Truth or dare.
Who here has masturbated to the lingerie section of the Sears catalog? Come on, show of hands.
Uh, so to speak.
Seriously now. You know, when you were a horny, desperate, screwed up kid in the eighties. Like before the internet. And Victoria's Secret.
Anyone? Anyone?
Ummm...how about JC Penny?
Spiegel? Come on! Those chicks were HOT!
Anyone?
Riiiiight.
Oooookay then. Me neither. Just checking. I'm gonna go now.
Actually, maybe I won't. Look, a lot of you Generation Y (or Z?) types don't recall, but there was a day when porn was hard to find. Sure you kids have known how to download live teen anal action since grade school. But when I was a kid, sneaking a peek at "The Joy of Sex" at Waldenbooks was enough to give me a week long chubby.
You may not remember this, but less than ten years ago, the internet was still the new, new thing. I didn't have access to email until 94. A browser till 95. Victoria's Secret wasn't hitting EVERYONE'S mailbox (now seemingly three times a week) until just a few years ago. And Penthouse and Hustler and all those other raunchy rags in the back corner of the liquor store were pretty much soft core until the mid, maybe even late nineties.
Not that I would know this without a Google search and extensive interviews. Honest Mom. How would I know?
When I was growing up, porn came only on video. Or worse, in an actual theater. Anyone remember Pee Wee and his peewee? Kids, that was 1991. Renting a porn flick from your local video store, you know, the one where all your friends (and MOM) went was a big, BIG obstacle for a kid just figuring out how his dick works. If you were old enough to rent porn, you usually had to do it at some seedy store half way across town.
My dad had no stack of Playboys (trust me, I looked EVERYWHERE). When you were in junior high in the mid-eighties and a raging ball of testosterone and you live with devout Catholics (actually, maybe that's not a good example), the procurement of appropriate spank material required the skills of a swashbuckling archeologist or a secret agent.
Genitalia Jones and the Temple of Poon. Always seeking that elusive holy grail: the porno tape.
Digging through discarded stacks of magazines out in the desert behind your house. Sneaking into bedrooms of people (like you didn't do that too), rifling the underwear drawer. Peeking under the mattress of your best friend's older brother. Finding the stash of old Playboys in the foot locker. Unearthing the discarded stolen Penthouse behind the 7-11. The lucky break of a new Hustler stuffed deep in someone's closet.
Back then porn was something dirty. It was something dangerous. And it was hard to come by.
Uh, so to speak.
Now porn stars grace snowboards and music videos. Jenna Jameson is a certifiable celebrity, and Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson have found that a little video indiscretion can be a very profitable embarrassment.
As happy as I am that people are seemingly more comfortable with sex (Janet's Nipplegate notwithstanding), I wonder if this is just desensitizing us to erotica and making us dig deeper and deeper into the primordial ooze of our collective reptilian brain just to get a boner. Look, just the words, "live teen anal action" would have caused an immediate uproar just ten years ago. Hell, I bet you have seen that phrase six times in your inbox this week alone.
Times have definitely changed. What once required a healthy (or unhealthy depending on how often you go to church) imagination now requires nothing more than an ISP. And with WIFI and mobile technology the inspiration for masturbation is available anywhere, anytime. I can't imagine being thirteen today. Put that kind of access in my hands and I think *I* would have been in my hands pretty much 24/7.
What was once a rite of passage has now become, well, as easy as pie.
So to speak.
Comments
Showing your age Jimbo...a dangerous thing...
Posted by: daisy | April 9, 2004 05:39 AM
You're right. You had to seek that stuff out. My parents had a Playboy and a couple of Penthouses hidden in the back of a bookcase cupboard, and I managed to find them and read all the stories (none of them were interviews, as I recall). Sometimes, when I got desperate, I drew my own "dirty" pictures of couples in pencil or wrote my own erotica. I was like, what, 12? Damn, I should have sold them to kids like you. I'd have made a ton of money.
Posted by: April | April 9, 2004 06:27 AM
C'mon, Jimbo... you forgot the one thing that kept a lot of us horny teenage boys going all those years. The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue? Remember? I remember vividly how NONE of the guys got a measurable amount of classwork done back in Catholic school the day the Swimsuit Issue would hit our mailboxes. I doubt it causes the same hysteria now.
btw, I think you've hit upon our generation's "walking to school uphill both ways" rant. Thirty years from now, we'll be telling our grandkids, "When I was your age, we didn't have all this fancy porn two clicks away. We jerked off to department store catalogs and were happy to have them!!"
Posted by: AVERAGE JOE | April 9, 2004 06:36 AM
Ahhhh... the good old days. I was fortunate - we had a stack of Playboys and even Forum magazines. I even stole a Playboy once for some guys I knew by sticking it in to my Teen Beat magazine that I bought. I have no idea why the cashier didn't catch on to how thick the magazine was...
Posted by: Christine | April 9, 2004 09:17 AM
I, too, was hitting puberty before internet-easy porn. And yes, I dug through my grandparents (yes, you read that right--grandparents) drawers to find something--anything--to get off to. I am not sure what was more disturbing: that I found hard-core porn mags in my grandfather's underwear drawer, or that, at 13, I was bored with them because I could imagine more interesting scenarios.
Posted by: Shawn | April 9, 2004 11:16 AM
I guess I lucked out. My dad had boxes and boxes of Playboy and Penthouse magazines. They pretty much made me the perv that I am today.
Posted by: melly | April 9, 2004 08:00 PM
Hehe. It really wasn't very easy to come by back then. I remember hanging out at the library where my dad volunteered on weekends, and happening upon "The Joy of Sex" when I was about 11. Whoo-hoo! That was pretty exciting at the time. In general though, the searching of other people's drawers and closets isn't always such a good idea. Especially when you find a HUGE jar of hairy vaseline and a kong-dong in your best friend's parent's nightstand drawer! YEEKS!
Posted by: Katie | April 9, 2004 08:06 PM
JC Penney for me. Seriously, I think I was 12.
Posted by: Donnie | April 9, 2004 10:37 PM
So what you're trying to say is that you whack your weasel on a daily basis because porn is so easy to find these days? ;)
Posted by: Dania | April 10, 2004 11:33 AM
sneaking the the Joy of Sex from my parents bedroom before they got home from work was my adolescent activity. the pencil drawn figures had such a 70's quality about them.
But you are right, I can't imagine being an adolescent today. Grab your laptop and find a Wifi spot behind the bushes after school I guess.
Posted by: brent | April 10, 2004 12:47 PM
the sears catalog?!?
you think you know a person...
Posted by: yvonne | April 10, 2004 04:50 PM
The Sears catalog had some major tent-building sections back in the day.
And who can forget that amazing moment when you got your new pack of "Charlie's Angels" trading cards, opened it, and realized you were the wooded owner of the highly coveted Jaclyn Smith bra-shot card. Man.
Posted by: sid | April 10, 2004 07:19 PM
is there a problem with that dania?
;-)
Posted by: the mighty jimbo | April 11, 2004 12:59 PM
( raises hand ). Mmm...the work clothes section of the Sears catalog with the unshaven rugged men did it for me. And the Cabella's hunting catalog turned my crank too.
Posted by: east coast jimbo | April 12, 2004 07:13 AM
yeah. dad had playboys but i didn't want to raid mom & dad's room for porn. one time i found an empty condom wrapper on their floor and was pretty much scarred... i resorted to writing my own "erotica" (read writing down my fantasies and re-reading them, um, "one handed").
Posted by: nessa | April 12, 2004 12:29 PM
i've resisted from commenting until now.
age 12: "men's sexual fantasies - by nancy friday"
age 13: books with stories and pictures of marilyn monroe. madonna.
age 14: worse than playboy magazine's given to me by boyfriends in the military.
age 15: memories of the night before with my girlfriend monica.
16 and beyond: regular sex.
the bra and panty catalogues scared me, they always airbrushed nipples away. freaks.
Posted by: tassy | April 12, 2004 04:26 PM
Ooh, yes, Nancy Friday was the corruptor of my young, innocent mind. Nancy's the reason I'm naughty. I shudder to think what I'd be like today if I'd had the internet at age twelve.
Posted by: Anna | April 18, 2004 12:05 PM