The ancient Greeks invented the word Pornography by linking two Greek words; porno for prostitute and graphos to create Pornographos according to Biblehub.com. The portrayal of sexual acts can be traced to pre-Ice Age. Neolithic anthropologists claim the Venus of Hohle Fels, a naked figurine carved from a mammoth ivory dating back 40,000 years ago, was man's first attempt at figurative representation. Religious opponents to this thought counter that lurid images have never been found amongst the thousands of prehistorical cave paintings around the world. I doubt it and I'm certain that the ancients had hid their XXX material far from the prying eyes of society whether they were Cro-magnon or Neanderthal, as I had hidden mine underneath my mattress as an adolescent.
Late spring 1964 my best friend Chuckie and I were exploring the abandoned army base not far from our suburban housing tract on Boston's South Shore. The hilltop installation was a victim of military cutbacks for Massechusetts after JFK's assasination. No soliders, no missiles, nothing. Not even guards. It was a DMZ for young boys from the surrounding towns. I had vandalized several buildings with Chuckie's older sister, Dennis, her boyfriend, and Bush, a motorhead from Fore River, Weymouth. We weren't the first to create a path of destruction.
By summer's end there was nothing left of value in the abandoned Nike military base. It had beenbecome a rendezvouds for teenage parties. Chickie and I were 12. Twelve year-old boys weren't welcome at these beery events.
One day Chuckie and I entered a dilapidated office. The corners were steeped with beer cans. The impact of bullets pocked the walls. Fire had scorched the entrance.
Teenage parties.
Maybe older.
Chuckie discovered a a moldy cache of 1950s porno mags in a corner next to a mouldy mattress. The collections' content ventured to another dimension of perversity than the Playboys from his father's closet. This was not the birds and bees. We had played with our sisters' undressed Barbie and Ken. We knew our penises were for sex, but had no idea about workings of the female organ. This was our introduction to sexuality via pornography. We separated the mildewed pages with the care of the Zionists handling the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of the sex was straight. Some was homosexual. A little sadism and a few filmy images of men with women who were men. Chuckie and I didn't have a word for that. In many of the photos the women were completely naked and the men wore sox.
"Why?" Chuckie was dumbfounded by this mystery.
"Maybe their feet are cold." I kept on my sox 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." It was adolescent logic at its best.
"Maybe the actors forgot to take them off in the excitement."
"If a girl is naked, I'm going to be naked too." Chuckie divided the magazines by genre. He took some of the queer stuff. One of the boys looked like him. I didn't comment on one of the boy's looking like him.
When I got home, I crammed the magazines under my mattress closest to the wall. Far from the edge. 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 magazine one by one. My fingertips smelled of their rotten pages. From that moment the photos and words from those books and magazines inspired long evenings of masturbation. My brother was a deep sleeper, but my sessions came at a cost.
I dozed off during the morning classes. 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 for these lapses?" Sister Mary Josef had been born in Stuttgart. The 7th grade called her 'Hitler'. She beat students with a ruler. Usually for no reason.
"For my grades?" I had been the #2 student in that class. "I 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 also taught at a Diocisan School for the Deaf. I had heard disturbing 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 them palm up. Her eyes pingponged across the whorls of my flesh, as if she was reading runes.
"No." I answered with feigned horror. The sisters taught us that we would grow hair on our palms, if we sinned with ourselves. I shaved every morning with my father's razor just to be safe. "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. $15. Good money. Levis cost $6 at Walker's Western Store on Boylston Street in Boston. A good deal, even if I was an atheist.
"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. 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 had been memorized more fervently than the Baltimore Cathecism.
And no one saw nothing.
Same as the anthropologists searching for erotic prehistoric paintings. They exist in the recess of unexplored caverns. Chuckie and I scoured the Blue Hills for more pornography. Our magazines were falling apart. We traded them to each other, but we needed something new.
Red Tate was the man to ask. He lived at the dump. His home a concrete bunker. Something bad had happened to him in the Korean war. My uncle said that Red was a hero. My uncle had won the Silver Star. He gave Red money for beer. We did the same with a request.
"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 thirteen.
"You don't even shave." Red Tate touched my cheek. His fingers smelled like discarded cigarettes. The 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. He actually didn't look too bad if you ignored the jagged scar across his forehead. Red must have been a good-looking soldier in his youth. "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. He was Satan's cohort in their Christian minds.
By month's end my right hand was cramped and the magazines were in shreds. I threw mine away far 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. Chuckie was B+ and I was A-. Sister Mary Josef commented my dedication.
"I prayed to God." I was an atheist. I only prayed to God at Mass.
"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.
Wicked forever.
