The First Porn Experience

I don’t watch porn.  This statement is a fact and not an admittance of being a prude or anything.  I don’t see the point in porn.  Something gets lost in translation in watching another guy go to town on some plastic looking chick with daddy issues while she spouts out ridiculous things (i.e. “Oh yea, give me that cock!”) while you’re supposed to manually relieve yourself.  So are you jacking off to the guy banging the girl or the girl getting cornholed?  Call me weird, but it doesn’t do it for me.  Even so, I have a history with porn and nude magazines starting from the age of 8.

When I was 8, my parents decided to uproot the family and move to New Jersey from Queens, NY in the summer.  It was heartbreaking to leave the only neighborhood I’d known, but the prospect of having a yard gave me a raging 8 year old boner.  In addition, the expense of this move as well as our new status as home owners precipitated the need for uh, less then legal ways of obtaining cable.  This finally meant premium cable channels and what was unknown to me at the time as existing, porn.

The first night after we had arranged most of our furniture, my family all sat down in front of the TV to try out this new cable box.  My parents started flipping through the channels, exclaiming with each subsequent premium channel how amazing it was to watch movies on HBO or Cinemax now.  And then it happened.  Skimming through the channels, my parents hit a scrambled channel that look like an abstract watercolor painting.  The sounds were muffled and then…a groan. A loud groan. And then an “oooooooooh yea baby” in the direct inflection of a former toddler beauty queen.  I’m not sure if it was paralysis of the moment or curiosity, but my parents lingered on this channel until I broke the silence and asked what was happening causing them to snap out of their stupor and explain we were not allowed to view this channel whatsoever.  This being summer and me being a mischievous little cunt, I was determined to find out what it all meant.

If you want to know the truth about it, most of my summer time was spent unsupervised with my sister or hanging out with the neighborhood kids my age.  My parents didn’t have the means to afford having one of them be a homemaker, never mind hiring a babysitter.  As it was, summer time turned into “Lord of the Flies” between my sister and I; a battle of attrition to determine who could make the most out of the scraps left in the fridge until my mom stopped by at noon to make lunch.  Despite the culinary experimentation (and subsequent failures), I enjoyed the ample free, alone time I had to get in trouble.  Which is what I did. Frequently.

One fine Monday morning (to be fair, it could have been any day.  As a kid, summer time melds together into one long day where the only thing worth counting is how many scrapes and cuts you’ve accrued), I decided it was time to find out what was happening on the scrambled channel.  I plotted my scheme to maximize discovery time and minimize disturbance from my sister who would surely tell on me.  I told her I was going to watch sports on my parent’s TV, a sure fire way to get rid of her, and that she’d be free to watch Disney on our non-illegal cable box TV.  She agreed to this arrangement and settled down to watch “Fraggle Rock.”

Oh god the anticipation was killing me.  I was finally about to find out what was occurring on this channel.  Would I see my first boob?  I flicked on the TV and hurried skimmed the channels until I found my blurried treasure.  And oh the magical noises emanating from the TV!  I couldn’t take any more of these sounds, these siren calls aggressively commenting on the unseen things being done by a random guy.  “Why won’t you clear up you stupid TV?!” was a constant thought in my head.  I was primed, I was ready.  I wanted to see what was happening and then the screen started to flicker.  It flickered until, YES! – it was appearing to break and settle.  And there it was I was face to screen with this large appendage considerably larger then my arm and whiter too.  All this time I had been frustrated about not being able to see a gigantic penis on screen.  My eyes darted looking for any female form on screen, my confused mind calculating the years of psychiatric help I would need should this continue.  To my surprise, another male entered the room.  Wait what? Where’s the female?  This male then – ON NO HE ISN’T – kissed the other male’s mushroom head.  All this time I had been viewing the gay porn channel (I’d later find out their serious research and analysis that the gay porn channel was 2 channels before the straight porn one. C’est la vie).  I was too shell-shocked to comprehend what was happening but then I saw the clock on the cable box nearing 12pm, meaning my mom would be home soon.

How was I going to get away with this?  And really, what was I going to get away from, watching gay porn? I quickly changed the channel to the local Spanish network.  I managed a quick inventory of the crime and cover up to make sure everything was ok, but then I remembered the “last” button on the remote.  This button would recall the last channel watched so I entered the other Spanish channel and tested the “last” button to make sure it would toggle between the two.  I then placed the remote in the place where I had found it and made sure to clean up any trace of my presence.  Walking out of the room, I swore myself off porn and the like, but curiosity would later get the best of me.

My First Girlfriend Part 2 - The Prom Bitches!

As we arrived in our mutual classmate’s mom’s station wagon, it began to dawn on me, “OH MY GOD, I may finally get to make out tonight!”  I couldn’t believe my luck as I had gone from awkward, chunky kid best known for laughing like Elmo, to going to prom with the biggest crush of my life.  Of course, not all was rainbows and unicorns.  The mom kept us outside in the blistering June heat taking pictures to commemorate the event.  Any swagger I was feeling about being at prom was slowly melting away into my Dad’s outsized suit.  As we finally entered the depressingly sparse dance hall where prom was being held, it was time to party.

               

Suffice it to say, prom wasn’t as large a success as I had planned.  Prior to prom, I kept thinking back to the many nights I spent watching scrambled porn on our fake cable box.  I never really knew what I was looking at (was that a boob or a shoulder? Or in the worst case -  “God I hope that body is not a dude, that would be really weird for me…”) but I had an idea of what consenting couples should be doing and sounding like while doing it.  For some reason I thought I was heading to an evening of Yadia and I treating eachother's bodies like prepubescent amusement parks.
               

Prom started and Yadia and I stood next to each other awkwardly, like baby lion cubs going out to hunt but not exactly sure the process or why.  Finally the song of the year came on, K-C & JoJo’s classic “All my Life” – which let’s be real is one of the most awkward songs in the history of mankind, it’s about one of the singer’s daughters and has lyrics such as “said I promise to never fall in love with a stranger, you’re all I’m thinking of”, WEIRD – and we figured this was about as good as time as ever to start getting our bogey on.  And so we started dancing, meaning we started moving in a halted rhythm within the general vicinity of each other and then...well then we never danced again.  Yadia ended up running to her friends when they arrived while I stood in the middle of the dance floor searching developing an exit strategy.  Fortunately, one of my classmates Randy had somehow smuggled in a small portable TV with which we spent the rest of prom hiding in a corner watching game 5 of the 1998 NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz.  I know, I know, I was SUCH a pimp.

                

 Prom ended and I hadn’t spoken to Yadia after our initial dance.  In my one futile attempt to get close to her, I was thwarted by Janie.  This isn’t to say Janie stopped me on purpose; just she was of the body type which prevented me from getting around her.  Unintentionally, she became an offensive lineman for Yadia, blocking out any outsiders such as myself.   And that was it.  Prom ended and then we had graduation.  Now I’m not sure why – maybe she felt bad about the non-fulfillment of my own imaginary prom date pleasures – but Yadia invited me to come hang at her house, located a couple blocks from mine, during the summer.  I of course obliged and so began the summer of 1998.