SAN FRANCISCO—Those of us who've had the pleasure of meeting and/or corresponding with Howie Gordon, who's open about his award-winning porn career as "Richard Pacheco," have found him to be a humorous and insightful social commentator ... and now his son Bobby is picking up where dad left off.
The younger Gordon's one-man show, "Debbie Does My Dad," will be presented Saturday night, Nov. 20, at San Francisco's Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission St. (near 11th Street), beginning at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7:30. And "The Ghost of Richard Pacheco" (as Howie Gordon frequently refers to himself) is scheduled to make an appearance as well.
The title, of course, is a take-off on either Debbie Does Dallas (1978) or possibly Debbie Duz Dishes (1986), neither of which featured the elder Pacheco—he did appear in Debbie Duz Dishes 3—but both of which have become emblematic of their respective porn eras, and Bobby Gordon uses the concept as the basis for the story of his experiences growing up as the child of a famous adult film performer.
Richard Pacheco's adult film career lasted for a decade beginning in 1978, and he starred in such well-remembered videos as Candy Stripers, Talk Dirty to Me, Nothing to Hide, Vista Valley PTA and Irresistible. He was voted Playgirl Magazine's Man of the Year in 1979, and is in every adult Hall of Fame, so Bobby Gordon has had a cornucopia of experiences to draw from for his show.
"Having spent his childhood 'in the shadow of his dad’s erection,'" a press release says, "Bobby Gordon dives into his experiences dealing with overly excited friends, meeting (or really failing to meet) unreasonably high expectations from female classmates in school, his own sexual development, confronting and rebelling against his father, and ultimately working to redefine manhood for himself."
"Nothing is what you’d expect in this show where the words 'sensitive' and 'male porn star' go together as easily as 'masturbation' and 'inevitably getting walked in on by your parents,'" the release continues. "Gordon offers an intimate window into his journey to come to grips with his father’s former career, and to create a world where a man can be an emotional and a sexual being; a world where fucking and feelings can co-exist."
It's a problem that even the elder Gordon (who's in the process of writing his autobiography) had to deal with, and his son may have done a better job of doing so, as shown by some short video clips from another performance of the show.
Tickets can be purchased online for this Saturday's performance, and at just $15 per, there's a good chance it'll sell out quickly. After all, how many times does one get a chance to check out a retired porn star interacting with his own kid?
