almost okay

THE PASSIONATE PURSUITE OF PORNE

Okay, I admit to being somewhat titillated by pornography. Yeah, yeah. I know it's an understatement. I can't explain the psychology of it, but I have to believe it goes all the way back to the caveman era. Survival of the species was man's paramount mission in life and the sights, sounds and smells of copulation were stimulants to produce arousal in others, who quickly followed suit with their own procreational behavior, thus ensuring that the population of the tribe would be maintained. (The orgy is a natural thing, you see.) Modern society has pushed this instinctual animal behavior into our private lives and away from the public eye, thereby making it seem 'dirty'. Laws have been set up to strictly dictate where, when and how we can not only view pornography, but copulate with other consenting adults as well. And let's not forget the Pope. Organized religion has had more than its fair share of influence on the rules these days, too.

I remember the first time I got aroused just reading something. It was 1971 and I had recently become a teenager. My dad always had mystery and action paperbacks laying around and I was suddenly deemed old enough to read them. That summer I picked up a Nick Carter novel to start the odyssey and I don't think I put it down until I had read the whole damn thing. Mixed in with the spying and the killing were fairly graphic descriptions of the hero bedding the ladies and I was floored by the fact that so much stimulation could be found between the flimsy, ragged covers of a paperback book. I raced from page to page to get to the sexy parts and before I knew it I'd finished it.

After I'd polished off all the Nick Carters my dad had, I moved on to the Carter Brown mysteries and fell in lust with the covers. The lovingly crafted illustrations of beautiful women depicted on the outsides of the books drew me in more than the stories on the inside, and no doubt accounted for a substantial portion of the publisher's sales as well. At that early point in my life, the half-naked, leggy women were as much of a turn-on to me as anything I'd ever seen, and I longed for a career like the one enjoyed by the cover artist, Robert McGinnis, who I considered a magician with the brush. I still collect the paperbacks to this day.

Of course, my innocence was compromised when a year later I found a stained and coverless Playboy magazine in the bushes across the street, took it to school and showed it to a select few friends. It was my first glimpse of female pubic hair, and the centerfold seemed almost alive when I folded it out, the brunette's perfectly smooth and shapely legs revealed with the final flip of the page. Word got around and the magazine was eventually confiscated, but there were many clandestine viewing sessions at my locker prior to that. I'd finally realized the power of pornography, but I didn't understand why it was feared and frowned upon so. Still don't.

I lost my virginity at sixteen, went on to a few girlfriend relationships but nothing serious, and at age eighteen saw my first X-Rated film, 'Emmanuelle', in a mainstream movie theater at a shopping mall in my home town. Some buddies and I went as a group to see it, and when we came out and got in the car, there was actually steam rising from the crotch of my jeans in the cold January air.

In college I was a serious student. I graduated in '82, moved to the big city, got a job and set up residence with plans for the future. Plans of being a fine artist - a painter popular enough to live on gallery sales and commissions. I had a few magazines of naked women under my bed, but the pursuit of pornography wasn't something that I thought about on a regular basis at the time. Living a spartan lifestyle in a cheap apartment, I deprived myself of every unnecessary luxury while saving my hard-earned dollars for an eventual return to school to earn my Masters Degree in Fine Art. Well, that never happened, but I did get to see some porn videos at a friend's house around 1989, and upon returning home was flabbergasted by the array of selections available at my own local video store. I immediately rushed out and bought my very own VCR and have amassed a private cache of personal favorites since then, duping them onto my own tapes with the aid of a second VCR which I purchased some time later.

I had favorite starlets...Angel Kelly, Dominique Simone (before the plastic surgery on her face and boobs), Sade (not the singer) and the sweet-but-not-so-innocent girl pictured above, Miss Nina DePonca. She's still tops in my book. Then came this God-forsaken Internet and everything was ruined with viruses and spyware that compromise your computer if you take a look at anything resembling pornography. And lest you Mac users think you're off the hook in that department, just wait until you've carved out a large enough market share for those nerds to take the time to fuck with you. Then watch out.

No, I'll stick to my trusty VCR, thank you. I now have one that plays both DVDs and tapes. And my low-def television set works just fine for porn. I mean, who wants to see some of those close ups in high resolution? I sure don't. The body hair, the scars, the pimples on the asses... I shudder just thinking about it. I truly don't want any more advances in technology that makes porn even more realistic than it already is. After all, the best part of the whole experience happens inside your mind, inside the fantasy. That's the whole point, am I right?

Did you ever see that holodeck thing on the new Star Trek shows? You know... the one where you can go inside and experience a three-dimensional, physically real world of your own choosing. You can fight with gladiators, climb mountains, go sailing...pretty much anything you want. Captain Picard used to visit often and play like he was a detective, a lot like the character in some of those Carter Brown books I mentioned before. Well, if they ever actually do come up with something like that, I won't make it out from my first trip inside. You see, gladiators and mountain climbing aren't my idea of fantasy. It just sounds like too much work to me.

No, in my fantasy, Nina DePonca and I would fuck like animals until there wasn't a single drop of fluid left in my body, and I would die a happy man.