Make Pornography Great Again; Perspectives & Obsession Behind Prison Walls

Pornography has been around forever. Long before written history. As soon as our cave-dwelling ancestors discovered they could decorate their cave walls with pieces of charcoal, they were using the charred timber to draw crude depictions of genitalia.

The first things ever drawn were in this order: a dot, a line, a circle, a spiral, a deer...a dick and balls. You might be thinking, what about a vagina? What do you think the line was?

After sexual art was discovered I'm sure it didn't take long before some dirty caveman was dragging his animal-fur bedding next to the sex wall and while the rest of the tribe was out on a hunting excursion Ugg was beating himself senseless with animal lard..

We all know where it went from there. Since high-speed internet porn has become ubiquitous. Without even considering the consequences we've built a world with every sexual genre and sub-genre at the tip of our fingers: sploshing, gang bang, bukkake, interracial, BBW, cuckhold, oral, money shots (you know what you like you devious bastards). The categories are endless, the access unavoidable, and the obsession crippling. 

We've become a nation of Uggs.

Porn is EVERYWHERE. Except here in prison. America's houses of detention are time capsules where porn has managed to maintain some of its long lost reverence; a reverence that's grown in the frustrating absence of access.

So here I am, smack dab in the middle of the porn renaissance with no sexual outlet, in the one place on earth that legitimately, desperately, needs pornography but doesn't have it.

The Michigan Department of Corrections declares pornography, depicting ANY penetration, as illegal contraband. Possession of such materials can lead to confiscation, destruction, the issuing of disciplinary infractions, loss of privileges, and an increase in security level.

While your fingering your keyboard and clicking links in a Starbuck's bathroom on your 4th session of the day, I have to go out and physically search the prison yard if I want to cure a debilitating case of blue balls.

Thankfully for me, this isn't completely foreign territory. This is how it was when I was a kid, back in the 80's back when you had to EARN your porn. The younger inmates in here don't fair so well.

In the world you get to use a search bar.

We have to actually search.

You live in the future and assume it's better.

We live in the past and assume it's worse.

Neither of us are really right.

We don't have web cam shows, Back Page, or high definition videos at our disposal. We have good OLD fashioned dirty magazines(For those of you born in the 2000's: imagine if you printed out a bunch of screen grabs from You Porn and stapled them together.) In prison parlance these porn mags are called "freak books" or "hoes." Now I didn't create the lingo but I do have to speak it occasionally, so spare me the hate mail.

When we get the itch that only porn can scratch we have to go find someone who's holding and ask for a legitimate favor.

Let that soak in for a minute.

When's the last time you had to ask someone for porn? How much would you cut back on masturbation if every time you wanted to watch porn you had to ask your neighbor?

You might be thinking, why not just buy your own dirty mag to have at your sexual beck-and-call? Well, /moneybags/, at times I have. But you're still thinking like an entitled consumer of porn. When I did have my own wares, the more important things in my life would seem to take a back seat to my sexual impulse; which would waste no time jumping in the passenger seat to start tugging at the wheel. Plus, when you're an actual owner, you're always just one ill-timed shakedown away from confiscation and losing your investment. So for the sake of sanity, self-control, and productivity, I had to give up the life of a porn owner.

The obvious downside, however, is asking for porn in prison can be a demeaning, awkward, exchange. As it should be. I'm all for these undeniable checks on our inflated sense of moral superiority.

While you're drooling over your keyboard in the comfort of your own home, or occasionally a public library, I thought you should know what it looks like to search out porn in prison.

First you have to find a mark.

I always start with a nice, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary, greeting. At which point my unnamed friend just thinks I'm saying what's up. He has no idea I'm sporting a Fabletics-commercial-induced half chub and looking to swindle a few free minutes of shower time with his hoes.

Now, there are two options here. Either I lower my voice and ashamedly ask if he has any "hard core". Or, I casually inquire about his freak books--real nonchalant, like I'm asking for somebody who's looking to buy.

The second option is too much work. Plus it's a fucking lie. I'm not about to pretend to middle-man some shady porn deal for an anonymous buyer so I can steal a few minutes with his "ladies," just to hurriedly slap myself around in a bathroom stall. I deserve better. Plus once I'm done I'd have to pretend that this non-existent financier wasn't impressed with his wares and decided to go in a different direction. All this as I return his defiled freak book while doing my best to avoid direct eye contact.

A lot of people use the fake buyer bit. It's just isn't for me. Not anymore anyways.

In my experience, it's best to just lower your head, soak in the rightful amount of shame, and simply ask.

At which point, my unnamed friend, would usually sprout a look of boyish excitement at the opportunity to publicly humiliate me. As he should, for he knows that I'd do the same.

I should mention I'm only friends with assholes.

Typically he'd reply with some predictable insult like, "I don't have any of that Japanese fetish shit."

I should also mention I'm half Korean and most of my homie live on a strict diet of low-hanging fruit.

In retaliation I'd most likely insinuate he's in here for pedophilia and that if I was feeling really deviant, like little-boys-in-spiderman-underwear deviant, I could just read his PSI(pre sentence investigation with pictures and detailed descriptions of the crime.)

This insulting banter would continue until we were both appropriately offended, but eventually he'd disappear down the rock to retrieve the implements of self-maintenance I'd requested.

A few moments later he'd come waddling back down the rock and into the bathroom where he'd lift up his shirt, exposing a pudgy pink underbelly, and I'd start mock dry heaving at the sight. He'd laugh, slightly deflated by my body-shaming, and pull a manilla folder from his waistline.

What he hands me is no glossy spread of high quality porn photos. It's a collection of wilted, weathered, pieces of black & white copy-machine paper of outdated porn haphazardly glued together.

All the quality porn has to be smuggled in. And since most CO's aren't willing to risk their pensions just so some inmate can have a smutty mag to pleasure himself to, the porn that has made it in is exploited to maximum affect.

All it takes is an industrious inmate to land at a joint that has a less-than-stringent copy machine policy for those copies of copies of copies of the original smuggled porn mags to be made. These black & whites, as they're called, are stacked together, covered, and resold.

Even though they're copies, every freak book is unique; both in compilation of scenes, as well as quality of construction.

Some of the lower rent books have deteriorated into a heap of loose pages; a hodgepodge of ancient porn; pages of models with shockingly red lipstick, massive Aquanet-erected hair-do's, with even bigger bushes; all psychotically stacked together into a notebook of shame.

These "throwaways" will cost you no more than $2-$4

Getting caught with one of these should land you on death row. Less for the crime and more for what it says about you and your unchecked perversions. You could use these books to profile serial killers with astonishing accuracy.

Some--the high class freak books--are crispy, trimmed, and organized replicas of the original magazines. Other than being in black & white they're exactly the same. All the pages are sequential, so you know you have a complete book, plus it deters thieves from swiping a shot of their favorite porn star during a test drive. These high-quality replicas are increasingly hard to find these days--but not impossible.

If you find one it'll run you close to $20 in food, not hygiene.

The holy grail of dirty magazines in prison is John Stagliano's Butt Man. In the six plus years I've been in the Michigan Department Of Corrections I've come across no more than four, full-length, color, high resolution, hardcore porn mags. Two of them were Butt Mans. Just two beautiful, nasty, unicorns. I immediately recognized some of the scenes from the countless replicas they'd spawned over the years. An original. A little too hardcore for my personal preference. But you know what they say about being in Rome. Oh they were glorious. 200+ pages of crystal-clear images shot directly on set of the most popular adult movie companies in the world: Vivid, Bang Bros, Reality Kings.

These gems, if you're fortunate enough to find one, let alone convince the lucky bastard who owns them to sell, will cost you roughly $100.

It's a pricey investment for something that can be confiscated at any moment. The times I had borrowed them, I was so nervous about being accountable for such precious wares that I could hardly maintain an erection. That's a lie. I was half mast before my cell door shut.

But these mags are anomalies. They're not meant for everyday consumption. Just ask Ugg.

Like everything in life, the majority of freak books you'll come across are somewhere in the middle. 20-30 pages of slightly overexposed, xeroxed-burned, hardcore sex scenes with the same 20-30 up-and-coming actresses. Many of which are a good 20-30 years since filming their last scene in the industry.

These pioneering ladies of porn spread out between these wilted pages have no idea that, long after their careers ended, a good 40,000+ inmates in the Michigan state prison system are still clamoring to get a look at their freshman work, still vulnerable to their beauty.

There's something inspiring about that.

These functional, run-of-the-mill, books range anywhere from $6-15 depending on the quality of the copies and the number of pages. But they're safe. You should be in no real danger of looking in the mirror to find Ugg staring back at you.

Prison porn factoid:

The racial mixture of porn in prison mirrors the racial mixture of the inmates in prison. 70-ish% black, 15-ish% white, 15-ish% Hispanic/Asian/Native AmericanAmerican.

In the last decade the unlimited options, in the free world, have spoiled porn consumers to the point that satisfaction is fleeting at best. There's a level of saturation that is beyond appreciation. In prison, we have to make due with what we have. And there is a strength developed in going without; an appreciation for what little we do have.

A friend of mine once said that jerking off in prison is like masturbating in a time machine.

But just like when we were kids, beggars with blue balls can't be choosers.

Sitting in a bathroom stall at 3am with a freak book in your lap, while pretending to take a shit, with a spray bottle wedged against one of the sinks to keep the faucet running to mask the jarring sound of turning pages in a otherwise silent bathroom; or, standing in a shower, doing your best not to drop the book while attempting to silently reach completion in an otherwise occupied bathroom, will give you an all new appreciation for the way things we're before prison. But most importantly they'll show you what is frivolous; that maybe you don't need unlimited specified fetish porn that pulls on the preternatural, reptilian, part of your brain and has you firing one off seven times a day.

Seriously, consider yourself blessed if you can do your business in front of a high-definition computer screen, with surround sound speakers and no threat of interruption. Shit, consider yourself lucky if there's a door you can shut; if you can reach completion without some one in your general vicinity—unless, of course, they're part of the whole crank session. And if you can let this gratitude hold the reigns of your self control.

Just remember, while you're worried about finding a bukkake video you haven't seen yet starring your favorite porn star, we're in here just trying to release some biological tension without also releasing all of our self worth, or being thrown in the hole.

To be honest, from the outside looking in, after a cold-turkey approach to porn, for going on six years now, I'm starting to see things more clearly. That unlimited, free, high quality porn of every genre and sub-genre might come with certain dangers. Before I got locked up I had become jaded to the amount and ease with which I was able to consume porn. Maybe It shouldn't be so frivolously imbibed in. Maybe it shouldn't be so over saturated and ubiquitous. Whether you want to admit it or not, most anything done in obsessive excess can become ruinous.

Porn has gotten so plentiful that it's on the verge of enslaving us. But not in prison. When it comes to porn, prison is the one place where we're more free than you are.

When I was a kid we had to dig through our parents night stands and desk drawers for our porno mags (that's what they were called back then). Or every so often--and to this day it's never been adequately explained--the porn gods would smile on us and we'd find a stash of discarded porn in the woods, like some sexually deviant Johnny Appleseed was traipsing through the Forrest's leaving trails of Penthouse, Oui, Leg Show, and Swank magazines for us to find, just when we needed them most. And all that was just to get our grubby little hands on a few dirty magazines.

It was infinitely harder to score actual videos. We had to wait for someone in the neighborhood to uncover their parents stash. And then grow the balls to actually swipe one of the tapes. The first time we secured a video we made a day of it. Electrified by the excitement of wrong doing, we all agreed to meet up at Mike's house. Both, because he found the tape and his parents would be at work. Back then watching porn took planning. Nick would man the window to make sure no one was pulling in after a short day at work. Jared would watch the door for intruders.

Mike made sure to take the time to grandstand before turning on the TV. We let him. He deserved it. He was the one risking life and limb so we could watch adults having actual sex. I remember he pushed the tape in. VCRs in those days took a few seconds for the tape to start spinning. There were four of us, equally spaced out in the small room, collectively holding our breath. An irretrievable moment of us leaving something behind.

But we were ready.

All of a sudden the screen snapped into focus and the hissing sound of static broke into guttural moans. A grainy picture, of shiny pink body parts sliding over each other, undulated across the screen. A pudgy, balding, Ron Jeremy was fully engrossed in defiling this poor woman with his belly, rampant hair, and general appearance, among other things.

Too much teal eye shadow, not enough grooming, bad teeth, terrible acting, and did I mention, Ron fucking Jeremy?

No kid should have to see his first full-grown penis attached to the likes of a beast like Ron Jeremy. Or maybe it's the only way to see it.

I think we all felt strange. A mixture of revulsion and excitement sprinkled with the awkward reality of the whole group viewing scenario.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as the scene unfolded. The four of us took turns fidgeting, crossing our legs or adjusting our pants. The tape continued. After a few minutes, Mike had turned the volume nearly all the way down. We pretended it was so we wouldn't get caught, but there was no one there but us. It's like we silently agreed that the assault on one sense was enough. Eventually we all made separate excuses for having to leave. This was our strange and slightly creepy introduction into manhood--or at least into porn.

It had to be that way.

Scarred into postponement.

We went our separate ways and didn't speak of our little stag party for sometime. And THAT is the proper introduction to a relationship with porn. Without speaking a word we'd decided to keep being kids for a little while longer. Maybe not forever, but for a few more weeks.

There were too many impediments back then for us to develop a frivolous addiction to porn. And I'm grateful.

I feel bad for the kids these days. I really do. They'll never truly appreciate porn. You have to earn that type of appreciation through struggle and absence. You never truly value what's given to you so freely, so gratuitously. Instead, kids nowadays consume this product without the ability to fathom a world in which it didn't exist. They know no other way, so they take it for granted. They're overexposed and desensitized by the time they're twelve.

Like everything, porn should be consumed in moderation. Sure, in complete abstinence, desire can turn into fetish and obsession. But overexposure can lead to desensitization and gluttony.

Hopefully when I get out I'll be able to keep it in perspective; to find the balance between watching bukkake videos 'till my eyes bleed and standing in a shower with a used copy of a black & white freak book trying to be as quiet as possible.

Then again maybe not. 

Sometimes sayings are cliche because they're true. None more so than, "you don't know what you have until it's gone." Some of you could stand to lose a few things if it meant you'd appreciate the shit you do have. So, when you're done reading this, if it suits your fancy, go out tonight, take a tequila shot for me, order three sides with your 32oz steak dinner, and afterwards, draw the blinds, log on to Pornhub, turn the volume all the way up and toss yourself around for me.

Well, that's it! I found the line and in crossed it.

The point is to wake up, if you can, and take a look through my eyes so that you might see the moments in your life for what they are: BLESSINGS, that are anything but guaranteed. And yes, that means porn too. But remember, if it becomes a chore, if you don't enjoy it after the third time that day then maybe it's time to put the Jergins down and take a walk, talk to your wife, spend some time with your kids, do some push ups, or clean the house, because of all the things I miss most in life, things that I know would make my life better, porn doesn't even crack the top twenty. Well, it definitely doesn't crack the top ten.

Now go outside and do something!...I gotta get in the shower.

Take a look around and appreciate what you have.