A short essay for men only: Playboy

In 1962 on the way to my cousin’s house for Christmas, my mother suddenly realized that we had no gift for my cousin’s husband Ben (name changed to protect my sorry ass).  My father pulled into a roadside store and after some prolonged shopping (possible three minutes worth) came out with a Playboy magazine.  My mother was flummoxed but recovered herself enough to say, as she looked distractedly out the car window at snow banks and towering pine forest beyond, “Well, I’ve heard they have very good articles.” 

Fast forward to Christmas 2010 or so, and this is the same Ben (now probably 76-ish) that has become known as the “Taser Bunny” of the local police.  It seems he was pulled over by a cruiser at 2 am for possible drunk driving after a high speed chase.  He was after all driving his Yamaha Skimobile down a tar road with no snow on it and making a spray of hell fire as his metal front skis abraded away.  Yet, resisting arrest for DWI is not why he was tased, rather he was tased because he did not understand why the local gendarmerie would not return his loaded shotgun. Of course, there are two sides to every story and I have been overseas so long never heard his side.  This maybe is because my cousin, wife of the Taser Bunny, is still upset about the Playboy magazine that once ruined the true meaning of Christmas so many years ago and can no longer talk about her husband of possible 40 years, I lose count - objectively.

No, people have never bought Playboy for the articles.  The magazine certainly attracted gifted writers such as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth and interviewed politicians (Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King) and many (if not most ) of our cultural icons.¹ Yet, not much hard news came out of the magazine.   It’s almost as if these notables were showing up at the hippest nightclub.  It was almost as if they were all on the make themselves.  So when Ben taped the Miss December 1962 centerfold to the chimney in the living room under a very jolly and flushed Santa, the juxtaposition was not a success, although I’m sure he thought it was funny.  No, I think he was spoiling for some marital discord to spice up an otherwise dull family event - and over the years discord is what he’s got big time.

Of course, Playboy in the 60s is tame by today’s standards.  First, along came Penthouse and Hustler and the term “full frontal nudity” was a red line in the sand for our culture.  This lasted for a decade or so.  But with the advent of DVDs and CDs porn, which always had been a pretty good business, became big business.  The red lines and negative stigma attached to viewing or even making porn became pretty indistinct.  And then the Internet arrived and . . . you know the rest.

I have for the last week or so been looking at a lot of porn on the Internet.  I know my bad.  In my defense I would point out that I have been deathly sick and during my illness most of the testosterone washed out of my body.  So as I see it, looking at porn is a type of therapy to rebuild my testosterone level.  Even if you don’t buy this, at 70 I need all the help I can get.  And even if you don’t buy this, I’ve always thought that a naked woman was nature’s way of saying hello – and in my case as I recover to life, sort of welcome back to the living, Forrest.  And lastly in watching porn, I’ve been playing cat and mouse with the Thai censors.  Thailand has become a military dictatorship so I’m striking a blow for freedom (that’s freedom and not femdom).

So I thought I give you my Pros and Johns account of the geography of pornography.

The cons

1.            Smut today leaves noting to the imagination and that’s a shame.  I’m glad the days at the Lichfield drive-in where soft porn movies could run for two hours are gone.  But now the average viewing time of porn is three minutes or less followed by what a female historian – speaking of Louis 16^th failure to get his wife pregnant – a “happy ending” outside of the vagina.  Creative thought is over before it has begun.

2.            Justice Potter Stewart once said:  I don’t know what Pornography is, but I know it when I see it.  Maybe, but I have much better luck with bad taste – which is rife on Internet porn.  I don’t begrudge little people (midgets) or the morbidly obese a sex life, and I’m sure lots of people have made love in a bathroom (mea culpa), but I don’ need to watch these clips.  I also rule out any clip which shows defecation or squirting.  Sex with animals is out, too as is rough sex (rape) and snuff flicks (which I have not found on my Internet voyage).  There are several other categories that generally, but not always, fall into the bad taste category.  You know bad taste when you see it, but pornography is a little harder to be sure of.

3.            Alvin Dark (a manager and .300 NL hitter) once described Carl Yastrzemski as the best player in baseball from the neck down.

      The Greeks loved the male form.  The statues of David and others dominated art in the ancient world.  The Olympics were all male and participants were naked, ergo more statues.  Form over function was the rule, I guess. 

               Too many porn clips have Vargas girls (another gift from Playboy) being screwed by guys we only see from the waist down somewhat like Yaz, or wearing executioner masks, or so ugly I see them as probably part time janitors at ball parks with losing baseball team.  They may sport outsized erections, but the mismatch of beauty is gauche.  Can a naked man not be beautiful?  After all, porn like hockey is a game that average white men can play, too.

4.            Say Cheese.  Sex is the most fun you can have (with or without your pants on), so why not smile a little more?

5.            Wise Blood, Flannery O’Conner’s novel, was (at least for me) ultimately a failure because she tried to use farce to talk about faith and religion –serious things and that shouldn’t be done.  I feel the same way about porn clips that use farce.  I dislike clips with Santa Claus themes, although there may be deep seated reasons for my dread of Santa having sex.

The Pros

1.            Japanese anime (or hentai both deal with sexual topics) is getting so realistic that only the animator knows for sure whether it was shot with a camera or digitally drawn.  I am guessing that these realistic graphics are the follow ons from the video gaming industry.   But the total control the animator has over his materials is heady stuff, and allows focus and story lines rarely seen in typical clips. 

 

2.            Japanese porn girls are often smiling, no matter what the situation – I like this.  And although I have no idea what they’re saying, their voices sound like a little girl relating a tea party she had for her dolls and stuffed animals.  “Oh, Mr. Bear your cup is empty.  Let me fill it for you with hot tea.”

3.            The Summer of ’42.  Generally, if they are well done like the movie, I like mature women showing much younger boys and girls the ropes.  No older woman ever took a passing sexual interest in me, so I can’t critique these clips.  I don’t watch the reverse either because an older man with sexually naïve youngsters seems doomed to be in bad taste.  And ,no, no older man has ever taken asexual interest in me.

[I am going to stop my list here for several reasons.  

First, I’d have to get into technical terms like bukkake, creampie, twink, katoey  or fluffer and my readers might lose interest. 

Second, there are more porn clips on the Internet than there are grains of sand on a beach. (Diogenes wouldn’t be looking for an honest man today, he’d be looking for a good-looking middle aged woman who hasn’t done an MILF clip.)  So I worry that my work may not be statistically valid.

Third, there’d be all those Nosey Parkers who – even though I said for men only, didn’t I? – who just want to cause trouble.  They’re the ones you see walking around with a sandwich board that says: Men who watch porn don’t believe in Immaculate Conception.  You can pick them out because they’re typically wearing a white beard and Santa suit.

Fourth, all this may not end in the happy ending I long for and which I hope is coming apace.]

1.            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_in_Playboy_2010%E2%80%9319  The list of notables who have been interviewed or submitted to Playboy’s 20 Questions I find amazing.  You can pick a decade at the bottom.