Cumming Of Age In America: The Evolution Of Pornography In My Lifetime
My first experience with smut was a Playboy, and, actually, I wouldn’t even call it smut. Compared to today’s adult entertainment it was innocent and pure. It was Hugh Hefner celebrating what arguably evolution’s greatest achievement: the female body. A tasteful photographic homage to breasts, butt and hairy bushes. The shaved pussy wasn’t even trending yet. People would have laughed at a muff that looked like it had undergone six months of chemotherapy. Playboy made me appreciate every inch of a woman’s body. It wasn’t until years later that I’d see a Swank Magazine or a Hustler with the women spreading their vaginas for the camera and posing with sweaty, tan, muscular men who were resting abnormally large penises on their foreheads. Playboy was pure.
I discovered sexual intercourse on film. A friend of mine had told me about the Spice Channel. I’d wait for my parents to pass out and I’d sneak downstairs to begin an exhausting process. We didn’t have the channel, but if I fucked with the antenna enough, I was able to see a tit in the top left corner, maybe one in the bottom right. The colors were green, red, grey, blue and yellow. If I was lucky and got the antenna in the right spot, Kenny G music would kick in and I’d see a couple making sweet, slow love in the missionary position. I wasn’t old enough to ejaculate, but it didn’t matter. I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to do whatever he was doing with those women.
Getting the Spice Channel was manual fucking labor. I had to put forth physical effort to see some uncreative softcore dry fucking. Kids today have no idea how lucky they are. They can type “sex” into Google on their iPhone and get some double penetration interracial hardcore in 1080 P. Full HD in less than thirty seconds. I’d have to troll chat rooms on AOL on a dial up connection, instant messaging with pedophiles to get a picture of a woman with her shirt off. And it would take 45 minutes to download a quarter of the picture to see half a nipple.
I’m not complaining. I’m grateful because I was eased into hardcore pornography. It was a slow process. The first sex I saw wasn’t two girls and 50 guys. A 12-year-old watching a hysterical squirter projectile ejaculate will never, ever look at a woman the same again. I’m sure the cream pies, facials and gang bangs were out there, but they were hard to get. You had to go to a closed-off back room at your local video store, or go to one of those truck stop crystal meth porn shops to get that stuff. And they were probably illegal back then. Now you just Google “porn,” and five clicks of the mouse later, you’re watching a video titled “25 Guys Jerk Off In Blond Teen’s Face.” The difficulty in finding pornography was what made me fall in love with it. She used to play hard to get.
The vagina is the most magical and precious thing I’ve come across on this tainted planet. This beautiful reproductive organ used to have the leading role in every heterosexual fuck film. I thought the cooter’s career was bullet proof. I thought porn without the vagina as the main character would be like Rocky without Stallone. But I was wrong. Somewhere in this ever changing landscape of X-rated film, the vagina has taken a back seat. It’s now become a warm up orifice, somehow devalued and placed in the same category as the mouth. This amazing hole that my — and so many other men’s lives — evolve around, has been reduced to an opening act. It’s been replaced by the new main event. The new headliner. The Anus.
Vaginal intercourse in porn is now in the same category as the blow job — it’s foreplay. The asshole must have some pretty aggressive lobbyists, because now you won’t find a film without anal. The change was a coup, completely out of the realm of the democratic process. There was no advertising; no one was told — it just happened. The vagina took a back sat to the brown eye. It’s like watching The Rolling Stones open for Gwar. I’d rather watch my parents take turns going down on each other.
I’m not bitter, though. The industry is constantly changing and going through phases. Right now the asshole is the headliner and the big butt craze is at its peak. A blow job is no longer slow and sensual, but a violent deep throat act consisting of gagging, spit flying and eyes tearing as the female actress pretends to enjoy the penis in her windpipe and throat. But it’s a trend, just like the Asian craze of the mid-to-late 90s and teen obsession in the early 2000s. Trends and phases come and go, but the essence and spirit of American pornography remain the same. It’s been there with me since my very first erections and for that I am forever grateful. I am grateful for my cumming of age in America.