Rachel Mason always remembers her parents telling her as a teenager not to let anyone know what they did for a living. “They used the same codes the mafia does,” Mason said. “My mom had five different ‘official’ job titles as one point. She’d say, ‘I’m in real estate’ or ‘I’m a manager’.”

Both of which were, in a sense, true. Karen and Barry Mason – two quiet, middle-aged and, in the mother’s case, devoutly religious, people – did, in fact, own a commercial property and did run a store. What they kept hidden was the fact that their store happened to be the largest purveyor of hardcore gay pornography in Los Angeles, a place unknown to the general public but legendary among gay men across the US. At one point, through their mail-order business, the couple became perhaps the biggest distributors of gay porn in the US. In the 80s and 90s, the Masons’ store, named Circus of Books, was the place to pick up explicit gay magazines and movies, some of which the couple even produced, along with such useful accoutrements as lube, dildos and cock rings. It was even a good place to find sex, with the friskier patrons ducking out back to an area teeming enough to earn the nickname “Vaseline Alley”.

It was the kind of store “you’d expect two extra-fetishy leather daddies to own”, Rachel Mason said, with a laugh. “Which is what made this whole thing so bizarre.”

The disparity between her parents’ character and the specifics of their business serves as the jumping-off point for an illuminating new documentary named Circus of Books, which is produced by Ryan Murphy and is now available on Netflix. The movie, directed by Rachel, an artist and musician, covers more than her parents’ unusual double life and the family’s complex dynamic. It also delves into the special role a venue like Circus of Books had in the lives of gay men of an earlier era. The heyday of the store – which the Masons owned from 1983 until its closing in 2019 – peaked several decades ago, a time when the lives of their gay male patrons were far more fraught, and covert, than the open LGBTQ+ world of today. “To be a homo was unspeakable,” says Billy Miller, publisher of the seminal gay magazine Straight to Hell, in the film. “I can’t even explain how different it was.”

In the movie, older gay men talk about the store in hallowed tones, expressing a mixture of affection, connection and awe. “To see men naked and unafraid, that gave us a lot of pride,” says Don Norman, a Circus regular, while another says: “It made every gay man feel comfortable about exploring their sexuality.”

The film also places the store in the larger context of gay politics by covering a little-known, but significant, demonstration against police crackdowns on LA gay bars that occurred two and half years before Stonewall. Initially, Rachel planned to make that history, and the function of the store in its patrons’ lives, the core of her film. But, over time she came to realize that her family was a more compelling hook. “I shaped the story based on what I came to believe people would be most interested in,” she said.

Everyone in her immediate family spoke for the film, including Rachel’s two brothers and her parents. But it’s the clan’s matriarch who became the film’s central, if reluctant, star. From the start, we see Karen telling her daughter “this is going to be such a boring tape” and “you gotta stop filming”.

“I didn’t think it was a worthy subject,” Karen reiterated to the Guardian. “There are people doing much more interesting things than I was,” citing as an example Act Up, who “were out there changing policy”.

To Karen and her husband, the store was a purely entrepreneurial venture. “We took advantage of a business opportunity,” she said.

Karen Mason. Photograph: Netflix

At the time, the couple felt they didn’t have a viable alternative. Neither of the parents had lucrative jobs in the 80s and they had three children to raise. One day, Karen noticed an ad placed by Larry Flynt in a local publication seeking someone to distribute his oft-banned magazine, Hustler. The Masons answered and soon found they were good at the job. When Flynt branched out by publishing some of the first slick gay porn magazines, such as Blue Boy and Honcho, the Masons began distributing them as well, with great success. A store on Santa Monica Blvd, the center of gay life in the city, named Book Circus had been selling gay porn but was having trouble paying its bills, so the couple stepped in to buy it. To retain the brand, but dodge a potential lawsuit, they simply turned the name around to Circus of Books. In those days, long before the ubiquity of internet porn, the VHS tapes the store sold, with titles like School of Hard Cocks and A Rim with A View, flew off the shelves. “These are the videos that sent me to college,” Rachel said.

But, as a child, she was kept in the dark. “I didn’t want my kids to be affected by anything I was doing,” Karen said. “I didn’t know if people would want their children playing with somebody’s children who owned a store like that.”

Rachel, a highly creative child, grew up with lots of gay friends, including a guy in high school who, one day, asked her the name of her parents’ store. When she told him, he burst out laughing, and then hipped her to the store’s true content. “It was such a shock, because my mom was an endless authority figure,” the director said. “She wasn’t doing anything that was remotely interesting.”

Karen and Barry Mason. Photograph: Netflix

When Rachel asked her mother about the store’s content, “she immediately downplayed it, saying: ‘Well, the other half of the store has all kinds of magazines, like the New York Review of Books,’” Rachel said. “But the reality of it was, 90% of their business was in the ‘over 18’ section.”

Her mother also downplayed the significance of she and her husband later getting into producing gay porn films, starring the king of the genre, Jeff Stryker. “She told me: ‘I didn’t think we were getting into pornography, I just thought we were getting into a different aspect of the same business,” Rachel said. “That, to me, was the ultimate in denial.”

Karen objects to that characterization. “I don’t like the word denial,” she said. “I just didn’t make myself familiar [with the material]. I was never interested in what it represented.”

Rachel believes her mother’s attitude reflects “the shame that’s part of her religious guilt. That attitude is so deep, in terms of sex being bad and sinful,” she said.

Karen’s conservative Jewish faith also made it difficult for her to accept it when her younger son, Josh, came out to her in his college years. Despite having supported scores of gay men who worked at her store, as well as standing by them during the height of the Aids crisis, Karen said she was unable to deal with her son’s sexuality for a long time. “When he came out, I didn’t talk about it,” she said. “I actually went into the closet.”

Rachel Mason. Photograph: Jeff Mclane for Carla Magazne

Over the years, Karen’s view evolved dramatically, to the point where she later became an active member in the LA chapter of PFlag, an organization which helps parents understand, and support, their LGBTQ+ children. Still, the jarring disparity between Karen’s exposure to the gay world and her initial reaction to her gay son, as well as her inability to integrate her source of income with its true context, reflects something deep in society. Namely, its ongoing difficulty in accepting sexual pleasure, in every consensual form, as natural, as well as in recognizing its elevated role in the lives of gay men, particularly from a certain era. “For a generation of gay men that never saw even the slightest glimmer of two men doing anything romantic, to see porn reflected a deeply suppressed desire,” Rachel said. “In that sense, gay porn was so radical, it’s off the charts. There’s heroism in that.”

While her mother isn’t comfortable seeing herself as part of that righteous fight, she has “learned to see [the store’s role] from all different points of view”, she said.

The store also had a role to play the battle to preserve free speech. In the mid-80s, when Ronald Regan and his attorney general, Ed Meese, launched a national “war on pornography”, the Masons faced felony charges, and potential jail sentences, for transporting banned goods across state lines. Karen, who had worked as a journalist for the Cincinnati Enquirer years earlier, had covered Larry Flynt’s free speech battles against the government. “So, I knew that first amendment speech is not defended in high rhetoric,” she said. “It’s defended in pretty fringey places.”

In the end, the couple’s lawyer got the charges downgraded to near nothing, but the experience made the two even more circumspect about telling people what they did for a living. The legacy of Circus of Books has only grown over the years, as it represents a lost world, replaced by ubiquitous porn available on the internet, and the migration of sexual hookups from places such as Vaseline Alley to apps like Grindr and Scruff.

Karen hopes her own evolution in accepting her gay son will serve as an example to other parents. But she’s less thrilled to find herself a public figure because of the film. For her daughter, the documentary’s greatest use could come in teaching younger LGBTQ+ people what the older generation did.

“I’ve been so disgusted by people who use the term OK boomer,” said the director. “If you had any idea what these people fought and died for, you’d be deferential. We don’t know many of their stories because there was so much shame and condemnation and exclusion. We need to unearth these untold stories and preserve that history.”