On God and Sexuality: When I Was 15 (Pornography Part 1)

In typical fashion my sense of humor can be rather targeting. For those of you who are in the group of people that I targeted and think that I'm wrong, please prove it. I can guarantee that almost all of you can't, and that my remarks are, again, as self deprecating as they are accurate.

Porn... what the hell am I supposed to say about it? Some people think it's of the devil, some think it's a God-send to their pitifully lonely existence, some think it's normal, and a growing number of people keep putting it into their movies (Zach Snyder, I'm lookin' at you, you stupid douche of a director.), so it's obviously not something we can ignore. What do I think? I'm with the people who think it's of the devil.

Let me explain.

At the age of 15 I developed an addiction to pornography. Yeah, t'was a typical "I'm-lonely-and-need-something-to do" phase, like most of the people I know who start up on porn. It was all well and good, I suppose. Beautiful women that are naked are beautiful women that are naked. So that part worked out OK. But, good ole Catholic guilt kicked in. I knew what the Catholic Church said. Any teenaged male with a brain (the minority, I can assure you) knows. So I felt guilty, and so I confessed it to my priest.

His suggestion? Take a figure drawing class.

Now, for those of you who don't know what figure drawing is, that's where a naked person sits in the middle of a room, and people draw the naked person.

In other words, my mother freaked out. Oh, you should have heard the ruckus on that one. Mothers.

But Father was insistent. Far more than insistent, actually. I'm going to invent a word and say commandful. Yeah, I know I could have said commanding. No, I didn't feel like it. Anyway, off I went to take life drawing classes. At the age of fifteen. Was it weird drawing what I normally jerked off to? Well, yeah, duh. But I kept trying, and a funny thing happened. I began to hate porn. It was so...inaccurate. Actually, way too inaccurate. I'm sorry, lonely men, but women do NOT look like that. I took the class again a few years later, and that finished it off. It's actually impossible for me to be aroused by porn for longer than it takes for me to think. Videos are a problem, of course, but pictures? Not really. Does this get rid of my lust, or even my desire? Hell no, you crazy? I'm 22, zero desire is biologically impossible (sorry, Buddhism). But it certainly did help me realize one thing.

Pornography is not reality. And, as an intuitive, I can use all the reality I can get.