"I'm watching porn right now," said the gruff voice over the line when I picked up the call. It's 3 in the morning, and the caller ID says it was my friend Jayvee.
I flopped back to bed. "There's blood in my stool," I replied, thinking we were playing some sharing game with rules that we'd be making up as we go along. I decided I was too sleepy to play along. "Good night."
Jayvee called again. "Why did you drop the line? I said I'm watching porn."
"Are you... Is this a dirty phone call?" Jayvee and I had been friends since high school. Although the prospect of phone sex with another man is somewhat titillating, I had no intention of doing it with Jayvee who practically nursed on the same breasts that nourished me, which is to say, his mother, our 3rd year Chemistry teacher. Also, he was fat. I had always imagined my first phone sex with another man to be with Ryan Reynolds, or someone really old but ridiculously rich, like Hugh Hefner, or 70-year old me from the future on one of those time-crossing mobile phones of 2052. "Please tell me you're watching gay porn, because the only thing that would make this phone call weirder-er is if you're watching Slutty Slitz, and one of the Japanese lolita girls reminded you of me."
"No," he said, sounding disgusted. I was offended. Jayvee once had helped their dog masturbate, and for him to take that tone of disgust with the idea of having phone sex with me says something about how he perceived I would rank in his Fuckability Ladder.
"Hey!" I said. "Don't act all grossed out. People masturbate to me, just so you know." I was talking about a message I got on my formspring. Someone anonymously informed me that they had been jerking off to one of my photos, and it made my week infinitely brighter, and I didn't care if they were chubchasers.
"Whatever. Will you shut up?" he whined. "I'm watching porn and I need your help."
"I thought this isn't a dirty phone call...?"
"It's NOT. God, you're disgusting."
"Well, what do you need my help for if this isn't about me listening to you moan while you bang yourself with a carrot or something?" I asked. "Oh, I get it. Is the plot too complicated for you and you want me to explain the metaphors?" That was apparently all my degree in literature is good for for my friends. Once, I was in Angela's car, and she asked me to interpret One Republic's Good Life.
"Shut up," he said, realizing his mistake of calling me. "Shut up for one minute and hear me. I'm a porn addict, and I need help dealing with my addiction." He sounded like he reciting a line he had been practicing often. "I was reading a magazine, and there's this article about porn addiction. It's a real condition, you know. It's serious."
"Porn addiction is serious," I repeated.
"Yes," he said.
"Like cancer?"
"Well... no."
"I once saw a man turned into a human tree when warts took over his body. Also, there's this condition where a fetus digests its own twin, but not fully, so what ends up developing is a baby with half a baby stuck in it, like two baby play-dohs lumped together. I suppose your disease is on that level of seriousness FOR YOU TO BE FUCKING CALLING ME AT THREE IN THE FUCKING MORNING," I said.
"Are you pissed?" he asked after several seconds of silence."Ok. Hear me out. Porn addiction is serious business because it affects my psychology..."
"...you're using a noun wrong," I informed him.
"...and my perception of women. Because I watch porn, it makes me think that it's OK to treat women as sex objects. That's according to the article I read, which was written by an expert," he continued.
I did not bother asking him what would make one an expert in pornographic psychology. Neither did I inform him that there are a variety of pornographic options that does not necessarily degrade women, nor did I correct his current Catholic perception that women hates being treated as if they enjoy sex. In my friend's Catholic world, women are either virgins or whores, and he treats them as such.
Instead, I decided to play along, and entertain myself with where this was going.
"Wow, man. That's really brave of you to admit."
"Admission of the addiction is the first step."
"I'm so proud of you. Do you mind if I Twitter this?"
"I would, actually."
"Oh, too late," I said, hitting SEND. "And you're calling me because...?"
"Because the article says whenever I fall weak to the temptation of my addiction, it's best to call a buddy and talk it out of my system. So, I thought, you know, you're like the smartest person I know, I thought I'd call you and..."
"Excellent choice!" I said. "Tell me more about your addiction, porn buddy."
"No, that's it. I just need to call someone every time I feel the urge to watch porn."
"Oh." I was mildly disappointed. I thought we'd be doing buddy exercises, like that time our office went on a team building activity out of town and we had these games where we pair up with someone we don't know that much and we must pretend to be falling flat on the floor with our dead weight, the objective being, that we should learn to trust members of the team enough that they would catch us before we hit the ground. It's not that people can't trust me to catch them when they're fainting, it's just that I have really, really bad hand-eye coordination, and it's not like hitting the floor hurts that much.
"Well... unless you want to join me tomorrow."
"We're watching porn tomorrow? Together?"
"No. I'm going to check out this treatment facility I found on the internet. Want to tag along?"
"You're going to a rehab for pervs? Hell, yeah!!"
The hardest thing about going with a friend as he nervously joins a support group for porn addicts was figuring out what to wear. What exactly is appropriate to wear when facing a group dealing with that sort of addiction? All of my clothes were tailored to sexually objectify me, and it's not like I own a poncho. Finally, I decided to wear a shirt, the loosest jeans I own, and some shapeless jacket. I was as sexually attractive as someone I work with--the woman who had been acting like a dick for not having one in her or on her.
The place was drab, and the group was small. The moderator was a woman with a distractingly long face, and equally distracting accent.Apparently, in lieu of an actual professional title like "Doctor", she goes by "Sister", and not because she has taken a vow as a nun, but because she wanted to let everyone treat her like she's a sibling they can trust. I don't know about that, but I never trusted my sisters, knowing we were all just trying to be civil until our parents die and we would all engage in mortal combat over the precious Happy Meal Toys collection that our mom keeps in her china cabinet.
Sister Eluria (or something) began the group meeting by asking everyone to hold hands in a circle, and pray. I distrust professional advice that include "praying" in the process. It's not that I don't believe in the power of submitting to a higher power. Lord knows I've often surrendered to the will of Tae Yang. It's just that I feel like it's cheating when they do that. Doctor to Patient: "The procedure's high risk, but we're going to do the best we can. It's best if we can all pray to God for success." What they're actually saying: "I might screw up and drop your lung in the process, but when I do, it's not my fault... it's God's will. I'm not negligent or incompetent... it's just God's plan for you to go." It's just not fair to involve God that much, especially when you're making money out of it.
Also, as I reached to hold the hands of the two people beside me, I couldn't help but wonder where those hands had been earlier, considering the nature of the group's common malaise.
We all went to introduce ourselves and talk about how we began discovering the pleasure of, well, self-pleasure. My friend Jayvee introduced himself as Bert, and he started on porn after his cousin showed him how to play "X-tris" on a DOS computer in the 90's. X-tris is based on Tetris, the objective being to reveal the sexually provocative video one line at a time. I took that as my cue to be creative.
"My name is Leandro," I said. "My first encounter with... pervasive material was..." One thing I'm quite good at is to cry on cue, so I let a solitary tear roll down at this point of the story. "In high school when I went to rent 'Baby's Day Out' at an ACA video rental space and there was an old man there who kept following me and... and he asked me to go with him to the Adults Only section... and I... and I... I saw all these VHS tapes of... of..."
Sister Vesuvia nodded sympathetically. There was no need for me to go further, they were all sympathetic, blah blah blah. The rest of the group all had lackluster stories, and no longer want to bother narrating them: dirty magazine found in Uncle's stash, classmate held a screening for group. Well, one said she first felt sexual arousal while watching Val Sotto in Valiente as a kid.
The rest of the meeting was humdrum. At some point, I decided to broach the taboo that everyone was obviously trying not to talk about: Neil Etheridge's bulge.
"So..." I began. "I heard Neil Etheridge is coming out with a new billboard for F&H." At this point, I had to explain to some members who Neil Etheridge was and what F&H was. My friend Jayvee was glaring at me rudely. "I think... it's not at all pornographic."
And that sets it. Sister Labia was on full fire and brimstone mode. "Pornography is a matter of escalating perversion. What started as playful billboards will soon escalate to more lewd, ribald, pornographic display of sexual perversions! And are we going to let our youth see that in public? Everyday, people will see those billboards, and it will affect the public's general PSYCHE until suddenly, 'casual sex' is OK, what happens to our morality then? Tell me?"
Well, I suppose, when it comes to escalating perversions, Sister Ave Maria was the expert. The other people were nodding their heads vigorously. Of course, I took that as my cue to stir the pot some more.
"Amen, sister!" I said. "That's why we really have to... you know... CLEANSE the land of all these IMPURITIES!"
"Amen!" roared the group. Except for Jayvee who was mouthing what could either be 'tonguing a mole' or his assessment of the woman who raised me.
Sister Copacabana was in a righteous rage. "Look at our society now! Look! People think it's OK to corrupt the minds of the youth with blasphemous art! With pornographic billboards! With... with... TV advertisements showing children pretending to be lovers! We are building the new Sodom and Gomorrah right here in Manila! Next thing you know, we'll have actual penetration on our billboards!"
"Talk about blasphemous art some more," I encouraged her. At that point, Jayvee stood up, and pulled me away.
"Thanks, hey, I think we need to go..." Jayvee said in behalf of both of us.
Sister Inquisition ignored him. "Blasphemous art! How dare them mock our God? How daaaare that demon? Pornographers! Blasphemers!"
"Wankers!" I cried out, now fully swept by her blessed fury. "We should crucify them all!"
"YEAH!" cried everyone.
"Crucify him!" I screamed.
"CRUCIFY HIM!" they answered back.
I turned to my friend Jayvee, who was starting to shake me violently. I looked at him straight in the eye, and started to sing that Judas song from Jesus Christ Superstar: "Listen, Jesus, I don't like what I see. All that I ask is that you listen to me! And remember that I've been your right hand man all along."
Jayvee glared at me, and dragged me out of that place. Just when I was starting to enjoy sex rehab!
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