Tuesday, May 31, 2016

FAILURE DIARIES: BEING HORNY



It is inconceivable how hard it was to come across VHS porno when I was growing up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.  This quaint notion of course sounds supernaturally ridiculous today, where every bozo with a smartphone or a laptop has been watching gag-ball clips and Sasha Grey blow-bangs for so long it’s as tender a honeyed formative memory as the goateed goober who saw “Star Wars” front and center in 1977.  But even well past being voting age, three years into college (where I definitely wasn’t getting laid), and three years after Mark Wahlberg had been a pop icon Calvin Klein star having sex with supermodels…. I, at age 21, had still not seen actual video pornography.

Doesn’t mean I hadn’t wanted to, since it had been a Byronic quest since I became a veritable Mad Whacker during puberty.  Whereas other dudes are, like, normal, and do crazy shit like playing sports and having friends, whereby they meet these things called “girls” and go on, like, dates and pass notes and go to parties and become, like, fully functioning human fucking beings who go on to flip houses in pink shirts with three happy kids and an SUV….my weird mix of super-strict fire-and-brimstone-level Catholic upbringing and seemingly paradoxical Movie Obsession made me process human sexuality in the most fucked-up way this side of a ‘70s Paul Schrader character.  Sex was like The Forbidden and Women Were Terrifying, but I loved all these movies and models and actresses, and, long story short to spare you the psych self-exam portion of the show, the concepts of women and sex and dating became not some normal-guy rite of passage in reality, but rather like another form of movies, entirely in some fantasy realm in my moron head.  The only way I could relate to adult humanity was through what I’d seen in movies I was probably too young to process properly.

There were cute girls in school that I’d get little crushes on, but as a man-titted Poindexter in Bob From Halloween Glasses, I was catching beatdowns and getting the Trapper Keeper knocked out of my hands like clockwork, and no girl was gonna be seen within a hundred yards of me.  And lucky them, I remember one time, age 13, I was in study hall next to some chick who legit looked like Bozo the Clown, had a literal Red fucking Afro, and my Big Move of chatting her up was to explain the diamond-heist plot of William Petersen and John Pankow in “To Live and Die in L.A.”   I got all EXCITED like a spazz recounting the car chase and how it all played out, doing that Boring Guy thing of telling someone who So Doesn’t Give a Shit the plot of some movie they could watch in less time than it takes for your long-winded ass to retell it.   At my locker afterwards I heard Bozo rolling down with the hall laughing it up with her friend Lisa – “What the HELL was he talking about?” and mimicking my nerd voice “…and then they rob the diamond guy!” and MUAHAHAHAing “What a nerd!”

But there was no such ice bucket to the balls to be had in the Hannibal Lecter Spank Bank Fantasy Chamber in my junior psycho mind, where from even younger than that, I’d had Little Fantasies of being a Rich Guy who had a mansion and an inexplicable harem of model/actress type women based on the girls I’d see on TV and glamour mags.  Why they were with me of all idiots was like a “what’s in the trunk from Repo Man” McGuffin that I never dwelled on, since clearly I had no charisma or experience in real life and absolutely no idea how women talked or behaved.

But in my mind every night, I’d play out these rich, three-act cinematic masterpieces in which the girls would fight over who I liked more, and they’d paint each other’s toenails or TRY ON LITTLE OUTFITS for me.  And I’d sometimes bust out the General uniform to have them line up in formation as I went down the line critiquing their beauty and deciding who had the prettiest face, eyes, lips, tits, etc. 

There were sexier parts, but oddly as a consummate burgeoning cinephile, I was more interested in the long-form character arcs of whether imaginary April would or wouldn’t do some light lesbianism with Courtney, who was subtly based on Courtney Cox, or if Teri was going to spread her wings and leave the mansion to backpack around Europe.  Stupid shit like that.  Especially since I basically had NO IDEA what sex even looked like.  I seem to remember thinking a vagina was like a huge round hole, which is why I once tried to replicate the Great Unknown by fucking my tae kwon do glove, and Rodney had had some standup line about fooling his neighbors that he was getting laid by “doing push-ups in the window.”  So I took this literally and thought you hovered over a naked woman and did pushups into this wide mystery area.  This is probably where an anal obsession was born, since I had no fucking clue what a vag was like but had a running start on what an asshole was.

One of my very few friends was this fun dude Bobby from across the street, who was way cooler than me in a Dennis Gilder-to-Arnie Cuntingham way, and who had a drum kit and had Run DMC and Slayer records on vinyl right from the jump, and whose rage-case ‘Dad (who looked like Danny Noonan’s father) allegedly had this hidden cache of old Penthouses that we concocted a Hot Rock-worthy caper to break into sometime in summer of 1985.  Like working out signals and codes and shit (“He’s on the move, go!”) and then racing out with the one measly 1979-ass copy Bobby managed to find.  We took it up behind a tree and were passing it back and forth, geeking out over the chicks in Guccione schmear-sheen and epic bushes – I don’t mean Bertolucci style dicks out, but I was flopping around like fucking Josh Baskin.

I was hooked on the naked female form from this moment, and no jelly-shoed, poodle-haired gum-snapping Yinzer in our junior high that fall was ever gonna compete.

Anything “sexy” became about the visual, about objectification, and if this was the last era where clueless guys were this wantonly sexist and voyeuristic and meatheaded, it sure was the right fucking era for it.  This was the time of David Lee Roth mugging like a jackass with four bikini chicks on either arm, the time of titty comedies with PeeWee sticking his dick in the peephole, those movies where “four guys on the make” go to a tropical resort and just OGLE WOMEN and try to get them naked then do lots of mugging, and that’s the whole fucking plot – this firm grasp on reality all helped shape the middle-aged bozo who’s still excited about Selena Gomez movies because there’s an off chance she might wear a PG-13 bikini, while long since giving up on having functional adult relationships of any sort.

But said comedy romps would come on late at night, and if I could stealthily record one while nobody was looking, I’d be in my GLORY in the days ahead when mom worked and I had a precious hour with the house to myself to pore over “Porky’s Revenge” or the Linda Hamilton “Terminator” tits or “Tomboy” with Betsy Russell over and over again, rewinding and leaving it stuck on SLP pause with the snowy lines across the screen.  They always had really blatant tan lines back then which fascinated me so much that one day I went out on the deck I gave my fat fucking ass a wedgie to see if I could get a thong-style TAN LINE on my already enormous man-ass.  Yeah, I was a REALLY fucking weird kid. 

I hadn’t actually figured out stroking off at this point, but I was just consumed with seeing tits and especially bush – I must have been carrying around a Dark Star beach ball-sized sac of wad before I finally started wet-dreaming from all this hotness kicking around my head.  I remember being horny ALL the fucking time.  I remember going to some zoo on a family vacation and blatantly walking around with a massive boner I couldn’t keep down while ‘Sweet Freedom” played on the P.A.  Now I have full blown E.D.

I think the first time I realized what jacking off was, I accidentally scraped my sweatpants around my knob and figured it out, and blasted off a round of Flubber I had no idea was coming.  I of course spent one hour that night praying for forgiveness and promising God he could send me to burn in the pits of Hell if I ever did that, whatever that was, again.  Also worth noting, in 2016, high schoolers and younger are eminently enlightened authorities on gender and sexuality, we live in a no-judgment culture where kids come out of the closet and everyone basically respects everyone’s identity, orientation, fetishes, lustings and longings and Hailee Steinfeld has a song about playing with herself..  But in like 1986, forget coming out or being trans – you would get bullied like a motherfucker just for whacking off.  NOBODY would admit to this, even though everyone surely was, and some dumbass named Kern cut class to go in the woods to jerk his dick one time, and the kid got brutalized and mocked so bad, his parents had to put him in a different school.  He never lived it down.  I remember two bullies getting in my face with the intensity of Harvey Keitel and Chris Penn one day, fuming and fists clenched, demanding that I swear I’ve never beat off or they would murder me.  Like I said, it was a joyous era.

But I still wanted mags and pics of the hotness to support this addiction, but the Playboys and Penthouses were impossible to come by on any regular basis, and that Bobby dude soon moved away and thus so did his dad’s cig and porno stache.  Along with the Mansion of Models in my head, I started day-dreaming things like that I’d be on a walk and happen upon a lost cache of mag porno.  Other kids wanted to be Joe Montana or Barry Bonds, I wanted a stack of dirty magazines.  The swimsuit issue came along for me then, with its glistening supermodels doing the foot thing and wet boobs and pretty hair, and through my mid-teens this became an absolute must.  It actually sort of replaced nudity as the principal obsession.  Like the nonexistent girls that still lived in my head, these models had Little Personalities and sexy Names! – Names!  Paulina!  Elle!  Stephanie!  They were my Little Buddies and I definitely incorporated them in fictionalized form into my daydreams, plus the relative tameness of ogling bikinis and legs and sandy feet melded nicely with my judgmental Catholic boy superstitions and movie-loser delusions about fame and cult of personality.  



Speaking of magazines, and movies, and VHS, I was a little movie nerd like I said, and would always get this magazine called “Video Review.”  It would have little capsule reviews of what was out on video, and little articles about the EXCITING HIGH TECH WORLD of VHS HEAD CLEANERS, about coaxial cables, about some rumored SUPER VHS technology that would truly be the dawn of a new age.  Mostly a tech wonk mag that you’d see that embarrassing HEY PADRON! Guy from Videodrome reading, but I liked it, especially when I realized it had this special SEALED SECTION in the back.  “Why whatever could be in here”,” I wondered.   If you didn’t crack the seal, you’d be none the wiser, hence why my parents would buy it for me…but lo and behold it was ads for – gasp – VHS porn.  Woooooah.  The ads were careful to put little stars on the nipples and such, but they promised a World of Adventure – I was shaking and nervous reading the titles like “Lez Be Friends” and what that could possibly entail.  All that vintage mid-80s headband and tube socks type porno that probably had Two Quarts North and Ginger whoever, filmed a hazy “Mike’s Murder” coke haze,  Porno.  This was some next-level shit.

Yet somehow I still – still – didn’t really realize that actual porno would should a dick going into the vag.  I was such a goob I figured it was naked chicks hopping around or doing light kissing or something.  Absolute idiot.  I was like 16 by then and had figured out how to rig the manual channel tracking on the top of my VCR that scrambled Cinemax would show up in snowy black-and-white with no sound.  It was this way that I watched some late-night Euro Skinemax gems like “Fiona,” “Young Lady Chatterly,” the Emmanuelles, and my personal fave, “Island of 1000 Delights,” which was absolutely filthy and had this lesbian scene on a beach that I wanted to will myself into like Chris Reeve in “Somewhere in Time.”  Somehow in ’88 I browbeat my folks into subscribing to Showtime – get this – because otherwise I could never have a 3-to-a-tape VHS recording of fucking “STAKEOUT” because HBO didn’t have the rights.  This was like literally a pressing, emotional concern of mine at age 15.   Anyway, Showtime had their own version of Skinemax’s fare, and late night Saturdays soon became a prime era to whack the dick electric to more ‘70s naughty fare that usually had a British bobby in fast-motion or that weird Casanova movie with Tony Curtis and a bunch of Playmates.

To slide back to real life, this was now getting closer to 11th and 12th grade, and in fairness to myself I somehow was FAR less of an inept loser by the latter high school years.  I’d worked up a little comedy persona that won over most, if not, all of the jocks, and with a few exceptions the bullying had really subsided.  I traded in the coke bottles for contacts, and looked like something approaching a functional high school kid circa 1989-90.  Even  started having female friends, especially this chick I’ll call Jody who I went full-on over-the-moon for.  Of course I was friendzoned but didn’t remotely realize it, in my infinite inexperience I assumed I was the love of her life and we were “just like Harry and Sally!” or something, and we hung out in her house together a couple times watching MTV until her asshole lawyer dad who looked EXACTLY like that motherfucker from the “Cradle of Love” video would come home and throw me out.

Of course this was short-lived as she started inviting her big-sized camp-hag pal and my INDIAN BOZO ROLLING PARTNER along on our adventures, since in her rational mind we were just pals, and frankly she was on and off with some Marlboro Lights 100s-smoking preppy god who had a brief stint in rehab because he couldn’t take the pressure of being TOO GOOD AT EVERYTHING, guy was a walking John Hughes character.  I remember thinking me and Jody had a “date!” together to go see fucking Alan Alda in “Betsy’s Wedding,” but at the last minute she suggests we invite the Indian Bozo along and make it a group scene, then doubles down by having him sit between me and her as I’m in fucking ALDA AGONY, and as slow on the uptake as I am about everything, even my idiot ass sussed this one out that this great love was not meant to be.  I think I had one more conversation with her where I embarrassed myself royalty, and from there it was a fucking Gettysburg-worthy retreat from the comparative pain of reality back to punching the fucking cork like Fast Times Reinhold to my imaginary swimsuit girlfriends Showtime tits and fantasies where I not only could command pussy, but I had the fucking General costume to prove it.

Was bummed and dejected about this through most of senior year, especially since my “posse,” such as it was, were all starting to date these really cool chicks, and I was always fifth-wheeling like the clown, striking out when I tried, and in the last few months of that year I remember already drifting apart pretty good from my little crew.  I just wanted to move to L.A. to be a comedian, but because I’m a pussy first and foremost,  I wanted to please my folks who desperately demanded I get a proper four-year college education, which we all know is the cornerstone of every great famous actor and comic.

I ended up that fall as a motherfucking COMMUTER at the University of Pittsburgh. Right from Semester One I started noticing I was riding a bus and going home nights to work as a grocery cashier in my PAISLEY SHIRTS and Dockers, I was hanging out with high school kids thinking I was The Fonz but was really The Douche,  and the nadir of my life came one December weekend (I believe the one where Last Boy Scout was released) that was officially Christmas break and on Friday night I was drinking a case of Coors in THE WOODS with a bunch of 15- and 16-year-olds, and the next night my BROS who’d gone away for college all called an Applebee’s meetup, and they’re regaling me with TALES OF THE VAG that sounded right out of a Phil Kaufman movie…. And my comeback is that I finally had TWO VCRs and was able to make a faded copy of GOLDFINGER I’d rented.  This guy Phil and this guy Scott who’d been total losses when we were in HS suddenly had college girlfriends and made it sound like they’d just wander the dorm and behind each unlocked door was a different waiting 1991-hotness chick taking the D as Sad But True played and the Jack and the jizz flowed in equal measure.

This was when WHACKING OFF became less a “hopeful fun someday somehow” sunny fantasy of a LIFE I WOULD SURELY LEAD, to a LIFE THAT WAS PASSING ME BY.  I still had hope that I’d ride out this MISERABLE FUCKING COMMUTER LIFE, but each visit home in the SNOW-OPP-USE YOUR ILLUSION era from the increasingly distant posse was a gong resounding what a lonely pathetic worm I’d become.

It’s almost a fucking footnote that somewhere around here in 1992 I finally kinda sorta got some makeout NECKING (ooh! See ya at the sock hop!) and light petting action fumbling around in my fogged-up K-Car from some chick in an event so low-rent I had to ask her to hold off making out one more minute so I could finish a fucking Skoal Mint Chew Dip.  But that wasn’t what I wanted, which by now was MAGAZINE PORN and HUSTLER and HIGH SOCIETY, and if I wasn’t meeting any chicks on my daily travails on campus, they had a newsstand and I was an adult now goddamn it, and while my buddy Scott was off on some campus in Erie regaling me with stories of how his TWO girlfriends’ pussies tasted different, I was nervously waiting in lines buying a pack of Marlboro Box with a squack mag in plain view of every freshman chick who happened by.  I would RACE HOME with these glorious low-rent Hustlers and bust a nut over their incredibly tacky shots of wide-open vag.  And yet, and YET, this is 1992-3, I’m 19, 20 years old, and to get back to whatever the FUCK I was on about 11 hours ago, I still had never seen video porn.  Never. Not the real stuff.  I still thought MAGAZINES were the height of human eroticism.

I got my first glimpse of said VIDEO MAJESTY, finally, around age TWENTY YES TWENTY I MEAN TWENTY, this is the first time I’d ever seen any kind of sex in video form, thanks to some cipher-like bro Ryan who works at my market as a bagger.  His stepdad was some wiry drunk asshole who looked like Rex Brown who would get all fucked up and roll out and get lost and wake up in a storm drain or something, so me and this dude and some other rod Eric who looked like the kid from The Toy despite being 18 are ALWAYS looking to get our hands on beer.  We work up a Reed/Dirk/Todd plan to just straight-up fucking boost a case from Ryan’s deadbeat stepdad some night he’s out getting loaded at the dive bar, figuring he wouldn’t notice it or remember.  We’re in this wood-paneled eminently West View PGH dumpy house, I got a case of warm Coors in my hands and we’ve almost gotten away with it when Ryan offhands, “Hey, my stepdad has some pornos, you guys gotta see this!”   Even the fucking spazz from The Toy-looking dweeb was like “Eh, let’s just go get fucked up” but I heard a HEAVENLY CHOIR AND THE CLOUDS PARTING and at AGE 20 was BOUNCING AROUND A FUCKING SOFA going “Put it in! Put it in!”  And dead-voiced Yinzer throws in some cassette from a HUGE FUCKING BOX, I mean those old porno boxes were way bigger than even the MGM HOME VIDEO BOX that like YEAR OF THE DRAGON came in, and hits play and the first thing I see is some dude’s HUGE FUCKING COCK, just an EPIC FUCKING LOOFAH LOOKING HOLMESIAN COCK and on cue it BLOWS A LOAD, like jizz flying fucking everywhere, I’m then basically the same age as MATT DAMON, MARK WAHLBERG, BEN AFFLECK, DREW BARRYMORE, and COREY FELDMAN were, and I’m like SCREAMING IN A WHINY VOICE in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, “It’s a COCK! OH MY GOD HE’S SHOOTING CUM! OH MY GOD THEY’RE SHOWING A COCK!”  Like my voice went up nineteen octaves high in a shrill squeal, COULDN’T BELIEVE THAT THERE WERE MOVIES THAT SHOWED JIZZ, which was blasting all over some tacky DD tits.   My mind, at age 20, was FUCKING BLOWN that they made movies that showed THE ACTUAL SEX ACT (er, a load), I was wholly unprepared for the view of GENITALIA, had no idea that was what PORNO entailed.    Almost on cue, the dude’s stepdad barged in and I’m standing there shrieking like a bitch and Ryan has the sense to shut the fucking TV off, and drunk-ass Stepdad has a Winston dangling in his Chevy ballcap and goes “Heh, heh, heh, you boys doing some drinkin’?” then shuffles off to pass out.

I don’t have the nerve to still steal the beer, but next phone call with SCOTT FROM PENN STATE BEHREND, I’ve finally got a STORY WORTH BRAGGING ABOUT!  “Oh, my God, man, I watched some PORNO!  THEY SHOWED A DICK!  YOU ACTUALLY SEE THE DUDE SHOOTING SPERM!”  (Guarantee I said SPERM even at that age.)    This dude’s been eating pussy like a fucking Michael Douglas champ for a year-plus and my big brag is I saw SEMEN EMITTING on a VHS tape.  I have finally seen pornography as a grown adult mere months from legal drinking age.  I didn’t even really see the chick, or the chick taking a dick, or the vag in closeup, or the anal I’ve been curious to see for a fucking decade in the goddamn fucking general costume of my mind….. My first porno, in my third year of college, was seeing a random dick shooting jizz for 11 seconds.  With both my hands clutching a case of beer.

From here I absolutely needed to see THE FULL ACT – aka, like, you know, a fucking chick, on a video screen, getting fucked or doing super-hot-lesbianism or something, like the ads of VIDEO REVIEW had promised oh those many years ago.  I started CRUiSING TOWN like a fucking creeper surveilling magazine stands and out-of-town newspaper shops downtown that promised the VIDEO BOOTHS or whatever like it was the days of THE HOWLING and CRUISING.  Again, I sure was never good-looking in life, but if there was EVER an era where I was passably human looking with a working head of hair, it was the 90s, and instead of going to college events on campus or chatting up NotAlexandraPaul in the library, I was PROWLING THE NIGHT like fucking LIGHT SLEEPER in the quest of not actual pussy or hookers or company or a girlfriend or a nice girl with a friendly smile whom I could see as human, but rather…. A fucking BIG OVERSIZED VHS CASE that might have shots of girls’ assholes and lesbian stuff.  I was consumed by this, picturing blonde girls all naked with bare feet doing insane porno stuff, I’d go downtown and stake a place out in Ferrara Sheen with my head down like I was scoring a fix, roll in, and get intimidated by some Spinell-looking asshole and stalk out in a hurry.  On MCKNIGHT ROAD they had some video store with a porn section, I got all emboldened one day and STODE IN like Wasson in Body Double, only to come face-to-face with a Female Employee.  I went through the saloon doors like an idiot then realized this, doubled back and, for reasons I’ve never understood, asked for a job application.  She’s all incredulous, “You want a job here?” I confirmed yes, God knows why, and she slapped down an application all “I don’t think we’re hiring, but whatever,” and like a dumbass I filled out a fucking job application complete with personal info  to a jack-vid store instead of just buying some tapes or racing out.  They never called me back.

The by-now anticlimactic (ZING) last act of all this came (ZING!) in late 1994, they’d bumped me up to PRODUCE MAN (GREEN SUITS COMIN’!) mostly because the chain-smoking, hard-drinking asshole Zubaz-wearing alpha-male stock guys and managers loathed me and were trying to Gaslight me into quitting the supermarket job where I’d dandy in like a bitch bragging about how I was the next Tom Hanks, despite wearing wire-rims and rocking size 38 waist black Levi’s in suburban fucking Pittsburgh for the fifth year going.  At the very least they’d try sticking me in BAKERY and DELI where I’d be far the fuck away from the “cool guys” in stock.  I was such a monumental fucking douche, but by now the RAGE LEVEL was at an all-time high, I was 21 and never getting laid, was starting to go to STRIP CLUBS by my SELF, prime of my life just a fucking dork, this was also the last year I was clinging on to METAL!, trying to browbeat GROCERY BAGGERS still in TENTH GRADE into going to metal shows with me even though I would show up in shit like a fucking gay-ass SALMON COLORED DRESS SHIRT (SO METAL).  The other produce guys were this hate-filled burnout named Gary who looked like Andy Richter and hated me, especially since I was lazy and depressed and a whiny bitch and wouldn’t stack the potatoes right;  This fat Italian awesome mook named Dom who looked like the fat kid from EVERY aforementioned ‘80s tit-flick and who I’d occasionally grab a brew with;  And this disco-ed out weirdo called THE REFT – I don’t know, I think his last name was Reft – who rocked CHAINS and BIG COLLARS and the closest approximation was that swingin’ douche in FRIDAY THE 13TH PART V who did coke while waiting on the waitress he was hoping to fuck in his car.  THE REFT was total Pittsburgh pure-comedy buffoon and would BAG ON ME mercilessly in his thick stupid fucking accent, especially once he found out that at age 21, four years into college, I was still a virgin.  I’m going for an English Lit minor and Film Studies major and whipping up these incisive analyses of cinematic thematics through the prism of contemporary American politics and Marxism and The Revenge of the Repressed an the Mulvey Gaze and ALL that bullshit, but come dayjob time I got this cock-of-the-walk Pittsburgh fucking shithead calling me a “fag”and pointing fingers even though he’s a 46-year-old man with a Dawn of the Dead accent packing strawberries on the shrink wrap machine.

Around this time (OJ era,  for the record) I’m doing movie extra work and trying to network to set up some opportunities for when I GRADUATE COLLEGE in a few months so I can move to Los Angeles…..but then facing epic shit from this Reft asshole come day, and he’s telling EVERYONE IN THE STORE I’m a virgin and shooting RUBBER BANDS at my dick.  Again this fucking moron was pushing like fucking 50.  Produce is right by floral department and some AWESOME blonde chick actually is kind of ALL ABOUT the Lexman BLACK JEANS GREEN COAT COMBO and likes the HAPLESS DORK VIBE  and we’re always hanging out when the Three Losers are taking a powder, and one time she teases my dick in the cooler (pretty sure I got some precum on some poor sap’s fucking cabbage) and FUCKING REFT rolls in like an asshole and cockblocks me at my finest hour as this girl was letting me dry hump her ass crack in a moment I replay every fucking HOUR of my life.  Idiot fucking REFT rolls in and shuts it down and I spazz out like fucking CUCKOO’S NEST DOURIF by way of Ray Babbit slapping his head, going off on this fucking cocksucker like he just took away all I got and all I was ever gonna have.

Actually went off on the guy so bad he backtracked and, knowing of my lack of pussy and complete obsession with said topic, starting talking up some PORNO TAPR he had. WOO-HOO, this guy had PORNO.  Imagine how fucking absurd in the world of 2016 that sounds, some absolute mind-blowing asshole mortal enemy you fucking hate, and he seeks to smooth over the bad blood by giving you a spank-vid from his VHS collection.  Fucking monumentally insane to even conceive of now, you’re all, we’re all two clicks away from seeing any and every fetish and fever dream we could ever concoct in our wildest fantasies, but the idea of a VHS PORNO was still – still – so fucking verboten and supernatural that YEARS after everyone my age was knee-deep in pussy, I still wanted to see FEMALE NAKED BODIES IN A VHS PORNO SHOWING THEIR VAG.  And he had me hooked from the jump, I was like “It better have lesbianism! It better have female assholes!” and he fucking milked that, “Oh you better believe it does!” and I was SHAKING, FUCKING SHAKING at the thought that all these years later, of dreams and fantasies and images and movies and softcore and Euro fake porn and some Indian asshole stealing my girlfriend who had no fucking idea she was my girlfriend, all of it, ALL OF IT, came down to this slimy, strawberry-slicing fucking jagoff in his ill-fitting green coat with his promise of porn oblivion. “So it’s all girl?” I asked.

“No, it’s about this guy, Rocco,” he replied.  Rocco?  Who the fuck is Rocco?  Plus he made it sound like a fucking biopic.  THE ROCCO STORY.  Had no idea who that asshole might be, but he assured me despite the presence of a GUY WITH A DICK, which I’d seen before, there’d be plenty of female masturbation and lesbians and assholes and tits and feet and the other fucking thing.  I needed this tape now now now now now also? Now. Also now.

Like the true gentleman he was, this fucking asshole shows up with a blank black VHS cassette the next day, no labels, no case, nothing.  I’m TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD and shivering while snapping up this glazed chocolate donut of a VHS that this idiot SURELY RUBBED HIS DICK ALL OVER just to fuck me.  Speed home in Liotta Vision with the Nilsson practically playing in my head, fantasizing about what lesbionic majesty was in my grip.

Raced into the door and, lo and behold, in a striking contrast from the 1986 days of pause-rewinding “Porky’s Revenge,” Ma has taken an unexpected day off from work and has decided to delight me by whipping up some spaghetti for her son.  Ma’s all “Can you get out the Parmesan cheese? It’ll be ready in 10 minutes, go wash up, and I race down to the GAME ROOM to slap this fucking GLORY into the VHS, knowing my SPAGHETTI BONANZA is almost ready, and it’s this porno called “ROCCO UNLEASHED.”  Title comes on and this dead-eyed Italian cipher who looks like Troy Aikman on downers is strolling around in some establishing footage, I’m pounding on the FF button with pre-ejaculate in full effect, then a minute in, some NAKED CHICK is playing with her vag and I’m like WOAH WOAH WOAH and with a 2/3 limp dick FULL ON BLAST A LOAD into my jeans before Rocco so much as starts fucking.  This was a moment a decade in the making.  I came in my pants over a chick rubbing her vag then went up, hosed down, and couldn’t wait to see what erotic glories were contained past the 2 minute mark.

Turns out it was Rocco fucking 10 or 12 chicks in an apparent stupor, and after all this time I had my dream in my hands…. Of watching some zonked-out cipherous idiot fuck a bunch of chicks on my TV set.  I still watched the tape again and again, and a real highlight of ‘ROCCO UNLEASHED” is near the end when GOD ROCCO is balls deep in a haze fucking one of the chicks and kinda glazes over then a light bulb goes off and he deadpans, “Hey! Who’s the chick who wanted to get fucked in the ass?”  And he proceeds to fuck some chick in the ass.  As long as I live, I’ll never get to utter those glorious words or that glorious command outside of my late-night daydreams in my general costume.  It took 21 years just to WATCH a chick getting fucked in the ass, I’m now pushing 44 and this seems to never actually be on the horizon of occurring in my real life.

I finally drove across the country the first of two times to make it as an actor in late 1995 through early 1996.  I brought the Rocco tape with me, but never ended up in a motel with VCR capability, so I backtracked a half-decade and spanked to some fashion ad with Christy Turlington in a West Covina Motel 6 as the Rocco tape fried in the San Gabriel Valley heat in my trunk.  When I failed to get famous and drove home to Pennsylvania in 1996, Rocco and the gals made the trip back with me, and got a few more horned-up views as I wasted away that summer prepping to go back and take L.A. by storm.  When I eventually did that winter, I decided it was time to put immature things behind, and found myself at some white-trash K-Mart dumpster where I tossed “Rocco Unleashed” in, but not until after I pulled out a healthy amount of VHS cassette tape and broke it off lest anyone ever see the forbidden treasure contained on it.   The magnetic tape wound around my knuckles and I snapped it with shame and embarrassment and yet a certain anticipation that the things held on said cassette would one day be a reality for me.