I Started to Use Porn as a Tool to Test Myself

Being a healthy 30 year old guy, I thought that the answer to this question was pretty simple. I was originally going to say that I use it to come to climax, but there have been many times that I have been able to do that without the use of porn. As I thought about it some more, I thought that I use/view it in order to fantasize, which is half true. Initially, I would use magazines like Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse, or Glamour. I would imagine myself having sex with the women, as I'm sure most men do at these times. Being young at the time, I knew only the basic mechanics of sex, so it was never anything to adventurous. Then I began to imagine the females in my life were these women. Not in any kind of stalker way, but I would imagine their faces on these beautiful, naked women, posing erotically just for me. These fantasies then evolved into the women I knew personally, engaged in the mundane sex I was having with the women in the magazines (in my head, obviously).

Then I "graduated" to soft-core pornographic movies like the ones that are on most cable channels late at night. Something about actually seeing these women "in action" was like discovering Playboys all over again. It was exhilarating. Plus, I was able to expand my extremely limited, mental playbook as I thought about having sex with the women in the magazines and movies that I would never meet, and the women I was surrounded by, that I would probably never be able to "have" sexually. Still, these movies, despite their "insert tab a into slot b" narratives, never fully allowed me to realize what happens during sex (physically) between two people.

My brother was the one that actually introduced me to hard-core porn. This seemed like the holy grail to me. FINALLY, I saw, and heard, what was going on. This allowed me to open my mind to so many different things. Now the mental picture I had in my head wasn't missing anything. I actually began to tell myself erotic stories as I masturbated. It seems like that would be self defeating, since I knew what was going to happen, but it wasn't. Some of these stories involved me, others didn't. Some were about specific people, others were merely descriptions of people that never existed (as far as I know, anyway).

Eventually, I stopped "writing" these stories, and opted instead to just watch people have sex, instead of imagine it. At this point in my life, I was dating, and I discovered a whole new way to use this fantasy part of my brain. As I would watch a porno, I would imagine myself and my girlfriend doing the things on the screen. It doesn't sound like that much of a difference from before, but it kind of made the whole process easier. Instead of inventing the scenario, it was there. Instead of imagining the positions, they were there. All I had to do was substitute in my mind's eye who it was, doing it. It got to the point where I had to ask my girlfriend if she would watch it with me, which surprised me when she said yes. On these nights, we would try to match what the actors on the screen were doing, which I'm happy to admit I was able to do most of the time. Almost as if everything up to that point had been practice. We didn't use porn every time we had sex, but when we did, it made it much better for me because, now the mental images I had in my head, of all of the women I had ever pretended to have sex with over the years, could be taken from the pretending part of my mind, to the memory part.

Then I started to use porn as a tool to test myself. I didn't really know where I was going sexually. For a short period of time, I found myself focusing on the men in the images and movies, and thought that perhaps I was gay or bisexual. But I tried masturbating to homosexual pornography, and it just never really did anything for me. So although I knew my sexual appetites were more advanced than just switching positions, I didn't really know how to go about expanding my knowledge about my sexual self. As my "library" of porn grew, I started to discover that I was more turned on by some of the weirder aspects of the sexual fringe. Nothing too extreme though. For instance, I knew for a fact that I was not interested in anything that involved urine or feces, although I did try to watch 2 girls one cup, just to see the perversion in it. I didn't make it past the first 10 seconds.

This experimentation led me to a few interesting things. I never would have thought that anal sex would be something I would be interested in, and yet when I watched it on video, I had an almost immediate reaction to it. This was yet another activity that I asked my girlfriend to take part in (both watching and doing), and once again she said yes. As I said, I never would have imagined that it would be something I would do, and yet without seeing it, I never would have known I enjoyed it. With this particular experience, I was the one performing the act on her, it wouldn't be until years later that a different girlfriend would attempt a similar act on me. Once again, I never would have imagined it would be as enjoyable as it was. Another time, I found myself watching a lot of group scenes involving anywhere up to 15 people. Something about this seemed so enticing to me, and yet I never was able to bring myself to pursue it. I did find my self in a few situations involving myself, my girlfriend, and another friend (sometimes male, sometimes female). Another thing I learned from watching porn was that I was apparently into light S&M. I found myself asking to be bitten, scratched, slapped, and choked. At first I thought it was purely masochistic behavior, but when I was asked to reciprocate, I did happily. The reason I know my interest stops at light S&M was because I was asked to take part in a rape fantasy, and as my girlfriend and I were attempting it, I just found my self getting nauseas. The most recent discovery I have made about myself was an intense interest in lesbians having sex with each other using strap on dildos. Like a lot of men, I have always found multiple women having sex thrilling, but the addition of this particular sex toy sparked in me a behavior that I was concerned might become a full blown fetish. I was so taken with the thought of a woman with a penis that I watched a few shemale/hermaphrodite pornos and I am still currently on the fence. I do not enjoy watching men performing with shemale/hermaphrodite actresses, but I can enjoy watching a woman having sex with a shemale/hermaphrodite.

So, basically I would have to say that my reasons for watching pornography are the fantasy aspect, but at this point in my life, it is all in regard to my own sexual experiences. The other reason is to learn more about myself and where my sexual desires lay.

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 a Geek

While I shan't recollect the details of my life, lest the endeavor elicit boredom in the reader. Suffice it to say, I shall concisely establish the context upon which it began.

My life took an unorthodox divergence rather early; during the Late Formative Period when I had accrued a collection of ritual viewing habits on television concerning alien warriors of an anthropomorphic variety frequently engaging in bloodless warfare with a sorcerous mummy--a subject matter in no short supply in the mid-80s--on a near weekly basis. The accumulated programming appealed to a restless preternatural fascination with the exotic and fantastical which thrived in a decade known for its scientific trends, garish aesthetics, and outlandishly cool-but-inaccurate entertainments. It was this extensive collection of related media that later served as evidence necessary for my first moment of self-awareness.

I was a geek.

And I was rather proud of my deduction, as the means of entertainment, though expensive as they were--as well as unattainable to a young boy devoid of discretionary funding--carried with it a significant increasing awareness that there was a burgeoning community of others whose interest were congruent with mine. And in those wonderful years when the vigor of youth are a sufficient currency upon which to purchase fortune and fun--except for the .25 donations towards video game cabinets in exchange for their services--I thrived in a fashion that supplanted in dominance the position of my preternaturally previous obsession.

The life of a geek in those days was a lonely one. Humiliation was incessant...and every member of elite society had the right to inflict it. And the women of our age found in us, not a single, desirable trait upon which to purchase anchorage for their burgeoning libidos. While I was never subjected to sermons of the demonization of sex (any sermons for that matter, we were secular WASPS), I was never subjected to positive appraisals either; my home life was sexless, and to protect my lascivious sanity from the paranoid ramblings of my critical parents, I suppressed my inclinations until this very day.

A young man with high-functioning autism, who had not enjoyed the benefits of the crucial behavioral education therapy and mentoring that would follow in later decades, could hardly have found himself in worse circumstances: I was unpopular with the peerage, undesirable to contemporary females, and unable to indulge my growing, impulsive need to immerse myself into the reservoirs of sexually charged material...which had been unavailable in my house, due to the austere nature of my parents, since before the age of five, when the interest spontaneously presented itself.

I had resolved, shortly after the age of 12, to never pursue even the most fleeting semblance of a relationship, for such optimism was futile: my autism would yield nothing more than failed proposals and their inevitably recurring humiliations. But such resolutions, though they may be steadfastly held for a few days, are abandoned in a few moments of bleak despair. Unable to change the quality of my station, I decided that, should I become unable to ever acquire sex on my own, I would pursue the next best thing: MEDIA DISPLAYING the intimate activities of those who could. And having a keen curiosity, and a very honed familiarity with stealth, I was able to acquire the first magazines of my youth through the ancient art of "a guy who knows a guy." At the cost of $12, a $5 magazine had been procured, and I was free to indulge my obsession with the previously inaccessible female anatomy in a most entertaining way.

From there, it evolved to videos, which were harder to obtain given that one needed to be in close proximity with the display case in order to ascertain the merit of said product; the solution did not present itself until the legal age had arrived. My natural repugnance continued to remain unchanged through high school, and so I failed to acquire the vile, misogynistic competitiveness of my more successful peers; their aggressive natures, and ruthlessly competitive approaches only reinforced their jaded sexual appetites, making them prone to prefer spectacle in lieu of quality. I suspect this is the key component to the pathological demand for sexual acts of a continually fantastical--and often degrading--"extreme" genres in the field itself.

And so, with no experience in dating or relationships, and an obvious lack of profound good looks, I ventured into adulthood celibate and miserable. My accrued talents of humor, intelligence, and polite behavior failed to compensate for a lack of animal magnetism and thus I was ignored by even the most casual of encounters with the fairer sex. I did not have occasion to lose my virginity until I was 24, and did so with the aid of an adventurous girl younger than myself at a swinger's party...almost the only viable option for me even today. I soon began to take not just solace, but also happiness in my porn, for it represented to me, not the constant ineptitude and failing in my social life, but rather the convenience and variety not found in a normal relationship. And if the truth be told, the dangers of real sex were not to be found either: there is nary a man who, upon the instance of consuming porn, is assaulted by the unpleasant smells, fluids, and frightful diseases, which would surely follow an authentic sexual encounter.

Without a catalyst for escalation, my porn addiction of today has remained largely unchanged: I abhor violent and aggressive sexual scenes, as well as fake lesbian titles. My distaste for anal stems not from ignorance but an obsessive-compulsive fixation on hygiene. And though my sexual life is far from active, it is also far from dead, having occasion to procure a handful of single-encounter horizontal partners at various events where that manner of play is demand, and professors of that science always welcome.

I've come to accept pornography as my surrogate sexual lifestyle: devoid of complication, disease, and odoriferous unpleasantness, and heavily populated with a wide range of women to satisfy every craving, it is a hollow yet adequate solution to my otherwise celibate bachelor existence. And while I am still aware of the inherent pathetic quality of being a man alone at my age, I would much rather be the connoisseur of an under-appreciated form of entertainment continuing to transcend the aesthetic limits hitherto placed upon it by forces of official history than a harried everyman, harangued by the burdens of emotional turmoil, personality conflict, atrophying sexual energy, and ludicrously inexcusable asinine conversations and circular arguments.

Women do not find me attractive enough for anything other than a gilded chair in the Friend Zone. And it is a development about which I can do nothing. So rather than dwell and ferment in my own isolation, I can use porn to have the "good parts" of a relationship while evading the burdens of engaging in a relationship with someone that will inevitably, statistically fail.

In closing, there are those who would sarcastically chastise me with a familiar chestnut of "Yeah, sit and watch your porn so you don't have to go through the actual effort of meeting and getting to know somebody else in the world." To those people I would respond:

"Look at the world and tell me the pleasure of becoming acquainted with it."