Alumnus Bobby Gordon explores dichotomy of growing up with porn star father in show

Bobby Gordon ripped open the box containing his new prop with excitement. He explained that his producer had just sent him the package while he pulled it out. “It” being an inflatable male sex organ made out of stretchy fabric. Using a condom as a makeshift balloon, Gordon blew into the phallus, until a “pop” could be heard.

“Damn, that was my last condom that wasn’t lubricated,” Gordon said.

While it is not out of the ordinary to see students on campus wearing eccentric costumes for projects or experiments, seeing a man in grey sweats step into a strap-on is not exactly an everyday occurrence. Gordon, a UCLA alumnus and former Daily Bruin sports editor, uses such outlandish props to tell the story of his childhood in his one-man show “Debbie Does My Dad.”

Gordon grew up with both parents and two older sisters in Berkeley. His mother was a marriage and family therapist. His father, Howie Gordon, was a porn star. For Bobby Gordon, this fact was a part of his daily life. He said that growing up in his household was like an episode of “Boy Meets World,” only with porn. Though porn and “Boy Meets World” are not synonymous with one another, Bobby Gordon said he had a normal childhood and never questioned his father’s career.

The only problem was that societal expectations began to seep into his life.

“(My father’s career) was cool to everyone … but it was also so taboo,” Bobby Gordon said. “So it’s a window for people into that taboo … I certainly don’t think everything about porn is great. But I certainly don’t think that the straight view of the porn world is very realistic at all.”

The play is centered on the conflict Bobby Gordon had between viewing his dad as a good father and viewing his dad as a porn star. He said that while he may have experienced normalcy when it came to his father’s parenting, the outside world viewed his situation as morally wrong.

Bobby Gordon challenges ideas of what should be within the performance. D’Lo, an alumnus and director for “Debbie Does My Dad,” said he and Bobby Gordon worked to create a show that would not shy away from questions concerning sexuality and masculinity.

“I hope people challenge themselves into finding alternatives to the social constructs that allow men to be men and women to be women,” D’Lo said.

Howie Gordon, professionally known as Richard Pacheco, said talking about sex, especially about what a man’s sexual experience is “supposed” to be, is vastly important. He has spoken in four sexual psychology classes, and has found that men are relieved when he talks about his sexual failures, instead of creating a façade that he was triumphant in all his ventures.

“My first sex scene took six hours,” Howie Gordon said. “It was only supposed to take half an hour, but I was just too scared. … You don’t know what pressure is until you have 40 people in a room waiting for you to get a hard-on.”

Howie Gordon said this openness to sex could help solve problems that surround it.

“When sex is accepted and celebrated for the goodie that it is, and can be in this life, it takes on a much less obsessive place in one’s life than when it is denied, vilified or repressed,” Howie Gordon said. “That’s the best answer I can give anybody. Do you wanna make sex hot and dirty? Forbid it.”

Like an episode of “Boy Meets World,” Bobby Gordon said his parents encouraged him to talk about his personal issues. Unlike many of his classmates, Bobby Gordon said he never had to worry about hiding his sex life from his parents.

“I always used to tell my friends that I wasn’t worried about getting walked in on masturbating because I was just supporting the family business,” Bobby Gordon said. “My dad put a lock on my door. That’s the message that I was given as I was a kid, and that was incredibly freeing.”