Velvet Memories

I am fairly certain that if the internet had become widely popular a mere ten years earlier I would now be attempting to write this essay with a deformed claw hanging from my right arm.

I am also pretty sure, that every guy my age, that grew up in a rural area like I did, had a friend, who had the father, who had the big box hidden in the barn.

The box in the barn that you accidentally kick over and open one summer afternoon.

The box in the barn that - when kicked over and it's contents spilled out - was responsible for the entire meaning of your life shifting in seconds.

In Junior High I had a friend named John. John's father had such a large collection of glossy filth, that looking back on it now, I am convinced the F.B.I. would have a found more then one runaway buried under the house. I don't remember a lot about my pre-teen years, but I can recall all of the forbidden shit : the first cigarette I smoked (Tarrytown), the first beer I drank (MGD) and I can remember finding that box like it happened an hour ago.

John's father was particularly fond of a publication called Velvet (see above) and appeared to have every volume published since it's inception. The barn behind John's house suddenly became the epicenter of our young lives. The picture above? That, my friends, is the cover of the first porno magazine I ever held in my sweating, shaky hands. It has been almost twenty years since I've laid eyes on the sucker but I recognized it online in minutes.

In large groups, we would gather after school and trade these magazines like Colombian gun runners - quickly, shifty eyed and strolling off to our respective homes within minutes of exchange. It's actually baffling to me the amount of planning and plotting we put into it. There were definite rules : keep em' clean (aim away), keep em' intact, and make sure the old man's box in the barn was full enough to avoid detection.

I'm confident, to any city kids, this scenerio is laughable. Shit, you bastards had it on every corner. You could find batch material in the back of a fucking newspaper - but we lived in the country. Our bored minds were aching for stimuli. If you couldn't smoke it, drink it, or blow it up, you'd better be able to jack off with it or it was no use at all.

I can only wonder now what our parents must have been thinking as we shot by them at the speed of light. The whole experience was like a prison movie. We, the convicts, had to rathole the contraband and get it by the guards. When safely in our cells, now came the question of where to hide it.

Knowing full well our mothers probably did an inch by inch search of the entire room when we were in school, this was the most difficult part. Where could it be safely out of site but easily gotten hold of in a moments notice? Some guys got lucky, some guys didn't and quite a few issues never made it back to John's father's secret stash.

But no one ever snitched. Snitches get stitches. Rats get bats. Talkers get walkers.

That was grounds for banishment, or a good, solid, group beat down - depending on who and how many were dragged down with the tattle-tale.

Nowadays, not only are video games making kids fat and lazy, but the endless stock of naked flesh online is stealing from our young men the necessary problem solving skills you aquire from hiding porn from your parents. Those skills are the seeds, the foundation, of what you will need to survive in the real world. They are at a sore disadvantage and I fear for our future.