Travis Bickle: Part 1

For as long as I can remember, I never got girls. They were something you stared at, but not something you talked to or interacted with. It might tie into my filthy Greek gorilla DNA, which matured me to a horny, pre-pubescent state by age 4, well ahead of the anglo maturity curve of my area. So while other kids were playing with jarts and catching lightning bugs, I would sneak into my dad’s work car, which was filled to the brim with porn (I guess his own Greek gorilla DNA had demands to be met as well). I would simply leaf through it and stare, not really knowing what I was supposed to do, but damn sure in the knowledge that, whatever this was, I really, really liked it. There are some images from those magazines (like a simple black and white shot of a woman with a gigantic ass bent over next to a stop sign…literally just ass and octagon) that I swear I will remember more vividly than the face of my firstborn.


These porn excursions (dates, really, as I came to think of them) went on for months until, one cursed, vile evening that will live in infamy, my mom found me. Enraged, she dragged me by the arm into the living room in front of my dad and started shrieking like a banshee about what she had witnessed. Meanwhile, he began to laugh hysterically, probably happy I’d turned out straight and relieved I was taking the porn heat off of him. And I just stood there with my acorn of a toddler hardon, my first impression of sex that it involved a screaming, angry woman and a laughing man. It was one of those rare, special moments where you can look back and actually see the irreparable developmental damage being done. (And, fyi, the words “toddler hardon” are going to get this article more hits than you wanna know, brother. The world is a terrible, terrible place.)

Dad was forced to hide the porn, but Papageorgiou Manor, roughly the size of rich person’s shed, had precious little space for concealment. In no time flat, I’d found the payload again and was staring at more bush than a Honduran immigrant during his average workday. But a change was already taking place. Not only was I running home from school to stare at the porn, but I was starting to have fantasies of my first grade teacher, Mrs. Comber (the lovely blonde trophy wife of a go-go 80s stock broker) actually being in the porn I was looking at. And, though I now imagine sex with every attractive woman I encounter the second I lay eyes upon them, to a kid whose only desires heretofore were Kraft mac and cheese and Transformers action figures, that was some weird, scary shit. Here poor Mrs. Comber is showing us how to play with our class pet Gerby the gerbil, and I’m sitting there imagining her straddling John Holmes with a throat full of John Keys and Aunt Peg licking out her ass. After a few sleepless months, I caved and told the one person on earth I shouldn’t have: my mom.


Had I simply told my dad, there is no doubt in my mind that my life would be far, far different. He’d have smiled, patted my back, explained that I was just ahead of the curve, taken me out for ice cream, given me a piggy back ride and that’d have been that. I’d be laying girls left and right guilt free and probably stand 6’2” (don’t ask me how I’d be taller. I just would be.) But my dad was fresh off the boat Greek. Not only that, he grew up during the Nazi occupation of Crete, meaning his childhood consisted of killing Krauts and then eating their rations and/or flesh to stay alive (he was a tough mother fucker, Jack). So, though I now recognize him as the greatest intellect I have ever encountered, at the time, he was just some guy with a weird accent that ate stew made out of fish heads and watched fat latina ass on Telemundo after work.


My mom was the “more American” of the two. Though still Greek, she was born and raised in America and was that white-looking Greek (my dad had that swarthy, “If you shaved Castro I could film a Parent Trap sequel with him” look). So I went to her with any and all of my questions. (As a quick aside, I can clearly identify this behavior as another place where my life went so very, very wrong. My dad was what they call “a natural” with women, smart as a whip and in general was a silver back gorilla of an alpha male if ever I’ve met one. And instead I chose to hitch my wagon to the parent who was somehow neurotic enough to be an honorary Jewish mother). Her Soloman-esque solution to my porn conundrum? I was going to have a parent-teacher conference with her and Mrs. Comber where I would confess to everything I had been thinking lately and, somehow, that would fix things. Given that I’m now writing this blog rather than doing something meaningful with my life, obviously, it didn’t.


I remember precious little of that meeting (it’s probably for the best, really), but I do recall Mrs. Comber being in pure shock at the utter filth coming out of my mouth. This woman was the poster child of all-American purity and apple pie good looks; half of the acts I vividly described her participating in I’m not even sure she knew. After twenty minutes of me repeatedly stammering out words like “blowjob” and “cooze” between my sobs, Mrs. Comber and my mom just decided to end the charade and call it a day. I went home psychologically devastated, more depressed than ever, and Mrs. Comber was left to ask her husband just what the term “doggystyle” meant. I’ve yet to get a thank you note from him.


Part two will get into the gory details of my sexuality in my later years.

Tagged as: Travis Bickle.