So, I was just sitting here looking at MetArt, one of the providers of pornography that I consistently enjoy. And I had a twinge of sadness as I looked at a beautiful image of a beautiful woman. Her legs open, her panties in my face, a sly, pretty smile on her face.
She was posed basically exactly as I might choose to pose her, were she a plaything of mine.
Of course, she’s not a plaything of mine, except in this most commercial way.
I’ll never meet her.
She’ll never know who I am.
Maybe I’ll masturbate to one of her photos or to a film she’s made. Probably not. The truth is, most of my masturbation is not actually to porn, or at least not to commercial porn. Some is, but most isn’t.
But as I was looking at the image and feeling this sense of sadness, of unattainability, of loss, it got me thinking: I feel a lot of loss in my life, a lot of sadness. In many ways, I think this is one of my superpowers. I’m in touch with all of the ways that life is sad. Not in an, “I’m so depressed, life sucks” kind of way. More in an emotionally and intellectually honest way that is somewhat aligned with the Buddha’s maxim that everything is impermanence, that it is the nature of things to be impermanent. That truth provides those among us who are most lucky, who have lives filled with delight and goodness, the nearly constant experience of goodness coming to an end. Every good experience ends. Loss is a constant feature of (at least my) life.
Generally speaking, I like to be aware of the sadness I feel. When I walk out the door leaving my wife for the day, when I fall asleep at the end of the day, literally losing consciousness. When I wake up in the morning, finishing my sleep. Loss is everywhere. Small losses for the most part, big losses occasionally. I feel them.
Back to porn though. I think on some level, part of what I do with porn is to experience a controlled sense of sadness and loss. I’ve written previously that one of the chief ways I use porn, and indeed many people use porn, is not to satisfy a sense of horniness, of erotic hunger, but rather to kindle one, to make one feel alive, to remind one that one is capable of arousal. This is true. I do use porn that way.
But this morning, I felt this twinge of sadness. I looked at the beautiful MetArt model and thought, “This is just a person I’ll never get to know or experience in any way, other than the way in which she currently sits, splayed before me on my screen. And that’s sad.” As I had that thought, It occurred to me – maybe that’s actually (part of) the point!
I prefer porn created for me by women I’m dating. Some women – Marina, Milica, Sofia, Veronique, have generated so much porn for me that I had to start paying Google just to hold it all.
I’ll show you two pictures, structurally identical. On the left: one sent to me by Marina. On the right, one taken from the MetArt page. (Marina’s original included her face.)
Obviously, the MetArt page photo is more professional. The lighting is better, the focus is better. It’s probably been through some processing to make it even better than it started. That seems likely. Marina’s photo, on the other hand, is raw, pure. The lighting’s a little harsh. The photography is clearly not professional. The background is nothing to write home about. And, at the same time, it’s infinitely hotter to me than the MetArt equivalent of it. It was taken for me.
When Marina took this photo, she was thinking of me. Moments after she took it, she sent it to me. By definition, it’s a thousand times hotter, regardless of the quality of the photography or the beauty of the model. Marina took this photo in this position, wearing this bodysuit, because I asked her to. The very photo itself was an act of compliance. A personal gift, testament to her trust in me, her desire to please me.
These other photos? they have nothing to do with me. In fact, almost the opposite. They almost mock me. Not cruelly, but structurally. The story is, since I can’t have this – this woman, this person, this human – since I can’t enjoy this beauty in person, I can have it a two-dimensional simulacrum. And I can satisfy myself with that.
Fair enough.
But, look at the photo from Marina. I actually can have the 3D version, or the 2D version, in real life. (Or, rather, could have: that was a moment in time. Marina no longer is available to me, and the ways and reasons I didn’t have her in real life have lots to do with lots, not least, COVID. But that’s a whole ‘nother essay. Or two. Including, perhaps, one about the loss, the feelings of sadness, I feel in looking at images of porn specifically made for me.)
But. Almost by definition, when I have a Google Drive filled with hot historical images of Marina, and Milica, and Veronique, and Sofia, and the dozens of other women who sent me porn just for me, if I’m choosing, instead to look at these images from MetArt, surely, on some level, a part of what I value is, must be, the sadness, the loss, embedded in each of their images. (And/or, maybe also to avoid whatever special, different loss those other, more personal images might bring.)
Each one of those commercially produced images, after all, includes the implicit statement, “Nick, you can’t have this. You can only fantasize about it.” Somehow, that must be essential. For me. And, I suspect, for everyone else.