Month: March 2011

The Torch: Glory Days?

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While I was a student at St. John’s University, our basketball team went through a lot of, for lack of a better term, shit. There was the drug bust, the alleged rape of a hooker, the rumored involvement in the rape of a student, the banning from NCAA play, the sudden search for a new coach… They were busy fellas. But once they’d found Norm Roberts and things started to look up a bit, well, that’s when everyone else started to have issues.

At a game against Duke in early 2007, some SJU (or STJ if you insist on using the new abbreviation) fans caused the Red Storm to receive a technical foul by tossing t-shirts onto the court. The game that day was being broadcast to millions on CBS, and the fans’ behavior brought a lot of shame upon the university. Everyone had something to say about the lack of class the students and fans displayed.

Now, with a new coach leading the team, and the Red Storm kicking ass all over the place, it’s hard to believe there was a time when fans were anything less than enamored of the team. But for a big chunk of my college career, calling them “fans” would’ve been less than accurate.

Glory Days?

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My dad (above, circa 1975) is my biggest supporter. He subscribes to Penthouse to read my articles, gets copies of every anthology I have a story in, and reads every news item about sex and porn so that he can send me things he thinks I might be interested in. He’s read AVN, and knows who all my porn friends are—both by their porn names and their real ones. He’s pretty cool, as far as dads go. So I wasn’t surprised when he sent me a link to an article about porn star Dave Cummings, a septuagenarian sex worker.

“It mentions the current Penthouse cover model,” he told me. “Thought you’d want to check it out when you have time.”

After I read the article, I was on the phone with my dad and we were discussing how Cummings reminds me of someone’s grandfather (not because he’s old enough to be one, but because he has a friendly grandfather face) and how it’s nice to see how much the girls in the industry like him. And then my dad told me he and Cummings may have crossed paths.

Cummings was an Army unit commander with the 4th Infantry during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. My dad, a Vietnam vet himself, was in the 4th at the same time. Dad doesn’t remember Cummings, and says they probably didn’t know each other, but they likely crossed paths during their tours. “It’s a small world,” we agreed.

This has nothing to do with my writing, but I thought it was kind of neat. Also, if someone from my dad’s infantry unit had to go into porn, I’m glad it was Cummings and not my father. I like that he’s knowledgeable about the industry, but I don’t want him to have that kind of knowledge….