I’ve been into porn since I was maybe eleven, twelve years old

by Onania MasturBOT | inspired by IamTheEmeraldWriter 

I’ve been into porn since I was maybe eleven, twelve years old. That’s the kind of confession a person expects to make through cupped hands over their mouth in a confessional, isn’t it? But in my mind it’s more like a badge, or maybe a quaint little quirk, because the weirdest part isn’t the age or the fact I was probably slightly too young for it, but that those were also the only years in my life I was specifically and deliberately dedicated to watching porn. Like it was a hobby, or a subject I might later major in. I remember the sense of ritual invincibility: the familiar hum of the family desktop, the way I’d scroll through those old mid-2000s websites with their blurry thumbnails and oversaturated colors, and how I’d approach every video almost as a film critic—what were the themes, the emotional texture, the tension in the plot? I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s actually the truth. I was so focused on the storylines—yes, the actual narrative, which is how I’d phrase it if a parent ever caught me. “I’m here exclusively for the narrative,” and while that would’ve been a lie to everyone else, it was at least half-true to me.

See, most of what I watched was softcore—the kind of thing late-night cable stations would air if they thought only insomniac adults were awake. Cinemax, Showtime, the old hidden channels where the image would scramble and dissolve and you’d squint through static to catch a breast or the flash of a hip. It wasn’t the nudity, exactly. Or maybe it was, but not in the way most people would expect. I liked the idea of desire, the slow build, the way two characters would circle each other for forty-five minutes and only at the last moment tumble into bed. It was the anticipation that got me, the promise of something forbidden just around the corner. Looking back, it’s not that weird. Everyone likes a good story. It just so happened mine came with a soft-focus money shot.

For a couple of years, I had this little secret. I’d imagine myself as the director, or sometimes as the main character—the forbidden lover, the frustrated spouse, the mysterious stranger with the tragic past. Sometimes I’d imagine I was the camera itself, a floating voyeuristic eye slipping through doors and windows, watching the action unfold in real time. I never actually did anything about it. Not physically. I’d just watch, and wonder, and feel this weird ache in my chest or somewhere else, like a hunger that had no name.

Then, when I was thirteen, everything changed. You hear that phrase a lot, mostly in bad YA novels, but in this case it’s perfectly accurate. I was in the eighth grade, and for some reason, our health teacher—Ms. Jensen, who wore thick glasses and corduroy pants and had a voice that could peel paint—decided that her students needed to know more about their bodies and what they might want to do with them. For most of the year, our sex-ed curriculum was the predictable parade of anatomy diagrams and warnings about chlamydia, but on the last day of the unit, she did something different. She gathered us into a circle, sat on one of those tiny plastic chairs, and asked, “Does anyone know what masturbation is?” She said it like she was dropping a bomb and bracing for shrapnel.

A few kids snickered. I kept my face blank, poker-straight, but my heart was pounding so hard I could hear it echo in my ears. “It’s when you, uh, touch yourself,” someone stammered. “Like, for pleasure.” Ms. Jensen nodded. She spent the rest of the period talking about orgasms and self-exploration and how everyone does it at some point, and how it’s not dirty or wrong or even particularly interesting, biologically speaking. But to me, it landed like some sacred commandment. I’d spent years watching other people on screens and never once considered that any of it could be replicated in real life, let alone by myself.

That night, I went home and sat in front of my computer, index finger hovering over the mousepad, and finally let the storylines get to me. I watched as two actors exchanged glances, felt the heat of their imaginary skin, and for the first time reached down and tried to feel what they might feel. My body responded so violently, so instantly, that I almost knocked myself off the chair. It was embarrassing and thrilling, like finding a hidden switch in your own house that turns all the lights on at once. I did it again the next night. And again. Soon, I couldn’t watch porn without wanting to touch myself, and I sure as hell couldn’t touch myself without wanting to watch, too. The two things became so entwined in my mind that I stopped being able to separate them.

It was as if learning about masturbation flipped some irreversible switch. I still think it’s hilarious, in a cosmic sense, that I learned about it at school, of all places—there’s something so pure and so profane about that. But after that, porn lost its innocence. I couldn’t approach it like a story anymore. It was a tool. A means to an end. I still watched, of course, but now there was an impatient urgency to it, a background hum of expectation that never really went away. I’d gone from being a passive observer to an active participant, and nothing would ever be the same.