A Boogie (Sort of) Afternoon

It was one of those rare afternoons with nothing to do, so I cranked up America Online to frolic on the Net.

The good dog Barkley, a springer spaniel, was sprawled on the floor, watching me carefully as though expecting something wonderful to occur.

Watching is what he does best with the kind of anticipation that is peculiar to his breed. Though his sprawl is always complete, one senses he is ready to leap into the air at any moment should a pot roast suddenly fly by.

In the other room, I could hear my wife, Cinelli, listening to classical music. The gentle sounds of a Beethoven symphony floated through the house.

After waiting through three busy signals, I finally managed to access AOL. As its logo and its offerings settled into place, a little voice inside the program said, “You’ve got mail!” The sound startled Barkley, and he sat up.

I clicked on the mail symbol, and there it was in harsh reds and blacks, an invitation to ecstasy. I was trembling in the doorway of cyberporn.

“GORGEOUS MODELS R WAITING 4 U!” the wording said. They were available 24 hours a day, anxious to explore my wildest fantasies, most of which I can’t even remember. “2-girl shows! 2-guy shows! Live amateur couples and more!” Something for the entire family.

Click here, the message said, if I was “wild and ready and over 18!”

*

I am not a porn person. Ever since a teacher confiscated a dirty Blondie and Dagwood booklet that was circulating in the sixth grade, I have been avoiding smut. Though it didn’t belong to me, I was the one caught.

It was one of those little illustrated booklets you flicked through fast to simulate motion. I never realized Blondie did those things. When the teacher nailed me, she held the booklet in my face and flicked through it.

“Is this what you want your children to look at!” she demanded.

“I don’t have any children,” I said. “I’m only 11.”

What she meant, of course, was when and if I had children, was a booklet about the beloved Bumsteads fornicating on the floor what I wanted them to see? I’ve thought about it for all of my growing-up years through America’s eras of dirty books, dirty magazines, dirty movies, dirty phone sex, dirty radio talk shows and then dirty Web sites.

As the musical satirist Tom Lehrer once sang, “When properly viewed, everything’s lewd,” and it does seem that way sometimes.

I protected my kids from most of it to the point of hiding the men’s magazines for which I occasionally wrote at the start of my freelance career.

My stories were funny, not dirty, but the photographs of women that filled most of the magazines were probably not for children’s eyes. I have no quarrel with nudity. It was the poses of the women I felt were probably not intended for kids, though the physical dexterity of the models was impressive. I had never realized women bent in those ways.

Today, sex is the most marketable product in America, and to completely protect one’s children from its more prurient aspects one would have to lock them in a closet and pipe in liturgical music 24 hours a day.

*

While the Web site on which I had stumbled promised me the time of my life, I was too late to pursue the “hot, young models” that once waited just beyond my pale blue screen. Unknown to me, AOL had gone to court and shot them out of cyberspace, eliminating my access. It was just as well. I am not about to explore anything sexual with the dog watching.

But the promise of the invitation was still there even though the fulfillment was gone. My wife saw it when she entered the room. “What’s this,” she asked, looking over my shoulder, “a boogie afternoon?” We had seen the movie “Boogie Nights” the previous evening.

“Research,” I said.

She looked at Barkley. Barkley looked at her. They weren’t buying the research response. “Is this something you want your dog to see?” she asked, then left the room. I looked at Barkley. He looked away.

There were only three other couples in the theater when we saw “Boogie Nights.” Critics had raved about it, especially the performance of Mark Wahlberg, who used to be the Marky Mark of underwear ads. What underwear existed in this film was always in the process of being removed.

It was the kind of movie you used to have to go to a Pussycat Theater to see. Cinelli and I went once. We saw a milkmaid who eventually abandoned her cows for a life of debauchery. Better she had stayed with the cows.

In “Boogie Nights,” a busboy abandons his kitchen to become a porn star. The same fate that befell the milkmaid awaited him. Laughter, sex, booze, fame, money, drugs, violence, disaster.

I’m glad AOL went to court to dump the porn. Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’m old. Or maybe I’m just tired of the sewage floating through our culture under the name of art or free expression. Are we really freer than we were or just dumber? Are we more open or just more indifferent?

I left the questions hanging and turned off the computer. Barkley and I went for a walk. It was a day as bright as heaven. A clean wind blew through the oak trees. Barkley chased birds and dreamed of a pot roast flying by . . .

Al Martinez can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com