I Never Talked to Anyone About It

Male, 45, married.

My history with watching porn is long and complicated, but I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. My first exposure with porn was finding a few copies of the now-defunct magazine, Players, in a trash can while walking around the neighborhood I lived in as a teen. Players was like Playboy, except it featured pictorials of beautiful black women only. Once I made that discovery, I was hooked on porn because it was the only sexual outlet I had at the time. Not long after that, I found out that a close friend at the time, had access to his father's immense collection of porn mags and films. Once in a while, four or five of us would go over to this friend's house to hang out and watch reel-to-reel porn films (this was the '70's, before the rise of vhs players and everything since). I always felt a little weird watching porn with my male friends because I knew we'd all be horny with no way of dealing with it until we were on our own. We were all straight and not the circle-jerking types.

Once exposed to watching porn on film, the still shots in magazines were not enough because I craved hearing the sounds and watching people having sex, no matter how staged it was. When I turned 18, I moved into the realm of adult book stores and into the video booths, where I would spend a lot of time watching all sorts of porn, depending on the selections. It took me a while to get up the nerve to venture into the viewing booths, but after a while, it was nothing for me to go right back there with no pretense armed with quarters and one dollar bills.
 
At first, I'd watch the videos, get horny and leave to go home and 'finish off'. That changed once I figured out that all I needed to do was to take napkins with me and keep quiet while getting off. Around that same time, I discovered what I liked and didn't like in porn. The 'yes' column included, straight fucking, 'lesbian' sex, anal, female masturbation, interracial (black men and white/asian/latino women), some S/M, and even gay sex once in a while. The 'no' column included: beastiality, violent sex, extreme gaping anal scenes, scat, and a host of other things I prefer not to watch. I also never got into the convention of 'facials' in porn. They just never did anything for me. I made weekly trips to different adult stores to get my porn fix until I finally got my hands on a vcr and was able to stay at home and rent vhs tapes and later, watched porn dvds and now on the computer. 
 
Porn has always been a very private thing for me. I never talked to anyone about it and saw no need to. I kept my use of it hidden from girlfriends because I knew that most of them didn't like it and I wasn't going to force them to see otherwise. There were a lot of times when I felt that I shouldn't be supporting the porn industry because of the negative aspects that go into the production of much of it, including some women and girls being forced to participate in porn and other kinds of sexual slavery. That, and the fact that some literature I read from hard-core feminists like Andrea Dworkin equated the viewing of porn to rape. I didn't really believe that, but my sensibilities caused me to back away from my consumption of porn for a couple of years. I returned to it during a four year period where I couldn't get a girlfriend and didn't have any opportunities for sex, otherwise.

I keep on looking at porn partly for the visual thrill of seeing women I don't know nude or partially nude and it helps get me off when the mood hits. I also love that people have been able to explore their sexuality on their own terms via the internet, for better or for worse.

The variety and accessibility of porn on the 'net has also allowed me to indulge in my exhibitionist tendencies a bit. I've taken and uploaded artful adult self-portraits to blogs of my own over the past few years. Some of the home-made porn is as crappy as the mainstream stuff, but, on the other hand, there is a lot of good, low budget porn out there. For example, one of my personal favorites is watching videos of women masturbating. There's plenty of that on the mainstream side, but it's all very faked, which does nothing for me; the faked moans, the scripted looks at the camera and bad dialogue (I know we're talking about porn here, but it really annoys me) is enough to make sure nothing hot happens. Then, I found the site, [redacted], which features very sensual videos of everyday women masturbating, either in a studio setting or in a location that they feel comfortable in. I love [redacted] because it depicts women really enjoying themselves and their bodies. That's what turns me on more than the usual stuff you see all of the time. I'm constantly on the lookout for sites like [redacted] because they show what the true erotic possibilities are for porn.

One of the things about my relationship with porn is that I never took it's attitudes about how women act sexually to heart. I never expected women that I would meet in real life to act anything like porn actresses in their videos. Keeping a strict line between reality and "pornality" has been a blessing and a curse at times because I find myself picking apart porn scenes unnecessarily. Most of the time, when I come across the dreck of the internet, I just keep moving along until I find something that clicks with me.