The 14 Year-Old Porn Peddler

As I start in on this it is about 9:30 on Sunday morning, so naturally my thinking turns to porn. Pornography practically oozes off the internet. I can Google “nude women” and see all kinds of bare stuff. If I’m particular, I can use the three words “stacked nude women” and get a monitor full of busty females, some posing, and some in action. It’s very easy. Too easy.

I’m 61 years old. Back when I was 13 and getting my first taste of porn, things were not so simple. A kid had to work for his pictures of naked girls. And even with work the pictures were usually lousy. Back in the day, the cream of the porn crop was Playboy. The girlie photos were airbrushed and sort of semi-real, but at least the models were attractive. The trouble was; Playboys were generally not out on the local pharmacy’s magazine rack where they would be accessible to the young, curious, newly pubescent guy, but rather up by the watchful eyes of the store's cashier. The magazines that were available on the racks were such dubious publications as Stag, and For Men Only. These were really cheap mags with grainy black and white photos of slightly overweight women displaying chubby legs and cleavage, but not much more. An adolescent boy had to develop a keen imagination to become enlivened by a Stag Magazine.

Just about my 14th birthday, I was walking down an alley when I came upon a trashcan containing about a dozen slightly worn Playboys. I felt as though God had sent me a pictorial treasure chest. I hurried the publications home and hid them in a box placed up in our garage’s rafters. Now and then over the following days I would climb a ladder, visit my stash, and leave the garage with a Playboy hidden under a shirt. I would show it to a friend and we would analyze the smiling, unclothed foldout. I eventually sold the entire library to an older kid for, as I recall, a whopping $3. I had never made so much money at one time. Now these years later I can honestly say that one of my earliest and most successful business ventures was in the peddling of pornography. Contrary to how others might label me, I have never thought of myself as particularly perverted or depraved. You see, I figure it was business, that’s all, just business.           

The Reaper

Well, it is 2013. I escaped 2012 alive and in good health. Not everyone I know who is my age did escape. One of them, Steve Sheridan, I knew back in elementary school when we were kids. He died in 2012 of leukemia at the age of 61. I am sorry Steve died but to be honest, I prefer he experience death as opposed to my experiencing it. I do not like the notion of death, which paradoxically, is why I’m writing this blog entry.

A couple of years ago another elementary school classmate died. His name was Bob Arnold. Bob and I occasionally got into trouble together back when we were kids. We were in the same Cub Scout den. A couple of times I visited his house for Scout meetings. He was perhaps the best cusser at Glenmont Elementary School during the early 1960s. When I saw in some online obituaries that Bob had died, I really felt saddened.

I kind of imagine all of my contemporaries lining up once annually about this time of year with The Grim Reaper walking down the line and putting his hand on a couple of shoulders, thereby selecting them for expiration during the forthcoming year. With every passing year the black-cloaked guy takes a few more of us than he did the year before. That is just the way it is with aging. There are things that can be done to make a person look less attractive to The Reaper, things such as a healthy diet and exercise, but in the end if Mr. Death wants you, you will feel his hand upon your shoulder.

I’d like to think The Reaper will once again pass me by for 2013, but of course I will not know for sure until I raise my champagne glass on December 31^st at 11:59 PM, assuming I will be here to raise it. Of course come next January the utterly pointless worry starts all over again. But I’ll tell you what; next year I won’t mention it, that is, given the chance.