Procurement of Pornography

(Originally posted Monday, July 07, 2008)


So this may come as a surprise to some of you, but I have been know, from time to time, to watch porn. I know this may come as a bit of a shock, seeing as I come across as such a pure and upstanding citizen, but it's true. Me I see it as the natural result of 28 non-consecutive years of abstinence.

Of course it's entirely possible that I'm just a pervert.

I mention this because just recently I purchased some and the resulting experience is something that I feel the need to share with the world.

At some point each and every one of us has watched some form of porn. Hell, thanks to the internet, we live in a culture where it's increasingly more difficult to avoid. Think about it. Chances are a google search for "sandbox" is going to bring up at least a few hits for geriatric lesbian porn. (If the need to research this overcomes you feel free. I won't judge you... Freak.)

My point is porn is amazingly easy to come by, so why would anyone actually pay good money at a store for these carnal recordings. In this particular case it all comes down to location, and this location was the local mall.

Allow me to set the scene. It was about midday on my day off. Not really wanting to go home I stopped by the mall to kill some time. One of the stores in the mall was one of those ridiculously overpriced music/video stores. As I was perusing the shelves upon shelves of shit, that I had no intention of buying, I came upon their clearance section. This section was about three shelves of direct to video crap that even Dean Cain wouldn't star in. Until I got to the last half of the last shelf. And there, behind some horrid looking sci-fi movie, I found porn.

Now understand that I'm not talking about some general Playboy pin-up DVD, but rather several "films" from Vivid Video. (While I'm guessing that most of you know what Vivid Video is, I'm afraid that special agent Rick might be in the dark. Vivid is a large American video company well known for producing XXX rated pornography. Indeed chances are, that if you've watched a porn in the last 10 years, Vivid produced it.) Not only were they Vivid films, but they were only $7.00. Seriously that's about the same price as a rental and a box of tissues. For whatever reason this highly amused me and piqued my curiosity. However I did not make a purchase that day.

For the rest of the night I was plagued with the question, "Just what kind of porn can you buy at the mall for seven bucks?!!!"

In fact I believe my internal dialogue went something like this.

Me: Just what kind of porn can I buy for seven bucks?!!!

Other Me: Well buy it and then you'll know.

Me: Nah, it's probably going to suck.

Other Me: You don't know that. It might be amazing. It could be that no one else has dared to buy it. You could be the first. You could be the Indiana Mother Fucking Jones of mall porn. You know before the shitty CGI and stupid alien references.

Me: I did always want a fedora...

Other Me: That's it. Come to the Dark Side.

Me: Wow. A reference to Indy and Star Wars in less than a 100 words. All I need now is to figure out a way to slip in THX-1138 and I'll have Lucas's holy trinity.

Other Me: Uhh, dude, you just did.

Me: BOOYAH!!! I'm the mother fucking king. So... What do I win?

Other Me: Well seeing how you have this much stupid George Lucas related information shoved in your head, AND you know who Dean Cain is. I'd say you're never getting laid again. Therefore you're going to need all the porn you can get.

It's actually hard for me to argue with that kind of logic, so the next day I went back to the store. Now your average man-boy would have no problems picking up the videos paying for them and leaving, but never let it be said that I am average.

So I decided to pick up 3 videos thinking this would give me a decent sampling of what they were selling. This was not hard, because honestly you can't tell shit from the covers, so really it was a random sampling. The first hurdle, actually, was the cashier. This girl was young. Certainly underage, with braces. I'm guessing that this was her summer job while she's off from high school. Let me tell you, very few things will make you feel like a dirty old man like buying porn from a high school girl will. As if that wasn't enough, the girl couldn't figure out how to open the security case, and informed me that we'd have to wait for her manager to come back.

At this point any normal person would have declared this entire situation as too much goddamn trouble, and really kind of silly. But I was on a quest and I would not be stopped.

So I waited. While I waited the girl left my selection sitting on the counter in full view of all the other customers. I truly believe the populous could smell my need to purchase these videos, because there were more customers than normal that day. After about half a dozen people came up to the counter and saw what I was attempting to buy, the manager finally appeared.

And opened all the cases in about 2 seconds.

Now, really, this should be the end of it, but no. Next the girl couldn't figure out how to apply the sale price to the videos. So the manager had to come to the rescue again.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, I had paid for my purchase. I thought I was done. I was wrong. First instead of just putting the videos in the normal store bag, she pulled out a brown paper bag. A brown fucking paper fucking bag! I'm truly amazed they didn't just give me a pin that said, "Hey!!! Everybody look!!! This guy is buying porn!!!" Then, after the longest bagging process ever, (I'm not kidding it took her like 3 minutes to put 3 DVDs in a brown bag.) my roommate sends me a text message. This make the girl look up at me smile and say, "I really like your ringtone."

This may not seem like a big deal but after everything I just went though, it took everything I had NOT to bust out laughing right there in the store.

So how was the porn? Was it worth the whole experience? Was it worth your time to read this crap? What's on tv right now?

Tomorrow I will answer all these questions.

(Except the "tv" one. However, I'm willing to wager a guest. I'm going with, "crap".)