'Here!' cried Alice, quite forgetting in the
flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she
jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of
her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and
there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish
she had accidentally upset the week before. – from ‘Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’, by Lewis
Carroll
Last
night, as I was sitting on the couch in a pile of pups (all three dogs needed
attention), an old episode of ‘Law and Order: SVU” played on the tellie. I’d never seen this particular episode, so it
was new to me. And while my mind was
busy elsewhere, something caught my ear.
The
episode was all about the prosecution of a pornographer whose output had been viewed
by an individual who then got into some rather nasty business. The state wanted the purveyor to pay the same
price as the person who committed the murder.
Granted,
‘Law and Order’ deals in an absurd sort of creative legalese; in real life, the
defense would have never allowed such a trial to be heard by a jury, wisely
choosing to have it heard by a judge, instead.
Nor would the case have ever gone to trial, as it clearly trampled all
over the First Amendment (something a real judge would have probably noticed) while
taking quite a leap in logic in order to land on its feet.
However,
that cute little criminal psychologist said something very interesting
regarding repeated exposure to porn: it desensitizes us and spurs us on to
explore kinkier and kinkier sorts of porn.
In other words, we develop an insatiable need that finds us fleshing out
our darker sexual impulses. Now, that
doesn’t necessarily mean that we act on those impulses, though it does seem to
indicate that we would continue to seek out pornographic material of a more explicit
nature, resulting in further desensitization.
That
spoke to me.
I think
that would certainly speak to my own pornographic pathway. On a daily basis, I expose myself to
countless images of men in various sexual activities. It’s become so commonplace; much of it no
longer really resonates with me. I mean,
it does, on some level, but certainly not the way it once did.
So, it
got me thinking… what if I removed most, if not all, the stimuli? Could I re-sensitize myself?
Now, I’m
not talking about trying to change who I am.
I have always been a sexual being – that will never change, however, I
could work to limit my exposure to porn. That said, I am not disparaging the
consumption of porn by others in any way – no matter how kinky. We’re all adults and to each their own.
No,
this has to do with only me.
Just
think of all the time I could reclaim and put to better use!
I have
noticed, since I quit all the hook-up sites and been in a monogamous relationship
for the past six months, that my sexual self has managed to re-wire
itself. A plethora of other needs are
being met in and out of bed these days. My performance anxiety has lessened a
great deal and I find myself much more willing to go with the flow.
Before,
it was like being a television actor – I knew my lines and knew I had to hit my
marks in a timely manner. Currently, sex
seems more like a silky indulgence – I mean, yes, on occasion, it is brutally
physical (which keeps the spice), but it’s no longer the by-the-numbers affair
of the wham-bam, twenty minute tryst.
Monogamy
has reawakened something in me.
Could
reducing my exposure to gay porn do the same?
I think
back to my early exposure to gay porn mags. I had more imagination then and
those images seemed more potent upon first exposure. Oh, how I used to pore over those photos for
hours, imbuing them with all sorts of meaning.
At what
point did such images become second nature and not worth more than a passing
glance? Yes, I still value them, but regard them in a
different manner.
Limiting
my exposure would mean making a lot of changes.
This blog, for example, given its past, might become a thing of my
past. That’s not to say that it would go
away completely, for I could reinvent myself on a new blog – one that does not
contain explicit content.
I think
the reason that particular statement uttered by that fictional criminal psychologist
resonated with me is because it is very closely related to something that I’ve
been mulling over for some time now – the end of Wonderland Burlesque.
I mean,
Alice did eventually return home… to the surface, to the world above.
Perhaps
it’s time I do the same…
