I can't write today. That's something I'd like to be different.
I've been trying to watch pornography, and not that direct, to the point internet pornography, but the kind you find on cable stations, the kind of pornography that feels the need to justify its existence and in doing so accomplishes the monumental task of making me not care about nude women awkwardly attempting to engage in oral sex with each others navel. I'd accepted the common held belief that no one ought to watch pornography for the storyline years before I'd actually been in a position to watch pornography, having grown up without cable or internet access, but I fear this infection runs deeper. Perhaps I've given too much thought to the art-form that is film making to accept a tall nude blonde woman moving in slow motion shot in soft focus doing absolutely nothing without wondering, "why is this nude blonde woman with incredibly spherical breasts standing around doing absolutely nothing in slow motion, and what is the director intending to convey with all this blurriness?" I hadn't expected free cable softcore pornography to be interesting, but I'd hoped nude women, as an iconic figure, wouldn't be so prone to not holding my attention.
What's worse, I've noticed even the committed relationship I've fostered with internet pornography has begun to suffer. Maybe I'm not being challeneged in my outside life, which is entirely possible as I've not in fact left the house in over a week, but I'm stuck analyzing that which I would readilly accept, by which I mean naked people engaging in strange actions to achieve orgasm. After analysis pornography is becoming more and more disturbing, and less and less interesting. I'm reading into that which ought not be read into.
In this softcore not paid for cable porno I'm finding depressed, angry writing... much of which I'm capable of writing and try to avoid whenever possible. It reads like something written by someone who feels the world owes them, who believes women should have been appreciating them instead of whoever they choose to appreciate, and who finds the act of sex distasteful and boring.
The less than softcore is somehow worse though refreshingly less concerned. There aren't characters so there's less of a chance they'll be portrayed as simple pointless vehicles capable of transporting genitalia from scene to scene. But the overall tone is misanthropic, not even misanthropic, but hostile. I won't jump onboard the mysoginistic bandwagon... I don't know, is there a bandwagon? But there's a lot of anger, a lot of it aimed at women, a lot of it channelled through control and humiliation... which is something, in my less focused days I try to pretend everyone involved understands.
But it's not just the general tone. I've been watching girls go wild for quite some time now and remember my first girlfriend ask me, as we giggled at the DVD's in the video store behind those plastic screens with the world adult embrossed on them, "why do people watch Girls Gone Wild? I mean, can't they find regular porn?" Her point, I assumed, was that it wasn't enough for her to watch women flash, and that she'd rather see something more involved. And I suppose that's how I took Girls Gone Wild, all these years, understanding it as something girls did when they were liberated, or reclaiming their sexuality, or drunkenly engaging in typical overly-rational teenage behavior, or getting back at their repressive parents, or desperately demanding attention, or hoping to be remembered for their pertness... I've had a while to think about it... but I'm noticing, just now, not the girls, but the cameramen, whose inane rambling I've always managed to begrudgingly ignore. But for some reason I've been paying attention to things I'd rather ignore and I notice the majority of the dialogue on a typical girls gone wild episode is desperate begging on the part of the cameraman. The whole affair seems humiliating for all involved. I suppose mainly for the women, as they offer, for a hat or tank top, the producers the chance to make what must be millions of dollars.
So I hate that.
But I worry, maybe rightly, as I do, that I'm mistaken about this whole, "not being engaged in thought and as a result overly analyzing my world" thing. I've spent the past week feverishly working on a story, giving every angle I can imagine as much thought as possible. I wouldn't say I've been exhausting myself, but I do think I've been so intent on understanding these characters that maybe I'm unable to turn it off... as it were. On an unrelated note, I think I add "as it were" when I settle on a phrase I don't really think is interesting enough. But I'm worried. I'm worried because I want to write, I enjoy being engaged in this near exhausting contemplative process, and I think the writing would suffer if I weren't so into it. But... if it's going to ruin porn... and it's already an established fact that I can't maintain a relationship for any substantial length of time, and I'm terrible at meeting new people anyway... I guess what I'm saying is, if I'm going to keep up this charade of pretending to be a writer, they'd better start making some less hateful pornography.
