Date: April 3, 2008 7:39:26 PM EDT
To: inyc@timeoutny.com
Subject: My parents and I

Okay, pantywaists: You think your relationships with your parents are SO weird? Well, my mom and I make fetish porn together. She shoots it and my boyfriend and I do the postproduction. Our next project? The history of the enema. Take that, you pot-smoking parents and progeny!

The Porn Family Robinson
Brooklyn

Hydromadam, 56, and her son Arthur, 30
H: I got into making fetish films after taking a class at the Learning Annex. I’ve been a domina, or domestic disciplinarian, for many years. One of my submissives gave me a camera and one thing lead to another.…

A: Mom came to me and said, “Let’s edit a film!,” and we’ve been splitting everything since. The enema project came out of me and my boyfriend being really big Doctor Who fans. I thought, What if Dr. Who has a bathroom instead of a telephone box, and we travel through time seeing how people got enemas?

H: Everybody’s like, “Ew, enemas!”—even some of the better dominatrices. It’s never bugged me. I had one fellow that wanted us to do a pregnancy-enema video. He literally wanted to have a large grapefruit inserted into his rectum and then expelled as if he were having a baby. I said no to that one.

H: We’ve always been open about sex. I came out as a gay man really young, and it wasn’t a big deal. It was just, I had questions and she had answers. And the whole dominance thing—Mom may be a “disciplinarian,” but I got away with everything!

H: It’s very relaxed within our immediate household. But aunts, uncles, grandparents—they have no idea. I started out back in the ’60s, but I was living a double life. Everybody in church just thought I was a waitress with very weird hours. I was thrilled to death to be part of the massage-parlor world. I used to love 42nd Street when the pimps were out in their turquoise Edwardian jackets and top hats. It was like, Wow. One wealthy client always stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria, and I would give him his enema in this palace of a room. Enemas are getting generationed out though.

H: Yeah, my job is to make enemas a niche market for young people. Sometimes we have creative differences: I want them to be slick and hip, and she wants ’em elegant and conservative. Of course, you have to be careful what you show.

H: We use water in our videos, but my clients can bring their own concoctions: a six-pack of warm beer, coffee grounds… [Laughs] It’s like ho-hum, business as usual!

H: This is not what makes our lives our lives, you know? It’s just something we do together. I don’t feel the need to tell people, “Oh, hey, I make porn with my mom!” There’s another part of me though that’s like, Fuck it, I don’t care. This is my mom and I love her. We make porn together. Who cares?!? It’s like making mash-ups of hip-hop videos at this point.

Date: April 2, 2008 7:51:56 PM EDT
To: inyc@timeoutny.com
Subject: You left out the orphans

Ya know, some of us readers lost our parents, and they’re still very much tied into our lives as NYers. Next time, maybe you can show some love for us twenty- and thirtysomething orphans for whom life in the Big Apple is inextricably linked to our moms and dads—even if they aren’t here to know it.

Jennifer Odell
Park Slope, Brooklyn

Jennifer, 32
I have this little kid inside of me that feels left out of conversations about parents. And the whole reason I’m here is because of mine. I was raised in Philly, but my dad was from Newark and my mom often went to Soho to see art and music. They always pumped New York up as this really cool, exotic, glamorous place.

My dad passed away when I was 22. It was a total shock. He was on a century ride in the middle of nowhere, fell off his bike and died of a heart attack. I was working at a coffeeshop in New Orleans at the time. The phone rang and I remember my mom was silent. I could tell that something horrible had happened. I said, “Is it Dad or Chris?” She said, “It’s not your brother,” and couldn’t say any more. I freaked out.

After losing my dad, we stopped all that mother-daughter bickering. You see mortality and things change. I took her to see music, we vacationed together.… When she died three years later, also of a heart attack, I was living with a guy in Toronto. I got the call at four in the morning. But I was more grown-up by then. Instead of getting bent out of shape, I decided to do something. Both of my parents had always encouraged me to be a writer. I left my boyfriend, moved here and used the money from the sale of my mom’s apartment to pay for a journalism education at Columbia. Now I’m 32 and work for Major League Baseball and write freelance pieces for People, Utne Reader and Down Beat.

It’s hard to lose your parents in your early twenties. You’re just starting to do something interesting with your life, and you want to have your parents there so you can say, “Hey! Look what I did!” I’ve had roommates that are still in that bratty phase, and it’s hard because I’m like, “You don’t understand how you’ll feel when they’re gone, and they’re gonna be gone.”

I think about my parents every day—especially when something funny happens or if I have a question. It’s like an amputated arm you still try to use—it never goes away.

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