The term pornography was derived from the Greeks linking two words; prostitute and I read.
The portrayal of sexual acts can be traced to pre-Ice Age and anthropologists have claimed that a naked figurine carved from a mammoth ivory was man's first attempt at figurative representation. Opponents to this thought have countered that not a single lurid images has been found amongst the thousands of neolithic cave paintings around the world, but I'm certain that the ancients hid their XXX material far from the prying eyes of society whether they were Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal.
Sex for anything other than procreation has longer been considered a sin.
Both then and now as I learned as a young boy on the South Shore of Boston.
In the winter of 1964 the Pentagon abandoned the hilltop missile installation in the hills above our suburban development, since LBJ had no interest in protecting the previous president's hometown from nuclear destruction. Teenagers from the South Shore soon flocked to Chickatawbut Hill to vandalize the deserted army base. Within weeks anything of value had been trashed by our lawless legions.
My best friend Chuckie Manzi and I lived less than a mile from the military base.
One afternoon we climbed to the top of the hill and slid under the chainlink fence to wander through the wreckage. We entered a ruined office not far from the missile silos. The corners were steeped with beer cans. The bulletholes pocked the walls and charred wood rimmed the entrance.
Teenagers had a hard time getting guns or beer in the 60s.
The parties held in the office had been for adults.
Maybe even older.
"Look at this." Chuckie had discovered a a moldy cache of 1960s porno mags. "These aren't Playboys."
I opened one to discover that sex had nothing to do with the birds and bees. The lewd photos portrayed another dimension of sexuality known to young boys. Both of us got erections. Neither of us told the other. This was sex.
We separated the magazines into genres with the care of the archaeologists handling the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most was straight. Some were homosexual. Others defined definition.
"This is sick." Chuckie found a magazine of men whipped by women. We didn't have a word for that perversity or those of men with women who were men. In many of the photos the women were completely naked and the men wore sox.
"Why you think the men wear sox?" Chuckie was dumbfounded by this mystery.
"Maybe their feet are cold." I wore my sox to bed in the winter.
"No, the girls' nipples aren't erect."
"Why does that rule out the cold?"
"Because mine get that way in the cold."
"Maybe the actors forgot to take them off in the excitement."
"If a girl is naked, I'm going to be naked too." Chuckie took some of the queer stuff. One of the boys looked like him. I didn't comment on the likeness.
When I got home, I stuffed the magazines far under my mattress. My mother liked to tidy the covers after we went to school at Our Lady of the Foothills.
I shared the bedroom with my older brother. He fell asleep before me. I explored the magazines one by one. My fingertips smelled of their rotten pages. The things on that paper inspired a long evening of masturbation and the next morning I dozed off during the the early classes.
In the next month my grades slipped from As to Bs. Mother Superior examined my eyes. Her glasses were thick. Her nose sniffed at my hands. I washed them with Ivory Soap after every time I sinned in deed and thought. <
"What's your excuse?" Sister Mary Josef had been born in Stuttgart. The 7th grade called her 'Sister Hitler'. She beat students with a ruler and usually for no reason.
"For my grades?" I had been the #2 student in that class. "I'm reading all the assignments and finishing my homework."
"Chuckie Manzi is having the same problem, only he's slipped from B to C." Sister Mary Josef was tall. I was scared of her. She had also taught at a school for the deaf and I had heard nasty stories about how she treated those girls.
Nasty as the magazines under my bed.
"I don't know why."
"Have you been touching yourself?" She seized my hands and turned up the palms. Her eyes ping-ponged across the whorls of my flesh, as if she was reading runes.
"No," I answered with feigned horror.
The sisters had warned their boy student that they would grow hair on out palms if we sinned with ourselves. I shaved mine every morning with my father's razor.
"Are you sure?"
"That's a sin and I'm an altar boy."
So was Chuckie and my older brother. We were paid $5 for funerals and $10 for weddings. People died more than they got married in our parish. Three funerals a week came to $15. Levis cost $6 at Walker's Western Store on Boylston Street in Boston. I had every color.
"Make sure you do nothing to lose your soul." Sister Mary Josef released my hands. "I'll be watching you."
My nocturnal forays into the magazines became more clandestine. My older brother dropped off to sleep early, but my mother was insomniac and she didn't shut off her lights until after THE TONIGHT SHOW.
Once her bedroom went dark, I slipped my hand under the mattress. My boy scout flashlight guided my travels through a maze of warped encounters. I read each magazine a hundred times that spring. Their images and words were memorized more fervently than the Baltimore Catechism.
And no one saw nothing.
Same as the anthropologists searching for erotic prehistoric paintings. They existed in the deep recesses of unexplored caverns.
That summer Chuckie and I scoured the Blue Hills for more pornography. Our magazines were falling apart. We traded them back and forth to each other, but we needed something new.
Red Tate was the man to ask. He lived at the dump. His home was a concrete bunker. Something bad had happened to him in the Korean war. My uncle had won the Silver Star for action in the Chosin Reservoir and gave Red money for beer. "He was a hero."
We asked red about the magazines.
"I'm not giving you anything weird," Red Tate exploded after hearing our request. "You're good kids. How you think people would talk if they found out I was giving kids stroke books."
"We're not kids." I protested since I was almost 13.
"You don't even shave." Red Tate touched my cheek. His fingers smelled like discarded cigarettes and his callouses were rough as a cat's tongue. "Stay away from that shit."
"But you must have some." Chuckie was desperate.
"I'm not interested in sex. Not the real thing. Not the fake." His family kept him in clothing and he actually didn't look too bad if you ignored the scar jagging across his forehead. "Not any more."
"Maybe you can answer a question."
"Like what?" Red licked his lips. The talking made him thirsty.
"Like why do the guys in porno books never take off their sox?"
"That's easy. They keep on their sox so they can put on their shoes easy if the police raid the studio. That's where you get the expression 'blow off your sox'." Red pushed me away roughly. Parents didn't want him speaking with children.
Chuckie and I were disappointed by Red's refusal.
By summer's end the magazines were in shreds. I threw mine away in the woods. Chuckie flushed his down the toilet. They clogged the pipe. The plumber didn't say a word to Chuckie's father. We returned our devotion to our studies.
In the Fall semester Chuckie was B+ and I was A-.
Sister Mary Josef commented my dedication.
"I was praying for you."
"So was I."
And I continued by requests to a pagan god for more pornography.
Certainly the nuns' god was not into filth.
He had more important things on his mind.
Me, I had only one thing.
And it wasn't God.
Not then and not now.
For I had turned wicked forever.
