Making Porn, Flirting with Transsexuals, and My Mother Part 1 of 3

Part One: My Mother

One good thing that’s come of my dad’s illness (he starts chemotherapy next week) is that in addition to bringing me and my dad closer together, it’s brought me an my mom (from whom he’s been divorced since I was five) closer together. My mother lost her dad when she was my age and she lost her mother three years ago. I never really appreciated what that must be like until my dad got sick. 

Last Monday night I had the best conversation with my mother that I’ve ever had. Ever. In thirty years. We talked about everything. Life, death, art, poetry, filmmaking, my sex life…

We’ve got a family reunion coming up and each family is supposed to have an entry in this talent show. My mom suggested that I enter the talent show for our family…

Me: What would I do?

Mom: You could write a poem about the importance of family and perform it.

Me: I can’t do that.

Mom: Can’t or won’t

I then explained to my mother that I don’t write poetry anymore and even if I did, that’s not how it works.

Mom: Why did you stop writing poetry?

Me: Because I stopped needing to.

Mom: When did you stop?

Me: I stopped when Robyn died.

This is the first time I’d mentioned Robyn’s death to my mother since the day of the funeral. I then told her about The Way Out Club and stories from my performance days. This was the first time we ever talked about my writing or my performances or my creative process or anything like that. When I was fifteen I showed my mother a short story I had written. She was so disturbed by it she showed it to her friends at work who suggested she take me to a psychiatrist. I never showed her anything I had written again.

Somehow we got on the topic of my sex life. She keeps asking me what I’m into and specifically about bondage. I’m like “MOM! You don’t wanna know about that stuff.” But she wouldn’t let up. So, just to shut her up, I told her about the time a Dom of mine put on a double ended strap-on and I gave her a blow-job. Of course, my mom not being overly familiar with the double-ended strap-on, I had to draw her a picture. Now imagine this, you’re a heterosexual male and you have to explain to your mother about the time you got down on your knees and sucked a woman’s “dick.” Complete with diagram.

I thought after that she’s recoil in horror and stop asking me questions. No. Then she wanted to know what I did at Shibaricon in Chicago. So I told her; I stripped down to a PVC g-sting, got my hands tied behind my back and got beaten with a cane until there were stripes up and down my thighs. And with that, my mom holds one end of the wooded handle on a 4^th of July flag and says:

Mom: Come over here, I’ll beat your ass right now.

Me: Mom, that is so wrong on so many levels you can’t even begin to understand.

I thought about telling her about the time we were in New Orleans for my cousins wedding and I snuck off and paid a woman $150 to trample me and sit on my face. But I thought better of it.