’m not about to take the fall for somebody else’s porn movie.”

One day when I was fourteen, my friend Aaron barged through my front door after school, out of breath and sweaty. I could tell by the intense look on his face that whatever he was about to tell me just might be the most important thing I had heard in my entire life up to that point. It turned out I was right.

“Dude. I found a porno movie in the alley behind 7-Eleven,” he said.

From his backpack he pulled out a VHS copy of New Wave Hookers, whose weathered, stained cardboard packaging left no question as to the fact that someone else had gotten his money out of this puppy. We reacted like a pair of farmers who had discovered a bag of money in one of their cornfields: jubilant, then immediately paranoid and distrustful of each other. But we knew we had to work together to make sure we didn’t blow this opportunity and decided that the best idea was to take a time-share approach. I would take the porno the first and third weeks of every month, and Aaron would take it the second and fourth.

Though I watched the movie fifty-plus times, to this day I’m not sure what the plot line of the film is, because I never made it past the first twenty minutes. The only place I could watch it was in my parents’ room. They had the only VCR in the house, which made me feel like a gazelle finding out that the only watering hole in a thousand-mile radius was inside a lion’s den. Never once, though, did I think, It’s not worth it. I’d wait until my parents had left the house, and then go into their room and do my business. I even worked out a plan for when I heard the front door open: I’d pull my underwear up from around my ankles as I hit EJECT, and then in one motion, remove the tape and hit the TV/VIDEO button so that they wouldn’t know the VCR had been used. It was a well-thought-out, efficient plan, and it never failed.

Unfortunately I still got caught.

I woke up one morning to find my dad hovering above me, waving my copy of New Wave Hookers like it was a winning lottery ticket. I had violated the cardinal rule of watching porn: Don’t leave the evidence in the VCR.

“I don’t give a shit if you watch porn, watch away,” he said. “But (a) don’t do it in my room (the last thing I need is to come home from work and sit on some of your nasty business); and (b) I can’t have your mother finding porn in my room and thinking that it’s mine. Then that becomes my problem, and I’m not about to take the fall for somebody else’s porn movie.”

“Are you gonna tell Mom?” I asked in a panic.

“Nah, I’ll keep quiet about it as long as you don’t do that shit on my bed,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

I reached my hand up assertively, assuming that now that we’d had our man-to-man he’d give me the movie back. “Ha, nice fucking try.” He turned and left with it under his arm, laughing.

Having your father find your porno and laugh at you is an embarrassing moment in a teenager’s life. I experienced a far more embarrassing one the next morning when I awoke to find my mother standing above me, holding my copy of New Wave Hookers. My dad had turned me in!

When my mom finished describing the ills of the porn industry and detailing the unrealistic nature of the sex depicted in its products, all the while screaming at me, I marched out into the living room like a man who had traveled a long distance to avenge a death.

“Hey!” I shouted at my dad, who was eating his daily bowl of Grape-Nuts.

He looked up at me, making a face that said, “Be careful in choosing your next words.”

“You told Mom about my,” and then I silently mouthed the word porn. “You said you wouldn’t!” I added at full volume.

He put down his paper, looked at me, and replied in a measured voice, “Yeah, I thought about that. Too risky for me not to tell her. You shouldn’t have left that porno in our VCR. Your penis betrayed you, son. Made you think stupid. It won’t be the last time that happens.”

On an Elderly Family Friend’s Erectile Dysfunction

“I don’t know why people keep coming to me when they can’t get hard-ons. If I knew how to fix that I’d be driving a Ferrari two hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction of this house.”

On My Frequent Absences at High School Dances

“You bitch about not going, so why don’t you just go?…So then find a date…. So then meet more women…. Jesus Christ, son, I’m not continuing on with this line of questioning, it’s depressing the shit out of me. Do what you want.”

On Practicing

“Nobody likes practice, but what’s worse: practicing, or sucking at something?…Oh, give me a fucking break, practicing is not worse than sucking.”

On Getting Rescued by a Lifeguard at the Beach

“What were you doing that far out? You can’t swim…. Son, you’re a good athlete, but I’ve seen what you call swimming. It looks like a slow kid on his knees trying to smash ants.”

On Breaking the Neighbor’s Window for the Third Time in a Year

“What in the hell is the matter with you? This is the third time! You know, at this point I think it’s the neighbor’s fault…. No not really, it’s your fucking fault, I’m just in denial right now that my DNA was somehow involved in something this stupid.”

On the Varsity Baseball End-of-the-Year Fund-raiser

“Just tell me how much money I have to give you to never leave this couch.”

On Video Game Systems

“You can’t have one…. Fine, then go play it at your friend’s house. While you’re there, see if you can eat their food and use their shitter, too.”

On the Importance of Watching the Evening News

“Let’s finish talking in a bit, the news is on…. Well, if you have tuberculosis, it’s not going to get any worse in the next thirty minutes.”

On Appropriate Times to Give Gifts

“Yeah, I got him a gift. He got his kidney stone taken out. If you shoot a rock through your pecker, you deserve more than just a pat on the fucking back.”

On My First Driving Lesson

“First things first: A car has five gears. What is that smell?…Okay, first thing before that first thing: Farting in a car that’s not moving makes you an asshole.”