Pornographic Mind

I'm standing in front of my wardrobe, a built-in affair with shelves that reach up to the ceiling, some filled with clothes, others with books or toys. I feel a peculiar sensation in my stomach and groin, a sort of pleasantly uncomfortable, constricting spasming. I can't remember if I touch myself, I don't think I do, but the next thing I feel is an incredible throbbing in my dick. I reach into my underpants and find that I seem to have wet myself, although I realise it wasn't quite that simple.

So went my first orgasm. I would have been about five. The next few I experienced were similarly spontaneous, often triggered, for reasons I can't quite understand, by embarrassment. The only one I remember clearly occurred when I turned a page of one of my English textbooks too quickly and tore it almost out. I must have thought I was going to get into terrible trouble for this and, doubling up, I came almost immediately.

I had been fascinated by my penis for as long as I could remember. I'd lie in bed at night toying with it. I loved the way I could push my balls up into my body and bring them out again. Sometimes, after having a shower, my father would walk into the lounge room naked and stand watching TV and towelling his hair. I'd look at his penis - it looked huge to me. I wondered if mine would ever be that big.

Now I knew that touching myself there could bring on this delightful feeling whenever I wanted it. I soon gathered that it was all to do with sex, that it was extremely shameful, and that the results could be enhanced by viewing pornography.

In this memoir, I shall use the word ‘pornography' in its broadest sense, in a somewhat similar manner to the way it is used by Martin Amis's narrator John Self in the novel ‘Money'. Pornography is not confined to books or magazines or videos. Pornography is a woman's breasts glimpsed as she reaches down to get something in a supermarket; it's fashion spreads; it's two cute girls spotted kissing in a café; it's a bra strap slipping from a shoulder. Porn is where you can find it and, from a very early age, I was looking for it everywhere. Today the media is saturated with pictures of naked celebrities and the Internet supplies a torrent of porn images of a most extreme nature to anyone with access to it. Things were very different back in the late ‘60s, so the few pornographic images I chanced on in books or magazines, or glimpsed on TV were much prized.

For the first time I ever looked at a girl's pussy I have to reach back even further than my first orgasm, to one of my earliest memories. I used to play with a red-haired girl my age named Teena, who lived in a house behind my grandmother's. (The only other thing I remember about her is that she once accidentally swallowed a fly.) One afternoon I coaxed her into the dingy, disused, grey cement toilet in my grandparents' basement for a game of "You show me yours…" She pulled her knickers down and I gazed at her round, featureless crotch. I know this must have been an early incident, for I was simply astonished that she did not have a penis like I did. In fact, I thought she must have been hiding it from me somehow, and I grew angry and refused to pull my pants down, something which I'm still a little guilty about.

I also have vague memories of playing a game called ‘hospitals' in the sandpit at my kindergarten, which mainly involved pulling the girls' panties down and sprinkling sand between their legs, and I remember a teacher catching us playing this game one day.

A few years later (I'm a bit hazy on the chronology of these early memories, perhaps when I was six or seven) my parents had taken me to visit some friends of theirs. This was a couple who had about five children, one of whom was a girl called Christine, who was my age and the one I usually played with. On this particular visit I went into the bathroom when she was having a bath, and stood talking to her and watching her for a long time. I can remember thinking that there was something naughty about me seeing her splashing around in the tub naked, but I didn't want to leave. A few years after this, I was sitting in Christine's bedroom with her and her younger sister and she mentioned, with great pride, that her chest was starting to swell. "See," she said, and placed a hand just below her right breast, smoothing down the material of her dress and at the same time thrusting forward one shoulder so that I could see the slight bulge formed by her budding little tit.

Another memory from around this time. I had just stepped out of the shower and was standing in the bathroom when my little sister, who would have been around three, came in. I was drying my hair with a towel when I felt her take hold of my dick. I remember thinking vaguely that there was something wrong with this and my first reaction was to back away from her, but then I stopped myself. I continued to stand there, drying my hair, enjoying the curious sensation of her little hand holding on to my penis.

The very first photographic image of a naked female I can remember seeing was in a book on the history of photography published by Penguin, which belonged to my dad. It contained a startlingly brightly lit photo of a woman's torso, her stomach sucked in, her breasts acutely pointed. Looking at it now (I still have the book) I think I can see why I was both excited and slightly unnerved by the discovery of this photo, taken by one Ferenc Berko. Up until then I would have thought of the female breast as a soft, rounded thing like my mother's. This photo showed something hard, the nipples, pointing out stiffly, looked like they could do you harm.

The best source I had for nude images was the magazines that my mother bought. There were always piles of thick, glossy magazines in the lounge room - Vogue and other fashion mags, women's mags like ‘Cosmopolitan', home and garden magazines. Best of all was a magazine called ‘Viva', a sort of ‘Penthouse' for women (it was edited by Bob Guccione's wife) which featured photos of naked men and women together. I can still see my favourite images from these magazines as clearly as if it was yesterday. There's an ad with a shot of a woman sitting on a sort of rope bridge in a jungle, her nipples showing through a white tank top. Another ad for some bathroom product has the page neatly divided into nine or so images, all pictures of a slender, honey-haired young girl in a shower. Her face is obscured but there are close-ups of her beautiful, pear-shaped breasts (these were my favorite nude images for a long time; the particular shape of this girl's breast, caught in one side-shot, is still my ideal.) There's the ad for a shower which I found tucked away in a house and garden magazine (usually slim pickings in these - I memorised the date of it - November - so that I could find it in the pile quickly). It showed a pretty, laughing blonde showering, clasping a sponge to her chest, with one round, pink-nippled breast protruding surprisingly from beneath her arm. I liked this particularly because it looked like an accident (perhaps it was). I returned to these few, treasured images time and again when left alone in the house, poring over them as I stroked my dick until the stuff came out.

Why did I find these images of naked women so compelling? I can't say for sure, but I think it had something to do with ownership. Once I had found these pictures, they were mine. Whenever I wanted to see some tits, I knew I could go to the shelf and take out the photography book. I think it gave me a sense of power, just as porn does today.

It was much more difficult to see anything on television. There was an unspoken rule in the house that I was never allowed to watch anything - those dreaded words - ‘not suitable for children', and I can remember making a point of not watching adult programs in front of my mother (while seeking them out surreptitiously - I was already developing secret life). But there was very little nudity on TV then anyway. The first glimpse of nudity I can remember came in a documentary summing up the ‘60s, so it must have been in late '69, early '70. It was a shot of a girl in a see-through dress, which was shown in the ad for the program. I waited excitedly for the program to come on and was actually able to watch it, but this was the only nudity in it. At some stage I saw some of Helen Mirren's nude swim in ‘Age of Consent', still one of my favourite erotic movies. My most powerful pornographic moment came as I was standing in the lounge room before school watching one of the morning TV programs (Mum was there too.) They started talking about a new movie called ‘The Road to Salina' and showed some clips from it, one of which was seared into my memory. A pretty girl with short blonde hair, standing in the sun wearing a dark, short sleeved top, buttoned down the front, which leaves her midriff bare. Suddenly - incredibly suddenly - she pulls the top open, exposing her breasts. I felt like an electric shock had gone through me. The fact that Mum was standing next to me when I saw this made it somehow more exciting. I told the other kids at school all about it. I remember the kid who lived next door to me saying "Did you see her cherries?"

I thought of ‘The Road to Salina' and ‘The Age of Consent' as the most exciting movies ever made. A few years later, when I saw the former on TV, I wasn't disappointed. It's a 1971 flick with a gorgeous blonde actress named Mimsy Farmer in it. Robert Walker Jr. plays a guy who is probably her brother, and they fuck themselves silly all the way through it. But I did get a surprise when I saw it - there was no scene which exactly corresponded to the one I remembered so clearly. There was a shot of Mimsy standing on a beach, peeling off a white T-shirt to reveal her lovely little tits, which was presumably what I had seen, but it just wasn't the same. It was an early lesson in the tricks that memory can play.

I was masturbating once or twice a day now. Every afternoon when I got home from school I'd go into my bedroom, shut the door, lie on my side on the bed with a book in my left hand and my dick in my right. Sometimes Mum would come through the door - she'd never knock - and in what became a reflex action, I'd pull my hand out of my pants, lie on my back and hold the book up to my face so I looked like I was reading, all in a split second - or so I hoped. (I'm sure Mum must have suspected something sometimes, and one day I'm sure I heard her and Dad talking about my habits.) A highlight of the week was when Mum came home with magazines. The TV guides were the best. I'd pore over them, wanking over shots of my favourite actresses.

All this emission of semen caused a disposal problem. At first I would just wank into a handkerchief, but I used my father's handkerchiefs and noticed one day, to my embarrassment, that I was leaving stains on them. (I remember well standing washing handkerchiefs in salty water in the bathroom sink, having heard somewhere that salt would eliminate the stains). After that I'd squirt my spunk into bits of paper, or run my dripping hand along the back of my bedside table, which became streaked with caramel-coloured dried cum.

Semen is considered a magical substance in many cultures, and I undoubtedly thought along similar lines. I was fascinated by the way, when it came into contact with water (as I found when wanking in the bath) it became a jelly-like substance which, when left, slowly dissolved into water. I did weird little rituals with my sperm. Once I got a cylindrical plastic pill container, put some semen in it along with the sap out of a tree, and buried it underneath our house beneath a slab of concrete. I supposed some weird chemical reaction would occur, but I never recovered it to see what had happened. It's probably still there.

The lack of masturbation fodder was so acute I began to manufacture my own. I'd take pictures of women and redraw them naked. I filled two pages of an exercise book with repeated images of a girl who was a sort of fantasy girlfriend. In the first picture she was naked, then in the following ones she wore a variety of clothes that I liked - lots of halter-necked tops and see through blouses. I created fetish objects, like the upper half of a nude woman in modeling clay. I even remember putting a couple of marbles up the blouse of one of my sister's dolls and having a wank to that. I hid my drawings away on one shelf of my wardrobe, along with the few real porn images I had found. Most of these came from some ‘Sunday Mirror' newspapers, which were famous for their photos of topless women, left behind by workmen who were building an extension onto our house. Another prized possession was a little tourist guide to Hong Kong, which contained several photos of topless strippers and hostesses.

On a couple of occasions I went into my parents bedroom and put on some of my mother's clothes. I put on a bra, stuffing it with other undergarments to make breasts, and a dress. I stood in front of the dressing table mirror, gazing at this woman I'd made, running my hands over her breasts. I lifted up the skirt and, with my dick tucked between my legs and out of sight, looked at her pussy. I don't think there was much in the way of transvestitism in all of this - I've never had any desire to dress in women's clothes since. I was just making another image of a woman to wank to.

The only actual woman I really had a chance to perve on at the time was my mother, and I think it was her simple proximity, rather than the Oedipus complex, which led me to fantasise about seeing her naked. I used to plan elaborate schemes for planting mirrors in the bathroom which would enable me to see her in there, which of course came to nothing. There was a strange corollary to this, however, in that my mother seemed, on occasion, to exhibit definite signs of exhibitionism. One of my earliest memories is of going into the bathroom when she was in the bath and seeing her entirely naked, her large breasts and brown nipples and the mysterious dark patch visible between her legs, and I am certain (although with a memory as early as this you can of course never be 100% certain) that she asked me to go in to take her a towel or something. (This is the only time I was ever able to see her tits, except when she was breastfeeding my sister and her nipples became huge and purple.) Then there was the matter of the very short, white nightie she wore, which barely covered her bottom. She would often go about the house at night wearing this without panties on, so I would occasionally catch a glimpse of her pubic hair. I would probably think today that I imagined all this, if it hadn't been for one extraordinary incident. I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom one night, reading a book or something, when Mum came in, in her nightie, and began fussing over my bed, turning over the covers. I looked up to see her bending over it, her back to me, and her open bum and big black bush of her pubic hair completely visible to me. She remained in this posture for several seconds as I stared, mesmerised, at her arse. I remain to this day baffled by this event. She must have known what I could see, but she never did anything like this again.

The idea that my parents had sex was as disturbing to me as I guess it is to most kids, but I only ever heard them doing it once. I was lying in bed and I could hear my mother talking to my father in their bedroom, and though I couldn't make out the words I was sure that she was asking him to fuck her. Then there was a pause, followed by a strange, regular slapping sound. I was baffled by it. Was my father slapping my mother for some reason?

I was extremely shy about my body when I was young, and paranoid about appearing naked in front of anyone. I was mortified when my grandfather came into the bathroom one day when I was having a shower, pulled the shower curtain aside and stared straight at my dick. I loathed having to shower with another boy at a school retreat (although I made sure I had a look at his dick). But at the same time, the idea of being naked began to attain a certain thrill. I remember the first time I dared to take off all my clothes in the back garden. I ran across the lawn and into a clump of trees behind the garage, terrified that someone would see me. During the school holidays, I took to sunbathing in the backyard and, when Mum was out shopping, would occasionally slip my shorts off and lie in the deckchair with the sweat dripping off me and the sun shining onto my dick and balls. I was sure the people who lived on either side of us would, at any moment, peer through the fence and see me, or that my mother would come home unexpectedly and catch me.

One Christmas we went to stay on a farm. Behind the farmhouse, at a lower level and therefore not visible from it, ran a creek. I would go down to it each day, make sure no-one was coming, then strip off all my clothes and swim naked in it. I had a crush on an older girl named Margot at the time and I took to performing another semen ritual. I'd pick up one of the round, smooth stones which lined the creek bed and scratch a little love message to her on it. Then I'd masturbate, squirting my spunk onto the stone. I'd rub it onto the message and toss it into the river.

On only one occasion do I remember intentionally showing myself naked to anyone, and that was to my sister. She had her best friend over - I'm not sure how old they were at the time, probably no more than seven. On this day I remember being particularly overcome by a feeling of lust. I had a shower and, wrapping a towel around my waist, walked down the hall, stopping at the door to my sister's bedroom, where the two girls were playing, and looking in at them. I have no idea what I thought might happen (I think I had some sort of scenario in my mind of us playing and the towel dropping ‘accidentally' ). I went into my bedroom and took the towel off and stood in front of my wardrobe (in the exact spot where I had experienced my first orgasm), and looked like I was rummaging through there for clothes. I remember I had never felt so naked before, so aware of my dick and balls as part of my body yet hanging outside it, obscenely bare. After a few minutes my sister skipped into the room, saw me, went "Oh!" in an embarrassed way and raced out. I must have enjoyed this for I remained in position, my ploy of rummaging for clothes wearing increasingly thin, until my sister ventured in once more, saw my dick again, and repeated her hasty exit.

I'm standing on a second-floor balcony at school when I realise there's some sort of commotion going on. There's kids going in and out of a classroom giggling. I walk in to see what it is. There on a desk is a porn magazine. It's open at a shot of a naked, dark-haired girl. It's the first time I've seen a photo showing pubic hair. That neat black triangle strikes me with the force of a talisman. I want to see more of photos like this.

My next encounter with porn comes as I'm traveling home on the school bus. There's some kids sitting behind me looking at a magazine. I turn around and see a photo of a woman with short brown hair and, I seem to remember, glasses, perhaps sunglasses. She's very stylish looking, I think. She's wearing a dress and sitting on a low seat or step with her knees drawn up. And as my eyes travel down the picture from her face, I see she isn't wearing any panties and her cunt's exposed.

And the picture doesn't make sense to me. The two halves - the woman's face, her bared cunt - don't go together. They form a paradox, and it's in this paradox that my relationship with porn is cemented. This woman seems stylish, sophisticated, yet here she is posing with her pussy showing. How could a nice, normal girl, like all the ones I've ever met, do this? How can she degrade herself like this?