I am not a fan of spectator sports.When I was in high school, I kinda-sorta understood the appeal of spectator sports. Given the right atmosphere and circumstances, I could get caught up in the spirit and excitement of a football game or a basketball game as completely as the people in the bleachers around me. But eight years of marching band and pep band in high school and college knocked that enthusiasm right out of me. After several years of being required to attend every single game and of enforced twelve-or-more-hour bus rides to bowl games and national championships, I no longer care if I ever attend a sporting event again as long as I live. Being a spectator gets pretty boring, actually, and I learned that the fastest way to suck the enjoyment out of something is to make it your job.
Which brings me to pornography.
I am not a big fan of pornography. Especially not heterosexual pornography.
Right after I graduated from college, needing to pay rent and bills, I took a job managing a video store in a local chain of video stores. And for several weeks in the mid-1980’s, it became part of my job to watch pornography.
At the risk of perpetuating Southern stereotypes, I must tell you in advance that I lived alone in a mobile home in a low-rent trailer park. The décor resembled that of Joy and Darnell’s trailer in “My Name Is Earl,” only not quite that nice.
You also need to know that in my own store we had what I secretly referred to as my “All Male Cast” (and, no, the irony of that appellation is not lost on me). Both I, the manager, and Eric, my assistant manager, were openly gay (or “flaunting our homosexual lifestyles,” depending on whom you asked). Eric was six feet four inches tall, and he incorporated some element of leather into his work clothes every day – a big boy, in many ways a “man’s man”, but completely capable turning his camp persona on and off like a light. The other four part-time employees were all heterosexual (or, as Eric and I sometimes privately referred to them, “the straight boys”).
I think the best way to tell this story is to give you some excerpts from my journal during that period:
