Porn Mama

Near the end of middle school Dad decided since we couldn’t get cable because we lived out on the fringes of Miami, that the family (he) needed (coveted) a satellite dish (to watch baseball games and boxing matches). Now please remember that in 1988 satellite dishes were the SUV’s of multi-channel options: robust black saucers floating in people’s yards with squeaky motors that pointed them in the direction of the appropriate satellite.

We got the satellite dish, we got reception, dad got a deal on the black market and we had a descrambler chip installed so we would essentially be stealing the satellite signals. It was middle class lifestyle on a low class budget. Awesome, right? Even more awesome was the fact that there were nudie channels. Ah yes. Number 1, the Playboy channel, which was kind of boring, really, lots of lacy women posing in castles to music by Enya’s cousin Tanya. Very eighties. Number 2, the Spice Channel, which is and was hardcore all the time.

Having been through puberty himself, dad asked Mr. Blackmarket Satellite Salesman how to keep me out of the porn. So a gate went up and a password was required, and my mama, convinced my dad was watching the porn at night after she’d gone to bed, decided to try and break the code, so she hired me. Mama and I had the house to ourselves most of the time and so one afternoon we guided the satellite dish to the right channel and then the password screen came up. Mama was immediately stumped. I on the other hand went right for my dad’s birthday. Don’t know why, really, but I figured it had to be something his feeble memory could recall easily. Voila. The birthday was it and we got access on the first try. Boy did we get access. I'll never forget the first pornographic image my virgin eyes set upon: it was a close up of jiggling breasts. Either because it was so close up or because I was so virginal, it was hard to tell what the shaky flesh was at first. But the camera panned back.

There I was, fourteen, watching porn with my mother. And she…she was commenting on what she was seeing: How artificial the breasts were and how painful the fucking looked and how dirty it all was…but she just kept watching. And so did I. Not that I wasn’t grossed out by mama’s presence, but I was determined to record those images of sex in my brain for the rest of my masturbating life. I mean at 14 the possibility of actually owning porn seemed to be forever in the distance.

Eventually mama had enough and the tv was off. And I went to my bathroom and closed the door. What I didn’t realize until after I’d replayed those images in my head a few times was that now I knew the password. As for mama, since she was incapable of using remote controls (and still is) she asked me to type the password in a few more times after that day, just because she wanted to really get a sense of what my dad was looking at. A few seconds after the images would pop up, she’d shoo me away because, “I dunno, but I’m not sure you should be watching this.” So I'd leave mama in the living room watching her porn as I tried to read in my bedroom over the shrieks and groans. It was a great way for a preteen who was repressed via religion to learn about sex. Spot-on educational programming with parental guidance. No wonder I'm gay.