Hal supine, the blizzard, Accomplice!, the fatherly talk (pp. 955–956)
But Himself said that if Orin wanted his personal, fatherly as opposed to headmasterly, take on it, then he, Orin’s father—though he wouldn’t forbid it—would rather Orin didn’t watch a hard-porn film yet.
Context
Here is the anthology's rarest artifact: James Incandenza actually fathering. Called to discipline Orin over a smuggled porn tape, Himself sets the headmaster role aside, gives the boy a lemon soda, takes his glasses off, and speaks as a father — not forbidding, just asking, with "reticent earnestness," that Orin wait to see sex on film until he's loved someone and learned firsthand "what a profound and really quite moving thing sex could be," lest a film like The Green Door leave him "an impoverished, lonely idea of sexuality." It's protective, intimate, and almost unbearably decent, the exact opposite of the remote black hole the sons otherwise describe. And it's the only such moment in the whole record. The father who couldn't speak to his undamaged sons found his voice once, for one son, on one afternoon — proof the tenderness existed, which only sharpens the question of why it stayed locked away the rest of the time.