After his death, I began a more careful examination of his office. My general understanding was that Dad had occasionally written porn to supplement his income, a pattern followed by many writers. Now, I realized that wasn’t the case. For half his life my father passed as a science fiction writer while actually functioning as a professional pornographer. Dad’s first eleven books were porn. The extent of his output surprised me, since the secret will had implied a fraction of what I discovered.
Throughout his writing life, Dad remained staunchly emphatic that he himself did not use multiple pen names. His persona, John Cleve, had sixteen pseudonyms. John Cleve had his own wardrobe, stationery, and signature. Most important, my father liked being John Cleve. John Cleve wrote sex books, was a 1970s swinger, and had no kids. John Cleve was free.
By the time Dad died, he hadn’t worked in his office in a decade. Before that it was seldom cleaned beyond an occasional vacuuming and a light dusting as high as my mother could reach, which wasn’t far. A narrow path wound between precarious stacks of porn, an outmoded printer, a broken copy machine, and three computers. Dad steadfastly refused an online connection, saying he feared the government would be able to peek inside his computer and learn about his porn. I considered this evidence of his paranoia and lack of technological understanding. Two months after his death, the NSA admitted they’d spied on hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens via the Internet.
My father was more hoarder than collector, and I began by throwing away the obvious junk: rusted pocketknives, corroded flashlights, broken office equipment, a hockey puck, empty bottles of expensive beer, and dozens of tin boxes that once held fancy Scotch. The office decor reminded me of a college fraternity house with its implied pride in drinking and manliness. There was nothing personal or sentimental. His possessions consisted of gifts from fans at science fiction conventions, books, manuscripts, and thousands of letters. I learned to operate in a very specific way: examine each item, evaluate its importance, keep it or throw it away. The pressure of constant decision was relentless. I’d grown up terrified of this room and now I was in charge of it, like an inmate becoming a warden. I felt as if I were trespassing.
As a kid, I’d left his office quickly, giving a swift and nervous glance at the closet, which was always shut. Never seeing its contents gave the closet enormous clout; it was Pandora’s box with a doorknob. The wood casing had expanded from humidity and I had to jerk the door open. The loud sound alarmed me, as if Dad would hear it and I’d get in trouble. I glanced furtively about. Nothing was there but the dusty, smoke-smelling room. The closet contained a wall of deep shelves that were a wreck of papers, books, magazines, computer manuals, and manila envelopes containing manuscripts. Wadded into a musty ball was a John Cleve shirt, now mildewed and rotting. A trail of dried mouse droppings led to a large nest composed of tattered manuscript pages. Twined within the rodent’s home was the shed skin of a snake. I jumped back and slammed the door shut.
Throughout my childhood, the most familiar adult refrain was: “Watch for snakes.” Standard practice in the hills was to kill any snake without wasting time trying to figure out what it was. My seventh-grade teacher taught us that poisonous snakes had a vertical pupil, but getting close enough to see the eyes put you at risk. Everyone I knew feared snakes: tough men, brave boys, women who could slaughter livestock without qualm. After discovering the snakeskin in the closet, I went downstairs and drank a glass of water. No doubt the snake was a harmless constrictor that had traveled to the second floor, discovered the mouse nest, eaten its fill, rested, and sought the next meal. The snake was long gone, its shed skin the ghost of its passage.
I returned to Dad’s office and stood alert as a bandit, sweating and nervous. It ran through my mind that a case could be made for an adult facing childhood fears, both metaphoric and real, but none of that claptrap really applied. I was genuinely afraid of snakes. Under my father’s orders, I had to clear out the closet. I did so quickly.