So who is Peter Daou, where did he come from, and how did he get here? Daou was born in Lebanon to Arthur Daou, a Lebanese businessman, and Suzanna Mann, an American expat from a Jewish family in New York City. Suzanna’s younger sister, married name Erica Jong, achieved worldwide fame in 1973 after the publication of her first book, Fear of Flying, a graphic semi-autobiographical account of a young woman’s sexual escapades. To a reader in 2017, Fear of Flying might appear unbearably trite, given that its protagonist is a 29-year-old aspiring writer in New York who goes on a gleefully-overshared journey of self-discovery, but it was revolutionary at the time. Many of Jong’s “semi-autobiographical” anecdotes bore certain similarities to Daou’s home life. In 2008, Suzanna Daou called Fear of Flying “an exposé of [her] life when [she] was living in Lebanon.” She was referring to a chapter (rather unfortunately) titled “Arabs & Other Animals,” in which the book’s protagonist, a poet named Isadora Wing and the character purported to be Jong, visits her sister and her husband in Beirut. Her sister, “Randy,” (Suzanna) is married to a Lebanese man, “Pierre,” (Peter Daou’s dad) and together they have six children.
Pierre’s refusal to shower is relatively mundane compared to what followed:
I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I said weakly. Pierre’s hands were under my nightgown, stroking my thighs. I wasn’t as unaroused as I wanted to pretend.
It continues from there. Suzanna Daou, for her part, “forgave” Jong in 2008: “I forgive her for everything, except writing that my husband crawled into her bed, which he didn’t, and asked her to perform fellatio, which he didn’t,” she said, according to the New Yorker. In response, Jong said that “every intelligent family has an insane member.” Yikes.
Pierre was arguing with Randy, saying that only Americans had the crazy notion of taking a bath every day, that it wasn’t natural (his favorite word), and that it dried up all your wonderful skin oils. Randy yelled back that she didn’t want her son to stink to high hell like his illustrious father, and she pointed out that she wasn’t fooled by his dirty habits. “What the hell dirty habits do you mean?” “I mean I know perfectly well that when I say I won’t sleep with you unless you take a shower, you go into the bathroom and turn on the water and just sit there smoking a cigarette on the goddamned toilet seat.
Daou has never been ashamed of Fear of Flying in the way his mother has, even though it contains lurid accounts of his aunt’s douching process and portrays his father as a greasy nymphomaniac. To the contrary, he seemed to embrace the book. In 1992, Peter and his then-wife Vanessa formed The Daou, a dance-pop group that scored a minor hit with the single “Surrender Yourself.” To follow it up, Peter and Vanessa opted to record a concept album about Fear of Flying in 1994. Yes, really. The album, billed as solo Vanessa Daou and produced by Peter, was titled Zipless. Lead single “Near the Black Forest,” which takes its title from a chapter of Fear of Flying, is about as sexual as you could get in 1994 without triggering an obscenity trial. The video opens with a hand undoing a zipper, and then it reveals Vanessa caressing her hips and breasts atop a platform in a steamy, possibly gay nightclub — in character, as Peter’s aunt. Just to reiterate, Daou and his wife wrote and recorded an album about his aunt’s sex memoirs in which a character based on his dad pressures her into a blow job. Sit back, crank up the sweet sounds of Daou, and just try to take it all in.
