Love Love (26 page)

“I understand,” Norman said. “Which is why I'm almost ready to tell you everything, Kevin. Almost done, just give me one more day.”

Done? What did he mean? But Norman wouldn't say anything further.

The following afternoon, they were sitting at an outside table of a tiny Mexican restaurant. Straw sombreros dangled from the ceiling and swayed with the breeze.

Kevin hurriedly wiped his taco-greased fingers on a napkin. His father held a jewel case containing a homemade DVD. The words
For my son
were scribbled in thick black marker on the rainbowed surface of the disc.

“I don't understand.”

“You will,” Norman said. “I'm usually good talking face-to-face. After all, it's my job. But you mean a lot to me, and that complicates things. So in this case, I'm better on camera than in real life, if that makes sense.”

C
laudia was standing in whiteness when Kevin returned from lunch. He was about to greet her but stopped when he saw the position of her body in front of a blank canvas. She held a wide paint brush in one hand and a bucket of red paint in the other, except instead of looking like a contemplative artist, she resembled a tiger about to jump on its prey.

Today was Sunday, which meant he'd been staying with her for almost two weeks, and even though he'd gotten more familiar with his surroundings, he still woke up each day in a slight daze. The only other time he'd been as unmoored from life was the summer after college, when he did the backpacking thing with Bill to Europe like many recent grads, but the circumstances then weren't comparable. He'd been a kid finally shorn of his educational contract, and as he toured the cobblestoned streets of Paris and listened to people who spoke words he didn't understand, the world had never seemed more open.

Kevin tiptoed around Claudia and ascended the stairs like a thief. Since Alice moved out, he'd been alone, and he was once again reminded of the challenges of living with another person, the self-awareness it required. Claudia wasn't a difficult housemate, spending many twelve-hour days at her gallery, and whenever she was in the mode of creation, he let her be.

The single television in the house was in the office, which didn't make much sense to Kevin until Claudia explained it. For her, the TV was work, where she watched the videos artists sent to her or a documentary on some arcane subject, like the history of the pushpin or how soy milk was made. Even when she did catch the rare show, it was still a job to her, a way for her to glean whatever she could to improve her art. Everything she did was for the service of her paintings, and there was something undeniably honorable about that. In spite of the nutty hedonistic side to her personality, he liked her.

He was placing the DVD in the tray when he heard Claudia behind him.

“What the fuck am I doing?” she said.

She threw herself facedown on the couch and screamed into the cushion, which didn't work too well because it was made of leather and not exactly sound-absorbent. Without her bandanna, her hair spilled out over the couch slowly, like melted chocolate.

Kevin grabbed the remote and sat down next to her. Most leather couches tended to be cold in winter and sticky during the summer, but this one was different. According to Claudia, it'd been treated with some sort of space-age chemical to make it feel and act like fabric.

“Why didn't you just get a cloth-covered couch in the first place?” he'd asked.

Her laugh was like a cough that expanded to a minor explosion. “That's a very good point. See, this is why I need someone like you, because you think simply.”

Which was different than a simpleton, she assured him, and she then chuckled some more.

He ran his fingers through her hair. It was odd how quickly they'd become comfortable with one another. Some of it had to do with Claudia, who was not shy about touching or being touched. He hadn't felt this cavalier with a woman since college, when it seemed as if there was an infinite supply of female bodies to discover. He couldn't decide whether this was a progression or a regression on his part, to re-experience this form of carefree human contact two decades later.

This was different, though. Back then, it was the haze of alcohol that created the false sense of closeness, while with Claudia, it was her uncompromising demand for emotional honesty. She wanted nothing less than for him to act on and follow his desires, and the moment she noticed his hesitation on anything, she would call him
on it. Like last night, when she'd pulled open the freezer and taken out the chocolate ice cream and asked him if he wanted some, she pounced on his microscopic pause.

“What is it you really want?” she'd asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“You”—she pointed the silver scooper at him—“don't really want”—now pointing to the tub of chocolate ice cream—“this. You want something else, but despite what I've asked of you, you continue to lie.”

“We're still talking about ice cream?”

She slammed the door of the freezer, the hanging pots above the kitchen island clattering. Scooper in fist, she walked right up to him, the tips of their noses almost touching. She stared at him as if she wanted to take a battering ram to his face.

“This is about what you want, and you asking for what you want. Now tell me, Kevin, what is it that you want?”

“Vanilla,” he said. “I have always preferred to put chocolate sauce on top of vanilla ice cream. In fact, if I can be perfectly honest . . .”

“Yes, please.”

“. . . I have never believed in the need for the existence of chocolate ice cream. Because by itself, it's too chocolaty. But vanilla is vanilla enough that you can add whatever you want and make it to your satisfaction.”

Claudia put the scooper down on the table, gripped his arms with her incredibly strong hands, and kissed him on the lips, hard enough to hurt.

“Thank you,” she said. “I ate the last of the vanilla ice cream this afternoon, so we don't have any.”

They drove to the store and bought six tubs. This was life with Claudia. Kevin had hoped for her company and clarity today, and he was glad to have her by his side. Maybe he was just overreacting, but he was scared of the DVD. On the subway ride back to Claudia's from Norman's, it had gained the heft of a horror movie, and it was always preferable to watch scary films with someone else. Kevin held up the DVD case and filled her in.

“So instead of actually talking to you in person, your bio-dad chose to make this film. That might mean he used to be an actor or has worked in some other capacity in the film business before he became a therapist. Maybe he's a transplanted Angeleno; lots of them here.”

Kevin nodded, though he couldn't see Norman as an actor. He didn't have the demeanor associated with people in the dramatic arts, with their loud voices and confident strides. But maybe when he stepped in front of the camera, he kicked into a whole different personality.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?” Claudia asked, tapping on the remote in his hand.

“Right,” Kevin said, and he clicked Play.

On the wide flatscreen, a red bedroom glowed, definitely not his father's. Kevin had visited his bungalow a couple of times and was given the requisite tour, so he knew this footage wasn't taken from his house. In front of the wine-colored walls, there was a garish four-poster bed from Victorian times, a gauzy curtain draped between the posts.

“Interesting,” Claudia said.

And now a man, holding a wooden chair with canvas backing and seat, the type that movie directors sit in, walked into the frame. It was Norman, and he was naked.

“Really,
really
interesting,” she said.

The quality of the video was startlingly real, high definition enough to see the hairs on his arms. This man, his father, placed the chair down on the floor and stood upright next to it, without a hint of embarrassment or titillation, as if what he was doing was nothing at all. For a man in his early sixties, Norman was in fine shape, possessing the lean, muscular body of a runner, and he just let it all hang out there, his penis jutting out of the forest of his pubic hair like a totem. Norman was uncircumcised. Kevin had seen his share of penises in the locker room, quick sideways glances to see how he measured up against the competition, and in the process he noticed how everyone had their foreskin removed. And now here was Norman in full, binding them together through this private physical trait.

“He did write
for my son
on the disc,” Kevin said.

“Do you want me to leave?” Claudia asked.

“No. I mean how much worse can this get?”

“Have you seen the website goatse.cx? Or Lemon Party?”

Kevin shook his head.

“Then you probably don't know how much worse this could get.”

Norman, as if somehow sensing the conversation between them, turned and reached for the arm jutting from the right that was holding a robe.

“There's somebody else there!” Kevin said.

Norman put the robe on and sat in the chair, his legs thankfully crossed.

“There's lots of somebodies there,” Claudia said. “This is a set for a movie.”

Norman cleared his throat. He looked directly at them, the camera slowly pushing in until his face filled the screen.

“Son,” he said, “I'm sorry if that shocked you, but I wanted to get this out in the open. For the last hour, I tried speaking to the camera like a regular person, but I couldn't do it, not without feeling like a liar. I thought I'd shed the shame that's associated with my business after all these years, but it looks like it came right back when I had to tell you what I did for a living. Even though I have my own counseling practice, I work exclusively with the pornographic industry. I understand these people because I was one of them. I was a porn actor, and so was your mother. That's how we met, and that's how you came to be.”

Kevin turned to Claudia, and if his jaw could fall any further, it would be somewhere in the fourth dimension.

“This is, without question,” Claudia said, “the best movie I've ever seen.”

“I've always been most truthful in front of the camera,” Norman said. “I'd like to tell you about my life. Even though none of it matters now, in the present, I know you feel differently, and I owe this to you.”

They sank deeper into the couch and listened.

Just how is it that I became a porn actor? It's the question I'm most frequently asked. And like most things in life, it's an unplanned event. Things are different now—there are men out there who actually decide and pursue this line of work as if they were going for their MBA, but that's because there's a viable infrastructure. It's all about money, of course: Last year, pornography brought in more than six billion dollars. But back in the day, we were just having fun. We got drunk or stoned, or a combination of the two—don't forget, this was the late '60s/early '70s, when everybody was smoking dope and dropping acid—and we were living in a gorgeous house owned by a very rich friend, a guy named Montaigne, and the guy was having a lot of sex with a lot of women, and me and this guy Rick were a part of his entourage. So when he tired of
certain girls . . . we got his sloppy seconds, I guess you could say. When he wasn't fucking, Monty liked to take photos, and it wasn't long until he got himself a video camera and started recording us.

So this is how it starts. There are all these cute naked girls, there's plenty of alcohol and drugs to go around, you're young, you're beautiful, you're horny. The camera rolls, and you don't even see it. You're just goofing off. Then Monty says let's play, why don't you, Norman, pretend like you're a plumber, and Jane, you're a bored housewife. Then he actually starts getting props and costumes, and that makes it even more fun.

The first movie wasn't scripted at all, one scene after another, just loops made with the Super 8mm with some corny music and amateur dubs added later, but it indeed is a feature-length film because it ran for eighty-one minutes and we were actually trying to tell a story. Granted, it wasn't much of a story, about a wife cheating on her traveling salesman husband while he was away, but there was an attempt to write a script and to act like a proper actor.

There was a strip joint in the Tenderloin that showcased nudie films after midnight, so that's where we had our premiere, supposedly. I wasn't there because it was all done without any of our knowledge. There were some girls who were pissed, and initially Rick and I weren't thrilled, either, but then we started getting recognized—by a tiny subset of the population, of course, and not always the most desirable. Still, it was something, because at the time, we were both down on our luck and couldn't really see a way out from the blackness of our future. I mean, you're so different than me, son. You are a professional, someone who has already conquered this mysterious world. For me, I saw a life of lifting boxes or digging ditches. I had no skills and, to tell you the truth, didn't want any. After barely passing high school, I never kept a job for more than two months. I couldn't imagine working in an office for the next forty years, and besides, I saw it as a sort of a spiritual suicide. It was the '70s, in San Francisco. I wasn't the only hippie in town.