Porn and me - The Early Years

I once heard a joke about three kids wandering around in a park when they stumbled upon some lovers in the bushes. The 4 year old said "They're fighting". The 6 year old said "They're making love". And the 8 year old said "And badly".

Do kids learn more about sex at an earlier age nowadays than they did, say, 30 years ago? I don't think anybody would argue against that. My own experience stands in sharp contrast - I was a bookish smalltown Midwestern kid with a set of encyclopedias and 3 TV channels.

Now this isn't a "True Confessions" blog, but IMO my own experiences running into porn when I was a kid might be amusing. And it's from a geeky kid's perspective, where the book learning was far ahead of any practical knowledge.

Breasts I figured out bright and early. I knew what they were and allegedly even drew some pictures of them at a very young age, but I don't remember how I found out what they looked like. It was probably from a calendar at an auto repair shop or something like that, and probably wasn't a photograph. I didn't know what the big deal was about them though, although somehow I liked looking. Maybe it was just the fact that they were usually so ostentatiously covered (except for that June or July 1967 Playboy I found, with Lisa Baker, DeDe Lind and Sherry Jackson, the girl from "Make Room for Daddy" - I can't believe I still remember that, but at least it proves that I really did read it). Anyway, I found out what they were for biologically speaking from a book, and later on I learned of other applications and expressions like "first base".

I'm not sure when it was that I figured out that girls and boys had different plumbing. It was probably fairly late, because the rest of the family was much older and didn't wander around nude. The little girls in the neighborhood weren't helpful (but they made up for it later, believe me). That Playboy wasn't any help - I think it was about 1970 or so when pubic hair started showing up ever so coyly in mass-market men's magazines. National Geographic didn't go there either. The best information I had was the paperwork from a box of tampons mentioned a few posts ago, and that was a black and white cross-section of a woman's pelvis.

But hey, that picture made me think - if THAT'll fit in there... So even before I learned about it on the streets I deduced the ins and outs of coitus. The ins, anyway - the practical details needed work. I definitely didn't appreciate the reproductive significance, and it sounded kind of gross. I figured people probably didn't do stuff like that - what for? For all I knew, if you were into stuff like that, you'd do as well with an ear. Hey, I was little...

Then I was snooping somewhere and discovered some porn. My analytical mind went to work immediately and I examined the women closely. It was kind of frustrating though, because a lot of the photography was grainy and small, and the women were downright shaggy. It definitely wasn't up (!?) to Larry Flynt's highly-groomed brightly-lit speculum-friendly photographic standards, so I still had more questions.

I saw some practices that hadn't occurred to me either. I already knew a name for one of them too (the one you might free-associate with "Monica"), and from context I realized it was an epithet. But I hadn't associated the word with the act, and I hadn't heard it often enough to know it was considered a bad word. Until, frustrated as a faster kid eluded me in a game of tag, I hollered "you @#$@!" at him at the top of my lungs.

My parents heard (along with everybody else for blocks in those pre-AC days), and I was called on the carpet. Did I know what it meant? "No", I answered honestly. But you can bet your bottom dollar I started thinking about it. I realized it was a compound word, and eureka! - there's even a term for what was going on in those pictures! I was probably about 9 at the time.

I kept learning more things. I knew what condoms were, but called them "rubbers". I knew the machines that dispensed them (usually in a rest room of a cheap diner or bowling alley) always said "for the prevention of disease only". I didn't know what diseases those might be, but I wanted to find out. Secondhand.

(There were other machines there too, containing such novelties as a "pecker stretcher". There were also tiny topless playing cards sold one suit at a time, which I furtively acquired at a quarter or so each until I got all four.)

We kids had arguments about what certain words meant, especially the F word. We also knew the number 69 had some sort of significance, and you couldn't pour a sidewalk in town without a kid inscribing this in it. (Later I learned 68 - you do me and I'll owe you one).

Sometime around this time the Supreme Court decided that something wasn't porn if it had "redeeming social value". That explains what I found about this time. There would be a long narrative section running through it, often with some Masters & Johnson type descriptions of sex and arousal. It would be accompanied by no-holds-barred smut that had utterly nothing to do with the narrative. The performers did seem to be having a good time though.

But I didn't think of any of this as anything anybody I knew would ever do. I sure hadn't caught anyone in flagrante delicto. Or even dogs...it must have been the water.

I ran into some literary things too. I wound up reading "Studs Lonigan" out of desperation, but much of it was lost on me. In particular, I asked an 80 year old relative what a "whorehouse" was. She didn't need her Ex-Lax that day.

I guess that takes me to about age 10. It's been a long time since then, a few things have changed, and I might even have learned a thing or two. I guess I'd have to conclude that the worst effect of porn that I recognize was a cultivation of unrealistic expectations - as I ran into real women later they set me straight right away.

But then this exposure didn't take place in a vacuum. Somehow I got opposing ideas about sexual continence and norms in sufficient quantity to keep me out of trouble at a time when herpes, AIDS and other treats were running amok.

I'm not sure where those ideas came from. I wasn't a churchgoer then either, I don't recall any discussion about sex with anybody but other kids, and this was before sex education. Readily available books were coy. And retrospect, I had some really bad examples. So all I can figure is that somehow it was simply subliminally built into our culture, including the understanding that those examples were bad.

I see few signs that that culture I grew up in still exists. Meanwhile porn has become pervasive, and while performers are not necessarily on the A list they aren't pariahs either. And Larry Flynt - good grief.

So although I might conclude that I didn't suffer anything I couldn't deal with, I'm not sure a modern kid has the same countervailing influences. With the result that....