As a female of the species, I am not expected to like porn. For that reason alone, I've always sought to enjoy it more. I've developed a taste for erotic stories as a reader and writer, and for print/static porn, and for nasty cartoons and almost everything else. But porn in the traditional "porn movie" sense eludes me.

There are reasons for this. I was very little when I had my first experience with video porn, and it wasn't a positive experience.

For as long as I've been alive I've never really slept normal hours. The adult units in charge of me gave up trying to keep me in bed by the time I was able to speak in sentences so the rule of "stay in bed" was amended to simply dictate that I read in my room and not go wondering through the house. And mostly I was a good girl. Except that, even for a child who enjoys reading, books can get boring sometimes. So I would sneak out into the living room, turn the volume down low and watch shows like "Nite Owl Movies" or British comedies and old reruns. (Cable TV and VCRs weren't around yet.)

Then, one day the adult-type units installed this box on the television set that was called "ON TV." (I would provide a reference of some kind if I could find it, but YOU try Googling for "On TV")

"ON TV" consisted of a box with an On/Off knob that hooked into the back of the TV (we had to get a splitter so that I didn't have to unhook my Telestar Pong console). Every day after 2pm, you would put your television on channel 3 and then switch the magic box to the "on" position and viola! you had movies. From 2pm to 11pm movies aired, and as far as I knew, that's when programming ended.

Then we started getting "ON TV" guides in the mail and I noticed that there were other shows with funny titles listed as starting at midnight. The adult units were holding out on me! I swore revenge!

So the next time I crept out, and turned the TV volume down low, I also turned the dial to channel 3 and switched the "ON TV" box to "on." I have NEVER forgotten the next three or four minutes of what I saw.

A beautiful black woman with a Foxy Brown afro was completely naked (she didn't even have knickers on!) and laying on a large picnic table out in the middle of a field. The table looked like it was set to feed an army, and she was laid out like a yummy chocolate sculpture centerpiece. I was fascinated.

One minute later, fascination turned to shocked and repulsed as the lovely black woman started playing with her food -- literally.

Now, I was a pretty sexually savvy nibblet for a girl my age. I knew all sorts of birds and bees stuff, had read things I shouldn't have and had been informed by all the adult type units that sexuality was not bad, just private. I'd also discovered that I had certain little parts that felt good to touch and I liked touching them.

Foxy, however, was doing very messy, very dirty things with her picnic spread that I had never considered desirable or possible. I sat in bewildered horror as she rubbed a log of Summer sausage between her legs and got funky with a jello salad. At some point she actually cracked an egg on her bushy wide-open kitty and that was about all I could take. I turned off the television set, flipped the switch to "off" and ran back to my bed. That feeling of heart-pumping "what the hell was that?" childhood terror shuddered in me and I vowed to whatever God might lend an ear that I would NEVER EVER look at such things again provided no one ever found out about what I'd seen. I felt sure if ANYONE had the slightest idea about what I had seen Foxy doing, I'd have spontaneously combusted. I was in college the next time I saw video porn.

During that time, however, I would like to note that my self-imposed "shame" regarding hardcore video porn never tainted my softcore porn fetish. Magazines, comics, cartoons and other print images were fair game. I loved looking at dirty pictures. I loved dirty cartoons, dirty illustrations, dirty comics, and salivated over pin-up art. I also enjoyed softcore "Sinemax" style porn when I got a chance to watch it. I did then, and still do get tingles in tender places from looking at all that stuff and my hard drive is pumped with it.

Although my tastes have always run to the softcore I didn't have the slightest bit of embarasment about liking it once I was free of my awkward adolescent stage. I was still in high school when, one afternoon, my Dad came home from work to find me in my bedroom up to my knees in his old 70's Playboy issues. Without so much as a blush on my face, I looked up to find him turning green as I rambled on excitedly about interviews I'd been reading and retro articles I'd been enjoying. Playboy was, of course, completely different back then. Bless his heart, Dad muttered something about making sure my mother didn't see me with his magazines and I don't think I saw him for a week after that.

I would like, very much, to develop a relationship with hardcore porn, especially of the video variety. But I've never seen a porn movie that got me wet. I am not the target market, alas. Plus I've never seen a porn movie that didn't look unconvincing.

This is probably because I did things backwards. I learned about and started enjoying my sexuality way before being exposed to porn regularly. I knew how to give blowjobs men liked. I knew what got me and my partner off when we were all tangled up together. Sure, I had stuff to learn -- we all continue to learn about sexuality as we age and mature -- but I had the basics down. And what I saw in porn movies looked false. It had no heat, no creaminess.

Most people I know seem to have been exposed to porn before they actually got into having regular sex -- before they developed their techniques and personal sexual styles. They were influenced by what they saw and tried to mimic it. So porn sex doesn't look so false to them.

The first time I encountered porn without produce I was with friends. A group of us were sitting around at 3am with some recreational smoke and whoever was in charge of the clicker landed on a porn movie. Standard doggie style close-up in-and-out fake-tits-bouncing type drivel. The boys in the room let out a happy cry of "Porn!" while the women (myself included) alternately rolled our eyes and made "urgh" sounds.

As is often the case with intellectual know-it-all college kids who are high at 3am, we got into feverent discussions about our differing views. The boys loved porn, the girls did not. But we girls weren't prudes (trust me, we had the sluttiest minds south of the Mason-Dixon line), we just didn't like what porn had to offer. We were JEALOUS that the boys got the stuff they liked and no one seemed to care that it wasn't tailored to a female mindset at all.

For reasons I won't add to this already lengthy post, I was the sexpert of my clan. Not that they knew how or why (sex was not bad, just private...) I'd acquired such knowledge, but it was clear I was the one that knew things. And what I knew more than anything was that the sex depicted by the porn movie we were watching was fake.

My use of the word "fake" sparked further debate --

Friend: "It's not fake! He's fucking her!"
Me: "Well, yes, but it's not, like, real fucking."
Friend: "What the hell are you talking about?"
Me: "THAT is not the way people fuck."
Friend: "It's obviously the way some people fuck. They're doing it."

I couldn't debate that point and my argument stalled, but I knew I was right. I just couldn't communicate the difference between "false" and "not real." Besides, I had the munchies.

The blowjobs I've seen in porn movies are bad blowjobs. They aren't sloppy enough. They don't make enough contact. There's too much "bob your head up and down" and not enough slobbery, slippery tongue-mouth-hands-touch-it-everywhere-you-can. There's no ball-licking "I'm going to push my finger in your ass just before you come and get that prostate throbbing" action. It's all one lip-implanted twat in cheap red lipstick trying to swallow as much as she can and being terribly uncreative in the process. Not that it's her fault. She's only doing what she's told.

Moreover, the fucking I've seen in porn movies is pointless, unsexy, and mechanical. And why camera men feel the need to zoom in on Tab A being inserted into Slot B is beyond my understanding. Show me the face of a woman grunting as her whole body jolts from being plugged from behind. Show me wrists being held down hard. Show me fingers sinking in to grip a plump round ass that's about to get fucked. I'm not saying I don't want any in-and-out shots, but when that's all there is, there isn't much.

Plus, why isn't there SOME story involved? I don't need much. I'm not looking for international jewel thieves who fuck by day and steal by night. I don't need plot development or anything as complicated as a beginning, middle and end. I just want a set-up that isn't so contrived even the actors look bored. Sock Puppet Porn is more stimulating than most of what I've run across.

I've talked to a lot of people about porn my whole life, because that's what I do about topics I don't understand -- I survey and probe and annoy others to get their take. And the general consensus seems to be that most people have a handful of porn movies that they truly enjoy and the rest is just what's available and works for the moment. It's like the world at large is on one long bad blind date with porn.

Except people living in Asia who appear to get all the porn they want exactly as they want it and who generally bewilder and frighten me.

The Rollertrain article says it all. It's not that women like myself want to hate porn, it's just that we're JEALOUS that our tastes, wants, desires don't seem to be represented. But that's easy to understand. When guys only seem mildly pleased with what's out there and they are the focus of the industry, then someone is doing something WRONG. I'm not saying "all" but I am thinking that most porn producers need to stop delivering what they THINK the market wants and actually begin digging into researching and then producing what the market actually wants.

But, they're probably not going to start exploring any Brave New World of Porn frontiers while we've got fundies chomping at the bit to take porn to the mattresses.

I know that my tastes are likely too taboo -- too extreme and too hard to pull off convincingly. The old 70s Taboo movies are okay, but the character in the position of power is the one character I want to watch get exploited (which never happens).

And my tastes means that I don't really look around for amateur stuff on the web because I'm always afraid I'll find something real that will spook me. I want to see mild rape porn, but I don't want to accidentally find some sick fuck who videotaped a real rape. I want to see age-play and incest-play, but I don't want to find some file of a child being exploited. There used to be a few clips I guarded covetously on an old computer -- a few minutes here and there of well done (but obviously scripted) non-consent and incest, but I lost 'em all in a computer crash.

Bondage sometimes works for me as well, but I'm picky. Most bondage stuff out there is too extreme for my tastes. I like spanking and tie-me-up play. But caning and whipping and fuck machines and leather hoods do nothing for me. I used to have a nice little collection of spanking clips that got me wet, but, alas, they, too were lost.

Like most people I would love to make my own porn movie. My script. My directing. My editing. The talent of the cast would be a wild card, but I could edit around that. Still, I think there'd be a huge market for my ideas. Taboo subject matter. Lots of facial expressions shuffled in among the full-body shots. Hot, non-cheesy dialog that adds to the fucking and doesn't detract from it.

In the meantime I look at my softcore pretty pictures when I want to touch myself and think naughty thoughts and whisper naughty things.

Or sometimes I just fast-forward to *the scene* in Monster's Ball. Because, you know, I don't care what anyone says -- they WERE fucking.