13
College Bound

When I graduated from high school, I didn’t have many college opportunities waiting for me. Grade-wise, my high school career had been pretty mediocre. I had tried my best but I was unfocused and distracted by various problems at home. I applied and was accepted to a few small, not-so-great universities in rural North Carolina, but I decided those schools weren’t great options for me. Instead, I begrudgingly opted to attend local community college in the hopes of applying to a few state universities in Florida and Pennsylvania for my sophomore year.

So, in the fall of 1988, I enrolled at Broward Community College, which I soon came to think of as “college purgatory.” No one I knew had aspired to go to community college—and I understood why. Really, community college was just an odd, in-between place filled with people trying to figure out their lives. Either they had flunked out of college, or they dreamed of going to a four-year university but couldn’t afford it, or they hadn’t been accepted anywhere else, or worse. I hated that I’d been left behind as my friends moved away to have great college adventures. To top it all off, I was stuck living at home with my mother, while working part-time at Sears in the housewares department while going to school.

Luckily, my college prospects improved sooner than I thought. The summer after high school graduation, I traveled with my friend Kristine to visit Florida State University. Kristine was making the trip to attend her student orientation and she invited me to tag along. It was a long bus ride, but it turned out to be well worth the trip. After a night of parties at dorms, friends’ houses, and various fraternities, Kristine encouraged me to stop by the admissions office.

So the next day, I walked across campus, excited about the prospect of possibly attending FSU. I felt like anything was possible.

“Well, with your GPA, SAT, and ACT scores, you might get admitted to the winter semester starting in January,” said an enthusiastic admissions counselor, a guy with curly brown hair and round glasses.

“Really?” I said, surprised. “I think I could really love this school.”

“But you’ll have to perform well in your community college courses,” he warned. “Any admittance would be contingent upon those grades.”

I took his warning seriously. As soon as I got home from Tallahassee, I applied to FSU and worked hard at Broward, and within two months, I had been conditionally accepted to FSU.

*

In January 1989, my father helped me move to Tallahassee. The night after I moved into my new apartment, he and I had dinner and saw a movie together. I could tell that he was excited about my college experience. He knew how hard I’d worked to get here.

“I’m really proud of you, Kristin,” he said before leaving me at my apartment for the last time.

“Aw, thanks Dad,” I said, a shy grin spreading over my face. “And thanks for helping me move in.”

“You went after exactly what you wanted and you got it. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time here.”

“I can’t wait to get started.”

“Oh, and also, don’t get stoned and drive.”

I stared at him blankly. Then I burst out laughing. “Okay, Dad. Thanks for the advice.” I gave him a final hug goodbye.

At this time, my father’s businesses were doing well and I was lucky; he was paying all my tuition and living expenses so I would never have to worry about student loans or working while going to school.

The divorce had been final for about three years, but there was still tension and hurt feelings between my parents; feelings that I wasn’t sure would ever heal. But my father had started dating again and he seemed to be in at a better place in his life, which I was happy about. I was very ready to move out of my mother’s house and thought she was ready for me to go, too. So I was surprised when she said, “The house is going to be so empty when you leave.”

*

During freshman year, I shared a furnished apartment with Kristine and two other high school friends at a complex called The Plaza, which was right across the street from campus and behind the Burger King on Tennessee Street. The apartment was a dump, but I felt like it was a step above dorm life—no group bathrooms or shower shoes. Standing outside our front door, if the wind was blowing just right, you could smell French fries and hear a nearby garage band practice the Guns and Roses’ song “Sweet Child of Mine” over and over. I thought it was just perfect.

My first semester at FSU was the happiest time of my life. I was relieved that everything had fallen into place and I wasn’t homesick at all. I was excited by everything about college life, like owning a miniature coffee pot, Corelle dinnerware, and a new comforter set with matching sheets. I was finally on my own.

And, of course, there was the partying. There were festivities or happy hours at all the local bars, like the Phyrst, at least five days a week. Friends with fake IDs kept me and my roommates in a steady supply of Captain Morgan and cheap beer, and it was fun going out and laughing with friends and getting drunk enough to work up the courage to meet cute boys. We partied more nights a week than not, and we tried, rather consciously, to replicate the college experience as portrayed in Animal House, a film that was burned into our consciousness. Like many people in my generation, we only recalled the hilarity of John Belushi’s character as the always-drunk, always-crazy frat brother, and we ignored Belushi’s real-life tragic end of a drug overdose. The toga party temporarily won out over intellectual pursuits, and very often the most intellectual thing we considered on a given night was which party or bar to go to.

Drinking was one aspect of college life and casual sex was another. Though my father was a pornographer, I was a child of the eighties and the AIDS era, and I was still a virgin when I started college. I feared that if I engaged in casual sex, I would almost certainly die of AIDS or contract some other sexually transmitted disease. I also wasn’t a flirt or overtly sexual at all. I avoided wearing tight clothing, and my wardrobe consisted of mostly baggy T-shirts, jeans, and shorts. I had a voluptuous figure, but I felt very self-conscious about it. My breasts felt out of place on my skinny frame and I did everything I could to hide them.

But things changed in my first semester at FSU when I started seeing Sean, a former athlete from my hometown high school. He was two years older, he had blond, spiky, Billy Idol hair, and I thought was gorgeous.

I was smitten. I thought my virginity might soon be a distant memory. But as much as I liked Sean, maybe even loved him, he insisted that he didn’t want to date exclusively, despite the daily phone calls, frequent time spent together, and sleep overs. He told me things would be less complicated if we weren’t having sex. So we didn’t have sex, and for months, I settled on this sort of relationship and it was so stressful that I began to realize why people get divorced and why some women just don’t bother with boyfriends at all.

*

“I don’t want to go home for spring break,” I complained to Sean one morning while we were lying in his bed (after another night of not having sex).

“What’s the big deal?” he asked.

“It’s depressing. My parents are divorced, and my mother acts like a teenager, and it all drives me crazy.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Sean said, his voice a little dismissive.

“You have no idea what it’s like, Sean. Your parents have been married forever.”

“No, I get it. But they’re still your parents,” Sean said, almost chastising me.

I sat up in the bed. “You really don’t get it. My parents had a very rocky relationship. So much craziness.” I shook my head, then continued, “You know, I don’t tell many people this, but . . . my dad has been in the pornography business for years. He doesn’t make the movies, he just sells them. And he owns a bunch of porn stores in Florida. In fact, he used to sell that movie, Deep Throat. So my parents are complicated, Sean. And I just don’t like to get in the middle of all that.”

I couldn’t believe I’d just spilled my guts. I lay back down, turned over, and buried my head in the pillow. He tugged at my shoulder to make me face him. I cautiously looked him in the eyes.

“Well isn’t that something,” he said with a wry grin. “A virgin with a dad in the porn biz. I’d never have guessed.”

Suddenly, I was laughing. Sean didn’t seem to care at all what my father did for a living. To him it was joke, nothing more.

*

Before heading home that break, my girlfriends and I drove to Daytona Beach for the weekend. It had been nice to delay going home. I loved my parents, of course. But I also knew that a predictable pattern would emerge as soon as I arrived. It would be great to see them for about an hour but after the glow of “being home” wore off, I would have to deal with them fighting about where I spent every second of my time.

I hadn’t even been home for a full day when the tug of war began.

“I want to have breakfast with you on Saturday after I go to the gym,” my mother said with an edge to her voice, her big brown eyes widening. “You’re just going to have to wait to shop for a new car with your dad.”

My mother knew this was the last thing I wanted to hear. My ancient Toyota Camry had just died and I was desperate for a new car. So I begrudgingly I picked up the phone to negotiate the schedule with my father. They didn’t want to talk to each other, of course, so I agreed, with great reluctance, to act as go-between.

“Unbelievable,” he said, a little pissed off but trying to restrain himself. “What’s the difference when she goes to the gym? We’ll just have to go car shopping later. Tell her it’s fine.”

After I relayed the news, my mother smiled, and I could tell that she enjoyed this small victory. But I also knew that he had only given in to make it easier for me. Besides, he probably thought he owed her a win for the years she supported him through the Deep Throat trials.

*

Since the divorce, my mother seemed much happier. But I still didn’t understand her at all. She would bounce around the kitchen, making fresh-squeezed orange juice while wearing white sneakers and a tight green leotard. The tight workout gear was attention-grabbing and showed off her breast implants, which she had gotten just before my parents separated. The gym had become very important to her and her devotion to exercise had paid off; she looked younger than her years, which proved she wasn’t past her prime.

She also idolized the reinvented Cher who sang “If I Could Turn Back Time” and danced around in a G-string in her provocative MTV video.

“It’s soooo great that Cher dates younger guys,” my mother said, referring to Cher’s twenty-six-year-old boyfriend, the bagel maker Rob Camilletti.

“I guess so?” I said, looking at my mother strangely. “I liked her in Moonstruck.”

“If Cher can date a younger guy, then why can’t I?”

“Mom, you say that like you’re not already dating younger guys. I mean, you dated the older brother of one of my high school boyfriends! That’s just creepy!”

*

It wasn’t unreasonable for my parents to want to spend time with their only daughter during her first college spring break. The problem was that I didn’t recall them at any other point in my childhood being so eager for my attention. The push and pull I experienced that week gnawed at me. Their behavior was irrational. When I was younger, my grandparents had explained their arguments as “adult problems,” but as I became an adult myself, this excuse didn’t hold water.

They weren’t adults. They were acting like teenagers.

Unable to sleep one night at my mother’s house, I climbed out of bed, sat cross-legged on the mauve-carpeted floor, and leaned against the padded edge of the waterbed I had begged for when I was ten years old. There, I leafed through the photographs I’d just had developed from my trip to Daytona Beach and I smiled as the memories from that great weekend flooded back to me.

Then—though I’m not exactly sure why—I surrounded myself with a collection of yellowing, crinkly newspaper articles from the 1970s about my father and the Deep Throat trial. For years, my mother had kept the clippings in a big shopping bag. I had asked for them recently and she put them in my room. The bag was heavy, so I figured that people had lots to say about Deep Throat. I had known about these clippings for a while, but I had never wanted to read them until then.

That night was rather an off juxtaposition of the past and present. I gently spread the old articles over the floor, trying to preserve these historical family documents, and I moved between reading news articles that chronicled the most tumultuous time in my childhood, while reminiscing about my carefree spring break trip.

Some of the clips merely described the daily accounts of the Memphis trial. In one short article, there was only a brief mention of my father at the end that proved he had even been there at all. “Also on trial Philadelphia stockbroker, Anthony Battista,” the article read, like he was a side show to the main attraction of Harry Reems and the Peraino brothers.

But some of the articles featured my father more prominently, also more menacingly, and depicted him as a Philadelphia stockbrokerturned-notorious-pornbroker at the helm of a successful strip club and the target of a major federal indictment. I even found an old photograph my grandfather had taken of my dad straight off the TV screen, when he was being interviewed for running porn films at the Lane Theater and was picketed by neighborhood residents. I remembered that interview. In the picture, Dad’s thick glasses looked like chemistry goggles. I shook my head. He simply didn’t fit the pimp-persona described in these articles. To me, he looked like an accountant.

The highest profile piece I found, STOCKBROKER TO PORNBROKER, was published in May 1977 in the Sunday magazine insert of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The cover photo showed a female executive with her feet propped up on a desk, under the headline PROBLEMS FOR THE FEMALE EXECUTIVE—all very cliché 1970s feminism. I remember thinking that the same female executive featured on the cover would have been the first to malign the Golden 33 and my father “the pornbroker.” I laughed out loud when I read, “The big difference between selling stock and selling smut, according to Tony Battista, is the hours. Also, he doesn’t wear a tie anymore.” There was that word—smut—used so often by my grandmother.

But when I read about my father saying, “I never seem to get enough time with my family,” I winced. I remembered how deeply separated my family had been during that time and that, really, those events had been the beginning of the end of my parents’ marriage. I pictured our old row house in Upper Darby, and my old room with the pink gingham bedspread and matching curtains, and my father being there only sometimes. It seemed like the reporter had tried to pry more information about us but my father had obviously been reluctant to elaborate. I know why. He always wanted to protect us and being away from home was, he had told me, his greatest disappointment.

After reading the article, I stuffed everything back into the bag. I didn’t understand a lot of what I had read, but it was incomprehensible to me that this successful stockbroker had become involved with something that so many people hated. How my father was portrayed didn’t square with my reality at all and I didn’t want to acknowledge they were in fact one and the same person. The depictions of the strippers, the hysteria over the trial—all of it seemed so much bigger than my small family. I was just beginning to understand how these events had impacted and overwhelmed my family, and I just wanted to give these articles back to my father, reasoning that this was his story, that this was his burden to bear. Why should my mother keep these clippings in the back of her closet?

The next morning, my mother and I went out for breakfast at a local bagel shop on University Drive, which had been a ritual even when my parents were still together. The bagels and the coffee helped me tolerate the boring conversations about my mother’s latest boyfriends and the inane gossip about her fitness club pals.

“So,” I said, looking at her seriously. “I looked through those articles. The trial was a bigger deal than I thought.”

“Well, it did make national news. There were so many newspaper articles that I just got tired of cutting them out.”

“That one article, ‘Stockbroker to Pornbroker,’ was a pretty big spread on Dad. Were you interviewed for that?”

“No. But that article was a huge deal at the time. I remember when it was published. We moved a month later.” She sighed.

“Were you harassed by reporters?” I asked.

She shook her head, no. “One day, I was sitting out on our front step, and a reporter approached me and tried to interview me. I just said, ‘No comment,’ and then went in the house. Other than that, your father got most of their attention. He was kind of famous in those days.”

“Oh really?”

“Well, yes, it was a big trial and he was a part of it.”

“What else do you remember?”

“The girls at the club just loved your father. They thought he was a big deal,” my mother said with a bitterness in her tone.

“What do you mean exactly?” I asked realizing there was something just below the surface of her comment.

“Well, there were girls at the club he fooled around with.”

“How do you know?” I asked a bit surprised.

“He admitted it years later when we were in counseling. By then it was too late.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. Relationships are complicated and I didn’t know how judgmental I should be about it.

“Your dad was a good father, just other things were not so good,” my mother tried to explain.

We sat quietly for a moment and both nodded in acknowledgment of her comment.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I want to give the articles back to Dad.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“I feel like he needs to keep his own story.”

She shook her head. “I want to keep these.”

“I know, but . . .”

“Beside, your father’s just going to lose them.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said defensively. “They chronicle the whole trial that he lived through. It seems like he should have them.”

“But you might want them someday, Kristin. You should let me hang on to them.”

We argued for several minutes and my mother finally relented. “I think this is a mistake, but okay,” she said. “If you think he should have them, fine. But he won’t be careful with them. I guarantee it.”

*

When my father came to pick me up a few days later, I hauled the big bag with me while walking awkwardly through the foyer of my mother’s townhouse.

“What’s in the bag?” he asked.

“Articles from the Deep Throat trials. Mom kept them all these years, but I thought you should have them since they’re all about you.”

“Thanks,” my father muttered, and without much gratitude, he accepted the bag I thrust into his hands.

He wasn’t excited to have the articles and now I realize that he just probably didn’t want to relive the painful memories. But he knew he should take the bag, since I had asked him to. I felt relieved.

In the end, my mother was right. Years later, as I became more and more interested in my parents’ past, I wanted those articles back but my father had lost them during a move after his second divorce. I should have trusted my mother. I should have realized this was as much her story as it was my father’s.