Porn and I

I have a rather ambivalent attitude to porn. On the one hand, I can appreciate why many people find it dehumanising and degrading; on the other, it has been a trusty masturbatory companion for many years.

I can still remember the eye-popping occasion when one of my best friends showed me his father’s “secret” porn stash. This was serious, hard-core pornography, not the kind of thing that was easily available in 1973 in my quiet home town. We were 14 years old. Up until that point, my only experience of porn had been the odd Penthouse or Men Only magazine sniggered over in the school yard.

I can remember looking at the pictures with awe. Women drooling over massive erections, being penetrated in every available orifice and giving every indication of thoroughly enjoying it. Those pictures were etched into my brain and stayed with me for many months as a mental slideshow during the serious business of pubescent masturbation.

Later, at university, I was exposed to alternative views on the acceptability of porn. Andrea Dworkin was popular with many feminist students and they espoused her position that pornography is a tool by which men control, objectify, and subjugate women. I could understand their view but, by now, I had my own secret porn stash that I used as an aid to masturbation and I didn’t really think that I was subjugating anyone even if I did feel slightly guilty once the deed was done.

The Internet, of course, has brought hard-core porn to the masses and, like many others, I had a sub-section of bookmarks that linked to a few favoured sites for masturbatory enjoyment. I speak in the past tense because, although the bookmarks are still there, I haven’t clicked one for well over a month.

I can’t really imagine watching porn without the underlying intention to masturbate (C is totally uninterested in porn so it’s not something we watch together) and since I can’t masturbate (or won’t, if you prefer), why watch porn? All that would happen is that I would be crippled with an erection and unable to do anything about it.

It looked like porn was off the agenda and that was just fine until yesterday.

Yesterday I was reading some of the archived material on Thumper’s site and, in one post he mentions “ruined orgasm”. He was talking about a video he had seen and he provided a link (obviously NSFW). Bloody hell! Some of that was really, really hot.

Am I going to seek out similar material? You bet I am.

I’m going to look upon it as teasing myself.