Boogie Nights
Sometimes, however, family history finds you instead.
For me this week it was the accidental (?) serendipitous (?) unexpected (?) discovery of my step-father's short-lived career as a distributor of homemade pornographic "stag films" in the early 1970s.
Say what???
It all happened quite randomly, that is in learning about his secret life as a distributor of wannabe Dirk Digler films. It happened just the other day, as I thought about wishing him a Happy Birthday. You see, I can never quite remember if his birthday is the 2nd or the 3rd? So I went to my trusty Ancestry.com account to look it up. While he and I have never been especially close, he was married to my mother for well over forty years, not to mention the fact that he will soon be turning ninety-something years old.
It seemed like the right thing to do to wish the old man many happy returns.
It was then that the curdled milk fell out of the proverbial genealogical cupboard. It was then that those unexpected storms from the past blew in shaking the foundations of my family and my family history. You see, "the algorithm" prompted me to look at a "hint" about my stepdad. It pointed me to an old newspaper article. There, in "black and white" text, was my stepfather's name. There in black and white on the back page of a back page article with a more newsworthy headline about "Nude Dancers," was my stepfather's full and complete name. There was the story explaining how he'd been arrested for distributing pornography.
The year was 1971.
Now I'm not a prude. Two men looking at titty pictures or even worse is not offensive to me. Heck, paying for his buddy's subscription to "Playboy Magazine 1971" isn't exactly "distribution" in my book. Even watching a "dirty movie" or two at the Pussycat Theater, while generally unwholesome is not the end of the world. We all have our demons. We all have lust in our hearts in some form or another. True too is that we are all "mixed bags" of good and evil. I certainly do not wish to judge anyone for their legally (if not ethically) permissible "tastes" in these things.
I guess I just wasn't expecting that it was my stepfather that I was going to be giving 'a pass' to. Silly me.
However, finding the initial arrest mentioned in the local papers of the day, indeed being directed to them by Ancestry.com's algorithm was startling. It brought back a whole range of emotions and questions. It brought back a whole range of memories.
Wasn't he dating my mother in 1971???
I certainly had to know more. I mean having just one cup of curdled milk from the forbidden cupboard is never enough, right? We genealogical types rarely give up when we are on the hunt for the truth or the facts. No, we are like sharks with blood in the water. I had to know more.
Oh Hell, I would know more.
So like any good genealogical family historian type, I scoured. I mean, this was my mother we were talking about here. The follow-up piece in the newspaper a couple of months later did little to ease my fears. It largely dealt with the penalty phase of my stepfather's Boogie Nights era, and how he and his cohorts (a Marine paraplegic, a welfare mother of four, himself, and a young twenty-five-year-old apparent stud-boy) had set up a quasi-film studio in a house in Westminster, CA to make their dirty flick shows. How many they actually "completed" is anybody's guess. I assume that Barbara does Buena Park and Down on Los Coyotes Diagonal were all confiscated by the local police department. Forgive me, but I sure as Hell hope so.
And to think, all of this occurred in Westminster, California - not three miles away from my home in 1971.
Near as I can tell, my stepfather was going to be "the distribution point man." He was to be (or in fact was) the purveyor of their assemblage of homemade pornographic films. The paraplegic mentioned in the newspapers was "the producer" (or Lord knows what else) and supplied the suburban Westminster house and cameras for the films to be made. The paraplegic was an older guy and seems to have been the mastermind behind "the business(?)." How my stepfather ever came to know him is a mystery to me - and no doubt always will be. The roles for the other two, the middle-aged woman and the younger man, sadly, seem a bit too obvious to go into more of a description. I don't know if I am happier that my step-dad was on the "entrepreneurial side" of all this or if I'd been happier with him "shooting scenes" in Riding High on the Queen Mary.
As unsettling as all of this has been, as sordid and as prurient as it feels the worst part is the memories and attached associations that come back with it. Things like my kid sister told me years ago, "He keeps lesbian porn under the sink in the bathroom," and me not completely hearing her, or disregarding it as a 'natural' habit of men (of sorts????), or the aspersions of an unhappy kid. Or worse, my coming for a visit with mom one time about '75 and walking in on him dry-humping my mother's face at the breakfast table. I remember looking away and pretending like I hadn't seen anything. After all, they were nearly married and I was the one who had interrupted them, right?? I should have been embarrassed, right? But my memory isn't of my embarrassment at all. It's the memory of my mother's face. It was blank and unfeeling. It was of a woman who was doing what she had to do to appease this man and keep herself and her kids fed.
I need to tell you that my stepfather is not a bad man. He has never been cruel in words or actions. He did and has done many, many good things. I do not ever recall him raising his voice to me. We never fought, but I daresay we had a mixed sort of detente. He provided a good life for my mother financially. He took good care of her when Alzheimer's disease stole her away from all of us.
Yes, he, like all of us, is a mixed bag of a lot of different things.
My mother and father separated in January of 1969. My stepfather was certainly around shortly thereafter and during my high school years. He was certainly around by 1971 when all of this "risky business" occurred. I remember calling him "The Creep" (as my High School friends will still attest to) as he came around during those years to date my mother. It was as harsh a term at the time as it is even now. Nevertheless, in light of these "pornographic film industry" revelations, it may be a title that my teenage self was using more aptly than I realized.
Did my mother know about this? Did she excuse it or cover it up?
Mom always said that they met through mutual friends in Westminster.
WHAT THE FUCK????
How close did my mother come to being recruited for this crap??
My maternal grandmother "Nana" and my stepfather had an uneasy relationship. He thought my grandmother was a bitch. He even used that word once with me in earshot.
What did Nana know that she kept to herself?
In the back of my mind, in a dark "filed away in 1971" corner of forgotten things I seem to recall my mother telling me something about her new boyfriend's dealings with the law. She was explaining something to me, not justifying it, but telling me about some sort of "timeline" or restrictions that he was facing. It was so long ago now. I don't recall the content of what she was explaining to my sixteen-year-old self. Looking back, the following year ("1972") would have been the year of his probation...
Did she tell me this? Did I make this up in my head? Is it a false memory? I can't tell...
"Nana" certainly read the same local newspapers of the day. There, with his name in black and white.
What did Nana know that she never spoke about?
Mostly though, I feel sorry for my mother. I know, I know. I really don't know that she had to endure anything more awful than my stepfather's unusual proclivities. I assume he was faithful to her, though I always wondered about his solo "family trips" to El Paso and the proximity of Mexican whore houses. I am sad for her because she was so down after Dad left her and had such a bad self-image. (Dad had left Mom for a trollop- sort of lady, a coquettish gold-digger type that Mom was never gonna be.)
Mom must have felt unpretty and unloved and not sexually worthy after my father left.
"Your father doesn't want me anymore," she said to me one day in 1969.
What that must have done to her young mind.
Enter my step-father and his 1971 ring of paraplegic pornographic movie purveyors.
Believe me - I have just started to scratch the surface of their identities.
Oh, I will know who you people were. I will know who your little pornographic entourage was.
"Zelma Sharp Carvalho Beauchamp" - apparently living, age 98.
I will not judge you - but like someone will see me one day...
I will know who you are.
☮️
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