imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Thursday, February 17, 2005
TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS, INSTEAD
oh she may be weary
them young girls they do get wearied
wearing that same old miniskirt dress
but when she gets weary
you try a little tenderness
The other night I printed out an article by Rodger Jacobs, entitled “Exhausted,” and planned on reading it while waiting for dinner. It's a 14-page piece about Rodger’s involvement (scroll down to "cast & credits") in the documentary Wadd about the late porn star, John C. Homes.
I snuggled up on the couch with an afghan, and immediately Princess jumped upon my lap and began her nesting. Ichabod noticed that Princess was getting my attention, so he sidled up next to the couch so I could reach his arched back to pet. DiDi thought I had food, so she jumped upon the coffee table. There I was trying to read with 3 cats simultaneously vying for my attention. Ignore cats at your peril. Princess eventually settled into her nest, Ichabod grew weak from standing and plopped down to nap, and DiDi realized it wasn’t supper time and left in her usual huff.
As I tried to get into Rodger’s article, DogMan was in the very next room struggling to learn gypsy guitar.
Pluck pluck, SHIT! Pluck pluck, DAMN! Pluck pluck, JESUS!I plodded through the first couple of pages as best I could, but my immediate surroundings kept intruding. It didn’t help that I had never heard of Wadd or any of the porn stars, and I really couldn’t care less. The only reason I was trying to read it at all was because Rodger had written it. I find nothing appealing in a porn star, no matter how gargantuan their physical attributes.
And then on page 3 I read, “I hated pornography,” which was an amazing admission coming from a man who at one time had written porn for a living. But I understood the sentiment. I finally had a hook, and the peripheral intrusions disappeared. Those three little words are a great lede, so good in fact that I think Rodger should have begun his article with that. It also felt like the first time that Exhausted truly read as a first person narrative.
When I was younger, I had no idea what porn was … the nudity and sex yes, but not its ugly underbelly … until I read “Last Exit to Brooklyn.” I was not prepared for what I was getting into when I began reading. I was hoping for naughty bits and got slimed, instead. I was maybe 20 at the time with at least one baby, two babies if I was 21. I don’t recall much from the book but what I do remember I remember vividly, and it sickens me to this day.
In 1977, my husband and I finally had a chance to go away for a weekend. We drove to Rochester (NY), settled into a Holiday Inn, and then went for a walk. X-rated movies were the rage then, although I had never seen one. I had even heard of live sex shows in some cities, which I couldn’t imagine. As we walked the drab, dreary streets of downtown Rochester, we passed by a little theater which advertised a live sex show. I casually commented that I didn't know what that was, which was all my husband needed to hear. He dragged me into the theater and paid an astronomical sum of $40 for our admittance. We had to pass through a grimy blanket hanging in the doorway to get to the seats. We were the only ones sitting together, and I was the only female there, which made me feel very vulnerable. The opening shot was gynecological, up close and personal. It was down hill after that. I was numb in no time, but it was obvious the others weren’t. There was a stag party in there, and many of the men were smoking. I sat there the entire time worrying that someone, in their excitement, would set the place on fire. I would die in that putrid place, and everyone back home would read about it in the paper: LOCAL MOTHER DIES IN SEX THEATER FIRE.
A friend of mine once told me that her husband would rent porn in hopes of arousing her. She tried to tell him that it left her cold. If he had listened to her he would have known that most of the time all he had to do was to caress her back and hold her.