Great Inventions of Our Time

Horatio writes: Fire. The printing press. The Interwebs. Inventions that have changed the world. We are proud to add two to the pantheon today. Few gave have arguably done more to change the way the average American male thinks, speaks, and acts.

The first was sent in response to to Brad from New Jersey's technical angst over how one should keep track of the exact spot to rewind one's parent's porno videos to after a stealth viewing in their room. Perhaps this information is coming twenty years too late for Brad, but we believe that Ian from Brooklyn's wisdom is still worth presenting anyway. "The answer," he suggests, "is called a numerical tape counter and its' invention changed my life. I could watch whilst pounding away at my pants, calm in the knowledge that after mopping up I was left with the simple task of winding that video right back to 4937."

A semi-connected invention related to the videos Ian used to watch. Rockin' with Seka in which Seka, the legendary porno Platinum Princess, played a role that was a stretch for her... a flight attendant who explained her sexploits to entertain her fellow hostesses and break up the boredom of a lay over. Ian wrote: "Seka was the Jenna Jameson of her day, so suffice it to say, the story line was scant but I did not need one. This was pulse pounding stuff. I was 14. I only needed to watch it for 35 seconds and that was enough for me three times a day." Seka was also an inventor, neigh a visionary, as an early adopter of the shaven haven some twenty years before it became standard practice. Think about that next time you admire her work while playing the one stringed bass. She was not just a pretty face but a genius upstairs. And if we need to tell you even more to put you over the top, while researching this, we were fascinated to find out that she is a huge fan of both the Cub and the Whitseox and owns a remarkable collection of Major league baseball caps. She truly is the perfect woman. Start the week off right by enjoying some Seka in action.

Able Seaman Peter North

Horatio writes: Thanks to Andrew Diamond of New York City for this video reminiscence:

Here's how I got my hands on the one video I watched pretty much every night bar Yom Kippurs between the ages of 14 and seventeen. My best friend was sent to boarding school freshman year of high school. He called all of us round to his house to solemnly dispense his "effects" like a soldier going off to war. These effects consisted solely of a dozen VHS porno videos he most could neither take with him not leave behind, knowing as he did that his mother would be giving his room a meticulous once over the second he was out the door. He had thoughtfully thumbed through his collection and selected one for each of us personally. Mine featured a virgin visiting her licentious cousin in the big city for the weekend. The slut took it upon herself to give her innocent relative an education by banging everyone that they encountered in the next 48 hours from the cable guy to the pizza delivery boy. The video climaxed with the appearance of porn-flick thesbian, Peter North, whom I later discovered, is known as The Master of Huge Loads. He made a dramatic late entrance in this particular movie, doing it with slutty cousin, for reasons that only occur in films such as this one, in a boat in a garage, before moments later, deflowering innocent cousin on a white leather couch in the adjoining lounge. Cue threesome. Such was the quality and the believability of Mr. North's performance, combined, perhaps with how impressionable I was back then (and still am today really) that the lesson that stayed with me after I had polished my pud to the final scenes for the umpteenth time was the learning curve -- that if I too could just loose my cherry it would be a gateway drug to finding myself in a threesome within the next half hour or so.

Home Alone!

Horatio writes: Brad from New Jersey raises a fascinating philosophical question.

My parents were pioneers. They got a video recorder early on and kept it in the bedroom. It was a Betamax and they held onto it long after the VHS format got the upper hand. One day I broke into their room with my brother and some of his friends in search of something better to do. To our delight we discovered that although my parents only had seven videos, six of which unedited tapes from our Bar Mitzvahs, the seventh was a porno video with a through line about some aliens who land on earth and become sidetracked from their original invade and destroy mission once they discover the human vagina. We watched the alien lovemaking in total silence before replacing the tapes exactly as we had found them. So was born my addiction to porn. From that day onwards, I manufactured every opportunity I could to be left in the Home Alone scenario. The second the front door slammed shut I would rush upstairs, into my parents room and slam in that tape in for some UFO humpy pumpy. And here was the the thing. Every time I put the tape in, it started at a different place -- which meant that this video gem was an active part of their love life. And because I had to pay witness to the exact second they were stopping it, I had a front row glimpse of their sexual peccadilloes (They loved the women on women scenes, especially the one with lead alien watching in the corner whilst pleasuring his terrestrial penis), something which sounds funny now, but that I would wish on no other twelve year old. I wonder if any of your other readers experienced this kind of scenario because if they did, I want to know the following. To rewind back to the exact place you found the tape originally or not to rewind? At first, I always used to, with a great degree of accuracy, driven by both a respect for, and fear of, my elders. But after a while I stopped doing that because it injected such a stress level and a technical dimension to what should be a quintessentially relaxing and pleasurable experience that it seemed counterproductive. Would be fascinated, and relieved to know what others make of this human dilemma.

Gymkata

We are proud of being featured on Gawker last Friday. It is the only site on the web that is more about mastubatory pursuits than this one. We've been flooded with submissions in the wake. This little gem, on the classic subject of the "taped over video" was submitted by the talented Jeremy Willinger:

My good friend had given it to me. A beaten up copy of Gymkata with the spools of vhs tape about equidistant on either side. "This doesn't look like porn," I said. "Trust me," my friend assured me in his all-knowing voice, "its taped over."

Word spread quickly through my intellectually gifted magnet school that I had a porno. This was big news. Wednesdays, my parents came home late and the tv was in their bedroom, so after school, six friends and I walked briskly to my apartment.

This was a motley crew- myself, a good buddy, three chicks and one wierdo kid who stopped off to buy condoms at the drugstore on a dare while en route. Why he bought condoms I'll never know, but he did pass them out to everyone except me. "Strange," I thought, "why would he pass them out to everyone EXCEPT the one person who is making this journey into XXX-hood possible?"

We got to my place and clustered around the television. My friend, being the impish prick that he was, had arranged the tape so the first thing one sees upon hitting play is rough anal sex and a moment later, a massive explosion of man goo upon a smiling female visage. I was hoping to open with some foreplay and ease everyone's porn experience slowly- like a seeing eye dog guides a blind owner across a street that moments before, was teeming with impatient traffic.

There was a collective "ew" as the same face twisting visceral reactions spread from classmate to classmate. I too was taken aback but also eager to see how it all started- how did that wind up thrusting into there?

I rewound the tape, silently cursing the cheap VCR owned by my parents that prohibited viewing the material from its natural start seconds earlier than if we had bought a better model.

The movie quality itself was at best, poor. The actors all looked like rejects from the 1970's and the stories preposterous. Hardly a cinemaphile, I at least expected some production value and not some hairy guy who personified "cocaine problem" working out and suddenly having his member being fellated by a girl who has seen a truck stop or three.

We watched several scenes together in pondering silence. Slowly my friends began trickling off to their masturbatory privacy at their own apartments, leaving me to enjoy the video for another 10 minutes before my parents came home.

It is true what they say, porn does desensitize- but only if you are watching it with 5 other virgins with a less than zero chance of an orgy suddenly breaking out, or any offers to re-enact the scenes playing before your eyes.

I tugged ferociously, scene after scene of charging spunk finally released into my second pair of boxer shorts- the green ones with fishing lures on them from The Gap.

Ejecting the tape, I realized I was almost at the anus oriented point that I had begun. In a way, I had come (pun intended) full circle. The next day at school, my 5 classmates and I had a shared secret. I often wonder if they remember their first introduction to this world of taped copulation.

As for the tape, my parents made me throw it out after one of my classmates told her dad about what she saw and my parents demanded the video be destroyed. To this day, I have never seen Gymkata.

Ghosts in the Machine

Horatio writes: New Jersey, it appears, was a pioneering state in the 1980's. Scott Bracey we thank you for this testimony.

Unlike some of the other losers on this site, I was no stranger to a pair of breasts by the time I was thirteen. Indeed, I had seen lots of couples actually doing it. This is my story. The story of early cable.

The cable boxes we received in New Jersey featured thirty-five buttons on the front panel, set out in neat rows of fifteen which you had to push in combinations while manipulating a switch on the right hand side to dial up your channel of choice. Push the 30 button and the 6, and up would pop Channel 36 showing Bosom Buddies over and over. 20 and 2 bought you the news. For most families, the design was simple enough to serve up hours of mediated fun. But for many of the amateur John Forbes Nash types across the state, the box was a platform for mathematical experimentation . How else can you explain the fact that someone, somewhere, discovered that if you pushed the buttons 3, 5 and 7 with one hand whilst positioning the switch to the down position with the other, you could crack the code to the local porn channel and watch Electric Blue. Before you become overcome with excitement dear reader, know that reception was not too good. Actually it was completely fuzzy -- like watching two people fucking in a snow globe. Forget about developing a penchant for blondes or brunettes, you could not actually tell who was a man and who was a woman. You could just see vague shapes pumping away in rhythm, backwards and forwards, over and over. There was no sound apart from the white noise crackle of bad reception. I would sit there watching mesmerized, with the television on mute, aware that my parents would find it odd that I was watching television without the volume and could come to find out why at any second. And this is how I spent my youth. Beating off to the idea of porn.

Pornucopia

S. Grover from NYC writes:

Junior year of college I moved into a house on campus with five of my fraternity brothers. We each had our own bedrooms, complete with every convenience a 20-year-old boy could desire. From a personal mini-fridge to our own Mac Plus computers, we were as self-sufficient as we'd ever been in our lives. Or so we thought.

Like most young men, our priorities were very clear: drink beer, sleep with girls, tell your friends about it. And, like most young men, we had only mastered the drinking beer part. God knows, we tried our hardest, but evidently Milwaukee's Best soaked breath, flannel shirts, and Timberland boots weren't as enticing to the opposite sex as we'd suspected. And so a ritual began— every night, around 3 AM, we'd all congregate in the hallway outside our rooms to commiserate about our lack of poon, and to subsequently begin the process of swapping VHS porn. With five men to the house, an estimated ten tapes per person, and an average of 7 to 8 masturbatable scenes per tape, we were looking at a total of about 400 scenes. Which at first blush sounds like an awful lot of material, but it actually isn't. You see, Ron was only into blow job scenes. Andy would only watch fetishes. Dave could only tolerate anal. And I, the normal one of the bunch, could only pleasure myself to lesbian scenes. You begin to see how getting the right tape was crucial to one's future enjoyment. And so, after much bartering, we would sheepishly excuse ourselves with the tape of our choice and slink away to our private beat tanks.

All in all, not a bad system. Until, that is, I began to outgrow my sapphic fantasies. Unfortunately, the loving triangles my imagination had so easily placed me in the middle of soon began to grow stale. I was outgrowing the lonely housewives, the curious co-eds, and even the ladies of leather. I was growing up, and it was time to branch out. Not wishing to stray too far from the nest, my next genre, one-on-one heterosexual sex, seemed like the logical choice. Much to the surprise of my roommates, I began requesting different tapes. At first, not a big deal, but then something curious happened. Roommate X and I seemed to be on the same path. We were both in pursuit of the exact same subset of tapes! I, of course, learned to work around it and we found ways to compromise. But as the pool of scenes grew shallower, my attention to detail grew greater. You see, roommate X would always stop the tapes at the exact same point. Without fail, each scene was always stopped at the precise moment before male ejaculation. No matter the scene or actors, it was the same every time— mouth agape, muscles tense, head thrown back, and STOP. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why now? Why not let the man finish for Christ's sake? And so I began to delve too heavily into the psyche of this decision. Why did I continue to watch? What was it about me that needed to see the man groan to climax? Holy shit, was this gay? Of course not, he was with a woman. It's her I'm watching, isn't it?

Porn is a terrible thing to critique and doesn't really stand up well to this type of introspection and analysis. The bad lighting and poor acting can't do much to disguise what a terrible time these two-bit actors are actually having. And so here I was, porn in hand, chaos in mind, unable to concentrate on the job at hand. For the rest of junior year I lived a monk-like existence, resorting to theater of the mind, conjured from the few and far between actual sexual encounters I'd had. It was the most difficult semester of my life and one I hope never to revisit.

The Blue Blanket of Sin

When I was fourteen my dad installed a satellite dish on the roof of our garage. This new NASA-sized antennae brought in exotic shows and channels from all over the globe. From Australian Rules Football to fiery sessions of Russian Parliament, our basement, where the receiver was housed, instantly became the de facto after-school bunker for every teenage boy in the neighborhood. At first, we gorged ourselves on unlimited viewings of "Hawk the Slayer," and "My Bodyguard." But it wasn't long before we discovered the stations in the 8000 range. Porn. Hard-core, butt-thumping, ball-banging porn. We were disgusted, revolted, and utterly hooked. If a time-lapse film of my adolescence was covertly shot, no one watching it would believe I ever left this room. My friends and I instantly traded in football scores for dirty whores. We spent what felt like weeks on end in that basement, with pillows and blankets draped nonchalantly across our laps to cover our dignity and soak up our discharge.

Late at night, sooner or later, everyone would have to leave, and I would be alone, blue blanket on my lap. Threadbare, this piling and faded powder-blue relic had been in our household as long as I could remember (had mother once swaddled me in it?). Left to my own devices, and making sure the coast was clear, I pleasured myself to no end, always leaving the traces of my love directly into this decaying heirloom. Day after day, I pummeled my blue buddy with the imaginary love of a thousand women. If the super sleuths from CSI ever descended upon my basement with their blue lights, the evidence would have been insurmountable. I would have been arrested for loving too much. Fortunately, thanks to the thoughtful installation of a dehumidifier, the basement was never overly humid and the blanket would always be dry by the next day. On occasion, I would not get to its familar folds first. Some days I would wander into the basement and find one of my friends hiding his bulge in it until it was time to leave. Chad, blissfully unaware he was covering himself with the crusty remnants of my desire, or Brian, falling asleep with his head nestled on top of my glazed and dried boy glue. "Male Bonding" at its best...

Channel 100

Back in the mid 1970's, acquiring porn wasn't nearly as easy as it is today. You see, before the advent of cable as we know it, and such groundbreaking shows as HBO's "Electric Blue," it was each boy for himself. Unless, of course, your dad happened to be a gadget freak and the proud owner of the country's first cable box: Channel 100. Started in San Diego in 1972, Channel 100 became the first cable company to use the optical system arrangement. I'm still not sure exactly what that means, other than we were now treated to two movies a week! Kind of exciting, but still not porn. Fortunately, the pervert gene doesn't fall far from the tree, and it wasn't long until my brother and I made the discovery of a lifetime. Late one night, when he thought everyone else was asleep, we saw our father, in his skivvies, wedging a grape-stained popsicle stick into the rotary dial on the cable box. What the hell was that madman doing? And suddenly, in a flash, we witnessed a modern day miracle. LIke Moses before god, or Aristotle before Socrates, we were about to receive the gift of a lifetime. Porn! Sweet, glorious porn! My dad, in all his filthy genius, had just discovered and unlocked one of the divine cheat codes of the universe: a popsicle stick properly wedged between channels 99 and 100 would open up a channel of porn! Previously masked by ugly static, it had been there since the beginning! Like Oz from behind the curtain, the truth had been revealed! Unfortunately, so had my dad's now swollen Johnson, and my brother and I booked out of there like Shaggy and Scooby. The secret now revealed, it wasn't long until we returned with popsicle sticks of our own. After many failed attempts, complete with splinters and broken sticks, the students soon became the master. For the next few years, we were treated to porn on demand. And then, miraculously, the porn gods saw fit to bless us once again as my dad came home one evening with the country's first satellite dish!...

Black Snake Moan

Anonymous in Providence writes:

My early pornographic memories were made in the basement of my childhood home, where my dad saw fit to gift his three boys with satellite television and a "black box" that gave us unlimited access to amazing channels like Spice. Spice had a regular cast of characters including "Black Snake," a muscular, well-oiled, man who was not surprisingly quite a hit with the ladies. Sometimes Spice's pornsemble was superseded by special non-Spice content intended for a specialty audience. "Life in the Fat Lane" for example; think hairy little men spreading apart mounds of flesh in search of an opening. This gem, which my older brothers subjected me to by fast-forwarding through the fascinating dialogue right to the money-shots, created some unfortunate associations in my impressionable pre-pubescent mind. This might partially explain why I was a late beat-bloomer, along with an ignorance of the benefits of lubrication, and an apocryphal story about a neighborhood kid (last name Peterson) who got his dick stuck in a bottle while using it inappropriately.

Sadly, it wasn't until I was twenty-one years old that I beat off successfully while fully conscious. My therapist found this impossible to believe. It was only after I explained the lubrication problem that she stopped scribbling notes (liar? severely repressed sexual deviant? pathological guilt?). I don't know why my ignorance of lube was such a plausible explanation. It can't be a common problem, at least not for seven years, but for me, friction was an insurmountable obstacle until at the age of twenty-one I confided in my older brother and he told me, "skin on skin is no good. You need lotion." After that, with the help of a few magazines I brought back from Brazil, vegetable oil (an innovation born of need) and memories of a Brazilian prostitute who showed me what is possible in life, I started to make up for lost time.

A college roommate of mine that year had very strange sleeping habits. Most days, he would take around five very brief naps. Of course this was suspicious, so one day when he was gone I checked out his room and was delighted to find a shoebox full of lesbian VHS tapes. I put one in the VCR, and immediately it was clear why he needed to take so many "naps". Sitting on his bed, dick in hand, enjoying the spectacle of a giant 69-style circle of cheerleaders, I heard someone come home. I was nearly finished, and I wasn't about to stop now.. no, I wouldn't even stop when that someone knocked on the door.. but, why, why didn't I say "don't come in" or "just a minute"? I don't know, there was the intensity of the moment, and I thought the door was locked, and I thought he would just go away. But the door wasn't locked. It opened and my roommate looked at me in shock and quickly shut it. When I came out a few minutes later he asked me why it wasn't locked.

As a teenager who was not yet familiar with the pleasures of self-pleasure, no locked doors were necessary. My friends and I sat in the basement with pillows discretely placed on our laps watching the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue "Making of" video over and over (was there ever another reason to buy Sports Illustrated?) hoping to capture in slow motion the elusive single frame where Ella MacPherson accidentally pulled up her bra to reveal nipple. I'm not sure if that frame ever existed, but it did in my mind.

House of Perversity

Horatio writes: Magazines were most often a gateway drug. And videos -- Betamax or VHS -- were rarely far behind. This post from LA is classic. We are are eager to hear your tales of classic scenes, thesbian performance, and even, great lines that are burned in your memory.

Submitted by Jeff Holt, Los Angeles:

My prize possession -- my equivalent of the Willy Wonka Golden ticket -- growing up was the one VHS porn video I was able to buy off a class mate. I watched it so many times I can remember it intimately. It pretty well defined everything I knew about women and about sex between the ages of eleven and sixteen. It was called HOUSE OF PERVERSITY and was dubbed into English from another language – for some reason, I always thought the women looked French. The plot line was about a mansion in which the lord and lady would take it in turns to proposition their staff who were always game to put down their brooms or cooking implements for little lip locking action Lady Chatterly style. The movie began with the two ladies of the house – one blonde and one brunette – having breakfast whilst being waited on by their butler, a large black man with a fake looking moustache. Whilst he was pouring their tea, the women idly discussed who they “would have” today. The blonde one suggested “Tom the Gardener.” An idea the brunette nixed because “I had him yesterday.” They then proceeded to exhaust a slew of other ideas – from Henry the gamekeeper to Trevor the driver before the blonde had a eureka moment fir for Archimedes himself. She looked at the man serving them and said with a giddy salacious tone, “What about Clyde the Butler?” Clyde giggles nervously and subserviently, looking down with shame, managing to squeak out “Oh no ladies, I have work to do…” but both ladies stand up, and a tinny funky soundtrack replaces the pastoral harp music which had been strumming discretely in the background to this point. And as it does, Clyde put down his silver tray and unzips his pants pulling out his manhood with the immortal line delivered in the deepest Jamaican Patois… “I hope you ladies like the taste of Chocolate.” The last word was drawn out so it seemed to consist of an endless amount of syllables… “cho-ck-ow-la-ay-te.”