In Search of the Eternal Porn

Why do we engage in behaviors that ultimately fail to relieve us from ourselves, yet feel like they will bring transcendence? Why do these behaviors feel so powerfully transformative for a moment, only to lead us to a stronger rebound of those same emotions we are trying to escape—only tenfold? I believe that I take the same actions and expect different results because I'm wired to crave that instantaneous taste of escape, even if it's only momentary. If the result is going to be different, even for just one second, please give it to me.

I no longer have alcohol or drugs in my life. I've also bottomed out on binge eating, buying and returning shit I don't need, and reckless romancing. Yet there is no shortage of things in this world with which to flee the scene of one's body, and I will likely run them all into the ground before I die. Most recently, I've forayed into watching porn with a renewed vigor.

There is something spiritual in the desire for transcendence. I would call my relationships with alcohol, drugs, sex, food, shopping, and even porn, misguided spiritual quests. I don't believe it is wrong to use any of these things for pleasure. But the sort of eternal solace I seek in these finite entities is where shit goes awry.

In the case of porn, it's a state of eternal longing that I am seeking—that moment just before consummation when the neurochemistry of romantic potentiality is running high. This type of longing, the almost-touching, makes me feel as though I am alive and that there is something left to move toward. I feel that there is still hope in the world: I'm not ancient, all of my first kisses are not over, I'm not just on a march to death. At the same time, when I'm watching two beautiful people engage in a performative act of love, I often compare my insides to their outsides and feel sad that I am not them, that I am not enough. Perhaps, on some level, I am seeking to confirm this about myself.

One important element of longing is that the object of one's desire is always just out of reach—or, when consummated, will quickly move out of reach again. The place I've found this experience most recently is watching the Cockyboys films by filmmaker Jake Jaxson. In Jaxson's Twitter bio, he describes himself as a hopeless romantic. This is evident throughout the Cockyboys films, wherein porn is raised to a new art form, with beautiful and deeply sensual high-definition footage that often features the pretty, tattooed-type of enfant terrible boys I most adore taking turns fucking each other. I love to watch Jake Bass, who takes his last name from Chuck Bass of Gossip Girl (a long-held object of my longing) kiss Asher Hawk on the mouth and tell him to say his name in the middle of a passionate scene. I know that they're going to fuck others after the scene is finished. I know this isn't really a "love thing." But there's an ineffable sweetness conveyed in that kiss and whisper, mid-assfuck, that makes me wish I could live in that moment forever.

Of course, I'm not the one doing the assfucking or getting assfucked. I'm not the one kissing Jake on the mouth or saying his name. And so, where I must really want to live is in observation of that moment in others, so that I may continue to long, pine, and yearn for what is not mine.

The nice thing about longing is that you are always just about to come. I mean, once I've watched enough scenes: Tayte Hanson and Allen King flip-fucking, Tayte Hanson fucking Levi Carter, Tayte Hanson getting fucked by Damian Black, pretty much Tayte Hanson with anyone, I do come. But the fact that I will never get to actually be these beautiful boys means that I can possess an eternal desire for them that is always refilling itself. It's a lust tinged with sadness, and that sadness is somehow important.

With longing, I don't really see the actual person in front of me. The person is forever coated with that sheen of desire, right before orgasm. I'm never over it. It's a young feeling, in the vein of crushes I had on Christian Slater and Balthazar Getty as a kid. If orgasm is le petit mort, then longing keeps death away. It's a way to stop time.

The downside of longing, of course, is the feeling that I am missing something in life. For every high, there is a fall. After watching these types of romantic porn films, I have an emotional hangover. I want to get ever closer to the performance but cannot. I long to be a gay porn star. Or, more accurately, the character he plays, with a big dick who makes another beautiful boy say his name, practically weeping with pleasure. I know that porn is a movie. I know there are others in the room filming and directing. I know that some performers are in relationships outside of work, that they are acting, that there are angles to be considered, and what the public wants, and Viagra, and things stronger than Viagra. I know that these performers (and they are performers) are not immune to time, aging, illness, and death. Yet somehow, I still believe these moments of longing are both eternal and real, or more accurately, that the best reality is found in these moments of longing. I believe it because I want to believe it. I want to make a new reality with my mind and live there.

I want to be so many things other than who I am: not only a gay male porn star, but young, a bad boy, firmly rooted in my body rather than living mostly in my mind. This is about finding an answer in what is decidedly not me. If I could return to my own youth, I wouldn't want it. Rather, I have always wanted someone else's youth, one that probably does not exist. I don't want to just be any boy. I certainly don't want to be an old man. I want to be a certain type of boy with no fucks to give.

It is hard to say what self-acceptance would even mean, as the self is so malleable. Do I attempt to engage in the seemingly Sisyphean task of learning to enjoy my own reality as it is? Do I let fantasy devastate me and continue to reap the pleasure I find there in moments? Maybe I am who I am, right now, as I am. Or maybe my real self is somewhere in those films, and I am trying, somehow, to become it.

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