A pornographer’s daughter salutes her dad’s wisdom on Father’s Day
On a day when everyone is honoring the uniqueness of their fathers, I realize my dad is just like any other dad with one exception— he’s a pornographer. When people hear what he does for a living, they often say, “You don’t look like your family would be in porn.” I surmise that they would expect the daughter of a pornographer to be a stripper or a porn actress and not a social worker or marketing professional. And they might also imagine my dad as a sleazy man with slicked-back hair and a polyester shirt unbuttoned to reveal a hairy chest and big gold chain.
I have to say Dad doesn’t look like the stereotypical pornographer portrayed in the movies but more like an accountant. He is a bald man with glasses who always wears a shirt with a front pocket so he can carry a pen. I have no idea what he might urgently need to write down, but he promptly returns any pocketless shirt he receives as a gift. He has other quirky traits, too, like he lives in Florida but hates the sun, and always wears a baseball cap or wide brim hat to shield against the sunlight. He looks like a Floridian but would deny it and protests by saying he is from West Philadelphia, even though he hasn’t lived there in more than 35 years.