My first encounter with porn was when I was a very young child. I was still living on the south side of Chicago and my dad had all of his magazines laid out across his bed. I think he must have been going through his Sports Illustrated collection and throwing all but the best issues out. He had left his room for a bit when I wandered in there and discovered, amidst covers with Dennis Rodman and Ken Griffey Jr. was a woman surrounded by purple. I do not remember her exact look, but I remember the word Playboy staring at me. I quickly opened the issue, saw what I needed to see, and felt very pleased with myself. I then ran out of the bedroom as quickly as possible to ensure that no one caught me.

Oh how the times have changed. Instead of flipping through pages of a magazine there is now a multitude of ways to take in that ultimate sexual pleasure of taking care of one’s business, and autofellatio isn’t even necessary! Apropos autofellatio, Microsoft Word claims that it isn’t a word so I decided to check Wikipedia, and let me tell you my friends, it is indeed a word, and it is a word accompanied by a very lovely photograph of a man in the act. The same goes for the word pearl necklace. If you have the time, I highly recommend some Wikisurfing.

WIKI: The sun god Ra was said to have created the god Shu and goddess Tefnut by fellating himself and spitting out his own semen onto the ground.

Our generation, Generation iPod or Generation YouTube or whatever people have started labeling us, is a very lucky generation. Yes, we have a “conflict” in Iraq and yes there is a big to-do about equality laws in the United States, but it is all made up for with the amount of free pornography that we can receive, provided you have the internet and the latest version of QuickTime.

There’s something for everyone out there. Erotic literature is aplenty on the internet. One of my friends recently told me that her masturbatorial adventures vary quite widely from when she’s in the shower to in the bedroom. In the shower, it’s all based on the physical, where a quick how-do-you-do from the showerhead does the trick. But in the bedroom, the stimulation comes slow and is drawn out thanks to saucy tales of man-on-woman action, or in some cases man-on-man. She hasn’t ventured into lesbian erotica yet, but I feel these things come with time.

Then, of course, there is the Google search engine. If you search, for example, autofellatio under the images category, a multitude of random images come up for your … er … spanking. However, with this word in particular a good deal are simply just cartoons. It seems that autofellatio is a bit harder to come by.

My favorite forms of pornography and technology, though, are based on a little thing I like to call webcams. The first website that I was introduced to that had a search engine of free porn was actually relatively late. I didn’t find out until the beginning of Fall Semester 07 that Xtube.com existed. This, of course, isn’t the only one of its kind, but it has become my favorite among searchable free porn. What I really love about Xtube is that not only can you find anything you have ever dreamed about, but for the most part it is all homemade. It is real sex between real people. Sure, some people look like models, but they tend to be the natural models. There’s none of this fake lighting bullshit to make people look better. No makeup. Real fucking is a huge turn-on, or at least it is for me, which brings me to my next website.

Could you imagine this being the only form of pornography available? God Bless 2008!

A friend of mine sent me an IM around 1 AM telling me that he has become addicted to cam4.com, a website with webcams set up by men, women, couples, and shemales who want to strut their stuff. For the viewers at home, it’s a sort of voyeurism that allows you to establish a secret identity and have an interactive e-porn experience. You can watch a straight guy jerk off, and if you want to chat with him you can easily pretend that you are a woman with a tight tight bearded clam that is just begging to be filled.

Isn’t that sick?

I love this website. Last night I watched a young tattooed dude have sex with a girl in his computer desk chair. Every once in a while they would stop to see what people wanted them to do to each other. The tattooed guy got into it and followed people’s directions while the woman seemed more intent on drinking out a few bottles of wine.

I’m not a cammer on this website, nor do I think I ever will be, but for those who have the balls to do it, more power to them. The difference between this live camming website and Xtube is that you cannot download the live stream with basic tools like RealPlayer, whereas it is very easy to download any and all videos ever posted on Xtube. If you’re into showing off your body but don’t want copies of it getting out just yet, you might be better off starting with live shows. Actually, about a year ago a friend of mine found a video in Xtube of an acquaintance of ours masturbating and touching his feet. Thanks to RealPlayer and the ability to download videos of off Xtube, YouTube, and the like, this acquaintance will never be able to live down the fact that he has jerked off in foot porn for the world.

This brings up the question I have: how embarrassing is it to do porn? Should it be embarrassing at all? So many people, myself included, find joy in these home videos that are constantly being posted on the web. It’s only a bit awkward when you actually recognize the person, especially when you see them in person and want nothing more than to tell them that they should really bust out the sheers because they have some major trimming that needs to be taken care of.

I like sex. I like porn. I think outlets such as Cam4 and Xtube are great because you can express yourself sexually and remain STD-free, but how open about our sexuality should we really be? What if our bosses find videos of us doing the nasty on the internet? Hell, I’m currently applying for jobs right now and I am somewhat terrified that a potential employer could see that I even WRITE about sex. Could you imagine if the hiring manager at American Eagle looked up my name and saw me fucking a watermelon? Now, I have never fucked a watermelon, but I have seen a video of someone who has. Can his employer really judge him for his love of large fruits and vegetables?

I believe sex is an important part of my life, and therefore I will continue having sex and I will continue writing about it. I hope you choose to continue having sex as well, and maybe someday soon I’ll be seeing you on Xtube.

I’m back in the United States and it has, up this point, been pretty damn sweet. Granted, the flight home was a bit of a bitch considering I almost had to go to prison, my first flight was late by 30 minutes and my second flight was delayed an hour, which meant an extra hour of being seated not next to one but TWO crying babies, but now that I am back, I am savoring Chicago style pizza, Panera, and Italian beef sandwiches. Yeah, one of the best things about the United States has got to be the food, but there are other nice things too, like gas prices (look, $4.30 is a lot better than the European equivalent of about $7.50), bonfires, and not legally being allowed to drink.

Well, at least the bonfires are nice. Coming back has been a little less than extraordinary. The other day I was in Panera and it appears that American teenage girls are still as slutty as ever with shorts that give about the same amount of skin coverage as a napkin. It’s still incredibly hot as hell, so that shows that global warming is still keeping up the good work. And of course, the cross-dressing men of the south suburbs of Chicago are still as masculine as ever.

Two nights ago I went to a bar in Blue Island called Club Krave. I had no idea that the southern suburbs of Chicago had a gay bar, but apparently they do, and apparently a friend of mine works there; and once a week s/he performs in drag as the now infamous Britney Sheers. This, of course, is a play on the fact that he’s in beauty school and scissors and hardy har har.

My friend Alex brought me to this bar to introduce me to what would surely become a hangout over the course of the next month while I am still at home in the burbs. Now, if you’ve never been to Blue Island for fear of being shot, you are probably under the impression that the south suburbs of Chicago aren’t as fancy as the northern suburbs like Evanston and Winnetka. While this may be true in terms of lifestyle, amount of money in the town, architecture, beautiful parks, fantastic gourmet restaurants, art, education of citizens, and many other factors, it simply isn’t true when it comes down to the cross-dressers, for at Club Krave, they are fabulous. And they have huge ass arms.

I have never really been around cross dressers much in my day. Or transsexuals. I have this idea that the whole grouping of “LGBT” isn’t particularly … well, correct. Lesbians and gays are “different” from heterosexuals in that their sexual orientation is different, but cross dressers like dressing as the opposite sex while transsexuals feel they have been born in the wrong body. This deals a lot with that more than 2 genders conversation, but I haven’t been well-versed enough on that subject. I will get back to you on that in a later article, but in the meantime, I’m just going to make some generalizations.

The first thereof is that trans is the new gay. Jews are the original American minority, and after them came the blacks, and after them to a lesser extent the Mexicans, and now the gays, and next up the trannys. I’ve been told that this is an incredibly rude and discriminating word but I’m using it because what I have realized is that I actually do discriminate, and I have the feeling a lot of other gays do, too.

The cross dressers I met at Krave were really cool guys. I may have been partial to them because so many of them speak German (German, by the way, is the new secret language of the gays. More America gays that I know speaking German than not, and I will also write an article full of bullshit as to explain to why in the future, but stop asking so much of me!! Enjoy your trannies and be content!). The cross-dressers of the south side, however, are different from the cross dressers I have met in Champaign, Germany, and Austria. In Europe, the cross-dressers I have met were very … elegant. They wore long elegant gowns, wigs with beautiful curled blonde hair, and had fantastic makeup that really increased their femininity. The cross-dressers of Krave wore Sox jerseys, wigs with short brown hair, and had makeup that made them look like, well, ugly south suburban women. Some of them looked like their female counterparts but for some reason men of the south side tend to be big burly guys, and when they dress as women, they aren’t the prettiest of creatures.

I know a lot of gays who get pissed off when African Americans don’t fight for gay rights, “They’re a minority and they used to not have any rights, why aren’t they fighting for us? Don’t they know how it feels?”

I think the thing is, is that that is the only common ground. Some African Americans probably just don’t identify with gays, regardless if they think it’s okay to be gay or not. And I think the same goes for transsexuals and cross dressers: not all gays are able to identify with the idea of dressing as the opposite sex or having a surgical operation to find the right body. Just because you are a minority, you don’t have to fight for every goddamn person’s rights. It’d be exhausting.

African Americans had a huge presence when they were fighting for their rights. Through protests such as sit-ins and refusing to ride public transportation, and activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, African Americans had a voice and through a lot of fighting, usually peaceful, they gained more rights (I will in no way say that they are equal rights, but once again, that’s another article). Who is fighting for gay rights? Well, we have pride parades and gay months and all that, and there has arguably been an increase in rights for homosexuals in the U.S., but where is the revolution? Where is our voice?

And cross-dressers? Transsexuals? Who is their voice? Please, for the love of all things sacred, tell me that trannys will have a greater voice than that of Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker. But then again, s/he’s loud, obnoxious, and doesn’t seem to give a shit what other people think of his/her lifestyle. Is Chris Crocker the voice of the revolution?

Chris Crocker in a less obnoxious moment

Three days ago I saw my host sister’s tits. I’m not sure if you would call that exaggeration or not. We were on the island of Ruegen, the largest German island that exists, which happens to be where Elizabeth’s* boyfriend of 1 year some odd months lives. He is (basically from what I gathered) a grain farmer and his farm and home lay right on the Baltic Sea. I had never been to Ruegen but was excited to be getting the tour because this is where Caspar David Friedrich painted those forever-famous chalk cliffs. In a few decades they’ll probably be washed away so it’s a good thing I came to see them now instead of for my 90th birthday.

Back to the tits. I was touring Elizabeth’s boyfriend’s home and was led into his bedroom. Elizabeth clearly helped him decorate as this guy didn’t seem to be the type to paint several differently toned brown lines of varying sizes on the wall. Above his bed post, an adorable picture of Elizabeth posing on the rocks that are probably one and the same with the rocks lining the beach a few hundred meters away.

Then, I got the phone call from my second host father (in the Rotary exchange program I was apart of in high school you live with a total of 3 families, Elizabeth was from family number 3 and Papa Hansy* was family number 2, but that isn’t really too significant to the story). During this phone call my host sisters left me alone in the bedroom as I talked to Hansy. We were planning a coffee and/or lunch rendezvous for the next morning. That’s when I noticed the calendar hanging on the back of the bedroom door, and there, Miss July herself, Elizabeth was laying spread across the crimson sheets, tits ablaze.

Americans are prude. Or rather, pruder than Germans, if you would care to allow such a word to exist. The moment I wrote that sentence I realized how incorrect that is. After all, I have admittedly written that many of the girls on the U of I campus are quite skanky when it comes to going out, but how many of you freak out when you see the word tits in print. God forbid I use the c-word… So my question is, is there a difference between being a skank on campus and being STARK NAKED ABSOLUTELY BARE NOT WEARING A THING NUDE IN FRONT OF THE PERSON WHO HAS BASICALLY BEEN A BROTHER TO YOU FOR THE LAST TWO AND A HALF YEARS?

No. There isn’t. It’s basically the same argument between porn and erotica. I enjoy both, I really do. I am the number one advocate of all things Xtube, but while I do think it is quite interesting to see regular joes jerking it for the world to see, I do not think I would go so far as calling it art. Maybe education, but not art. I also really love erotica. One of my favorite all-time books is The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker: An Erotic Memoir by Suzanne Portnoy. If you haven’t read it I will lend you my copy or you can pick up your own here:

http://www.amazon.com/Butcher-Baker-Candlestick-Maker-Erotic/dp/0753511010

Go read this right now.

Arguably, there is a difference between porn and erotica. Porn is meant to get you off while erotica is literature that just happens to turn you on and then you end up throwing the book aside and just go at it. That’s the difference: porn you keep in front of you and erotica you throw aside when you move on to the handy business. So why isn’t porn just considered interactive art?

It should be. That’s the problem with this damn calendar. I see my host sister’s breasts and I try to justify it. Is it art? After all, she’s laying here only for the enjoyment of a single person, her boyfriend. And since they live 2 hours away from each other, the calendar probably is used for more than just keeping track of the date (regardless of how impressive and difficult a task that may be). But yes, I would go so far as to argue it is indeed art. It was meant to please someone’s eye. It was meant to arouse certain feelings. It was created to remind someone of something they enjoy. That someone just doesn’t happen to be me and when I see such things I get a little red in the face.

As some of you know, Germany is in Europe. And being in Europe, it is of course quite to have nude beaches. Sadly the first time I wandered onto one of these beaches when I was 17 I was quite displeased to realize that it’s usually old wrinkly and often fat women who enjoy being nude on the nude beaches. On one of the first days I was living in Germany my host mom (of, naturally, family number 1) took me to the beach that was about a 4-minute walk. Naturally she just decided to take her swimsuit with her and instead of finding some sort of locker room she just stripped down right there in front of me. I learned a lot about my host mom that day and I do not wish to share it. Quick side note, this is the same host mom who, while walking along the same beach, saw a very very large naked man and woman swimming together and then giggled to me, “Hey look, beached whales.”

Germany, clearly a part of Europe.

Not that I advocate making fun of fat naked people, but I just thought it was funny that this person was put in charge of my life for 5 months. She taught me German and I liked her a lot. But that has nothing to do with my host sister’s tits.

What I am getting at is that in Europe everyone seems to be pretty damn cool with their bodies. They make calendars and they walk on beaches even when they’re old and nasty. I believe I mentioned in my article on the Life Ball in Vienna that one guy, instead of wearing an alien-themed costume, just went to the red carpet event naked and painted everything up to and including his uncut penis purple. Yes, I have a picture and no, I will not be posting it, but yes, if you contact me through email I will happily send it to you.

In the United States, bodies are put into pretty little frames. Girls show off their cute little asses and their gigantic tits and fake tans while guys groom rather interesting areas (also a very important topic that must soon be discussed) and wear tight tees with Greek letters to show just how ripped and cool they happen to be.

Like I said, I like porn, so I really don’t have a problem with this. They do this in Europe too of course, because people EVERYWHERE like getting laid, but America just happens to lack a lot of the “erotica” and seems to bank on the “porn.” That, and violence. In America we love violence and video games and movies are a great example of that. One of my favorite movies is Kill Bill Vol. 1 because of just how much ass Uma Thurman happens to kick.

If you compare America to Europe, specifically Germany, you’ll notice that when it comes to media Americans love violence but are too embarrassed to admit to the tits, while Europeans really love tits but don’t like to admit to the violence. A lot of video games are incredibly censored (green blood, seriously?) and you are definitely always carded when purchasing violent games. But if you turn on any television after 11 PM you will see tons of commercials showing off various porn telephone lines that show everything. And when I say everything I mean everything. A friend of mine from Mexico once caught my reaction to a commercial for Grandma Porn. I guess some people are just into that.

In order to solve this whole war on terror, America needs to not only allow the public display of tits, but also encourage the public display of tits. You want to solve this recession we seem to find ourselves in? The solution is obvious: more erotica. We need to stop being embarrassed of the erotic side of sex and embrace it.

Save the USA! Show off what your mama gave you!

Just try and tell me that you can’t imagine what these hands are really grabbin’ on to.

*Elizabeth clearly isn’t the real name of my host sister, but it’s a good name with a good amount of syllables. Oh, and my second host dad wasn’t named Hansy, but I really wish he was.

A week ago I left Vienna. Leaving my friends was one of the hardest things I have had to do lately and I cannot wait to see them again, however for the past week I have been seeing a good deal of Denmark and Germany. Denmark is beautiful and is home to my new home away from home, Legoland. Did you know Legos are Danish? You probably did, but you don’t have to rub it in my face, ok?

Austria, Germany, Denmark, they all bring something to the table that needs to be discussed, something that I know has been going through your mind for quite some time now: lack of circumcision. It’s kind of interesting, the first time I ever saw one that wasn’t circumcised, I actually laughed out loud. All that extra skin and did it really have a use? I had to play around with it a bit to find out and while it didn’t really do anything for me, god dammit did I not wish I had one myself.

This article is a call to arms against circumcision. They have so many uses! I can think of about … well one right now! And it’s a great one! Less lube! I really hate lube. I’m pretty sure everyone has their own favorite lube because it seems that there is only one that is usually worth working with while the rest leave you feeling, to be blunt, oily, slimy, and worst of all, when on the receiving end, squishy. Squishy is by far a feeling that no one should ever need to associate with sex.

As I write this I’m having a conversation about the same topic with my boyfriend. Are you aware that a circumcision costs 450 bucks? This is, of course, if his mom knows what she’s talking about, and I’m pretty sure that she does. So if you think about it, a circumcision is not only going to cost you money when you have it chopped off, but it’s going to cost your son years upon years of lube fees, providing he isn’t a total heifer who sits on his ass playing World of Warcraft all day.

Hm. I should stop talking to him now. He’s going on about something called a reflexive clench and I’m really more interested in this cut vs. uncut debate. A lot of people consider it unclean to be uncut, but it’s simply not true. All of Europe can’t possibly be unclean, right? And if they are, it doesn’t seem like it’s really affecting their social lives.

Doin’ It Well actually already tackled this subject in their article that you can find here:

http://the217.com/articles/view/turtleneck_or_crew

I just wanted to bring it up again because for some reason traveling through Denmark and seeing the home of fairy tale king Hans Christian Anderson apparently inspires thoughts of circumcision. But seriously, 450 dollars? I could get a new tattoo for that.

I guess the only thing really worth saying here is don’t knock it ‘til you tried it. Just don’t laugh. They apparently don’t think it’s as funny as you do.

Han Christian Anderson, author of The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid, was probably not circumcised, but I really can’t back that up.