When we last left our hero, her temporary-while-her-house-was-being-built best friend was teaching the young and impressionable about rhyming and stealing, and then got pasted by a car. It’s Ratso Rizzo coughing up blood all over again. I hope you didn’t think that ended my career as a tiny hooligan. Once you get a taste of the naughty life, it takes a lot to come back from that.
As I said, I got thrown into the sticks. Since I lacked retail opportunities, I turned on my own. When I was nine, I started rifling my parent’s drawers for anything I could find, after realizing that was one place in the house I had never been. If someone would have told me not to do that, I probably wouldn’t have. Probably. It just didn’t occur to me that it was an uncool thing to do. And the thing was, I knew my stepfather was rifling through my stuff already, because I was always “up to something.” That’s true. I was. Who wants a kid who isn’t, though? Sometimes I think they might have been happier if I spent six to sixteen staring at the wall and drooling.
So I discovered the world of porn then. For some reason, little kid foolishness I guess, I took a couple of copies of the magazines I found back to my room, to be peeped at under covers with a flashlight. I should have just looked at them during the day. I was a little angry then, because I realized at nine there was this whole adult world I was not privy to, or welcome in. I started realizing in a big way that people had secrets, and that anyone I saw around me could have them. Serious, kind of weird secrets. It felt like a blow to the chest to know how much I was being left out of.
I kind of got the porn, though, and why people would want to look at it. I think, in a really roundabout way, it helped me to figure some things out about myself. I had an indication at a really early age that I liked girls (thank you, Bananarama). So instead of just being all, “Ew, vag/handcuffs/goats” or whatever, it gave me some time to think about what I was looking at, and if I really liked women.
The men, however, were another story. That was fairly “Ew, wristwatch/hair/tubesocks.” No confusion there.
I remember when my stepfather confronted me about my appropriation of his porn. He called me down to the basement where he was working on one of his coin-op machines.
“So, um, you know it’s wrong to go through other people’s, uh, things, and um, take them, right?” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Okay, good.”
Wow. Good talk, Dad. Especially good since he spent the next seven years looking through and taking my things, under the guise of “looking for the scotch tape.”
Oh, man, oh man, oh man. Great post. Brought back memories. I love the last line. Really sums up the arms-length approach to parenting dad’s often take.
Oh man. My parents never had anything good (or DID they??!!)…so I mostly scored snooping at babysitting gigs when the kids were asleep. I found some seriously strange things, even looking back now as an adult, but it was mostly just the good old Joy O’ Sex with the hippie line drawings and the odd lube to sniff. Makes me wonder if my babysitters ever looked in my goodie drawer when the Cat was away!
You are so lucky that your parents let you have the experience of discovering this stuff for yourself; they gave you the thrill of the forbidden. My mother the demented psychology professor brought me home a heap of educational materials from one of her colleagues who was a sex therapist. Nothing like being told this stuff is healthy to put you off it – just like broccoli and granola.
I remember finding the Joy of Sex in my parents dresser drawer, stealing it to scope it out and placing it ever so carefully back where I found it. My parents never really talked to me about sex, until they found out I was getting married. Then that’s when my mom suggested that I get on some birth control. Little did she know that I’d already been having sex for about 3 years. Crazy huh. I really was a good kid. I never got into trouble and not cuz I didn’t get caught, cuz I was a good kid. You totally brought back the tube socks/short shorts picture in my mind of the 80s guys!
Dorrie — for sure the babysitters have found anything good that you have stashed! We have a trunk of locked goodies in our place. If someone asks “what’s in the trunk?” I say “sex stuff.” And no more questions are asked. O’course that means that stuff hardly ever gets used because I can’t remember where the key is….
I read my dad’s Playboys. No, I mean READ. I read them for the articles! My parents said something like “well, OK, if you want to look at those pictures I guess you are curious” and I was like “No, I want to read the interviews.” Believe it or not, this was true. I still remember the interview with Jimmy Carter. There were all these political figures being interviewed. Politics was the secret adult world I was fascinated by. God, I was the world’s weirdest kid. Eventually, I did read about the sex but the pictures were not that interesting to me. I also liked the comics.
The older kids up the street had turned their ‘tree house’ into a pron stash. I remember sneaking in and snagging a couple of nudie books then hoofing it double quick to avoid getting caught and summarily pounded for pilfering pron. They had mostly hustler and Playboy. I remember thinking the cartoons in the hustler were funny, but being sort of icked out by the pictures in the hustler(“I think I can see the back of her eyeballs! ewww”)I didn’t really understand what those parts were for.
The pictures in the playboy, however, tickled a little part of my underdeveloped reptile brain. The sort of made me lose track of my thoughts and drool, just a little.
my story trumps all. my brother and i watched my mom’s porn while she was at work and 5 minutes in, i experienced hysterical blindness! no lie. my little brother completely freaked out. he said, “god is coming to get us! god is coming to get us!”
i was like, “could you chill the f&^k out! call dad and tell him i need a ride to the emergency room.”
strangely, this story is so funny to me now. i still don’t know what happened.
One of the weird things about pr0n and childhood for me is this: I often “found” pr0n in random places – out in the field, in the park, in the neighbor’s trash – always outside in the wilderness. It never really dawned on me that it was strange or anything that it was raining pr0n, either. What I find so strange is that I fuckin’ NEVER “find” pr0n now? WTF is up with that? Do you think it’s because of the internets?
These stories are awesome. Speaking of hysterical blindness, if you haven’t seen that movie with Uma Thurman I highly recommend it.
Bad Kitty — I had a similar experience. For awhile it seemed I was pictures people took of themselves either naked, or just exposing their privates. It was so weird!
Exhibit A: Spring cleaning the neighborhood with coworkers, I find a picture. Upon closer inspection it is a snap of some guy spreading his cheeks to expose well exercised poopyshoot. Ewww!
Exhibit B: Sifting through hardbound books at a Salvation Army. Pick up a collection of Shakespeare. Leaf through it only to discover a pic of a 6′ redheaded dude lying nekkid in a bathtub contemplating a semi-flacid organ. Ewww, ewww, ewwww.
Exhibit C: “Discovered” a photo-booth strip of what at first looked like an extreme close up of an elephant’s phallus. Look closer — it’s a guy in a photo-booth holding his meat… with two hands. This pic was a plant. A guy in Paris would “drop” it and then demand it back — or you could keep it for 10 franc (this is pre-euro). I turned it over to the Gare du Nord police, much to their amusement.
you are the bomb.
bananarama is the shit!
i blogrolled you.