I'm Never Full

I've never had a problem meeting woman or getting sex. I consider myself pretty normal. I've held good jobs, dated lots of women, married, raising a decent child, and I'm genuinely proud of my life w/ the gross exception of the vice of porn. 

Somewhere along the line I, and I believe my generation, grew to include porn as a gateway to sex in our daily lives. I don't think I'm different from most young men, we learned from our male role models that porn is o.k as long as its a secret. Dad's and men kept closets full of porn magazines, VHS, DVD's and now movie files. Our friends with access to their Daddy's smut also reinforced this idea. As long as its in a box, under the bed, in the back of the closet, etc its kinda OK. It's no wonder that the 'closeted' acceptance has created such conflict for society. Long kept secrets have a way of sneaking out. 

Now that porn is so main stream the sentiment that still lingers with it in society, and for individuals is the sensation that it should somehow still have an association of 'dirty little secret' even though its out in the open. Porn is no longer 'secret', is hardly 'little' anymore and the sentence is still out on whether it's 'dirty' or not.

I've got a very healthy appetite for porn. I could "eat' all day if I really wanted to. The thing about it though is I'm never full after the meals and the more I consume the more I want. If that's not classic addiction I don't know what is.

I go through periods of binging and purging, just like a bulimic, hoarding gigs upon gigs of filth and deleting them with the resolve to " be better about the collecting" 

The powerful need for fulfillment is what porn offers and what I have embraced over the years. It offers a sense of accomplishment- found porn, got hard, stroked, ejaculated/climaxed! "Wow that felt so good. So why do I feel so empty? Let's try that again with something nastier this time!"

The truth about porn is that for all the moral issues that surround it in society, it works. It provides release for the frustrated, a forum for the exhibitionist, a catalyst for the inhibited, a sanctuary for the shy, a stage for the theatrical. It embraces our fetishes and makes them acceptable, giving us a right to do or say just about everything. It can be artistic, commercial or amateurish and still offer value. Its a mirror that holds so many facets of humanity up and dares to say, "Judge me as you would judge yourself!" and in that fatal hour of judgement we categorically exclaim…we're not worthy!

The feelings I have after I've jerked off to 'insert fetish here' are more about me wishing I was better as a person then actually feeling bad for what I've done. Thinking that if I was better, stronger, more capable and confident I wouldn't need this temporary fix. Hoping that some how I will arrive at a place in life where I won't need to look outside myself for satisfaction.

The reasons to obsess over porn are just so myriad. It's a rich juxtaposition of scorn for the totally "sickos" who I feel at least I'm not them. Then there's the envy for at "lucky ones" who get to have the things that I want. Except I don't know that I'd want some of those things had I not seen them. 

I'll probably always be a customer at the porn counter. There are just so many things to sample. The important thing for me is to learn how to 'eat right'. Only consume the things that are good for me, nothing to indulgent. To try and stay in the "organic" isle and get the less processed variety, things that focus on self esteem and not so much on gluttony or excess. 

I feel that education would go a long way in dispelling some of the societal taboos that surround sex and porn. That as a people we could do worse than to explore our pornographic tendencies. The hyper-sexualized world we live in is just a bubble. It will burst just like the dot-com and housing bubbles and we'll all return to a more educated and reasoned acceptance of what porn is and what its values are.

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.

I Was Gonna Explode

I started consuming porn at a very young age. As a budding 10-12 year old boy, it was quite a surprise to find my dad's dirty mags under his nightstand. I didn't even know how to masturbate back then. It was through some friends at school and my brother that I found out what I was "supposed to do" with this pictures. There was no turning back then, I guess. I would scour the whole of my house looking for porn, and found it. The magazines were never in short supply, usually staying in their spot for a month or two before being replaced by new ones. There were also a couple of betamax tapes that I would be itching to watch when my parents were away. I gradually became picky and started to hone my preferences and my taste. When I turned 18 I couldn't wait to buy my very own porn. I remember buying my first magazine, in a comic book and used books store. I couldn't even look at the cashier (a woman), blushed like I was gonna explode and one of my legs started trembling uncontrollably. At this time I also had my first job, and it was in an office. The office had internet connection and I could be left alone for long stretches of time. You know what happened then. I would frantically try to watch as much as I could and often jacked off in the very office. By this time, finding porn had become an obsession, I needed to find as much and the best porn available. I had started a collection. I would cut up the magazines I bought and pasted the pictures that turned me on the most and made a scrapbook. I also kept the very best digital pics I found and load them up to a slideshow viewer, you know, for easier masturbation.

Now I must mention what my sexual and romantic life is like. In a word, nonexistant. As I am writing this I am 27 years old. Virgin, never had a girlfriend, have been on a total of two dates, never even been kissed. I absolutely love women, find them fascinating, intringuing and stimulating. Yet I am a complete failure in social skills. I am incredibly shy, have very few friends, spend most of my time alone and freeze to a standstill when someone tries to socialize with me. Is consuming porn the cause or a sympton of this problem? If I had a girlfriend and a healthy sex life, would I not need to watch porn anymore? I don't know, and it's these kind of questions that are always in the back of my mind. To be sure, porn has had it's benefits. Thru amassing and sorting the collection I've learned first hand lots of skills that are useful in my career, as I am a librarian. Simply by searching for porn I've become a better librarian and able to find stuff for my users in ways that otherwise I wouldn't consider. Porn has been a distraction and a company thru all the lonely nights. And it's also brought me an unxpected and pleasant connection.

About two years ago I started blogging my porn, just to see if there was anyone out there that liked what I liked. Imagine my surprise when not only did I find someone, but it was also a woman. A middle-aged mom in a completely different country and with a taste for porn, started to comment on what I posted and it slowly evolved into an online friendship. Then we started e-mailing and sending each other semi-nude photos. She is now one of my very best friends and we still connect thru porn. I send her pics that I come across which I think are stimulating or that I think she'll like and she answers me back with her thoughts and sometimes a question or two. My life is not fascinating or exciting, but it's also far from miserable. I walk thru the street and fell jealous of the couples I see kissing or holding hands. I want to experience that, but in the meantime I am happy with what I have and I enjoy porn as a means of entertainment and self-discovery. Am I addicted? Yes, probably. But I would rather say that I'm addicted to the world and to beauty. And while not all porn is beautiful (believe me, I know), sometimes a glimmer shines thru it and that is what I'm looking for.