Garage Porn

by Mrs.XEnterprises

After Joy's husband sleeps with everyone in the Boston music scene, she tosses him out only to realize she has no marketable skills with which to support her two daughters. She receives an offer she can't refuse from her dearest childhood friend, Aldo, and she reluctantly starts a lucrative gay porn dvd business in her garage.

Garage Porn

By

Laurie Nardone

Can I make it better, with the lights turned on?

-The XX

But my dreams they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be.

- The Who

Aldo refused to watch my second daughter, Hannah, get born. He knelt at my head, held a bedpan under my chin, and tried not to faint, "I ain't seen a cooch that close up in a lifetime." I knew he was referring to our tipsy high school field trip to the Triple X theater in the bad part of town. Even in mind-numbing pain, I could not forget Marilyn Chambers' Insatiable dilemmas.

In between contractions, I asked Aldo, "What ever happened to Marilyn?" My mother-in-law and husband, Steve, exchanged quizzical looks.

Aldo winked at my ashen face, "An old flame," he explained and the quizzical looks persisted until the next contraction began.

My husband and mother-in-law stood between my legs, eyes moist with sentiment. When Hannah was finally emerged, purplish and looing like an alien, Aldo shrieked, "2 cooches!" In-law gasped, husband smirked, I cried.

Some time later, I made a mental and vocal note of Marilyn Chambers' passing. When I saw the front page but small obituary, I sighed. Luciana, my oldest, was younger then, sweeter, "What is it, mommy?"

"Just a sad story," I patted her on the head and handed the paper to Steve. He wrinkled his forehead and pushed the article back to me. Later, I called Aldo, and we had a mock toast for the woman behind the green door.

Breasts larger than life, Marilyn Chambers's character was supposedly "insatiable," a word I would blush at a few years later when it appeared on the SATs. For me, "Insatiable" was an ongoing porn series, and one life-changing night, I stared up at those 3-foot long boobs, riveted. Even after all my Women's Studies classes, I still insist that it was Marilyn, God rest her soul, and not my father, who really introduced me to porn. And I came to Marilyn on the big screen through Aldo and the boys.

We sat in the front row, me and five boys from St. Joseph's. Aldo was the only one I knew. We had been drinking beer in the parking lot of the train station over Christmas vacation, and I was becoming pretty good at holding my pee. Barely distracted from my full bladder by the cold, I shivered, and we steamed up the Pinto's windows. No one wanted to waste gas money by running the car on the frigid night, so we went to the "movies." It didn't add up, but I went along just the same.

It was dark, and yes, there was popcorn to go with the cans of Schlitz we snuck in. We sat in the front row because of a long-planned rationalization proposed by one of the altar boys: "No dirty old men are going to jack off in the front row. Too obvious." All the same, the seats were sticky. And I watched, simultaneously embarrassed and absorbed. I was not turned on, and even the idea of being turned on was somewhat foreign to me. A "late bloomer," as they call it, I had kissed all of two boys – which I found underwhelming; simply said, I was one of the gang and only beginning to realize that it might be nice to be a girl among these boys. But the screen was so big, and my breasts were so small, and Marilyn's legs spread so wide, her groomed but very present pubic hair in stark contrast to the waxed or lasered crotches of more contemporary stars, women and men.

I wiggled down in my sticky chair, not an easy feat, and watched what happened. A massage table, some dripping wax from a burning candle. Pain and pleasure on screen. In me, too. I followed the story, intrigued by Marilyn's insatiability, but repulsed by the theater, the smells, the gaze of my companions. Twisting my head to follow the contortions of the insatiable woman, I was annoyed and relieved, but I obeyed when Aldo motioned that we were leaving.

"Haven't you had enough?"

"I want to see what happens to her. Is she ever satiated? Does she get burn marks from those candles?"

The boys laughed. "You're right; she's a riot," one of them said, nudging Aldo. We escaped from the smell of men and popcorn into the frigid New England air, and it was over. I had been initiated, though not really satisfied.

For years after, the hanging plot bothered me, and it is something I think about on occasion, like reminiscing about a wild high school classmate. What ever happened to Marilyn after she fucked the football team and left school in disgrace . . . or in triumph? The fact that Aldo din't care at the time did not strike me as odd. I figured he was embarrassed by a burgeoning hard on, but in retrospect, I realize it was the opposite. Sometime later, Also realized he wasn't on the right team, and he settled more comfortable into the love of men.

When Steve left me, it was natural that Aldo, and not my mother-in-law, come to my rescue. He brought tequila and Doritos the first time he visited, he brought more tequila and paid my mortgage on the second, and during the third visit, he brought coffee, opened his laptop and showed me a business plan. Morally obligated as one of the last sane, solvent friends still standing in my life, Aldo realized he had to help me complete that hanging plot.

Insatiable is not a moniker I'd ever use for myself. It suggests something wanted, needed, but while incredibly needy, I had no ideas what I might want.

My initial trepidation aside, I now have a thriving porn business happening right in my garage.

It's a two-car garage, which is really helpful. There are no cars in it, and I had to pay a contractor lots of extra money to put the heating and AC system in during the off hours when the neighbors were entranced by the flickering blue light of their nightly reality TV shows or lulled by Ambien. Any way you look at it, it's tough to get away with air conditioning a garage, especially if you're a single mom and not some pop diva, which I need to say at the outset, I am not.

Lately, though, one might mistake me for a teeny bit of a diva; it was when the award nominees were named. There I was sitting in my kitchen, making a shopping list, bananas, cheese sticks, chicken fingers – white food, all phallic. It's how I think about things now.

An email announced itself on my laptop to tell me I'm up for "Female Newcummer of the Year." The gay porn industry delights in their puns. I sit at the kitchen table, scratching my sagging boobs, writing with the nub of a My Little Pony pencil. I wear Lee Jeans that practically button under these boobs, 22-year old clogs, and my stringy hair is in a ponytail. Of course this makes sense in the senseless chasm of my life. The competition, the email continues, is stiff, no pun intended, but the email turns all earnest at the conclusion with various mentions of professional honors and achievements. I am not interested in honor or achievement; a good day for me is when I tuck my girls into their beds and I pat muself on the back that I have made it through another day without scarring them. While a non believer, I thankGod I managed to keep them alive another day.

My initial impulse is to click "delete," but I don't. My responses these days are now expectedly unexpected, so I call my partner in crime, Aldo. "Oh, Bella," he always calls me Bella, though my name is, well, my name is Mrs. X. He got the "bella" bit from his college school year abroad in Rome, "Roma," as he insists. Some might consider this pretension – I just consider it Aldo. Regardless, "bella" means beautiful, and clearly, this fits me not-so-well, especially as I sit at the kitchen table.

"Bella," he said, "what an honor!" He said "honor" slowly, intentionally, as though I were eight years old, and English was not my first language. Since the divorce, Also treats me like china. In my mind's eye, he is a saint and an asshole.

An "honor." In my mind, I put the honor in italics. I scoffed. I'm ambivalent about my career choices.

"Don't even think about skipping the ceremony. We need to book the tickets now." Aldo always looked ahead, while I had a tendency to look behind. Lynnie, my best girlfriend, was the one who I relied on for the "here and now," and she was not here, not now. All considered, it's remarkable that Aldo abides by so much protocol. The notion of there being the right thing to do was prevalent in our relationship, but now at the height of my paranoid depression, these were fraught with suspicious motives. I wanted to have a small dinner for my wedding, but he insisted on a more traditional reception. At a larger reception, he could size things up more effectively, increase the sample size of friends and family to gauge what I was getting myself into. When I wanted to skip the prom, he insisted, but my agreeing to be his date was simply a cover for his gayness.

These suspicions are not fair, really, and I never shared them with him, but I had always taken everything at face value, and that didn't seem to be serving me very well.

"Aldo, there's NO WAY I am going to the gay porn industry awards ceremony – insert cute little acronym here. No one knows I'm Mrs. X." Aldo's promise of my anonymity was a deciding factor in this current career choice. He told me what I needed to hear, thinking that we'd worry about the truth later.

"This could really help explode the business. There could be partnerships and sponsors. We could take it to a whole new level." His excitement reminded me of our teen years together, Aldo always stopping at the convenience store to buy a lottery ticket. He never checked the winning numbers, but he always said, "When we win the lottery, it will be a whole new world." We never won, but he was hopeful and full of plans just the same. Went along for the ride since I could not think of anything better to do.

"New level, my ass. No." I knew part of my protest was that I had nothing to wear. Aldo knew that too, but he redirected. Later.

"Hush, girl, we need to think bigger, better. We'll get a new space. Get out of the garage. Hire people. No more getting our manicures scoffed with envelope stuffing." It should be noted that I had a manicure last on the day before my wedding. Aldo was another story all together; he told me, "buff is the new black." He always looked impeccable. J Brand jeans, floral, slim-cut shirts. He looked the other way at my frumpiness. Aldo hid his anxiety behind exquisite grooming, and I often wondered how he could be friends with me in my sloppy, messy life. I suppose I has not always been this way, not had he. For a while he did preppy and even grunge. I moved through punk, emo, and Stepford, but we both seemed to settle at the opposite spectrums of each other.

"While I'd love to entertain this notion with you all afternoon, I am afraid that duty calls." It was 2:30 and time for me to turn back into Mother of the Year. I was getting no awards for that. The children needed to be picked up and carted around to some enriching after school activities: junk food and nutrition workshops, inappropriate hip hop lyrics, and building your credentials on the internet. How, in my mother's name, had I landed in this place? I'll never forget Aldo's response when I told him I was pregnant years ago: "how refreshingly conventional! I thought we were just experimenting when you got married, but you seem to be embracing this." It's true – all I wanted was to be normal – I relished the thought of a conventional family, a house, home-cooked meals.

All during my marriage, I was fat. We can mince words: chubby, big-boned, "healthy," whatever works. I was not fat when I met my husband. Believe it or not, I put on pounds when I am happy – dinners out, lovely cooked meals, late–night ice cream in bed. In my happiness, it was winter all year long. I wore weight like a lovely coat, a tapestry that spelled out my comfort. In the waning months of my marriage, the twilight of my French Chef adventures, I put more and more coq au vin into Tupperware containers. I was just feeding myself those days; Steve was gone, and the girls were not crazy about French cooking. When I opened the fridge and finally saw weeks worth of food, I started feeding the disposal. I became less happy and less fat.

Someone said, "It's time to leave the table when love is no longer being served." So when the love was gone, I excused myself. I no longer cared about food, and it was everything I could do to keep my children fed. I cooked for them, things that I couldn't even stomach, tlhat I had never served them before: chicken fingers and pizza, peppered with sliced apples and pre-washed baby carrots. I didn't cook per se, but I prepared. Prepare. It's a funny word that leads to a future I could not see clearly. I tried to represent all the food groups, and I stopped sitting at the table that comfortably sat four. I washed the dishes, cleaned the fridge, and had a margarita. While the girls ate, I was drawn to the sophistication of all the expensive wine bottles we had accumulated, but wine struck me as too sad. Plus, liquor is quicker.

The tequila was a godsend, and margaritas evolved to simple glasses of booze with a squeeze of lime if I had one. I was speedy from some Zoloft, not eating or sleeping, and the tequila enabled me to put the dinner on the table, to make the lunches, to answer the emails where my husband was screaming in capital letters about not loving me.

Indeed, love was no longer being served. And I was getting back into my skinny jeans. All women have three wardrobes in their life. Most of us are pretty nostalgic, and we keep all three. There is the current wardrobe (fat), the moderate wardrobe (what used to be fat), and the high school wardrobe. The high school clothes are simply aspirational: a past and a future. In some sense, I was angry I had saved them – preparation or premonition?

I served grilled cheese and pancakes to the kids. They were thrilled not to have to move the lentil escarole soup around in their bowl, knowing that if they didn't eat it, mommy would probably cry. They ate their kid food dutifully. Mommy did not cry.

My life is about my kids, porn, and gay men. I am starving but not hungry.

To me, Playboy was a part of everyone's childhood, so I don't really even consider it my chronological introduction to porn.

Each of my therapists has thought otherwise.

My dad, Ned, who we all call "Nettles," imagining himself a groovy father, thought my sister and I should read it when it came in the mail. "The writing is amazing," he told us, and he would hand us the magazine, folded over to a story by Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, or John Updike or to an interview with Kurt Vonnegut or Jimmy Carter.

Nettles mandated the reading in the same vain as sitting us in front of the Watergate hearings and telling us to watch history in the making. My sister and I were already getting left behind by history, we realized, when Nettles had to find the v frbblack and white TV, dust it off, and grab a coat hanger for reception. It was the only time I remember watching tv in my house.

Nettles was specific in what we took in, and while he never told us not to read further, it was understood that there were boundaries of our Playboy perusal. Playboy was not Good Housekeeping, a browsing magazine we continued to find in our mailboxes long after my mother was gone.

On occasion, my sister and I flipped to the centerfold, and we giggled at the accessories: the boas, champagne glasses, and long strands of pearls. The first time we came across Miss July, or whoever she was, we read the questionnaire, penned in her own flowery handwriting, replete with smiley-faced "i"s and heart-ed exclamation points. Turnons, turnoffs, ambitions . . . . we laughed at the girl; she was no Mailer. She was 18, loved nude sunbathing, and made no mention of being old enough to read. I now waver between thinking Nettles was clueless, in his own world. He was much of the time. It has also been suggested to me by various shrinks that his required reading, and the implied limitations, was some kind of provocation.

In college, thinking myself cooly cosmopolitan, I subscribed to the magazine, and when my boyfriend moved in with me, he collected the mail, waved Playboy in front of me with his eyebrows raised and said, "let me guess, you actually do get this for the articles?"

"The writing is amazing," I parroted. I suppose Nettles even came with me to college.

"Well, save the issues for me after you read them." For a while, he thought I was sexually liberated and one time, he brought home a waitress for us to share. It shocked me, and my refusal shocked him. She smelled like smoke and french fries. When I asked him to move out months later, he yelled, "Fucking dyke!" I cancelled my subscription to Playboy and changed my major to Women's Studies. Ambivalence is tough to sustain. My father was thrilled: "Gloria Steinam was a Playboy bunny, you know."

My sister and I grew up in the company of men. I know the images you are conjuring up in your head: fishing and touch football, lots of pizza and cars, but Nettles was nothing like that and neither were his friends. We grew sprouts, ate brown rice and talked politics; we saw Allen Ginsberg read "America," and we snapped. There was the end-of-the-war party with homemade beer, home-grown dope, and Bob Dylan on the record player. And when we finally "bloomed," Nettles did not take us bra shopping because he remembered when women were burning their bras.

The closest "normal" male relationship I had was with Aldo. He taught me about sports and junk food, and he loved me unconditionally even through my ugly duckling days. When Steve left, I cried to Aldo about my inability to form good relationships with men, "I only have you, but you already have Rico."

"You'll always have me, Bella. And Nettles, don't forget Nettles." He paused, "well, maybe that's not saying much after all."

Aldo's business plan was framed by his knowing me for far too long. I would follow him into a burning building. Plus, I was poor, bitter, and incredibly depressed. He also knew I was passionate about sex, the idea of it, anyway. I was intrigued by theories of sexual pleasure and politics in the bedroom; in practice, I was simply the girl next door, my life long aspiration. This conflict confused Aldo, though I suppose it confused me as well.

"I can't do it, Aldo. Jesus, I was a Women's Studies Major. I wrote my thesis on Gone with the Wind as a female buddy film. Porn would be incredibly bad Scooby. Bad, bad, bad." I thought about my neighbors, the parents at the school. The girls. Secrets never last long. Even with my head in the sand, I had discovered Steve's affairs sooner than he imagined I might.

"Ancient history, bell. College? C'mon, how well is that pro-sister college degree working out for you now? Being a divorcee, your ass is grass among all the local mommies. You have no skills that might translate into a job. . . . I knew you'd conjure up the feminist exploitation bullshit. I'm actually gonna help you stick it to the man. You need to trust me on this. Please." He closed up his laptop, pulled out a shoebox, and placed it on the kitchen table. "Think about it."

I rolled my eyes. But it was a fair argument. Since Steve left, I was persona non grata in the girls' school. I sometimes volunteered for the annual fund or the bake sale. I had a brief tenure as an office manager at a graphic design firm. I wasn't trained to do anything except mother. And even that had been a trial by fire. According to both Steve and Luciana, I wasn't doing that very well.

"I'm thinking about nursing school."

"Oh, please. You hate blood. You call Lynnie when the girls need a fucking band aid."

"No, I'm serious. Or teaching." All mothering professions, of course. I reconsidered, "Maybe law school."

"Whatever. But fine, we'll play it your way. Then you'll need money for going back to school for your illustrious legal profession." I thought about the secret bedroom conversations we had in grade school. I was going to be a songwriter. Aldo would be on the Yankees. We would live together in Manhattan with a big TV.

We were silent for a bit.

Aldo redirected, "Remember when you made the decision to give up red wine?" Some months ago, this decision was just part of a whole arc of giving up, but abstaining from wine was the only sacrifice that survived my better judgment. Conversely, I gave up meat for about a week, my cell phone for a few days, and I dyed my red hair brown for an afternoon.

"Aldo, you laughed at me; you thought I was ridiculous."

"Bell, it was ridiculous; it is ridiculous. From fine Bourdeaux to tequila shots? But who cares? It's all the same to me, so long as you are keeping up. But the hair? Well, that was just plain crazy. You went from Lucille Ball to Judy Garland, and Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do." Aldo and I watched I Love Lucy reruns when the kids were tucked in.

"Not fair. You –you love Judy Garland."

"It's true, me and my people, have historically loved Judy, but she scares us – too tragic. Get over your white suburban self. I need you to laugh. I need you to make me laugh. You used to be a fucking riot. Remember when you would only go out for Halloween as a great composer? Or that ridiculous outfit you wore when you sang in that band? You're no fucking fun anymore."

"I am tragic." Not so much, really, but the whine bought me some time. I look now and realize Aldo was trying to put me on a path, a path that would bring me back to something he imagined I was before. But the train had derailed. It's true that I had tried and failed at quick, meaningless change. I was silent, staring at my fingers, pushing the cuticles back, wired from too much coffee. It was 8:45 on a Tuesday morning. The girls were at school. Aldo was trying his best, but I was unsure how long he would keep going; I realized that eventually, even I would walk away from myself, bored to death of my victimhood.

"To continue – as with wine, you are currently overwhelmed by choices. Hence your shift to the much more straightforward tequila." I had to give Aldo points for trying to pull it together for me. For making it easier to go down, for using my own analysis to lure me: his salt, his lime. Speak in the language the barely functional alcoholic will understand.

"You're such a freakin' top, trying to get me to swallow this shit." I smirked for the briefest moment and almost felt like myself again, the self I had been before. BS, as we called it, "Before Steve."

"There you go! Listen to you making little gay funnies. It is funny and very profitable. Plus, it's hot, and since we've already discussed the importance of swallowing ad nauseam, it's time to pony up." The puns and metaphors of my so-called life.

Hi Ho Silver.

"The neighbors? Remember them?" I was surrounded by white, middle class do-gooders. Families. Some elderly couples. A teacher and his cats.

"You have the luxury of space. And anonymity."

"You have an entire fucking floor in the city. And a parking space."

"True, but I'm already a suspicious character – with my gay, Puerto Rican lover."

"Rico was born in Newton, for Christ's sake."

"My neighbors don't know that."

Aldo never really settled into my suburbia the way that I had. He bristled when I chatted with the neighbors or invited him to Halloween Open Houses. He lived in Cambridge, and for years, we kept in touch with brief visits and dinner in the city. Only for the past few months had he spent any time here, usually during the day. "Besides, you and your whole grain gingerbread are adored by all. The neighbors won't know, won't even suspect. And if they find out, they will be jealous." Aldo had great confidence that he was living the life all envied. He was probably right about that. We would send out gay porn videos to members of this new club: Madame X Ma(i)lers.

"Will we be mailing these little ditties in leopard print envelopes, too?" I kept accidentally slipping in some interest.

"Look, Bell, you know I would never do anything to put you and the girls at risk. I saw Hannah get born, which as you know, was one of the most moving – and horrific - days of my life. And you let me experience it because you are open-minded and giving, and you know that I will never ever have that opportunity again. And this is a great opportunity. It will get you back on your feet, you can maintain the quasi-agorophobic lifestyle you've come to cherish, and you'll be surrounded by gaggles of beautiful men with senses of fashion and big cocks. You do fag hag so well. And it's all celluloid, no relationships, no commitments, no answering you back. And don't forget, big dick." The speech left me speechless – it was so out of character, such a remarkable breath of fresh air. And big dick. The clincher. Any woman who tells you that size does not matter is full of it. It's one of the lies we tell. It matters and matters and matters. And the allure is magnetic.

He opened the box to reveal a stack of dvds. I glanced at the hairless, hard bodies. It was a world free of women, which felt right. I was sick of myself.

"Watch these, Bell. They're harmless and just focused on fantasy. That's it – nothing grand to read into, no hidden agenda, no trigger for all the feminist bullshit you are thinking about. It's men, pure and simple. Guys on guys, working it out. You'd be doing a great service." He knew my overriding commitment to mankind would win. He kissed me on the forehead, "And for the record, you're no bottom. Which is precisely why this will work, why you are my best friend in the whole wide world." I was silent. I considered it a remarkable compliment.

"I mean it, Bell. You can do this." He patted the box on the table, he patted my ass, and he left.

Man to woman. Gay to straight. Top to top. These were few of the many reasons that Aldo and I would do business together. There was really no other way to make our commitment to each other more basic. We would sell sex, which as I know, all but sells itself. A no brainer.

I heard his car start, and I drew the curtains in the living room. Then I pressed play.

I heard the music first, lower in production value, even than the film itself. I turned the variable, scratchy volume down, afraid the neighbors would hear. I imagined myself on the outside, hearing the cloying music, the wa-wa-wa seventies-style come on. It screamed porn to me. I pushed pause because I needed distraction. More coffee, water, a pad of paper and a pen, my laptop on the sofa next to me. I could surround myself with the everyday to make the foreign more palatable and comfortable. I was cold. A blanket. Too comfortable, I tossed it off of me. Just a movie. Just a fucking movie, but I was anxious, the voyeur. Just sex. Too close. Just gay sex. Better. The little girl. The judgment. Pleasure. Pain.

Why weren't Aldo and I watching together? Why hadn't he taken my hand, sat me down on the couch, poured me a glass of tequila? What was it that insisted on privacy; I imagine the crew swarming around the talent during production. Sex is one of those funny things. It pervades our lives, we sell it and buy it every day in some way or another, but we are alone in our exploration and experience of it. We can be led to the cave, but the lessons we learn there are ours alone.

Some fucked-up lessons. I could hear Suzanne, my therapist.

I settled into the couch. I bit my lip. I watched. And I giggled. I rolled my eyes. Jesus, I thought, this is ridiculous. Here I am a thirty-nine year old woman, and I can't watch a movie in the privacy of my own home. Get over it. Get over your suburban self. How many of my neighbors were watching porn right now, listening at full volume while telecommuting, doing laundry, drinking another cup of coffee? Why did it have to be such a big deal?

The images were riveting, fascinating, intriguing, aggressive, and just as trite and poorly plotted as anything else I had seen with an X rating, which, admittedly, was not much. They were all embodied fragments. But there were no tits. No pussy – a word I had never said aloud without referencing a cat, and even then . . . Just ass and dick and tongue. Lots of tongue. It looked sloppy and messy, but it seemed to be following the safe sex rules of condoms and the like. I made a bullet-pointed note of this. Who would I be sharing this note with? Would there be a quiz? Distance.

In this first expedition, we were at a construction site. The men were handsome, working in tank tops. Whenever I see men in construction garb, I think of the Village People. But this was no 70s scene. These men were young, hairless, and there was absolutely no singingl. I made another note, a question: Is there a market for musical porn? Phallus of the Opera? Some Jimmy Cliff – The Harder They Come. Maybe I would write porn someday. Always the overachiever. I was simply being clever in anticipation of my follow up with Aldo, a performance. He would accept it, dole out admiration, take me seriously. If we took sex seriously, well, then I could live with it. Which is fascinating to me. We are taught about the seriousness of sex, the danger, the sobering emotional ramification, the precautions and ramifications. The consequences. But when we talked about sex, our impulse is to giggle, to smirk, to crack silly jokes. The disconnect was remarkable. Pleasure/pain. Keeping ourselves in check and under control.

I did not touch my coffee. Mutual masturbation, progressive aggression. The foreman needed to keep the laborers in line. They all had the same tattoos, the same facial hair, yellow hats, construction boots. My dad wore those boots in the garden. Bob the Builder? Pretty low budget. I turned the DVD case over in my hands; the price was still on it – 49.95. Fifty bucks, no overhead. These guys were wearing their jeans, fucking on steel desks, playing with glory holes in the institutional bathrooms. It could be filmed anywhere. Beautiful.

The phone rang. I let it. It went to the machine, "Hey. You there?" It was Lynnie. "You're not picking up and the girls are at school, and I know you won't leave the house unless there is an emergency. I'm right out front, and all of this tells me that you are feeling sorry for yourself on the dining room floor, so I am here to snap you out . . . "

I could hear the voice coming from inside the house. The porch door slammed shut, and the key went into the lock. "of your funk. Up and at em."

"Do you like it? DO you like my cock? Is it big enough?"

"You home? Jesus, you ARE home. Are you decent?" Lynnie ran into the living room. I fumbled for the remote, which I quickly dropped, which smashed onto the floor and stuck on the volume button so that the entire first floor echoed with "I'M GONNA FUCK YOU SO HA. . . " I ran to the TV and clicked it off.

Lynne was stunned. "Honey. Jesus." I was shaking. And then I was laughing, that sort of cackling, crazy, nervous, ridiculous laugh, the one that indicated that something was terribly wrong. Then I was laughing so hard, I was crying. I may have peed a little bit. Lynnie looked frightened, but she took a deep breath, sat me down on the couch, and held onto my arms. Tight. I laughed more quietly now, though tears still streamed down my cheeks. I don't know how long this went on. This woman had witnessed me laying catatonic on my dining room floor, throwing darts at a bullseye picture of my ex, and burning every letter that he ever sent. In the early days, she got me out of bed. Yet somehow, this scene was so very much more troubling to her, and to me.

"Lynn, it's not what it looks like." How to explain this? " Ok, what does it look like?"

"Aww, honey," she mocked up her best Southern accent, "it looks real bad. But now that I can breath again, I am refreshed by the sordidness of your escape. Sitting here, watching porn while the kids are at school. Wouldn't have occurred to me, from the uptight mom around the corner, but hey – live and let live." She raised her eyebrows, wanting me to fill in her explanation.

"It's really not what it looks like. It's gay porn, Lynnie."

This gave her pause. "Wow, a LOT on my plate right now. OK, porn AND you're a lesbian."

"Male porn. Gay male porn."

Beat. "What am I missing?"

I tried to think of a way to explain it. Lynnie got up. She went to the liquor cabinet, to the kitchen, and when she returned, she poured us two glasses of tequila. "So, you're watching gay porn at, let's see," she glanced at her 10,000 Leagues under the sea diving watch, "ten of ten. Nice. OK, go."

I explained the situation, Aldo's proposal. We drank more tequila. Lynnie was impossible to read. I held my breath.

"It's fucking brilliant. Brilliant. Sordid in just the right way, but no exploitation of women to get you where the feminist crap might. No implication with your girls, no messy issues about, well about, anything. It's business, and it's fucking amazing. Never really liked Aldo, but this is good, excellent, even." There was more tequila. And eventually, I pressed play for her.

Lynnie had come in my life, our lives, when the girls were young. Both Steve and I were fond of her; she was fun and entertaining. Really, she was our only single friend. Aside from Aldo and Rico, we were surrounded by married breeders or wannabe breeders. I thought it odd that Lynn would find her home here in the suburbs, but she liked having a yard to garden in, and having soured on her upbringing in Manhattan, cities were not her favorite place to live. For money, Lynnie wrote technical journals for Chinese electronics companies. I guess it paid her pretty well, and it allowed her to garden and keep bees and have season tickets to the Boston Celtics.

Once, Steve asked her if she was a Sox fan–he was–I wasn't, and he was trying to increase his common ground with her. "No summer sports - cuts into my gardening time." In the winter, the Celtics were the gardens she tended to. When she walked her dog in our neighborhood occasionally, she spotted Steve pulling up the dead tree in the front yard. She stopped to help and endeared herself to all of us.

The relationship Lynnie and I had was a world apart. This is not some romantic interpretation of the ideal. It really was something separate from the rest of my life. We did not share each other with others – she was not the one about whom I would say, "Oh, I am dying for you to meet my friend Lynnie." I kept her for myself, selfishly, I suppose, and I think she did the same. We led separate lives except when we didn't. There's no great way to explain it – we were devoted to each other, and while the rest of our lives were spinning around us, we would always have that respite. She adored the girls, but that simply seemed an extension of me. Even Aldo – they had met, and I harbored secret hopes for a great trio, but they seemed not to see the things in each other that I saw in each of them.

What I saw in Lynnie was a funny, honest, devoted touchstone. I trusted her in her groovy skirts and Frye boots. She had style without being stylish, a filthy mouth without truly offending, and a past that offered cautionary tales and admirable adventures.

At one point, I wondered why I had gotten to keep Lynn in the divorce. She and I never spoke about it; she just was. Steve did not seem to question it, and when Lynnie started arriving with groceries the day Steve moved out, I suppose she was mine to keep.

We met Lynnie's boyfriends through the years, four of them, two Johns, an Owen, and her very own Steve. All nice; none lasted too long.

She never seemed troubled, flustered, sad, stressed, or angry-except when she drove. Driving with Lynnie was an adventure, so when I could, I did the driving, and she still spent much of these journeys swearing loudly, even in front of the girls. It was the small price to pay for my dearest friends, even when the Luciana started experimenting, "Hannah, you're a douche!"

"Jesus, they are hot. Look at that package. Oh my god, is he . . . " she squinted, "he is! Oh my god."

"Shhhh. I'm trying to follow the dialogue." We laughed together. We admired. It seemed ok not to muster a mock repulsion with an audience like Lynnie.

I put in another disc and another. There were ski trips and after parties and money shots and blow jobs. And there was tequila and closed curtains for us.

Lynnie kept mumbling, "brilliant, fucking brilliant." I assumed she meant the plan and not the videos. I would become Mrs. X because I had nothing else to be – right here in my two-car garage. I would mail these gems of athletic sex to people around the country and they would send money, and return them, and I would send them out again.

In, out, up, down, mouths, muscles, tongues, nipples, dicks, lips, balls, assholes. Oh my. I felt warm from the drinking or maybe from the films. They were becoming background noise now. Lynnie was doodling on my notepad. "I'm making a list," she told me. "You'll need some organizational stuff. Groovy folders, maybe a class in Excel? I can help you with that. And some accounting software?" Lynnie was a different kind of anal than the kind we were watching. She was way ahead of me. I was Googling gay porn star names.

"Hank seems to be popular."

Lynnie looked at me with glassy crossed eyes.

"Have you ever? I mean the diversity?" I was asking about the various sex acts – they seemed too numerous for even Lynnie to catalogue. She put on her readers to look at the business plan. I was getting comfortable watching these men in front of me. I could admire their careful bodies, their muscular thighs. I imagined them being comfortable in their skin. I envied them.

For the first six months after Steve left, I fell in love with each gay man I came across. Young, muscled, tattooed - beautiful specimens that had no sense of time or responsibility. Needless to say, I spent these nights going home early and alone. Still, I could watch the dances, the glances, the language that I was certain I would never understand. I could listen to people speaking Italian for hours, but I was never going to be Italian. It was mind-numbingly gorgeous, and it belonged to someone else.

I was getting lost in them, and lost track of time. The sound was low, but I still did not hear the footsteps on the front porch.

"Mom? Mom?"

It was a scramble, but I managed not to drop the remote, and the TV screen went blue, the other blue, that mesmerizing, otherworldly blue that dominated the nights in the neighborhood we called home. Lynnie looked as though she had been caught making out on her parents' love seat.

"Bunnies!" I rallied with only a spurious hint of dread. I leapt up.

Lynnie looked relieved. Her eyes darted to the glasses of tequila, the Google search, her doodles and lists. She was paralyzed until she realized that none of this was on the girls' radar. Not in my house.

They dropped their backpacks and stared at the TV, pupils dilating in the dark. They were hypnotized by the blue light in the darkness. They squinted.

Hannah looked at me pleadingly while she kept an eye on the blank screen. She was my charmer, smiling, "Whatcha watching, mama? Can we watch?"

"Yeah, right, Hannah. Like that's gonna happen." Luciana snapped out of the trance and picked up her backpack. She was already anticipating my answer.

"I was just watching the news, girls. Say hi to Lynnie."

Luciana mumbled something about fairness under her eleven-year old breath, while Hannah ran to Lynnie. "Hi." There was a beat. "Mama, I like the news."

"You do not. Jesus, Hannah." Lucy was timing her dramatic exit when I shot her the silencing look.

"Luciana, enough with the smart mouth." She dropped her backpack again, made an inhuman little grunt, and I sealed my own fate by laughing, scoffing actually.

And then, less under her breath, Luciana busted the day wide open: "It's totally inappropriate for you to call me that. Dad says it's ok to tell you that!" She was incredulous. The tequila haze lifted, and it unearthed the sleepless nights.

"What did you say?" I was on my feet, storming into the kitchen chasing after her, "you little brat. You know what? It's your fucking name. It's always been your name. And you know what else about your precious revisionist father? He's. Not. Here. And you know what else?" The venom would not stop, and I was afraid, but at this point, Lynnie was at my elbow; she gripped hard, and I stopped myself. She had saved me again. I felt myself releasing my lunge forward.

"Girls, Girls, Girls. Whew." She mocked a boxer referee stance – arms apart at each of us. Hannah sidled up next to her, melting into her leg. I took a breath. Luciana shook her head. Lynnie laughed. Luciana smiled. I fumed.

She was feeling proud that Lynnie was inviting her into the conversation, validating her power. Now, I was excluded, shut down like the child. Luciana felt the need to be right, to be heard. Honestly, there was a part of me that did not even blame her. " Whatever," she shrugged her shoulders. The word was harsh, and the tone was throbbing. I moved toward the bathroom to splash water on my face because that's what Mommie Dearest would have done with a friend like Lynnie.

I could overhear Lynnie and Luciana, the conspirators, talking in the kitchen. "It's a beautiful name," Lynnie said loud enough for me to hear.

"Yeah, right." You know what it means? Do you?" There was silence. "Little Lucy! Honestly. How could she think that was an OK name?"

I shut the light and stood behind the closed door in the darkness. There was quiet. Lynnie began to say something I could not make out. I jiggled the door handle announcing my arrival. I didn't need to hear any more.

Lynnie looked at me with a fake smile, "I was just telling the girls that we should make brownies for dessert. I make a killer brownie."

"Brownies," Hannah was happy again. "I love brownies!" Lynnie put her arm around Hannah's shoulder and winked at Luciana.

"I'm not gonna eat brownies – I need to train." Luciana, my gymnast, was beginning to show ridiculous concern over her body. It made me crazy.

The train wreck that my marriage turned into was hardest on her. She loved Steve; he was her true north. She took all the blame for his departure, though outwardly, she hated me.

"She's testing you to be sure that you won't leave too."

My therapist had used this line with me. "Mothers don't leave," I reminded her. "Luciana knows better than that."

"What? Yours did."

"She didn't leave, leave. She died."

"She left, J. She left just the same."

And she had. She left me and my sister and my dad alone. Nettles was convinced he could be both mother and father to two girls, and I guess he did an ok job. We were clothed and fed, and he made us go to college and all that. There were always men and women around, so we were never alone. I learned in therapy that I was confused by my father's response to my mother's absence. He never struggled or wept or threw up his hands in exasperation. And now my kids were seeing all of these things daily: struggle, weeping, exasperation. It felt like I was scarring them. I was alone and frightened and poor. But I had no family to speak of except for these two little girls, no female friends, except for Lynnie. Sure, there were moms who dropped the girls off after school, but I had never pursued these women as friends. And now, I was the town pariah. I got pity, and people were willing to help, but no one wanted to get too close in case the wife abandonment was catching.

My sister used to tell me that our mother was a beautiful woman; she wore her long auburn hair in braids or bandanas. She tried to do my hair like that when we were little since I carried my mother's hair as a genetic legacy, but I liked to play with scissors, and I wore my hair short until I got married.

I don't really remember any of this; it's pieces of conversations and pictures and fairy tales. I remember that my mother was smart, smarter than my father, certainly. But she was quiet, reserved. She seemed happy with the joy that immediately surrounded her: her husband (common law), his friends, and her girls. She loved cooking and brought her own baked goods to the restaurants and coffee shops in town. She wrote and illustrated lovely books about cooking and gardening. She bound them herself and never tried to publish them.

The books sit on my shelf. My girls know nothing of them.

I took out turkey dogs and baby carrots. Lynnie was in the living room with Hannah, drawing underwater scenes. Luciana was still upstairs but I knew she would come down when she got lonely and when she has decided she has punished me enough.

I rinsed out the tequila glasses, put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher. I am tired. While I heated the skillet for the dogs, I cried. This happened many nights when I cooked dinner. It is the ritual now – making it through the day, connecting with my girls, exhaustion. Today, I changed it up – drank tequila, watched porn, surprised when the kids came home.

I read an account of the widows of 9/11; many of them cry in the shower. I cry at the stove. I may take up crying in the shower. I am not a widow, though I imagine I am. In the Book of Psalms, David talks of a tear bottle, and in the time of Jesus, women were paid to fill small vials with their mourning tears, but I have lost my religion.

I think now about those early days in Mrs. X's life – the change that one day would precipitate my future. Friendless, depressed, a mother barely acting like one. It was the most responsible, grownup thing I could do.

I remember turning off the skillet and rifling through a box underneath the sink. I found a green and blue paisley bandana, and I put it on. I pinched my cheeks, licked my lips, and took a deep breath.

"Girls? Let's go. Get your shoes. We're going out to dinner!"

Lynnie looked up. "You too," I told her. And then I whispered, "You're part of this, now. An accomplice. Do as I say, and I'll kill you last."

Until then, I was living quietly, unobtrusively, living the rest of my mother's life – she was dead before she was 39. I was quiet. I let my husband shine.

"Mama, mama, Mama, can we have pizza?"

"Shut up, Hannah. Pizza was for lunch today. Can we have sushi, mama? Amanda, at school had sushi for lunch."

We lopped into the car. The four of us. Four girls. Four women. I turned up the radio and looked at the babies in the back seat. I was not going to leave them. "Buckled?" I asked.

"Mama, you look pretty today." It was Hannah, of course, but I dreamed it might be Lucy, my Luciana.

I smiled through it. Lynnie held my hand as we pulled out of the driveway. My cat neighbor across the street looked up from his porch and waved. I waved back.

Aldo swore that the business itself was easy enough to run: low overhead, no employees, just a little manpower. Well, a lot of manpower.

When it came time to make the garage workable, I did not ask anyone for a recommendation and instead, I hired a stranger from the Yellow Pages who lived three towns away. With Lynnie's help, I crafted elaborate excuses to justify my garage remodeling requests, but my three-town-away man did not ask any questions. No one asked any questions. Now that I was hyper aware, I noticed that my neighborhood bustled with the comings and goings of landscapers and contractors, and maybe lovers and thieves. No one looked up.

"It's low impact, Bella, not like we're running a prostitution ring with people coming in and out." Truth be told, even Aldo wasn't around very much any more. I invited him and Rico to dinner with the girls and me, but he always had an excuse. A jack of all trades – he did some real estate investing and acted as a silent partner in two restaurants – Aldo never told me when he started some new venture. We would be chatting about something, and he would mention "the property on Mt. Vernon Street," and I would tell him to back up. "Really, I didn't tell you?" He had never told me until now, but I felt like I was in good hands – he seemed to have the magic touch with businesses and while you could tell he was a hard worker, he never seemed to worry about money. He did, however, always seem unsettled, searching, not aggressively for the next best thing, the newest deal, but for something less tangible, something new that might offer something unnameable, something neither of us thought about too specifically, but something that those of us who move through life as searchers are constantly seeking. Aldo searched the search, and not wanting to do my own work, I joined his.

I kept my laptop behind the box that held my wedding shoes. Lynnie laughed when I told her, "Just because YOU won't go there does not mean no one else will." This was true enough. "Besides, is all of this really necessary? You're not hiding state secrets or anything." I told Lynnie all of these things "just in case."

Lynnie rolled her eyes, "Just in case you're attacked by a fluffer? A horny teenager? In case of what?"

I stuffed the envelopes myself, which was simply a matter of finding the right disc. The discs came to the house at night. Sometimes with UPS, sometimes in the trunk of Aldo's Audi. I unpacked them after Luciana's homework was done, both girls were bathed and tucked in. They were shrinkwrapped – the dvds and not the kids, and while the covers had cheeky titles, the back had close-ups of butts and dicks and tongues. I put them neatly on the shelves in the garage.

I had asked Aldo, "Do you go to gay porn conventions or knock over adult bookstores?"

"Neither, girlfriend, so don't ask, don't tell. Not a bad way to run our business." I felt far from him. Part of me liked not knowing, but part of me knew my willful ignorance was pushing us further apart. I stuffed the envelopes while the kids were at school, picked up mail at a PO box in town. The credit cards were processed through some online thing. In large part, my life did not change much in those first few weeks.

When Aldo promised me my first paycheck, I bought him a bottle of Don Julio Reposado, and he bought me a pair of Christian Laboutain over-the-knee stiletto boots. In black patent-leather, of course. They were stunningly shiny and flirty, yet dominatrix in a Bergdorf's sort of way. I had never seen anything like them; they were sculptures: sleazy, well-constructed fetish sculptures.

Maybe Aldo fantasized that we were running a brothel. I gazed at their red soles from two feet above the box. I didn't want to touch them. "These are awfully expensive to wear around my future home in the trailer park."

"They're heavy enough to weigh you down in the event of a tornado, and the girls can hang on to your heels. Anyway, I figure you could wear them to Amateur Night at the Shiny Apple." We drank tequila shots.

Aldo held out an envelope for me. It was thick, probably a stack of singles in remembrance of our waitering days. "Are you trying to tell me that I'll need to 'dance' to make ends meet now? Is porn the gateway drug to hell? And you're my pusher, my pimp? What, next I'm dancing with a pole, turning tricks, asking the kids to help me bleach my 'works?'" The boots would swallow me up.

"Try on the fucking boots, Bell."

"You really bought them for yourself, didn't you?" I had once seen Aldo wear a pair of Jimmy Choo heels, at a charity auction he dragged Steve and I to years ago. Before he knew better. Before I knew better. Before it all. I sat on the floor in the dining room. The boots were remarkably heavy; they were art, machinery, status, and power. Like a gun. I slowly unfurled the shaft of one, slipped off a clog and wiggled the boot onto my left foot, my left leg, my left thigh. I wanted to see it, so I tried to get up to see the mirror, but I was unbalanced, and to right myself and stand, I had to flip over onto all fours. While I managed it, Aldo shook his head. I stared at the mirror, one foot hidden in leather, four inches above the other leg. Clog. Boot. Aldo finally got up and helped me into the other boot.

I had to tuck my khaki capris into them before I laced the stitching up behind my knees. The price tag on the box read $1300. They made me want to throw up and never take them off. "You. Are. Kidding. Me." I stared into the mirror and turned gently, again and then again.

"You needed them. And they look perfect with your mom standard-issue outfit." I smirked. Old Navy meet Barneys. I blushed.

"And I need them because?"

"You need them, Bella, because we are now incorporated as Mrs. X Enterprises. And you are the CEO. And these are Mrs. X boots." He was positively gleeful. I was horrified and delighted.

"You'll also need a better haircut, some lipstick, and a coat that is NOT from LL Bean."

"Aldo, I am not going out in these boots. Ever."

"Aw, honey, I don't care about you wearing them out, but I do need you to be Mrs. X., to actually feel like you are in her shoes, so to speak." Method acting. I so wanted to please Aldo. I wanted him to know I was thankful for his help, certainly, but more importantly, that I was up to the task. I could be what he needed me to be. They say that clothes make the man, but I wasn't making any men. In spite of the boots, I was a suburban housewife, without the wife part. I had two identities now, I suppose; the paycheck would confirm that.

Aldo knew it was important for me to have this banter, to be constantly reminding myself and reminding him that I did not, at my core, approve of sending porn across the country. I was simply in a situation. Steve had put me in this predicament, and I would do whatever I needed to do to keep the girls safe and happy – well, to keep Hannah happy and Luciana from sinking further into early snarling adolescence.

I had few expectations about the kind of money I would be making. I hoped it was enough to pay the mortgage and tuition. I told myself that I would study the business plan tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and then tomorrow again, but I never did. The first and only time I looked at it, it reminded me of getting busted staring at the crotch of my 11th grade math teacher; I looked away quickly.

Before Aldo left, he pushed the envelope into what would be my cleavage, had I not been wearing a hunter green fleece vest. "Go buy yourself something nice, hon." He pat the envelope a few times. It was thick and gave me a uniboob. I walked Aldo to the door – click, click, click – towering over him; my head was cut off in the hallway mirror: uniboob, fleece vest, khakis, and come-fuck-me boots. A circus freak. An asylum inmate. Mrs. X.

I took my tottering, couture self up the stairs, and I sat on the edge of the bed. I reached into the fleece and took out the envelope. It was cash from two weeks, and it was in hundred dollar bills. A lot of them. We would all eat that month. I could pay the tuition. I could even buy better booze.

IN – out – IN – out. The disc went into the envelope. It was mailed. The disc returned, came out of the envelope. The films did not stay in the garage for long, and I felt responsible for more of a railroad switching yard than a porn warehouse. Eventually, we needed more and more dvds. They came in the brown truck or in the navy Audi. I filed them. And then, IN – out – IN – out. I could do it and drink. I could do it and bake for the PTA. I could do it and not think about what I would do next.

I wore my boots sometimes when I unpacked the DVDs, and once, when I did laundry. Sometimes, I wore my pajamas. I paid for things in cash. There is a shoebox that no longer contains my wedding shoes. It is heavy, and it is under my bed. My name is Joy, but my best friend calls me Mrs. X.

When my sister was born, the Midwest was experiencing a terrible drought. Miranda, my mother, liked to tell this story about her wilting tomatoes. At the time, she and my father did not believe in using anything unnatural, and so the only thing that kept the bugs away was my mother talking to her plants. My father apparently humored her. Almost 10 months pregnant, by her calculations, my mother didn't believe in induction or even visiting a doctor who would schedule a C-section. She had faithfully visited the obstetrician at her parents' request until the moment she realized that the baby needed to carry longer than a doctor might like. At the end of the hottest day, my mother birthed her first child with an unlicensed midwife – in their bedroom – and everything was just fine.

My grandparents also apparently begged my mother to marry my father, and rumor has it that he was willing enough. She, however, remained unmarried – officially, that is. And she drove into her death a single mother, in name at least. For all the quiet that my mother left as her legacy, she was a strong woman who knew her own mind. She nursed my sister when no one was nursing; she carried her in a sling when she introduced her to the plants.

On the day my sister was named for the second time, it rained, a halfhearted sort of rain that got sucked into the earth almost instantly. It did the plants little good, but my mother was convinced it was all as planned. My sister had two names; Vivian, after my mother's favorite film star, was her birth name. Her official name came later. There were friends and family gathered in the dusty backyard of their house, at a naming ceremony for Vivian. And right before it started, the skies opened for the briefest moment. So my mother named my sister, Rain. It wasn't the sort of hippie name that everyone imagined it was. My mother was a true believer in magical thinking and other worlds, but this naming was literal. It was raining, and so she was Rain.

When I came around a little over a year later, Nettles demanded that he be able to name the child. And to change his mind as he saw fit. My mother agreed this was fair. She was tired, still nursing Rain, and she gave my father what he wanted. Rain tells me that my mother gave him a 2 week window, but I'm not sure how she knew that since she was a baby herself. There were times when I used to convince myself that this was my mother's way of having a hand in the naming, but it eventually became clear to me that Rain was my mother's child, and I was my father's. I say this not because she showed any degree of favoritism, at least not that I remember. But I have fewer memories of her than my sister did, and so it seemed a good way to divide up the love.

When I was born, my father named me right away and never changed his mind. Apparently, he was overcome with emotion when I made my entrance, and so he called me Joy. Apparently, when the smaller cast of characters gathered on the frosty backyard grass, he proclaimed that he was presenting, "Joy to the World."

As my shrink tells me, "that's a lot of name for a little girl."

The naming of porn stars takes as much thought. Sometimes they were pitiful, sometimes camp, but most of them were pretty damn funny. There's the age-old game where you figure out your "porn star" name – I remember doing this in high school. First pet's name and the street you grew up on. I had been Merlin Prospect, as had my sister. Aldo was Major Prospect. We had cats, he had dogs. It all seemed to fit.

This was how I found humor in the films that I sent from the garage. I looked at the dvd case, turned it over, read star names, plot details, and the like. This way, I convinced myself that I was "on top" of the trends. I thought of adding to the credits: purchased by Major Prospect and brought to your doorstep by Merlin Prospect. To no one's surprise, the plot lines never varied, but as some famous critic says, there are really only 7 basic plotlines to tell. In porn, there are even fewer because resolution never truly needs to happen for the viewer – and the actors – to be satisfied.

In some ways, porn is the perfect zen solution – self-help to living in the now. It's all about the process. We see very few porn films with unresolved conflict since everyone can fuck his or her way out of just about everything.

I eventually learned that my ex husband had found this a gratifying solution to getting out of our marriage. He fucked his way through Boston's indie music scene when I was found lacking. He seemed surprised when I got angry, and now I can see why. In many porn films, someone's wife walks in on the action, and there is some initial mock shock, then the offended partner gets turned on and usually joins in. I had not reacted as casually.

"Oh, hey honey. This is Billy." And everyone has an orgasm and moves on. I learned all of this well after my trauma, my divorce. Gay porn is a metaphor, a self-help book, and a way to pay the bills. It saved me and my girls, not just in the financial sense, but it also put my life in perspective. The big picture of accepting what is and being in the moment. The drama is limited to the moment, and it is resolved quickly and with pleasure. There's one answer to every problem; you're simply one good fuck away from happiness.

In a sense, porn taught me a lot. Gay porn, especially. I say gay porn because I had little exposure to any other kind. But I had plenty of exposure to the boys. And working with the boys helped me with the girls. It helped me work through the anger I displaced onto all men after Steve fucked me by fucking around. These were good looking, hard working, fun-loving men, and I stopped seeing them as assholes of abandonment. Abandonment became person-specific: Steve, my husband, Miranda, my mother, and my sister, Rain.

When I was in middle school, I watched Rain drift further from me. I would sneak to her side of the room, reach under her mattress and read her diary.

I am a cheerleader because I have long hair. I look around me on the first day of high school and know I have to negotiate my place in the pecking order before it is done for me. Here are the possibilities I would like to avoid:

1. Dead mother pity. This can be channeled from parents or particularly mature students.

2. Odd family homestead. I live in a weird place. Not that too many would've seen it, but our house is three buildings, two of them demolition-worthy, lots of dirt and grass, a greenhouse, and Christmas lights year-round. Only half of them work, so it looks like we are either always getting ready for or always packing up the holidays.

3. Druggie dad. Though dad does not really smoke a lot of dope, I am sure some parents score from him at the "Farmer's market." Certainly, the child of a drug dealer has its own panache, but I want something else to take the lead.

4. Fashion. I'm a don't. Not a lot I can do about this, so I need to compensate.

5. Smart. Kiss of death, though I'm not planning on dumbing down, so I needed to get ahead of it.

At 14 I have boobs and long hair. That's all I have going for me, so last summer, I started paying attention, sneaking the forbidden Cosmopolitan Magazine into the house. One of dad's girlfriends–a French chick not much older than me– caught me with it, and she laughed. She trimmed my hair and taught me about conditioner. I have shiny, bouncy long hair that Marie taught me how to strategically get into a loose bun. I can now also strategically undo the bun. I went out for cheerleading on the second day of school and bounced and smiled and let my hair shine. I was in. First identifier? Cheerleader with the hair. Done.

Joy was pissed. I could tell. She told me, "but you hate cheerleaders. You said they were blonde and vacuous. You are neither. Faker."

Ned tried to explain Joy to me, "she's jealous, Rainy. You're so grown up now. My little girl is all grown up." He's so frickin' clueless.

I was just being strategic, forward-thinking. I'm tired of being known for the things over which I have no control. Marie also took me bra shopping. She took me into the city, to Saks, "Your mama, she came to me in a dream, and she says no cheap bras, so when I woke up, I knew we could not go to the common stores, yes?"

We bought lace in pink and white and black. I adore them. I adore Marie. My life will change. Marie will go away like the others.

"It's gross," Joy told me, "Lace bras? No one will even see them."

"Jealous." Ned said it again, the refrain from the tension between Joy and me.

I'll explain it to her someday. I'll take her shopping myself.

She never did.

I tried my best not to be to present at the kids' school. Steve had little faith in the local public schools, so he had steered us to Shady Day, and the girls seemed to like it. They had good friends and good challenges, and every time I longed for the anonymity of a big public school, Luciana would charm me with talk of peace in the Middle East, and Hannah would describe the plight of the sea turtle. But it was hard to disengage from a small, do-gooder school, and the meetings, initiatives, and service projects overwhelmed me. Before the divorce, it had been my reason for being. Since the divorce, I found it hard to keep up.

"You're a single working mom," Lynnie reminded me, and while she said it in jest, I knew she was trying to help me validate my life.

Unfortunately, I was convinced that other parents, and even the teachers, were looking at me with contempt, or worse yet, pity. I mentioned the pariah feeling already, but the paranoia was paramount, and I knew that the other adults in my children's lives were staring at me with either the "better-her-than-me" or "well-you-can-understand-what-the-poor-guy-was-going- through" look. After Aldo and I started working together, I became certain that the contemptuous looks remained, but the pity had turned to suspicion. "How is she able to afford this place? I hear she got a good settlement. Poor Steve."

Aldo chastised me, "For an atheist, you sure are sounding like a Catholic. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty." He would know, a man whose family was so devout, he wound up in the seminary for about half an hour. "Too many men," he had told me when I went to fetch him in Western Mass.. This, of course, was both the problem and the solution. I knew he couldn't hide behind the robe; he knew it too, and I scrunched my eyebrows together in that way he insisted I would get wrinkles.

"Was it the fashion?" I asked, genuinely interested. "Let me guess, low riders and muscle shirts were out of the question?" From that moment, Aldo wore his gayness like nude lipstick on tasteful middle-aged women–it just was. And it seemed natural, but his Catholic upbringing remained garish like blue eyeshadow. His mother, in her kindness, always tried to convince my sister and I to join them at church. She'd do it casually, looking over Aldo's head at the two motherless heathens in front of her. She used spit to tame Aldo's cowlick. My sister and I were happy to run along home, "Can I go, ma? When we get back?" Aldo would beg.

Every now and then, I tried to lure Aldo to babysit, just like his mother's request for church, but he'd decline with odd excuses.

"She's already 10," he insisted when I asked him to babysit.

"She's 11, and since she is only 11 and her sister is eight, they need a sitter."

"Too young for the birds and the bees."

I let out a heavy sigh. Aldo did not want Luciana to hear about sex, and I did. And if I weren't going to look like the checked-out mom I sort of was, I needed to be at school in half an hour for the parental viewing of some tastefully-named but not too patronizing video.

"They know they can take advantage of me," he proffered. This was untrue. He was not a fan of children. He liked the idea of them for the continuance of the human race and all that, but the fact of them was another matter. Even as a child, Aldo had seemed like a grown up in many ways.

"So what? Give them candy and TV. I'll be back in two hours."

"They can smell fear." Clearly, Aldo was busy.

I called Lynnie when I hung up on him, and she rescued me once again. This was better for the girls anyway. She'd entertain them playing dressup and card games, and she'd even let Luciana watch an episode of Real Housewives if Hannah fell asleep early.

There had been lots of e-mail talk about the sex video; some parents had been concerned that it was too early. Others thought it was too late. I hadn't a clue. I was just running a cash porn business from my house, and I was skittish about talking to Luciana about sex. I prayed that if I got there five minutes late, I would be right on time and skip the chitchat before the show.

There were snacks. There were always snacks at Shady Day, but tonight, they seemed excessive, as though we might shove spinach pie triangles into our mouths and not have to talk about sex. I took one, shoved it in my mouth, and made my way to sit at Luciana's desk. Where my ex was sitting. In a tie. I pushed my hands over my now-skinny thighs, smoothing out the wrinkles on my high school khakis. I couldn't win.

"We know this might be a bit uncomfortable for people, so we'll get right to it." Sean, the teacher, toyed with the projector screen. I smiled, made excuses as I meandered around other parents and grabbed the seat next to Steve, who stared too attentively at the blank screen. There were two teachers in the film–a man and a woman, and I was mildly uncomfortable, even disappointed, that it was not a cartoon with birds and bees. I nibbled politely at the spinach pie that rested on the Easter- themed napkin and tried my best not to glance over at Steve. He had been AWOL for a while, and from my brief glimpse, he looked young. Was he dying his hair? Losing weight? He was no longer wearing his glasses. Vain son of a bitch. I hated him.

He too had gained some weight during our marriage, but he had worn it well. Men usually seem to do that. He was handsome, with a squared jaw and small silver stud he had worn to our wedding.

I did have a life before all of this. I mean before Steve, though not much of one, now that I think about it. After I graduated from college with my incredibly useful degree in Women's Studies, I thought it was smart to move to New York since most of my college friends were there. I followed the flock, but I did fall in love there. I mean not in love with Steve but in love with the city. At the time I remember having those incredibly enlightening thoughts that everyone should live in New York City for a while. It was an education in art, finance, socialization, culture, food, and poverty. It had everything. I lived in Chinatown with 4 other recent college grads, two actresses, a magazine intern, and my best friend, Delia. Delia and I had met in Theories of Sexuality class my sophomore year, and while she took dance classes between auditions, I sent out lackluster cover letters for work at PR agencies and places like Ms. Magazine, but for the most part, I was unwilling to do much more than soak in the city.

I also answered an equally lackluster ad, a poster, really, with the phone number tags you rip off, to sing in a band. There were these signs all over New York, and after I had passed enough of them, I remembered singing folksy 70s songs in my kitchen as my mom baked. When she died, I stopped singing, and to resolve the memory away as best I could, I called the number.

When I heard back from Gregg, who pronounced his name Grrreg, I felt like things were finally going my way, and I signed on to be their lead singer. The Band was called Kill Nets, and the only requirements that they had for me was heavy black eyeliner, a kilt (which they provided), ripped fishnets (I was on my own), and Doc Marten boots (which I arrived to the interview already wearing).

The band was pathetic, and I sang whatever they told me to sing, which because of our limited skills, was usually punk or metal or something screechy and screamy. It did not last long, and I have yet to think of the good old days and getting the band back together. No one had ever heard of us, but most of the underground, seedy bars in the East Village or on the Lower East Side would let us drink in payment. When I could work up a really good fantasy, I imagined I was Patti Smith singing at CBGB, though we never got near the place. We had a small fan base – girlfriends and friends of the band members, my roommates when they had nothing better to do. Rain passed through when she was "stateside," came to one show and promptly told me we were giving her a migraine. Still, my drink of choice, Maker's Mark and water, was free. I was completely disconnected from the scene, and while it worked for my image that everyone thought I was simply a cold bitch, I was just too lazy or scared to really try to connect to anyone. Not much different from my life now. The image of the badass girl, which had never been my thing, went far in creating a little boundary around my vacuous inner life. So singing, even singing poorly or singing awful music became important to me again.

Through the band, I met Reno, a man who became a close friend until his death a few years back. Reno played darts every night all over the city. By day, he worked for the electric company, but by night, he played in all the darts bars on the Lower East Side. He wore a long, tan leather jacket, drank sambuca and carried a knife in his cowboy boots, which he wore no matter the weather.

Most nights before and after the shows, I would hang out with Reno. He was a quiet guy of an indeterminate age. I knew he was a father, he'd never been to college, and there was a rumor that he'd served some time. But he taught me to play darts, and he became my friend. It's funny now that I think of it – that the brooding, dark darts guy – was my closest new friend. It's not really true; we just remained alone and walled up together. We just stood in each other's orbit.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when I finally got up the courage to introduce him to Aldo on one of his frequent city visits. I don't know what I was more nervous about – Aldo meeting Reno or Reno meeting Aldo. Aldo, of course, was more concerned with my look and my bad singing, and to him, Reno was just part of this version of Joy, like the nasty fishnets I wore. He called me Joy Diversion, but this was a long time ago. And I haven't thought about Reno since I stood by his graveside in Queens, pregnant with Hannah and mourning the loss of something I could not name. Steve refused to come with me.

Aldo was in the city a lot during those days. He called it his gay discovery tour, and he went to placed he would not take me to. For a while, I thought he was too embarrassed by me, but later I realized, he was simply embarrassed with himself. When Aldo and I drifted apart through the years, I would hold onto this realization. We were both a little embarrassing, both lacking self-esteem, both looking for something unnameable. This kept me close to him, at least in my heart. We would reconnect and then drift again, but this thread always held him close to me, even when I knew he disapproved of my marriage, my decision to breed, my fashion choices and lack of direction. We wanted, in some way, to mirror each other, but while the outward signs made us drift, the general ineptitude we felt deep down about our lives kept us together.

To make money in the city, I baked bread. No one needs to have a degree in psychology to see that I was enacting the early relationship I had with my mother, baking and singing – I could do it for both of us. I would sing in the band many nights until 2 or 3, grab some food, and then head over to the Ukrainian bakery on Delancey at 4 AM to work. It was quiet and ended up being just the time I needed. No one spoke English, and the ringing in my ears from the shattering noise in the bar could settle down and dissipate. I loved the yeasty smells, the perpetual flour fog, and I paid the rent with this bread. On most days, I was finished with work at noon and wandered the streets until I was exhausted, crash for a few hours, and if we had a gig, I would get up and do it all over again.

One night, we had an early gig at a new place – I arrived, and the crew wasn't there; this was not terribly unusual because the group was a bunch of stoners, and we never really needed a sound check. So I hung out at the bar, drinking Maker's Mark and water, while another band arrived. These were all men, clean-cut boys who drank beer; you could tell they would play covers of Lynard Skynard, even some Bob Marley. After 2 drinks, I found my way to some guy who looked like he knew what was going on. He had the "I'm with the band, but I'm not a groupie" look about him – faded jeans, a groovy Rolling Stones lip/tongue tee shirt, and a clipboard. This was Steve.

I was a little light-headed but tried to say steadily, "Hey, I'm Joy. With the Kill Nets?"

He had a nice voice, soft but strong – assertive but not arrogant. I determined all of this with his brief, smug greeting, "Hi Joy with the Kill Nots." At the time, I am sure I thought it was clever rather than smug, but that was then, and this is now.

"We're playing tonight." I pulled out a crumbled piece of paper and showed it to him – giving him no more evidence that 10PM and the name of a bar, both practically illegible.

He squinted – I would later discover that Steve had terrible eyesight but was too vain for glasses, "No you're not."

I pointed, "Yeah, I have it right here."

Steve spotted my mistake. The bar I was supposed to be at, an hour before, apparently, was in Queens, sort of similar name, very dissimilar clientele. I panicked.

"You should hang." He told me, softly, assertively.

I called the other bar, but the phone was disconnected. I thought about jumping in a cab, but it would clean me out. So I stayed, with Steve, the band's manager, who bought me drinks all night long.

I went home with him but passed out while he jammed on his electric guitar – too pumped after a show, he told me. I snuck away at dawn.

I went crawling back to the band the next day at one of our regular haunts, took my verbal medicine, sang for a while, and when it was over, there was Steve, walking up next to me with a Maker's Mark and water in his hands. That was the end of my music career and the beginning of my life with Steve. I went to his band's shows and never sang again until the girls were born.

I invited the Kill Nets to my wedding party and not one of them RSVPd. All of Steve's band showed up and even played us "Friend of the Devil" as a gift. Maybe that was an omen or a dig. At the time, I thought it was cool that Rain slept with the bass player and my father smoked a joint with the drummer. Now, not so much. Reno was there too – just for a bit.

And now, here we were, Steve and I, so fucking far from New York, watching an earnestly- produced sex-ed video for eleven year olds. Different from the films I watched, the ones whose profits sent my babies to this school. No in and out, no nudity–just talk, a few diagrams, some titters of discomfort when the film teachers talked about masturbation, some disapproval and then whispers when there was an allusion to same-sex relationships. And then it was over; the lights came on, the hands went up. I finished the spinach pie.

"What if we don't want our children to see this?" There was always one in every class – the overprotective parent of one, the one who was too busy to work, the one who wrote PE excuses so her daughter would not have to change in the locker room. Poor kid.

"Then you can sign the sheet indicating that. We are available for their questions. We hope you will be too." There were more questions, comments, complaints. In general, we all just wanted it to be over. Me, more than anyone. It depressed me to think that Luciana, my little Lucy, would be having sexual feelings, urges. I hadn't an urge in my body and could not find my vagina with a flashlight and a compass. The idea that my little girl would desire, would fantasize, about boys (most likely) and the nightmarish Pandora's box that would open. She would see porn, wax her crotch, criticize her nipples while trying to explain why touching them made her feel so good, while someone else's hand slipped under the turtleneck, undid the top button of her still-shopping-in-the-girl's department jeans. Jesus.

I moved the chair back a little more hastily than I wanted to and grabbed my bag; Steve touched my arm. "How are the girls?" The girls, girls? In my head, Luciana was undoing her bra and slipping her spelling partner's hands down her pants.

I was stunned–angry, surprised, confused. "They are well, thank you."

"I'd like to see them." He wasn't squinting: lasik surgery? Contacts? I didn't want to look too closely.

I entered the combat zone, "would you now?"

"I'm allowed to see them, you know."

"I'm fully aware of that, but you seem to have forgone that opportunity."

"Look, let's not do this–how about Saturday? I could take them for the afternoon."

"Luciana has gymnastics."

"I could take her."

"Fine."

"Fine. I'll be there one. I can have them home by five."

"Of course. We'll be thrilled." He rolled his eyes at my sarcasm. I ran to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I stared at the old woman in the mirror; she had spinach in her teeth.

"You'll get a haircut." After I put the kids to bed, Lynnie poured two glasses of tequila. I sunk, defeated, into the couch.

"A haircut will never erase the spinach-toothed crazy woman he saw tonight."

"A color, then, too. Plus you've lost some weight: new jeans–something that fits you." I do not shop. I wore jeans, what Luciana had taken to calling "mom jeans," those high-waisted, too dark washed nightmares that covered my stomach but hid it from no one.

"He looked good. He looked happy. He's getting laid."

"So, you get laid." The only men I had seen were gay and not real. This did not include the elderly neighbors who doted on their lawns.

"The contractor you hired for the garage?"

"Wedding ring."

"There must be a single dad at the kids' school."

"Not a one. Plus, taboo."

Lynnie took a final swig of tequila. "You are just being difficult."

The prospect of sleeping with someone turned my stomach. I liked my video boyfriends better, the ones I moved around the country, who brought pleasure into other people's homes. I knew I should raise the issue with Suzanne, my shrink, but I was lying to her about how I was making money. I was, however, convinced she knew everything subconsciously. I thought about how that session would go. The non-judgmental nod, the pursed lips, "and are you turned on by these videos?" she'd ask.

Turned on by what? By whom? Chicken nuggets? Field trips? Paper cuts? But I couldn't move past it. I had not really watched one of the videos since that first day, and seeing men on men would just depress me more. Even the celluloid fantasies would never, could never, be interested in me.

I threw myself into the business, the money stacked up, and every now and then, I found myself flipping the DVD covers to the back. Now, they were just overgrown anatomy diagrams to me. I wondered if there was something wrong with me, if I had used up all of my sexuality in my marriage.

"You'll find it when you need it," Suzanne moved from Freud to Buddha readily.

So I could shrug my shoulders and "just be" with my lack of need. I did, however, reconnect with my long-lost hairdresser, and she squeezed me in on Friday while the girls were at school. I made her promise not to chastise me for my absence, but I could see it in her eyes. My teeth might be spinach-free, but when I left there, I still looked like hell, with better hair.

We do women everywhere a disservice when we intimate that a good haircut will change everything. I'm not sure where or when the conspiracy started, or why it works, but you go in, or I go in, and I sit in bad lighting staring at the dark circles under my eyes the entire time. What little self-esteem I walked in with, fades away while I sit in that chair. And then, I'm just so glad to be away from the mirror that I bounce out of the salon, $80 lighter and waiting to find a place without mirrors and witnesses. Lynnie was waiting for me at some little boutique that specialized in jeans. When did this happen?

"They're too tight," I told her.

"Nope. They stretch."

"No they won't. I can't breathe."

"Anxiety."

"They are $180."

"They look like a million."

"You realize how pathetic it is that I am primping for my ex-husband who will most likely sit in his car and honk for the children." Lynnie insisted that I would know how good I looked.

She was relentless, "How about a new shirt too? Maybe a bra that puts your tits back where they belong?" Reaching my limit, I shook my head and paid cash for the jeans.

You'll note here that I am eliding any mention of my ex coming on Saturday. That day, I just went to the mall with Aldo who provided the moral support when Steve came to pick the girls up.

"Let's go out. Get ready."

"I am ready," I told him.

Aldo pushed past me into the half bath and reached into the shelves. "A little lipstick maybe? Some bronzer? Something."

"I don't think I have anything."

He read, "Lip gloss with shimmer! Bubble gum flavored! There are six exclamation points on the only makeup you have in the house."

"Not mine."

"Nah, too fun for you. All work and no play trashes Mrs. X's face. Grab your purse. We're going shopping." In the post-divorce makeover, I was living the adolescence I never had: shopping, makeup, the mall. Was this really supposed to make me feel better?

"I wish you'd stop calling me Mrs. X."

"Obvious."

"I hate shopping."

"Again, obvious."

"So I am not going, and I don't need my purse."

He gave me the look, and I acquiesced; when Aldo gets an idea, it is futile to fight him on it. I have no identifiable skills, and I am running a video porn business. There is clearly nothing Aldo cannot talk me into. Plus I knew he was trying to help, and he's pull away if I didn't accept. I wondered if this was ultimately the reason why I accepted his business offer in the first place. Emotional blackmail, but I could not bear the thought of him leaving me too.

We ended up at a department store, into the sterile hiss of temperature control and walking mannequins. I usually shopped online for what I needed, so I was amazed at the shiny floors and all of the posturing, the performance. I was suddenly aware of my mom jeans and clogs, my oversized oxford shirts, that were hanging in the closet. I thought Lynnie was kidding. I became remarkably in tune to the soft sounds of Aldo's driving shoes on the gleaming, faux-marble floors. He sensed my hesitance and moved back to grab my elbow. He led me toward a counter with loud music and black everything. It frightened me.

"They are all so young – what are we doing?" The women behind the counter were glamorous and chatty, but they broke into huge smirks when they saw Aldo. When they focused on me, the smirks turned plastic – they set like when you are scanning a crowd, and you're smiling and all of a sudden, your gaze sets on a tragic figure, one from which you'd like to turn your eyes, but you can't because you've been caught in the gaze and you have to convince yourself and the middle-aged woman muttering to herself, digging through the garbage that you see her equally, that she's no different from you. But she is different and your face reflects it, and if she's staring right at you, she notices and you feel worse, so you widen your smile even more and maybe say hello, as though she is young and beautiful and wheeling a baby stroller and not a discount store shopping cart.

Aldo came back for my elbow. "Here we are."

"Yes, you are," shouted one of the glamour girls. She shouted because the music interfered with the soft jazz playing in all other parts of the floor. And she shouted because we were uncomfortably far away.

"No way," I muttered without moving my lips.

"Don't embarrass me, Bella."

"Let's go to shoes." I figured I could get lost in the sculptures of heels and gladiator sandals. "C'mon, I need another pair of boots."

"No, we're here now."

By this time, one of the glamorous girls had moved out from behind the counter and toward us: Stanley and Blanche. All that was missing were the white coats and the restraints. As she approached, I realized that she was neither that young nor that skinny. Her black cashmere was pilling, and the cuffs of her tailored shirt were yellowing. She was gorgeous.

"We need a makeover," Aldo said, staring at the woman's chest level nametag, "Sandi."

The woman smiled, proud of herself, and she grabbed my other elbow and just started babbling. I was going to have a panic attack when we landed on a black stool.

"So what are we thinking?"

"Well, Sandi," Aldo could get away with using service people's names without getting a cheesy look. He could get away with a lot.

"So, Sylvia's husband left."

Pity look.

"And she hasn't worn any makeup or updated her wardrobe in a million years."

"Oh my God. I am SO sorry." Sandi made a conscious effort to look at me: me and my discount store shopping cart.

"Anyway, my friend here, needs a new look. A look. Any look. She needs style, panache." Sandi nodded vigorously until Aldo got to "panache" and then she did the smile freeze. He lost her. I stepped in.

"Something simple and easy. I don't have too much time in the morning." Sandi nodded; she had heard it all before.

"Sandi," Aldo pulled her attention back to him, "none of this all-natural crap. She's depressed, alone, and she doesn't leave the house unless accosted." Sandi looked excited and dipped behind the counter. I was about to open my mouth when Aldo held up his hand, "You'll thank me."

Now, I had boots, jeans, and makeup. Combat boots, armor, war paint. I could do this.