<p>It was June 1973. I was home from college for the summer, and soon to turn twenty years old. Bernardo Bertolucci’s controversial X-rated film, Last Tango in Paris was playing at a small art-house theater located just outside my socially conservative hometown. Neither my (seemingly) straightlaced forty-three-year old mother nor I had ever seen a “dirty movie.” (When I was growing up, people in my small town considered beach blanket teen-y bikini movies to be “dirty,” and “respectable” parents neither saw nor allowed their children to see such movies.) So, I was astounded when, one day, my mother abruptly announced that she wanted to see Last Tango. She didn’t want to go to the theater alone, so she insisted that I go along with her. (“You’re old enough,” she assured me.) She impulsively called up her long-time best friend, a woman thirteen years her senior, and invited her friend to come along, as well. After my mother hung up the phone and told me that her friend had agreed to accompany us, I said, “Good. You don’t need me to come along with you.” My mother replied, “Oh, no, you have to come along, because my friend wants to see you, and then treat us to lunch after the movie.” I was trapped.</p>
<p>We drove over to pick up my mother’s friend, who was even more straightlaced than my mother, and–I quickly realized–didn’t know anything about Last Tango other than that it starred Marlon Brando and “sounds romantic.” Oops. When the three of us walked up to the theater entrance around noon, and my mother’s friend saw the huge “X” emblazoned on the marquee, she adamantly refused to go inside. I stood around outside (wishing I were invisible, because the theater was located on its town’s busy main drag) while my mother tried to convince her friend to see the movie. My mother prevailed, and the three of us headed for the box office, where I was required to show proof of age, and–given that I did not have a driver’s license–had to hand over my college ID for scrutiny by the smirking (or so it seemed) box office clerk.</p>
<p>Once inside the theater, I saw that the only patrons other than the three of us were a handful of middle-aged men, each of whom was sitting by himself. (In retrospect, I doubt that any of those men were film critics.) My mother, her friend, and I sat well behind those men, with my mother’s friend seated between my mother and me. The movie started, and the next two hours–which seemed to last as long as two days–were as surreal to me as the film itself. As Marlon Brando’s naked body (not a pretty sight) gyrated in larger-than-life big-screen glory, my mother sat on the edge of her seat, her face a rigid mask, eyes bulging. My mother’s friend sank down in her seat, head buried in her hands, occasionally peeking through her fingers and either giggling loudly or blurting, “Oh my Gawwddd…” Meanwhile, I was thinking, “I can’t believe that I am sitting here with two middle-aged women–one of them my own mother–watching a dirty movie.”</p>
<p>Finally, the ordeal was over. As my mother, her friend, and I exited the theater, I looked up and suddenly experienced my most embarrassing moment ever, as I saw my former high school World History teacher (whom I later learned lived about two blocks away from the theater) walking by the theater carrying shopping bags and staring at me in wide-eyed astonishment. He and I locked eyes for an instant, and in that instant, I knew what he must have been thinking: “Oh my. Look at that. There’s my former student. The quiet, well-mannered, hard-working student who earned an “A” in my class. The student for whom I happily wrote a glowing letter of recommendation for college. There’s my former student, who just saw a dirty movie.” My former teacher and I quickly averted our eyes, pretending not to recognize each other. I wanted to crawl under the sidewalk and die of shame.</p>
<p>My mother, her friend, and I walked to my mother’s car and drove to lunch (at the newly-opened and only Japanese restaurant in our region at that time) in shocked silence. The restaurant’s intimate and tastefully decorated dining room was a world apart from the cinematic brothel we had just departed. However, I felt as though the three of us had carried the theater marquee into the dining room with us. I cringingly imagined the restaurant staff whispering to each other, “Do you see those three people sitting over there? The ones who seem so nice? They just saw a dirty movie!” As our lovely, kimono-clad, charmingly solicitous waitress served us fragrant tea and light-as-air tempura, my mother, her friend, and I engaged in strained small talk, doing our best to ignore the luridly Brando-esque elephant sitting on top of our table amidst the gleaming silverware and fine china. Afterward, my mother and I drove her friend home; my mother’s friend pointedly neglected to thank my mother for inviting her to the movie. </p>
<p>As my mother and I drove home after dropping off her friend, my mother admonished me, “Don’t tell your father what we did today. Don’t tell your grandparents.” However, I was furious with my mother, and I was determined to make her pay for humiliating me in front of my former teacher. I knew exactly what to do to get my revenge. When my mother and I drove over to her parents’ house later that night, I promptly told my grandfather (a socially liberal but personally prudish bantam rooster of a guy with a feisty mouth and a volcanic temper) what my mother and I had been up to that afternoon. Just as I expected, my grandfather exploded in rage at my mother. “You went where?!?” “You did what?!?” “You took my grandchild to see that?!?” I fled to the kitchen, where my silently appalled grandmother pretended not to overhear her husband and daughter screaming at each other, and instead, attempted to purge me of the ill effects of my first exposure to pornography with a cup of homemade hot cocoa. </p>
<p>When I returned to college that September, I told one dorm friend (in confidence), that I had seen Last Tango. Word spread like wildfire, and soon, my other dorm friends–as well as dormmates I didn’t even know–were bombarding me with questions: “Did you really see it???” “What was it like???” “How did Brando look???” I told these people the truth: “Yes, I saw it.” “It was weird.” “Brando looked ugly.” Of course, given that I had accompanied my mother to an X-rated movie, I quickly acquired the reputation of being “worldly,” and of having the most “far out” mother on the planet. Little did my dormmates know that given the option on that awful day, I would have gladly chosen to either stay home, or to see a re-release of Mary Poppins.</p>
<p>The moral of my story: Mother does not Always Know Best.</p>
