7
Grandma Maria Sees Deep Throat

“Kristin, did I ever tell you that I saw Deep Throat?” Grandma Maria said to me.

It was a few days before Christmas of 1985. I was fifteen years old. Grandma Maria and I were sitting alone at the kitchen table eating pizzelles and honey cookies, and our conversations had turned, once again, to our family’s Deep Throat past. I was still a young woman but I’d already learned that every time I was alone with Grandma Maria, I would learn something new and strange about my family. But this latest revelation, I never expected.

“Oh, my God!” I replied. “No you didn’t! You have to tell me this story.”

Grandma Maria laughed. “So you didn’t think your old grandma would see a movie like that?”

“I’m just surprised, I guess. Why would you see it?”

“Your dad got me the tickets,” Grandma Maria said, and she dunked a honey cookie into her coffee.

“Really?”

“I didn’t ask him for the tickets. Just one night your father calls me up and says, ‘Mom, my film is playing at the President Theater on Twenty-third Street and Snyder Avenue. I’ll get you free tickets.’ It was just up the street and it was free, so I thought why not.”

I understood how, with her Depression-era frugality, Grandma Maria could never turn down anything free. And at the time, it must have seemed that everyone except her had seen Deep Throat; it was a major cultural event of that decade. So I shouldn’t have been surprised. But still, the thought of her watching a porn flick was just unfathomable. Maybe it’s because no child ever wants to believe that her grandmother, or parents for that matter, has any sexual curiosities. I also wondered why my father had offered the tickets in the first place. It must have been to preemptively indulge her unstoppable need to know everything.

“Well,” she went on, “I didn’t want to go alone, so I asked my friend Ida Shultz to go with me.”

“Ida?”

This was the first time I had heard my grandmother mention a girlfriend and it seemed out of the ordinary, since I knew my grandparents didn’t socialize much or have a large circle of friends.

“She was my best friend from my neighborhood,” Grandma Maria explained. “She married a German man who was nice, but at the time, it was highly scandalous. Italians just didn’t marry outside of our kind. Ida died about ten years ago of cancer. Poor Ida, I loved her, and I didn’t see her much when she was sick. Your grandfather never let me see her much after we were married.”

Grandma Maria spoke in a bitter tone and tears welled up in her eyes. But I knew my grandfather was just being painted as the scapegoat, since I knew he couldn’t stop her from doing anything. Rather, I think it was hard for Grandma Maria to admit that she’d just become busy with life and family and that seeing friends had become more difficult.

Before Grandma Maria got to the juicy details of the story, I imagined two ladies in their early fifties watching Deep Throat with the raincoat-and-couples crowd, and I likened it to when my best friend, Kelley, and I tried to sneak into see the R-rated film Purple Rain when we were fourteen years old.

Best friends, I knew, were your companions for mischief.

*

“Mary, are you crazy?” Ida said. “Do you know what kind of people go to this type of movie? Perverts! That’s who! What if someone sees us?”

“Don’t you have any sense of adventure?” my grandmother prodded. “It’ll be fine.”

“I know plenty about adventure, Mary, and this isn’t adventure. It’s purely disgusting.”

“Please, Ida. I don’t want to go by myself. I have to see what my son-in-law is doing.”

After some debate, Ida finally said, “Okay, I’ll go. I can’t believe how you talk me into these things.”

They agreed to meet in front of the President’s Theater at 8:00 p.m. on the following Thursday night.

Grandma Maria arrived home from work at the Beaumont Birch Company, where she was a receptionist, and she prepared dinner for my grandfather and for Kitty, the ocelot. Kitty received a bowl of raw chicken while Grandpa Frank got a simple meal of eggs and asparagus. As Grandma Maria cooked, Kitty jumped on the countertop. If Kitty became too persistent, my grandma would have to coax her in a kitchen cabinet where Kitty liked to sleep while Grandma cooked. Kitty had once nabbed a whole raw turkey just before Thanksgiving dinner, so Grandma Maria knew not to turn her back, even for a moment.

Grandpa Frank emerged from his basement darkroom after a day of retouching and developing photographs. He shuffled into the kitchen, ready for dinner.

“Frank, I’m going to see that movie Anthony is showing at the President’s Theater tonight.”

Grandpa Frank gave a double take. Then he raised his voice, “Mary, do you really need to see that movie?”

“Yes, I’m going to see that movie.” She rolled her eyes. “Ida’s going with me. It’s fine. Don’t get all riled up.”

Grandma Maria was accustomed to her husband’s small outbursts. When she married him at age of fifteen, Grandpa Frank’s raised voice had been intimidating. But as she had matured, she’d realized it was all hot air.

“Don’t you want to know what your son-in-law is up to?” she went on, keeping her eyes on Kitty and the cooking. “Honestly Frank, you are the most uninquisitive man. Your family was always like that, even when your sister Annie was sleeping with that married guy.”

Grandpa Frank looked down at Kitty, who was now under the table, for sympathy. But all he saw staring back was a wild cat looking for scraps of meat—another symbol of his wife’s determination.

“Mary, I don’t want you wandering around the streets at night.”

“I’ll have my umbrella and mace,” she interrupted calmly. “I’ll be home by midnight.”

Grandpa Frank shrugged. A moment later, he muttered, “I’m going back to finish retouching,” and he retreated to his sanctuary of the dark basement.

After dinner, Grandma Maria freshened up by reapplying red lipstick and powdering her face along her square jaw line and prominent nose. To tame her thick brown hair, she pulled it back into a tight ponytail. Then she put on a black turtle neck sweater and a trench coat with matching beret. She stroked Kitty goodbye.

“I’m leaving, Frank,” she yelled down into the basement

“Okay, Mary! Be careful!”

It was beginning to rain, but she didn’t mind because she had her trusty umbrella, which on more than one occasion had doubled as a weapon. The night air felt slightly cool and crisp as she walked up Broad Street, weaving in and out of people who were walking too slow. Grandma Maria always walked fast and with purpose, not only because she was impatient to get to wherever she was going, but also because she wanted to avoid being a target for a mugger.

A couple blocks from the house, she lit up a cigarette. She only smoked at work and when she went out and avoided smoking at home so she wouldn’t have to hear a lecture from Grandpa Frank.

When she arrived at the theater, she was relieved to see Ida already waiting for her under an awning next to the ticket booth. Ida waved and adjusted the rain cap covering her short dark hair. Standing up to make her short stature appear taller, she looked the same as when she was schoolgirl. Her black pencil skirt and blouse were perfectly pressed and she wore a silk scarf around her neck.

“It’s about time you got here,” said Ida, looking around nervously.

“I’m so glad to see you, honey,” said Grandma Maria. She gave Ida a big hug.

A moment later they were standing at the ticket booth. “My son-in-law left tickets for me to see a movie featured here tonight. My name is Maria Parrotto.”

The man in the booth smiled wryly as he handed her the tickets. He then stroked one index finger over the other in the “shame-on-you” hand gesture.

“Enjoy the show, ladies,” he said.

Ida looked at the man strangely and hesitated before stepping into the lobby. But Grandma Maria quickly hooked her arm around Ida’s and dragged her through the door. The lobby looked like an ordinary movie theater with Hollywood movie posters of upcoming films, deep red carpets, and the smell of fresh popcorn. Once inside, Ida looked like a teacher studying the space in academic curiosity, while Grandma Maria played the grinning, mischievous student, up for anything.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ida whispered.

“Of course it is! Let’s hurry, the movie’s already started.”

They entered the dark theater. All around them, men sat alone in various seats. There were also a few giggling couples. Then Grandma Maria and Ida looked up at the screen and saw a huge penis.

“Oh my . . . Mary . . . I don’t think we should stay,” Ida gasped, and she stood there motionless, too paralyzed to move.

“Yes, we should stay,” Grandma Maria hissed. “We walked twenty-five blocks to get here, and we’re going to see this film.”

“Okay,” Ida said as Grandma Maria hustled them into a pair of seats. Ida glanced again at the screen, sort of covering her eyes with her hand. “Mary . . . let’s sit near the back.”

Throughout the film, Ida interjected repeatedly, “Oh, my God!” and “I don’t believe this!” It was impossible not to stare. And just like that night in the strip club, Grandma Maria was both horrified and curious.

The blowjob scenes almost made her gag. How can a girl actually do that with her throat? she thought. She questioned if any of it was real. She also felt sad that our society had come to such a place that a movie like this was acceptable, even praised.

When the movie ended, they were greeted outside by pouring rain. Both of them let out a big sigh of relief. Then they just looked at each other and exploded into laughter.

“Well, Mary, thanks for an experience of a lifetime,” Ida said, still laughing as they said goodbye.

As Grandma Maria crossed Twenty-third Street, she saw a young man she knew from work. John was a single twenty-five-year-old and he was hanging out with some buddies on the stoop of a brownstone. John recognized Grandma Maria immediately and his eyes widened.

“Maria! Did you just see Deep Throat?”

“I certainly did, honey!” Grandma Maria called back, and she proudly gave him a wink. “See you tomorrow at work.”

But as she walked home, worry settled in. What her son-in-law did for a living was disgusting and she believed it may even be damaging to her daughter’s soul. She couldn’t understand why her daughter didn’t feel the same way. How could her own flesh and blood see this movie, and the club, and not think it was degrading to women?

When she arrived home, Grandpa Frank had already gone to bed. The house was quiet and dark with the exception of a small light in the kitchen. She found Kitty lying across the dining room table. As she stroked Kitty, she murmured about the disgusting movie she had just seen. Then she went up to bed.

The next morning at work, John stopped by Grandma Maria’s desk.

“How’s it going, Maria?” John asked nervously. Then he leaned in and whispered, “Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Sure, honey. What is it?”

“Is it true that the clitoris is in the back of a woman’s throat?”

Grandma Maria covered her mouth and chuckled. But given this young man’s bravery for even asking the question, she tried to be kind.

“No,” she said sweetly. “That’s not true.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I think you should go to the library and get some books about sex. I think it would help.”

“Yeah, maybe I should do that,” John said with a confused look on his face.

Men are so dumb, Grandma Maria thought as she shook her head in disbelief.