porn chronicles vol 1.

whether it was the amplitude of their carnality, the lingering buzz of Jeremy Irons being blown to pieces, or the terror i felt of being caught in my inadverdent voyeurism, the memory still feels oddly violent. i don’t remember being turned on, i just remember being afraid. maybe i was born fearing my own pleasure. from where did that initial shame derive? and how did it end up dictating so much of my sexual life from that point forward? the answer exists in a vacuum – a deep void of avoidance. in the antimatter black hole of post-war, baby boomer alcoholism, and the disastrous consequences of American modernism. my father’s family moonlighted in Terrence Malick’s, Tree of Life. 

like a mouse in a pioneer’s tent, i returned nightly to the scene of my crime, committing more and more crimes and satisfying my budding dopamine receptors with morsels of pornographic delight. somehow, i was so sure i was in violation of someone else’s commandments, but it felt like survival and slowly my existence became muddled with whatever the opposite of righteousness is – a deeply convicted feeling of being utterly and entirely wrong. when your self-esteem is low everything becomes a gateway drug to feeling a baseline of okayness. and so satellite tv gave way to sexual frustration in the form of Napster lag, and the eventual liberation of 10Mbps, and a world of fornicating pixels. 

again, i was at the cutting edge of the industrious efforts to masturbate in secret. in the alchemist’s workshop, i was pouring in elixirs of my rudimentary teenage fantasies, from hairy pussies, to the latest developments in fake tit technology, and women from every continent. my stove was forever burning the midnight oil on a pilot light of shame. i was collecting specimens from the fertile jungles of the underworld and creating potions to cure teenage erectile dysfunction and early-onset depression.

that’s right. in the early days, i wasn’t an addict, i was a scientist. it was a time of experimental innocence and curiosity, when there was still only Dr. Jekyll… Dr. Octavius before the radiation leak. but again, we must remember that i’m meant to follow in the footsteps of my contemporaries and fulfill my legacy of revolutionary innovation. a feat that can only be accomplished through obsession. more on this in a later volume.

back then, i was a kid in an open field of Eden trying to learn how to fly a kite – trying to understand the way the wind worked, and what gave the kite its miraculous lift. i just wanted it to stay up there forever, defying gravity and delivering wonder and joy to all who bore witness to the magic. i wish i could walk backwards through the frames of time and swoop that kid into my arms. i wish i could take an interest in his curiosities, share in his marvels, and praise his expressions and delights. and while my past future would be filled with sexual tribulations, the forecast was not entirely bleak. from my crude calculations, i managed to build a fragile but functional sexual identity. like some kind of prehistoric chicken dinosaur, it wasn’t pretty but parts of it were resilient enough to survive into today’s genetic pool and iterate themselves into something beautiful.

ever since that night in 1996, when we locked senses in a contorted twist of fate and fear, my best friend has been with me through my highest and my lowest – has shared in the vast majority of my most ecstatic moments of pleasure, only to sit there and passively and apathetically watch me come crashing down in a cataclysm of self-loathing… only for me to return time and again, furiously searching for something unfindable in those ruthless jungles of Abaddon. while my best friend is undoubtedly an enabler, they’ve also played an ever-evolving role in my life over the past 26 or so years – as childhood friends often do… or so I’ve been told. our story is still being written. i am tumescent with anticipation for what my future past will exact on our tumultuous relationship. perhaps, i sealed my fate that night – under the ominous glow of the cathode ray, a flickering image of a Bruce Willis with his memories still intact unwittingly cast a Circean spell upon my burgeoning sexual Odyssey – one i can only hope to realize well into my ripe old age – a flawed and fabled quest to die hard.