THIS IS THE MAIN CHUNK OF AN ESSAY I WROTE TAKING A TRAGIC-COMIC SKEW ON MAN'S FIGHT AGAINST HIS OWN IMAGINAION-AS ALWAYS SELF-DEGRADATION IS THE BEST HUMOUR

...Then I got into porn ' it started out light, like any first hit or snort or sip. Then I was sneaking home porno mags from the gas station down the street, pranking phone sex lines, and even, yes even, recording the exercise channel when I need a quick fix that was so hard to find in mid-western small town America. Years of this ( and even being dubbed the official porn chairman of my college fraternity) was taking its numbing toll and I wasn't even aware of it. Somehow, through some galactic practical joke played out between God and Satan, I have been cursed with the opportunities to have dated some of the most beautiful girls on the planet through the past ten years of my life. These were smart girls, funny girls, girls with libidos that would dwarf the national deficit. These were athletic girls, artsy girls, rich girls, successful girls, girls from all parts of the country, and most important ' these were girls that loved me. Now they are girls who have ran the fuck away from me, cursing my name, and stuffing needles in my likeness. I'm not talking simply not returning my calls, I'm speaking of changing zip codes and entering into some sort of Dating Protection Program here. Why? The answer is three little truth filled words ' I fucked up.
I gave up their warm bodies for recorded images of sexual fire. I was a pure stupid victim of the 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the mattress' mentality. I bored easily and I always felt some spiritual need to upgrade ' to trade in my current model for the new best thing. Now I'm alone ' plain and simple. And I'm two steps away from chopping off my manhood and hanging it off the nearest flagpole in effigy. Some people would call it the booby prize ' I call it the dumb dong award. But I've come to the conclusion that I can't depart with my dear friend. I forgive too easily, yet I can never forget. Like a junky and their needle it's me and my dick. I love him, and I hate him ' but, as the old cracked smile saying goes ' every time we have a fight ' I win.
Growing up, once the guilt removed itself slowly after night upon night of self-satisfying session I went to town. My sex life was played out over and over again continuously rewound and fast forwarded, paused and slow-moed , cutting through pointless dialogue and cheesy lighting. I had every pin-up girls hobbies memorized. I knew that Gina was a tigress, Hilda was a bored Hungarian housewife looking for a little spice in her life, Rita had a weakness for tequila shots, and Raylene ' my fav ' was studying to be a Nuclear Physicist. DVD technology only inticed me even further. I could be my own director, choosing camera angles and positions. Interactive menus and speed control made my bliss virtually endless. Then came the internet which is worthy of volumes on its own demonic accord. I found fetishes I didn't even know I had. I never knew ten second streaming video clips of senior citizens pissing on rotweilers could be so erotic! If I wanted to sneak a peak on the latest happenings of any college dorm room there was a webcam broadcasting it all over the constantly expanding universe. If you think your mom is a hottie chances are I've seen photo spreads of her getting it on with the Oakland Raiders.
And I was spent! Hours upon hours upon days upon months upon years wasted over the Styrofoam cutout convenience of pornography. I once heard a famous orator speak about the dumbness of porn. He said that pornography was destroying the hunter-gatherer mentality of man. It was making us lazy in our pursuit of happiness. Why take care of yourself? Why go out on the hunt? Why bother with the sexuality game when you had it all right here in front of you ' blazing up your video screen ' melting your mind ' killing your relationships ' adding to the body count of lovers lying at your semen crusted feet.
This whole tangent brings me here ' to my new apartment ' or more importantly ' the transition from one apartment to the next. No, I haven't got freaky with the hot neighbor across the complex nor am I spending countless hours at the pool pumping my brain full of masturbatory fodder 'not just yet. Give me time, it's only been five days! Due to contractual obligations I have decided to take my time in moving from one apartment to the next ' an entire month if I feel like it. In the past I have usually had to force moving into one grueling profanity filled day. Sometimes I have even had to spend weekends in a hotel while all my belongings remained in transit. So now, I'm taking my precious time ' getting a feel for the neighborhood watering holes and dealing with ever present work stress one day at a time. This slow transition, has led to several dilemmas, the following being the most pressing.
I am not one of those privileged fucks who owns one of those privileged fuck flat screen televisions that you can mount on your privileged fuck wall. My television is huge and it is heavy, and as of now I no longer have cable. Due to lack of friends and accessibility to a truck I am taking refuge in the new apartment while all my heavy furniture remains behind, for now. With me I have an air mattress, some books, and my stereo (and, of course, toilet paper) that's pretty much it 'everything-period. This makes my means of self-love primitive. And I have found this to be both enlightening and frustrating. But one must replace convenience with effort, and the work has been hard, but the 'rewards' rich.
Like a junky going through withdrawl I have kept to myself in nights of curtain drawn seclusion. It is then, when the light is slipping away and my frustrations over the day at work are disappearing with it, that the ritual takes place. All of a sudden I'm back home, in my bedroom growing up, and my world is void of porn. At first, I have the urge to throw a DVD in this here laptop, but then I am angry at myself for even entertaining the notion of cheating on the road to nirvana. If anything, I have become a fantasy purist ' we're getting back to basics here.
On the slowly deflating air mattress, in the middle of the small living room (which is half the size of the old one ) , I lie down and begin. It's harder to clear one's mind than you think. I have to get real creative here. The first few moments are off and running to a good start. The fantasy woman is obtainable and ready to go, our surroundings are taboo and oh so arousing. I usually place the act somewhere like the storage room at work, her trailer while her husbands out, the confessional at St Patrick's Cathedral, or home plate at Shea Stadium. Things are getting interesting, and it looks like it's going to be a quick trip to ecstacy. That is until my boss shows up behind my eyes giving me some spiel on the importance of filling up a ketchup bottle almost all the way to the top, but not ALL the way to the top. Or I hear the voice of my old man on the phone barking out all my financial failures.
Then all is lost and I'm back at square one.
I try a different technique, a different angle, a different hand ' something ANYTHING to get me back to that point from which I once viewed the universe.
If only I had that television, then I could just put in a video and 'NO YOU BASTARD! THIS IS A MATTER OF PRINCIPAL NOW!
So the horse is out of the stall and off running. He's wounded, he's dragging behind, but he's off none the same. My mind is clearing itself worry by worry. I can hear her voice ' her lips are cold, but they are there-before me, even, if I try hard enough, there is the pressure of her hand pulling me close, the warmth of inside 'the fact that I am a month late on my utility bill! Here it comes ' my mind is doing all sorts of long division financial planning , it begins calculating just how the hell I'm going to keep my heavy head above water for another week. Now if I can save 200 dollars a week ' I should start working on that novel, at least submit a short story next month ' I could ----
Lost again. My mind has ran away with itself leaving this race horse with balls the size of small planets and a grudge even larger than religion.
I roll over and look at the clock ' forty six minutes have passed without success. I guess that's a good thing, right? I mean chicks dig a guy who can last a long time ' or so I'm told, but what if they get bored? That's a possibility too. Then I remember Jamie, my first real love, and the best. She was one of those beautiful girls. Not Trendy beautiful, but beauty from the earth, beauty that was going to last for a long long time. She was warm and full, she welcomed you with uninhibited laughter and the power of all things good. Her body was lovely, I've searched for better words to describe it, but that's the best one-lovely.
We were young. We were THE couple in school. Two years exactly together, and for the first one we were on fire in a good way ' for the latter year we were on fire in a bad way. But my mind is going back to her whether I like it or not ' so I follow. And the horse reluctantly peers out of the gate with that narrowed eyed look of 'don't fuck with me this time, bitch. His balls are in a cast with the devil's signature. It's a collage now, a panoramic bliss of learning about each other, of learning about sex, of experimenting, of cheap hotel room getaways, of staying in bed for days, missing classes just to get our fix of each other ' of endless streams of nights talking about nothing and everything. Speaking of marriage and bringing it all on 'everything and making it ours. But now, the road has turned and reality takes place of fantasy. My mind replays the last few moments of our relationship. Infidelities come to the surface. There is the play by play of our fights which, more often than not, ended in violence. Of course, it ends with the last days of college and the suicide attempt which left me alone and insane.
Needless to say all sensations of pleasure have left the building. I'm sweaty and I'm flaccid and all I want to do is deflate along with this mattress. But I'm stubborn, so I am not giving up ' no matter if it takes all night and an extra set of hands!
The horse has given up and moved to Fort Lauderdale.
I'm almost there. I swear. My television may be clear across town, but my libido is here, and I'm only mere seconds away from escavating it. I will have victory.
And then there was Cat. Kinky Cat, my boss and roomie. We lived and worked together for seven months secluded in upstate New York. She came from South Dakota and she was everything mid-west. I think that was why we ended up together-we were both homesick. Something familiar is always so familiar. Cat was soft and welcoming, and even better yet 'she was desperate. She liked it rough and she had a thing for her feet. More often than not she would get me drunk and take me downstairs in her room while her Golden Labrador Retreiver watched ' it only creeps me out now the more I think about it. She was infatuated with me and full of compliments ' nothing turns on a guy more than filling his head with pointless flattery. It's these compliments that get my blood flowing again. Back when I was real good, back when there was never a bad thing to say about my performance. Everything was aerobic, marathon, great feats of love making! Her face dissolves into all the others. The long string of Academic Affairs. My brain becomes a collage of heyday humping. When it seemed I could do no wrong and I could do, boy could I ever do. And I did. Shayla, the Jewish Princess, Megan ' the cowgirl who was large, but had a nice smell and wrote poems about me, Diane; the girl who gave me her virginity and was oh so tight, Soccer Girl, who got passed around for a reason, Kate; the volleyball player who was well out of my league but wanted something different, Em; the colleague who was married yet spent an entire night confessing her drunken lust for me with her hands claiming that if we kissed her whole world as she knew it would fall apart; Karenna, now married to a Midwestern publisher who went searching for me ' searching for fulfillment ' and then LuLu ' the last girl I ever loved who was once my best friend who ended up my best heartache. She was hot, not beautiful, but hot and we had a chemistry that will never ever be recreated , both in bed and out ' but don't remind me how that ended ' and '
And I'm crying now. First I think it is only because I've clamped my eyes shut so tight that pure soul is dripping out of them. But I soon realize that these are tears of sentiment. I am suffering from a sexual mid-life crisis. How pathetic, I think, I'm getting off on memories. Most people get off on fantasies made up of unobtainable substance. They take on movie stars or dead people in places too exotic for words. Not me, not now, at this moment I am jerking my way through a perverse slide show of former greatness. My sex life is flashing before my eyes and it's a memory almost worth dying over. Or killing myself for.
Is this it? Was that all I have to offer? Is my past summed up in one juicy romance novel sold in airports or published in sections on the pages of PENTHOUSE FORUM? Did it even happen in the first place? It had to of, it feels to painful now to be made up. Fantasies aren't supposed to hurt. That's why they're fantasies ' they are flawless perceptions of a reality man made by their creator. More vivid then these videos and magazines that have consumed most of my adult life. More alive than I feel right now.
Once I bitch slap myself back to some level of respect I realize that I have , somehow somewhere during this self-sexual collage, finished. The proof is here, there was some physical sensation followed by the biological evidence left in a Kleenex I have absent mindedly used to wipe the tears away...

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