When I was twelve or thirteen years of age, I barely had any access to porn. Actually the only way I could get a glimpse of it, was by going to several videolibraries (yes, the VHS-age was still on) and burst myself into the adult section. At first it was just the thrill of being there. Surrounded by all this nudity, by all this sex, just excited me. It was also prohibited, not only by law, but also by my mother and some video librarians. At one time I was with a friend in the adult section and the (young female) employee came in and saidangrily: ‘Is it that nice?’

It was, but both of us felt ashamed. At that time I realized two things. First thing was: the young and quite beautiful employee did not like porn. Second: I would have loved to see her taking her clothes off and taking part in a Seventeen-production.

I absolutely loved Seventeen-movies, or, to be more precise, I loved the (back-)covers of their videos and magazines. I knew that I could never persuade the employee to contact Seventeen and / or show me her naked body. I knew that there was a wall, a mental wall of porn between us. You could say I felt very‘dualistic’.

You see, I could (and can) very well understand why people find porn disgusting. Even when they are not conservative or wish to censor it in any way, I can understand that a lot of people do not like to watch people being explicitly  naked and / or having explicit sex. But – and this I knew then just as much as I know it now – I, myself, I’m always in the mood for watching porn or explicit nudity. There’s a lot of porn that doesn’t interest me, but I’m always interested in seeking out for interesting porn. So how can you live with yourself knowing that two of your favorite hobby’s (looking for and watching porn) are looked down on by so many people?

Let me illustrate this question: One day, it was 1996 or ’97 I believe, and I was 16 or 17 and still in highschool, our class had an internet-session. I think it was the very first time I surfed on the internet. I looked up the browserhistory and saw a site with “whitehouse” or something similar in it. I clicked it and was directly linked to a porn site. There were two girls on the computers next to me. The girl on the left was very hostile and told her partner – there were not enough computers for everyone, so some people had to form couples – that I was looking for porn. She said it like I was a nazi or something. It didn’t even help saying to her that I accidently surfed to a porn-site. I was expecting pictures of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The girl on the other side of me, an attractive girl who liked Playboy and the sex-scenes from Basic Instinct, also disliked porn. Ironically I said to her: ‘Yeah, I getto see the “fun” sites, huh?’ and she responded coldly: ‘What you call “fun”’.

So for the girl on the left I was a sexual pervert, the girl on the right knew that I accidently hit a porn-site and felt like making it very clear to me that porn was really disgusting. I expected a smile to my remark, followed by an ironicalquote like: ‘Five minutes on the internet and you’re surrounded by naked women’. But none of that. I remember that with a chill I imagined myself typing the word ‘Seventeen’ in the browser. I was such a fan of Seventeen, loved their girls and loved the attitude. Before the internetsession got started, I wast hinking about browsing to Seventeen. See if they had a site and what the site was offering. Boy, in a way I was glad I accidently surfed to a pornsite. Imagine me saying: ‘I’ve only seen the covers of their videos and they make me so horny. I just had to see if their website would turn me on as well.’ The girls next to me would just explode in furious anger.

‘So we’re just fucking cunts to you or what?’

‘No, I…’

‘What, you’re a fucking looser?’

‘No, it’s just…’

‘It’s humiliating, it’s disgusting, it makes me wanna puke all over you!’

‘But I…’

‘Maybe we should get your butt naked and fill you up with a cucumber. How would youlike that huh?’

Their reactions (real and imaginative) scared me. I mean, I can respect that a lot ofpeople (most of them women) don’t like porn, but why can’t they bring up the same respect for people who do?