The first time I came was in my bedroom with all the lights on and a chair blocking the door to prevent my mom from walking in. I was 14. While touching myself never felt wrong or gross, something about watching people fuck seemed more off limits, something only boys did. But as I started flicking the bean more, I quickly got bored just imagining PG-13 situations in my head or focusing on the feeling. I wanted, no needed, to see some kind of penetration, fingers in pussies, dicks in mouths, to hear the whimpers, cries, “fuck yeah, like that,” flesh slapping flesh to get off.
I started off reading “erotica” on Urban Dictionary definitions of words (lol) but quickly jumped into trolling Tumblr porn blogs for five-minute clips using the search words “trib,” “lesbian,” “3some,” “sex porn video,” and names of male pornstars who my teenage virginal self thought didn’t indiscriminately pound women but fucked, like actually fucked. This sort of cracked open in me this intense need to consume and learn as much as I could about sex, desire, and eroticism in general. But in the ongoing process of growing into my sexual self, sometimes I wonder how the intensely exploitative penis-centric sex and male-gaze-heavy porn industry affected everyone I had sex with, especially men, or even talked with sex about.
When I walked into the theater to go see The Stranger‘s HUMP! Film Fest, the short porn film festival curated by our very own Dan Savage and a team of porn enthusiasts, on Wednesday night, I was eager to see what type of other perverted miscreants would show up. Turns out a lot of middle-aged couples. The mood seemed to be decidedly giddy, bordering on flirtatious. As I settled into my seat, I thought I’d have hangups about watching a Boy Scout get come all over his face while my arm brushed my seatmate, but that wall fell away pretty quickly.
