I Want What I Can't Have

Not too long ago I found myself masturbating to a video of a woman playing with herself.

Like most of my masturbatory experiences, it started innocently enough. I had started my routine of checking the usual six or seven sites but soon found myself going off track, following one link after the next until I found myself in a site dedicated to the perverse. There were videos of a man who nicknamed his grotesquely engorged testicles "the Blob", a dog throwing up on it's unfortunate humping victim, an exploding ass. Not exactly classy entertainment. But I was titillated, in a way that made my brain throb.

Feeling adventurous, I clicked on the video entitled "Blonde Plays with Perfect Tits and Pussy". A young blonde woman, with huge and seemingly pneumatic fake tits and ridiculously long, clear plastic stiletto heels gyrated on a wooden bench. I laughed a little and moved the mouse over to close the window but stopped short. Instead, I got up to close the door to my room. Watching her squeeze the large rosy nipple of her left breast with her right hand while her left hand's pink-nailed fingers spread her moist labia, I found myself surreptitiously touching myself. My butt in the air while I lay on my bed, my hand under the tight white band of my undies, I came within seconds.

Almost as soon as the semen left the head of my dick, the second it shot onto my trembling fingers, I found the video disgusting and distasteful. I shook my head, as if to shake away the memory of what had just happened, and closed the window, every window, and turned my computer off. The image of her lipsticked mouth open in pleasure seemed to burn itself onto the black screen. The void of it nagged at me, tugged on my sense of memory.

This kind of masturbation is not a new thing for me. Hurriedly rubbing the end of my cock while looking over my shoulder, watching the door. Not because of the shame of the act, but the cause of it. Often, I am turned on by the mere inappropriateness of something, the "wrongness" of it.

When I was thirteen, I would record the Sex in the 90's specials on MTV, then re-watch them alone in my room while jacking off. The more people talked about what they were into, the weirder it was, the greater the risk of someone walking in, the more times I would cum. Sometimes I would masturbate several times in a single one-hour episode.

One of the specials was focused on fantasies. There were fantasies of "everyday people" and of famous cool figures, rock stars and the like. One in particular seized me, the fantasy of Henry Rollins. In the segment, he spoke of wanting to have sex with Superman, being completely powerless to a person with limitless power. Or perhaps he wanted to be Superman, and have others under his power. Green-tinted images flashed in staccato of his angry muscled body in blue tights and a red cape, screaming at the screen with macho Neanderthal features, jumping in the air and grabbing bars with a look of unearthly frustration. This turned me on to the point of pain, and I would watch it again and again.

I was playing with myself while watching it one drowsy Sunday afternoon when my step-sister came barreling out of my closet, her blonde hair flying past the fuzzy static image of Henry Rollins thickly corded neck while she screamed "Pervert!" and ran out of my room. I slammed the door after yelling out with a mischievous grin, "That's what you get for sneaking into my room!" Less than a minute later I was cumming into my sock.

While working a volunteer position at the local public library with my best friend I would sneak books on body-building, male physique, and nude photography into the bathroom and beat off furiously, convinced that people could hear my hand squeezing the crisp plastic covering of the library books. I even checked one book out that was particularly erotic. I still remember the sepia toned photos of men with perfect bodies, and one photo in particular of a man lying in a bath, the milky soap of the water curling up against the taut flesh of his chest. I would jerk off to it any chance I had, and made almost no effort to hide it when I took it with me to the bathroom, although my brother and I shared a room at the time. I waited until the library sent a postcard to the house to remind me to return it, and the questioning look my mother directed towards me as she handed it to me.

This was part of the excitement for me. The fact that I knew it was taboo to be looking at men in this manner made it that much more enticing. The strange looks I got, from my step-sisters, from my Mom, from the librarian, from my best friend... these looks were half the reason I got the boner in the first place.

Now that having sex with men is no longer a mystery, something that is out of reach; now that I live in San Francisco and am out to everyone I know; now that I'm comfortable with my sexuality (for the most part); does it take the idea of a woman's sexuality to get me that old feeling of urgent, secret release? Does it take something that many of my gay friends would find disgusting, anathema, just as plain wrong as my parents finding me jacking off to men in underwear? Is desire so fickle? Or is what we find arousing learned, the direct result of a culture that frowns upon open sexuality?

Right now there is a boy staying at the hostel that I can't help but observe like a creep. He's shirtless often, and the tight fuzzy quality of his chest under the strap of his acoustic guitar is nothing short of remarkable. He's scruffy already and always, with big chops, and stubble that doesn't ever seem to change. He is always laughing and jumping, bouncing off of concrete from his skateboard with the aplomb of a superhero. Today I was walking down the hall and almost ran into him. He just stood there for a second and looked at me, the red paint of a Superman S curling down his naked stomach before skipping past me towards the bathroom and the shower. It left me with a headache and the need to jack off furtively. Am I attracted to him only because I can't have him? Because he's most likely straight, a skater, only 17 and off-limits? Or is it as simple as the fact that he's got an ass like a shelf?

I can only hope that he won't take to bubble baths while wearing six-inch, clear plastic high heels.

Reefer Sadness

It's one of those summer days when it just is not possible to do anything at all. I've been sitting on my bed doodling or playing a game half-heartedly, I've been sprawled out on the couch chatting aimlessly with my roommates about girls or boys or sex or art, I've held a book in my hands and dazed out. My mind is one of those motes that play in the shadows between the shafts of light that bleed through dingy aluminum blinds.

This general listlessness combined with a complete absence of sexual arousal has put me in a state of mind very similar to that of my 12 year old self, left alone every day of the summer. What an odd time that was. I never had anywhere to go, no neighborhood friends, no summer camp, no sports. Life consisted of getting up late, eating Cap'n Crunch while watching Nickelodeon cartoons with sandy eyes, eating a bologna sandwich on my stomach while watching Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Jane's Addiction and Guns n' Roses videos on MTV, eating Doritos while watching cooking shows with my Mom on her lunch break, fighting with my brother, laughing with my brother, watching the lives of wild animals while he made concoctions in the kitchen that I would be dared to eat, then remembering our chores 30 minutes before my step-dad would come home and doing them in a sweaty flurry. In other words, it was mind-numbing fun. It was monotonous, it was like being perpetually stoned.

Key Word: "like"

When I was 21 I had a terrible paranoid hallucinogenic waking nightmare after smoking pot in which I believed that I had forever lost my mind and the ability to live in time as everyone else did. Don't even try to understand that, it's a slippery slope indeed. Ever since, I haven't exactly jumped at the opportunity to partake. It always takes me to the darkest space in my brain. Back in February I went to a birthday party in which everyone seemed to be smoking and thought, "what the hell!" Thirty minutes later I was in a cab on the way home muttering to myself about how shallow and evil people are and suspecting my cab driver of nefarious deeds.

I had pretty much decided that I just shouldn't smoke it.

But a few days ago I smoked with Froggie and I gotta say, it wasn't half bad. For the first time in a long while I understood why people enjoy it. Admittedly, I took only the tiniest hits; as I felt it wash over me I felt my body and mind relax in ways that they hadn't in months. As we laid on his little couch I felt a fondness for bad television that had been lost since childhood. One show bled into the next and held my interest in quick stops and spurts. No longer was time any concern. Television was just on, and when you let it in, you let it in completely.

Touch too took on a gentler connotation, and before I knew it we were playing around in a space without guilt or nervousness. Not that I normally feel those things around Froggie, who is kind and silly and sexily comforting to be around, but for once, my brain was shut off during physical interaction, and I just let it be what it was.

Unfortunately I took another, bigger hit and it started to have an adverse effect. Already prone to overthinking everything, I found myself analyzing every hand gesture, every noise that came out of my mouth. My vision started to tunnel a little and I started to feel enclosed inside of myself, barely speaking. Being aware of my own quieting, my paranoia increased regarding a fear of sounding stupid, or boring. When I get really high, essentially all of my worst insecurities get magnified until I reach a point of complete atrophy, at which point I fall into the deepest escape of sleep.

I don't regret doing it--I had a lot of fun and felt freed for much of the experience. I especially like the loosening of one's boring internal regulations, and the childlike ability to live fully from one moment to the next. Perhaps this is why as I lay there watching South Park I kept thinking how great it would be to watch a big summer blockbuster like Superman Returns after getting high. To just let go of that cynical inner voice that can't enjoy the thrill of the action for what it is: a simple sensual visual pleasure.

I know you remember this: chewing on a peanut m&m with the tickle of Coke in the back of your throat, watching explosions with a barely concealed glee, your mouth ever so slightly open in awe. Isn't that what we loved about going to the movies in the first place?

So maybe marijuana isn't as bad as I've been saying all these years. Still, I don't support smoking it every day! I don't want to see anyone get the short term memory of a sponge. That's not cute. Your inner child would kick you in the ass for that.