Second Thoughts

Repost from old blog, 10/20/2006: As far as incest porn is concerned, this post is quite outdated.

Today I was getting ready for work when I realized that some of my porn had finally downloaded. I opened it up for a quick look, and saw something completely new for the first time: I saw twin brothers having sex with each other.

This kind of blew my mind – after the fact. As I was watching I was way too turned on and fascinated to think about what I was seeing, but as I walked to work some questions surfaced: Was what I just watched illegal? What does it mean that I just witnessed a huge social taboo shattered on film? Is this a sign of our moral decline? But most importantly: how much longer before I can come home and masturbate to it?

Then I started thinking of that ridiculous Glenn Beck clip I posted on Monday, about how porn is addictive. And I realized that that clip hit kind of close to home for me, because I really do worry that I consume too much porn, that I prefer fantasy over reality, and that I’m somehow harming myself because of it.

But fuck that. It’s just the shame talking, the same shame that made that dumb schmuck on the Glenn Beck clip believe he was doing himself a service by going on TV (and dragging his wife on there, too – what a jerk) and telling people how much he used to beat off. If I’m gonna look at porn and jerk off, I’m not going to feel ashamed about it. It’s not the end of the world. Nobody’s getting hurt.

I haven’t jerked off the to the twins yet but I’m going to as soon as I finish writing this.

—–

I was standing at the bus stop, watching lots of college kids stream by (it was Friday night on homecoming weekend). A group of three boys and four girls passed me by, and I immediately got a good vibe from them. I thought, Those are my kind of people.  They seemed relaxed. I thought,  They probably get high.  They were pretty, but in individualistic ways – not fashionable or conformist.

I turned to watch them go and thought about following them. The night seemed filled with possibility. I imagined trailing them to a party, subtly intergrating myself into their night, getting to know them, maybe even becoming their friend. Just witnessing their lives for one night.

Then I heard somebody say “Hi,” and I turned around to see two perky, fresh-faced young people – a guy and a girl – standing about five inches from my face.


^^visual representation

“Hi!” they said.
“Hi,” I said.
“How are you tonight?” she said.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You doing alright tonight?” he said.
“What’s up?” I asked again, as if I couldn’t figure it out. They handed me a card for their bible study. “We’re from the Greater Pittsburgh Church of Christ.”

I talked to them as I waited for my bus. They asked me a lot of questions, and succeeded in making me feel interesting and accepted. We talked about J.K. Rowling, about writing as a career, blahdey blah blah.

I got tired of it. I wanted to acknowledge the artificiality of the situation – my belief that they had approached me and were attempting to befriend me on false pretenses. They didn’t want to become my friend, they wanted to get me to come to their church. Right?

“So why do you do this?” I asked.

The guy got nervous, started rocking on his heels, as if he was afraid that I was getting confrontational. But the girl didn’t miss a beat. She said she discovered God after she came to college, and it was a great thing that made her life better and she wanted to share it with people. I could respect that. I asked her if it was something she thought she’d do for the rest of her life. “God willing,” she said.

But I don’t think she got what I meant. I wasn’t asking if she’d be a Christian for the rest of her life, I meant would she continue to just walk up to people and start talking to them. Because in a weird way, I really envy the balls that the two of them had, to start a conversation with a random stranger. Kind of like what I wanted to do with that group of cool kids just a few minutes ago… (Who, at this point, I’d completely forgotten about. What happened to them, anyway? Where did they go?)

So if I had tried to integrate myself into the evening of those cool kids, would I have been acting on false pretenses? Just getting to know them for having the sake of “an experience,” using them to tell a story, using them to make my life more interesting? I considered the idea that I was no better than the Christians, because we both had motives, because we were both doing it for selfish reasons.

Well, fuck that. The Christians have the balls that I don’t have, that may be true, but their focus is too narrow, they don’t know what they’re missing. The experiences they could be having, the people they could be meeting…I can’t even imagine. But their mission is black and white, there’s no exploration, no discovery. To them, you’re somebody who comes to church, or somebody who doesn’t.

I won’t.

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