I recall my first experience viewing naked ladies in the mid to late 1980’s via my Dad’s stash of 1970’s Playboys. A collection of fine women, cartoons I was too immature to understand and ads that are reminiscent of the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign; cognac, cigars, boats, leather nail head trimmed chairs in a proper home library and of course – women – were the feature of these ads.  And oh, what women they were. Women who’d undoubtedly burned their bras a decade prior and were now baring all on the pages of a “dirty magazine”. The women looked different then than they did today: natural, in every sense of the word. Their bodies were photographed in their God-given state, long before the days of plastic surgery, waxing and liposuction. It was an era of innocence and the notion of appreciating human form was alive and well, even if it was from a magazine dated nearly tens years prior to its viewing. Oh, how things change.

The second of what I’ll call monumental experiences came a short two years later. An unnamed “friend” with a penchant, and dare I say obsession, for naked women would leave his stash unattended for hours while we pillaged through the stacks – yes, actual stacks – of carefully dated, organized by volume and, we would later find out, cataloged, magazines. There was every variety of magazine available, from softer images to foreign magazines to what I’ll call fetish magazines, such as Juggs. We used to sneak a peek at these magazines under the guise of playing pool in the rec room, which was adjacent to the veritable pornucopia of mags. One noticeable difference in some of the more raunchy magazines was the graphic portrayal of sex acts, which also had become more aggressive in nature. I contend that it was during these years in the 80’s that the industry would change forever to become less about the appreciation of a woman’s body and more about control and dominance.

The third memorable experience was during high school when, at the end of the school year, some friends and I decided it would be a great idea to watch a video together. In retrospect this is quite possibly the worst way to have experienced this, but I digress. Actually, I lied. I’m going to elaborate because, well, if I’m scarred you should be too.

For the women reading this, I’m going to break Man Code and tell you an inside secret your hubby or boyfriend won’t tell you: Dudes watch porn together when they’re younger. Yeah, I know — that’s pretty strange. But wait, it gets worse. They also will do a “Boner check” to try and embarrass their friends by telling everyone to stand up mid-way through a sex scene to see who’s got wood in front of other dudes. Ok, now I digress.

Thanks to the aforementioned porn freak I know, access to videos evolved as the medium gained acceptance. BetaMax gave way to VHS, and the porn industry celebrated a huge victory over Sony, only to be trumped in the 2000s by the widespread adoption of Sony’s Blu-Ray (see? Who said you don’t learn anything on blogs?). And with this adoption of the VHS cassettes came the ability to high-speed dub porn. The freak I know had a large selection of videos that, somehow or another, made their way to my house just in time for the end of my sophomore year of high school. Some of my friends could drive, and while I couldn’t, I did have a house that was empty until 5 PM as both of my parents were working. Thus, the opportunity to host a raunchy screening party ensued.

I’ll spare you the details of the actual video, because quite honestly it was less than 20 minutes in that my friends and I heard the garage door open. Ok I lied again. I’m going to tell you one detail that is crucial to this experience: I witnessed my first BJ scene. It was odd looking at another man’s junk, and  dare I say stomach-turning. I thought to myself “This isn’t right. I’m looking at another man’s JUNK?!? This is supposed to be enjoyable???”.

Back to reality, which in this case was Mom and Dad deciding to make a surprise trip home for lunch. I scrambled to get to the VCR, eject the tape and hide it. Surely Dad would notice that the video he “borrowed” was missing! With a dash across the house I put it back without rewinding and sat uncomfortably with my crew.

“David, why is everyone here?”, my mom asked.

“Hello, boys,” my Dad greeted.

“Uh. Hi Binkowskis, Mrs. Binkowski, Mr. Binkowski” came from the peanut gallery.

My friends stared at me with a look best described as “Whatthehelldudewecameheretowatchpornandyourparentsjustfuckingshowedup????”. Yeah, something like that.

We all made small talk after having witnessed — at least some of us — their first porno. It was about 10 minutes of awkward, tense, nervous and for some, semi-erect, before my Mom’s beckoning call for lunch came.

“Dave! Hot dogs!”

And again my stomach turned, except this time instead of lunch being a Ballpark frank it was the porn guy’s penis in a hotdug bun. I nearly dry heaved before telling mom I wasn’t hungry.

Experience number four was much different and several years later, but with a similar outcome. This wasn’t the kind of video you’d be proud of talking about, but because we’re close, personal friends I’m going to share it with you. I used to work at a court and as such, worked with professionals who’d seen things the average white boy from the ‘burbs hadn’t seen: Violence. Death. Rape. Crazy Ass Porn. Burglaries. Theft.

Yes, you read that right: Thanks to a diverse population and income range, I grew up in a town where everything happened. And in one case, the trafficking and collection of bizzare porn was on the docket. Again cutting to the chase, I got ahold of a video tape that the best way to describe is “HOLYOMFGBALLZNOWAYTHATJUSTHAPPENED”. Goats, dogs, little people, poop, a pig, a chicken and an eel – this tape had it all. The capper was that the girl-on-dog scene was dubbed over with Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. From there it only got worse, divulging into stuff that can’t possibly be legal and would make a daughter’s father wonder where the hell he went wrong.

This tape became amusement for some friends, who decided to take it to their friends bachelor parties and “share the love” of dry heaving (and in some cases actual vomiting) with their buddies.

Anyone who’s done casual browsing online can attest to one simple fact: People can’t just get off the way they used to. Sex has become some perverse activity where demeaning, insulting and flat out derogatory behavior dominates the covers and has become the “norm”. As a father of three boys it’s troubling that society has pushed what was a simple pleasure of looking at a naked woman so far to the extremism it’s become.