’d already quit high school, hadn’t applied to any colleges, and feared being permanently trapped in my father’s house. The one act I’d taken to exert control over my life was thwarted by piss in a cup. My own body had betrayed me. I didn’t even know what albumin was.

  The recruiter returned to his small office in Morehead and prepared the final paperwork for the lucky boys. I walked four miles before catching a ride to the turnoff for my home hill. I climbed the quarter-mile dirt road slowly. For twelve years I’d traveled up and down the hill on foot. I knew how the light and shadows fell, where the potholes developed, the steepness of every step. I’d walked the dirt in full dark with no moon or stars, at dawn in mist and dew, during rain and snow. At a flat curve, the only place two cars could pass, I began throwing rocks in the creek. The absolute certainty of my future was obliterated. I wondered how many rocks it would take to fill the creek. I now had that sort of time. Stuck forever in Haldeman, I could build a dam, rock by rock.

  Long after night arrived, I sat in the road, clearing the space around me until I was down to dust. I went home and told my parents the news. Their reaction was the same as when I’d announced my intention to enlist. They nodded and said nothing. In my bedroom I discarded my notebook of anecdotes. I rearranged the items on my shelves—a jar of wheat pennies, a box of feathers, hundreds of comic books, and lucky rocks. My brief brush with the adult world of military service made my collections seem silly, the accumulations of a child. I lay in bed unable to sleep, tense and furious. A few months later I enrolled at Morehead State University, the only college in the hills.

  I’ve since learned that albumin is a type of protein essential to building muscle and healthy plasma. Its appearance in my urine was a onetime fluke, unexplainable, never materializing again. In 1976 the army was bloated with troops and attempting to downsize, thus increasing the rigor of its requirements. I’ve often wondered how my life might have unfolded with successful enlistment. Every time I meet veterans, I feel a twinge of envy. The benefits are clear to me now: a structure that provides camaraderie, meals, clothing, lodging, and training. The potential existed for a strong role model, perhaps a man of honor and integrity. I might have hated military life or never used the GI Bill. Or maybe today I’d be mingling with bureaucrats in D.C.’s Beltway, commuting daily to Langley, working as a senior analyst. Or perhaps like the other boys with whom I enlisted, I’d have been discharged quickly, returning home with a deeper understanding of personal defeat.

  Chapter Twenty

  MOM HAD lived her entire life in two counties of Kentucky. She’d never lived alone. Three months after Dad’s death, the movers transported her possessions to her new home in Mississippi, a few blocks from the Oxford square. For the first time in her life, she was autonomous. Mom promptly bought a new bed and hung her favorite pictures. I’d never seen her so happy. She could sleep as late as she wanted, eat a roast beef sandwich for breakfast, and read in bed. The only rules were hers. She applied for a passport. In the ensuing year, she traveled to Germany, Spain, London, Paris, Prague, California, Texas, and Virginia.

  My own house was seven miles away, in the country. After thirty-five years, our situations had reversed: Mom lived in town and I had returned to a rural environment. I saw her at least once a week, usually for a meal or a local literary event. Mom was socially adventurous, liked to laugh, and preferred her cocktails promptly at six P.M. As her young neighbors said: “Miss Jodie’s cool.” We looked forward to our time together. Our conversations were very open and honest. Now that Dad was dead and Mom no longer lived in Rowan County, she felt comfortable discussing pornography.

  At times I worried about her reaction to my writing a book about Dad and my childhood. Ten years before, Dad had called me with express orders not to write about his career as a pornographer, a project he’d learned I was working on from a magazine. I explained that porn didn’t have the same negative connotation that it once had. He didn’t believe me and I appealed to his vanity, suggesting I interview John Cleve for the book. Dad’s voice took on a slightly mournful tone. “That won’t work,” he said. “Ol’ John’s clothes don’t fit anymore. He’s gone, son. He’s gone.”

  A week later Mom made a rare visit to my house and asked me to abandon the book I’d begun. Surprised and irritated, I pointed out that since she and Dad had mass-produced porn without consulting their kids, I should have the same literary freedom as an adult. Mom said they’d been very careful to keep their lives separate—the wild excesses of fandom and the more sedate life in Haldeman.

  “There was no overlap,” she said.

  “There was an overlap,” I said. “Your kids. We were the overlap.”

  She nodded, then told me her own objection. She didn’t think too many people in Morehead would actually read my book, but they’d know about it from the Lexington paper and naively confuse pornography with smut or dirty books. This surprised me, and I asked what porn was if it wasn’t smut or dirty books.

  “Sex guides,” she said. “For couples.”

  “Most people wouldn’t see a difference,” I said.

  “Your father did.”

  I didn’t say anything because the language sounded more like Dad’s than hers. Finally she gave me the real reason—she was afraid the women in her Weight Watchers group would hear about the porn and ask her to leave the meetings. She’d lost fifteen pounds and felt good about herself. I didn’t say anything. I was trying to comprehend Mom’s situation. It wasn’t about her weight, it was her fear of social rejection. She had lived most of her life with a difficult man. Mom was like a trusty in a prison, unable to leave but receiving special privileges for service and good behavior. Her kids could escape but not her. Out of deference to my mother, I set the project aside.

  Recently over lunch in Mississippi, she mentioned that Dad had given his own mother a copy of Mongol!, his twelfth book. I expressed surprise, since it was a John Cleve novel. Mom explained that Dad used index cards and rubber bands to block off the sex chapters and prevent his mother from reading them. I nodded, remembering Dad telling me that the loincloth worn by primitive people simultaneously protected the genitals and called attention to them. Partitioning the porn was a way of pointing it out.

  Dad often said that Mongol! was John Cleve’s best book. I had never read it, never even seen a copy, but I remembered his excitement about the research. I was nine when he explained that the invention of the stirrup revolutionized war, allowing men to fight efficiently on horseback. My father stood with his legs spread wide as if astride a h
orse, bouncing on his toes to demonstrate how mounted archers used their knees as shock absorbers against the jolting gait of their mounts. Genghis Khan’s men hated to leave the saddle. If a horse was exhausted from a hard ride, the soldier cut a vein in its neck, drank its blood until the horse faltered, then lithely switched to another steed mid-gallop. Under Dad’s enthusiastic tutelage, I considered Genghis Khan a romantic and mythical hero on a par with King Arthur and Robin Hood. Years later I learned that approximately sixteen billion humans carry DNA from Genghis Khan due to his custom of raping women.

  After the conversation with my mother, I went home and located a copy of Mongol! in one of the many cardboard boxes. Published by Brandon House in 1970, its olive-green cover depicted a prancing satyr beneath the title, large white letters in a quasi-Asian design.

  John Cleve’s

  MONGOL!

  I admired the emphasis on the author’s name, as if John Cleve were a known entity and the reading public anxiously awaited his next offering. At 246 pages, Mongol! ran very long for a pornographic paperback, which averaged 170 pages at the time. The retrospective narrator is Chepi Noyan, son of a lowly blacksmith who rises to the rank of general under Genghis Khan. The book begins with direct address, which creates a closeness, a sense of trust, as Chepi draws the reader into his perceptions.

  The story I have to tell you is not of love, nor of peace and tranquility. Such was not my destiny, and there was none such while my lord Jenghis lived.