The first time I saw porn was a huge deal. I had to make an appointment. That’s how it worked in my neighborhood. You had to make an appointment with this kid called Sigg. You had to go to Sigg’s house and into his room and that’s where he apparently had a twelve year old’s porn amusement park set-up. Kids claimed he even had an emergency shutdown situation armed and ready, detonation-reactive to his parents’ breathes. Everyone in my neighborhood had visited with Sigg. Many continued to go back, some too often and too enthusiastic, pawning off cigarettes, their parents’ golf cart keys, yo-yo’s (BRAINS), video games, Halloween candy and one time a kid even handed over his skateboard.
I wasn’t interested in having a first time with porn. I didn’t even know it was. I pretended to know what it was (I have always been good at pretending) but I had no real clue what porn was or meant. I assumed it was men and woman kissing with their clothes off but then the men start making pig sounds and the women start making goat sounds and then they get shamed by someone’s mom and have to put their clothes back on and go home. And mustaches. Everyone’s got a mustache. I didn’t need porn in my life. I was contented. I held a uniformed stride with a story book adolescence. In my driveway I was an NBA superstar addicted to game winning dunks and most post-game celebrations involved me orchestrating intergalactic/parallel universe wars between G.I. Joe and X-Men action figures. A little Are You Afraid of the Dark or maybe a fresh chapter out of Goosebumps novel and some hot pockets was all my chubby little heart desired. Never had it crossed my mind that I need to throw in other people fucking into the mix.
I hated Sigg. I hated his manhole head and his bowl cut. He had a wide grin like a cartoon cat and always possessed an endless supply of fireworks, primarily poppers. He’d throw them everywhere, always looking for a jump out of someone. He was short and wore baggy clothes and his feet were enormous. He never tied his shoes. Girls liked him. Guys thought he was cool. He liked KORN. A lot. He once carved my name into a picnic table next to the name of the school’s stinky girl, implying a love connection. I hated the stinky girl too. She stunk and it was seriously unnecessary to stink that bad. I’ll leave her name out of this, as I’m sure she has showered since.
Tim was my closest pal at the time, and that’s sad because he was a pretty terrible friend and major idiot. He bossed everyone around, wined and complained all the time but he also had the best toys and fun shit to do, so we all withstood his ways. Tim was insistent that I go over to Sigg’s because he had just done so and it was life-changing.
“Boobs, man. They’re just great. He’s got everything. You wait.”
“I dunno, dude. I hate Sigg. I don’t want to go over to his house for any reason.”
“Dude, everyone kinda hates Sigg, really, if you think about it. But this–this you’ll love him for.”
I stole one of my dad’s beers as a trade offering and Tim and I walked over to Sigg’s house. We were scheduled for 3:00pm. Sigg was in his yard waiting for us, sitting on his bike, ramming the front tire onto a bed of flowers, killing for the love of the kill. He saw us and just started motioning to follow him in through the garage and into the house. His room was right above the garage and entering through this door would have us avoid walking through the main quarters of the house where we would be in danger of running into a parent and having to explain an unlikely newfound friendship and reasoning for being present. His mom was a tacky squawk-bag and she decorated her house with pastels and seashells, even Sigg’s room couldn’t avoid her style. I was going to see porn for the first time in a room that resembled an easter egg.
I handed over the beer and Sigg looked at it smugly, but accepted.
“So, what do you wanna see?” he asked.
“Uhh, you know, the porn. The porno. Pornography.”
“I know that, dumbass. I am asking what specifically do you wanna see. I have everything. You name it, I got it.”
“Oh. Boobs, then. Boobs?”
He laughed at me and Tim joined in even though Tim had no real idea what they were laughing at. Apparently “boobs” was a bad answer.
“OK, OK,” I continued. “I don’t give a shit. Just whatever you show everyone else. Show me that.”
At this point I figured he would go over to his bed, reach underneath it and pull out a stack of magazines and he’d pick out his favorite, explain who he was showing us and why, then he’d give us a Capri Sun (neighborhood custom) and we’d be on our way. But he didn’t go over to the bed. He went over to the TV. It was a big TV for any kid our age to own and it had one of those built in VCRs. I always thought those were super cool. Sigg turned on the TV and walked over to his closet. He pulled a duffle bag out of the closet, it had wheels, and he wheeled it over to us. He unzipped the duffle bag and opened it up and I immediately saw more penises, boobs and vaginas than I had ever seen in my whole life. And those were just the covers of the tapes. Hundreds of porno VHS tapes were messily thrown about inside. I had to consciously be aware of not shuddering or turning my head away in shock or astonishment. I had to play it cool. I had to like all this.
He rifled through the case and pulled out a few and then tossed them back. He grabbed one that was uncased and held it up to us.
“This is the best one,” he said.
“What’s it called?” Tim asked.
“See that’s the thing with this one. It doesn’t even have a name. It doesn’t need one. No one knows what to call it. It’s a personal favorite.”
He shoved the tape into the VCR, it made some clicking sounds and then a large butt appeared on the screen. A woman’s butt. An 80’s butt. I had already seen too much. I was unprepared. My knee bobbed up and down nervously and then a boob appeared. And a second boob. And these boobs did not belong to the 80’s butt. So now what? Two naked women in the same room? Was this the swimming pool locker room? Music cued in. Must be the same guy that does Seinfeld. Once I saw the man with the mustache, I knew I was about to see a penis and I wasn’t ready for that. I knew what sex was, kinda, and I knew that the man uses his penis to poke at the woman until she’s pregnant, daunting task if you ask me, and during that time he does something with the boobs and the butt, maybe he touches them or spanks them or something. But what I saw in that video was not sex. This particular guy had it all wrong. He was shoving that thing in everybody. The only holes he didn’t attempt plowing through were the earholes, but I still thought he eventually would try for the earhole so I looked out for it, just to make sure I knew whether or not earholes were a sex thing, too. It seemed as though everything else was fair game.
The shocker for me was the ending. It was terrifying. I had heard stories of people getting so dehydrated that their urine came out with the viscosity of snot, but I never really believed it, until that day. I had no idea that a penis could produce such vile milk, and so much of it! Why? What’s the point of that? And it seemed to be everyone’s favorite part! The women seemed to yearn for him to produce as much of it as he could and he was more than excited to do so. I was scarred. I gripped my package and shamed my guys. They would never do such things. Not my guys. We’re gentlemen, we’re human. I had obviously just witnessed extraterrestrial intercourse. My hatred for Sigg grew a great deal that day.
I understand sex much better 20 years later. I still think watching other people have sex is a very peculiar activity, yet it’s a common, popular activity. It’s not something that pops up in day to day conversation, it stays in the TMI Vault with pooping and masturbation. But it’s there and we like it. So many of us do it. We’re fascinated by it, it turns us on, some of it even turns us off. Dogs don’t watch other dogs do it, so I assume the reason people watch other people have sex has something to do with a sense of self, or, in the heat of the moment, lack there of. “Porno” is a great word though, isn’t it?
