April 12, 2011

A Guest Post by HLBB

At 10, I had proudly declared myself a feminist. I regularly read Ms. Magazine, could quote various injustices committed against women, and educated others about the inequalities that existed. By the time I reached my twenties I had a very firm opinion of porn: it was degrading to women, suppressive, insulting. Porn promoted negative body images of both men and women. It was dirty.

In my late 20’s, I met him. We were having an “arrangement” and I had come over for my weekly visit. Despite the nature of our “arrangement”, I was still surprised to see that he didn’t (bother to) hide the porn, knowing that I was coming over. Finding the DVD by the television, I picked it up and dangled in the air as if I had just found another woman’s panties.

“Ahem.”

“What?”

“You couldn’t put this away?”

“Why would I? Wait, YOU don’t watch porn?”

While I had my objections to porn, I had not discouraged the men in my life from having it; I know men watch it, I just didn’t want to see any evidence of it. Keep it in the back of the closet please and thanks. Having already experienced what was in my bag of tricks, my arrangement had assumed that I had learned a thing or two from viewings from my own collection (wrong; it was Anais Nin and other writings). I rolled my eyes in disgust, and reiterated the points I had been using since my teens: porn is degrading, trivial, badly written, poorly executed, with shit lighting, blah blah blah…

“So you, the writer, Miss ‘people watcher’… you like to watch people but you refuse to watch porn?”

I was stumped. He had a point.

He put the DVD back in the player and had me sit on the edge of the bed, facing the TV.

“Close your eyes, you’re not going to watch. I am. You’re going to experience it.”

Despite my reservations, I realized that this was the point of our “arrangement”; to learn and try new things. So I shrugged my shoulders and closed my eyes.

As soon as the actors started talking, my inner critic came out. The dialogue! The music! Oh and I bet the lighting is bad! I opened my eyes to confirm my assertions…

“Shhhh. Close your eyes.”

He fast-forwards through the small talk and bad banter that establishes all unlikely porn scenarios and got right to the heart of the matter. He turned the sound down and started to describe what the actors were doing on the screen in slow, exacting detail.

“He’s taken off his shirt and she’s in her bra and is wearing the tiniest pair of panties…I think you have a pair like this…he’s stroking her and she’s arching her back. But she…she doesn’t want this. She wants to suck his cock. So she stops him and pushes him back on the couch. Oh, he’s fully naked now…I have no idea how his pants got off…who cares? They’re off and she’s going at his cock…y’know, I think you do this better though. She’s good, but she’s basically deep throating him…he’s really hard though. He’s got her on her back now and he’s eating her out…and grabbing at her breasts. Your breasts though…?”

As he’s describing what’s happening on the screen, his hands make their way to my waist, up my rib cage and eventually start to fondle my breasts. One hand stays up while the other moves lower to unbutton my jeans. My breathing has becomes more and more shallow…

I have never wanted to watch porn so badly in my life.

“Are your eyes still closed?”

I nod slowly. Transfixed by what I’m not seeing, he continues to describe what is on screen while slowly removing my clothes.

“Do you want to watch?”

I nod a little faster. He stops the DVD.

“Your turn.”

Another scenario plays on his TV as I describe what’s happening. Having now seen porn with new eyes, I decided to let him keep his eyes open as I describe what’s happening on the screen.

We’re not watching porn…we’ve become voyeurs, enjoying our view of this anonymous couple while we act alongside them, each of us going at our own pace. This isn’t dirty…wait, it is dirty, but in good way. This is hot. This isn’t degrading. This is fun…(oooh, he likes that, I’m going to try that next). I realized that I’m not a substitute for the woman on the screen and she’s not a substitute for me…she’s fantasy and I’m fantasy made real.

Eventually the couple is forgotten and it’s just us. I hear them in the background…I know what they’re doing. I can see them in my mind’s eye as he…I close my eyes.

“Open your eyes. See that? Do you want me to do that?”

“Yes.”

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