Category: Personal (Page 11 of 14)

ILB’s personal posts

Bored

November 27, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 4 Comments

We’ve heard a lot about COVID-19. Even if you have spent the last two years living in a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, you almost definitely have been bombarded with news about it. There’s a lot of panic and misinformation around it, but if you can filter out all the waffle, there are some very important messages hidden there.

What nobody tells you is how boring COVID-19 is.

Since testing positive two days ago, my entire life has ground to a halt. I’m being careful – self-isolating and all that – but, even so, it feels like I’m doing much less than I would be doing were I at home for any other reason – say, a weekend. It’s Saturday now, and it took me a while to work that one out.

I’m usually really grateful for the chance to spend a little more time in bed, but it’s less pleasant when lying in bed is accompanied by a pounding headache and far too much heat for November. In order to protect my beloved, I have been lying on the sofa at night while they take the bed – notice how I didn’t say “sleeping”. Sleeping on our sofa is physically impossible.

The nights are unconscionably DULL. Lying there, lacking the energy to move or do anything fun, just waiting for the morning to come. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Why aren’t I sleeping? I’m not well, so why can’t I just sleep through it like I do with every other illness?

And yet when the morning comes there is still nothing to do. I’m not a particularly active person usually, but the fact that I could do something – go to town, shop in London, get some food somewhere (even if I didn’t do any of those) – was always an option. Staying at home was just something I chose to do. Now I have to.

It’s so boring.

I don’t know why. I have plenty of things here at home – Nintendo Switch, Disney+, a huge pile of books. But now I’m stuck here, feeling grotski, I don’t really want to do any of them. Lying awake last night I made plans for what I’d do today, but since they mostly amounted to “make a sandwich”, they seemed more exciting then than they do now.

Am I complaining? Probably. I feel awful, but I’m fortunate enough that my reaction to getting COVID-19 isn’t any worse. I’ve had to cancel a few things – a gig I was going to; a hospital appointment on Monday – but, at the very least, I have a bed and a sofa and a computer all available.

And yet, on any of them, every second is an age.

Tick.
Tick.
Tick.

ILB History (part two)

November 21, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

…and continued from here.

At the end of 2010 I made a New Year’s Resolution to be more sexually adventurous, and with it, to have more sex. I’d kind of been taking steps in that direction anyway, starting to attend the CCK socials and such, but I felt like I needed to come out of my shell a little more.

Typically, the following day, the Seamstress ended our two-and-two-thirds-year relationship, thus throwing me back into the depression maelstrom I had worked so hard to get out of… and with no idea of any direction in which to go. In a kind of desperate flail, I started going to Spiritual Space, which gave me a little peace.

Fast forward to Autumn 2012 and I’d be in a similar situation with a different lifeline.

The rinse cycle

I wasn’t ready for a new relationship so soon after my second one ended, and although I soon after went on what could technically be termed a ‘date’, it didn’t really go anywhere. By the summer of 2011 I was in a relationship, but I still wasn’t ready, really. I still was having (and still do have dreams) about the Seamstress, and even though I was starting to do more things with what could loosely be termed ‘the community’, the cutieloveheartgirl wasn’t keen.

Which is an understatement. She was furious that I had started to go to Erotic Meet (nothing happened) and livid that I had Rose staying over for the night (nothing happened). In February 2012, I attended Eroticon for the first time, which was like an unforgivable sin. I’d just about managed to reconnect with my identity, and here she was, telling me that I shouldn’t be writing my sex blog any more. I genuinely didn’t know how to feel about it.

And so towards the end of the summer I found myself single once again and completely unsure of myself. Gone were the overpriced meals of the CCK socials and late night Jesus chat of Spiritual Space; my escape manifested in the dark gloomy corners of the Green Carnation with the miscreants that attended Erotic Meet.

The tenderness years

For the first few months I attended Erotic Meet, I was – although certainly very social – relatively chaste. Certain moments where I could’ve are still burned into my mind, and although I certainly got the chance a couple of times, I didn’t. I was still in a relationship, anyway, and even if it wasn’t a healthy one, I couldn’t just start cavorting with people I’d met at EM, no matter how hot they were.

Not cheating was difficult. I’m surprised to hear myself say that, as it’s genuinely something I’m very much against (since my first relationship ended that way), but while I was attending EM, I was also in a difficult, angry, sex-free relationship and, although there was still a lot of love there, we were both fairly sure that it was going to end at one point.

Someone (someone specific, but I won’t name her here) once told me that she would have sex with me that night if I was single, and asked if I was. I told her that I wasn’t and we couldn’t have sex… but, if I had lied, we would have done.

Starting a relationship with Jilly was probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. We were clearly attracted to each other, and had been building up a flirty friendship for all the time we had attended the same events, so when we actually started dating, it felt like the natural conclusion to what had been ~~Agatha~~ there all along.

And so I found myself in a fourth relationship, now with somebody who was completely accepting and aware of all sides of my identity…

To be continued…

TMI Tuesday: Munie

November 16, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I’m not even sure if the theme of this TMI Tuesday is money. It seems to attach itself well to the first few questions, but then peters out. Still, it lets me answer questions, and if there’s one thing I like to do, it’s answering questions.

Ask ILB is still an option, btw.

You went to dinner on a first date, and your date took care of the bill. But when you get home you get a text from your date that is a Venmo request for half the cost of dinner. Do you…

a. Pay the Venmo amount in order to up your chances of a second date?
b. Only pay for what you actually consumed?
c. Pay nothing because the date supposedly picked up the tab and did not discuss halfsies when you were face-to-face?
d. Call the date and yell, “WTF?!”?

Hmmm. There isn’t an option here that matches what I’d actually do. I’d never expect someone else to pay the bill on a first date anyway – going Dutch is always my preferred method, but given the choices here, option A is the closest thing to what I’d do.

I wouldn’t pay my half to increase my chances of a second date, though; I’d do so because it’s the right thing to do!

Does anyone owe you over twenty pounds? How many different people?

A few people, and I’m never expecting to get that back. Two come to mind – the housemate I had at uni, who needed £30 to go to Germany and never mentioned repayment once he returned, and the £100+ I was owed by the lady I went for a sex date with in Brighton and vanished halfway through the night. It transpired that she had never paid the hotel bill (as she said she had done) and I shelled out cash I couldn’t afford for one night of sleepless worry and no sex.

She ghosted me and I’ve never heard from her again.

Are you one to sneak food into cinemas?

No – I’d buy food from the kiosk or the Starbucks my local cinema contains. In fact, that’s what I do do, since I go the cinema a lot and… well, do this.

There’s a Pizza Hut next door to the cinema, which is a popular source of comestibles for the local youth. Rapscallions often go through to the cinema screens with boxes containing side orders from the Hut, or even full pizzas to eat with their film! They’re never challenged for this by the staff, so it’s my assumption that, were I to sneak food in, it wouldn’t be a problem.

What do you want to brag about?

I rarely brag. Let’s think.

[Thinks.]

I’m a very considerate lover.

This is something I’ve been told, rather than something I’ve pulled out of my arse. I will genuinely go out of my way to do something for someone I love (romantically, sexually or otherwise), even sometimes doing something I’m not comfortable with. I’ve been told (again) that it’s apparent I’m very focused on my partner’s pleasure, and won’t stop until she does, unless I’m told to stop, in which case… I stop!

What do you get in trouble for the most?

I have no filter. It takes a huge amount of effort to remember that not everyone is part of a liberal, sex-positive community and that sometimes I have to moderate my conversation to not drop in casual references to sex shops or soft porn actresses.

In my professional life, I can’t do this; it’s a point-black no-go area (as opposed to something in an office which might raise a few eyebrows at most). As a result, I’m slightly more free with my words outside. Most of my friends are relatively chill with my innuendo (which has increased since I started a sex blog); a few are exasperated but tolerant. I can’t think of anyone I still see who’s genuinely offended by my sex talk.

Most of my friends have children now, so I’m assuming that they’ve all had sex themselves at least once.

Bonus: What is in your attic?

I genuinely have no idea. I live in a rented flat. There is an attic, but there’s no stick to open the stairs or ladder to ascend to the loft with, so I haven’t a clue. Most of the overspill from my life is in my parents’ attic, and due to my disability I’m finding it very difficult to get up there any more. My sister may have to sort out my shit at some point, and some of it could be very valuable if she does!

ILB History (part one)

November 14, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 2 Comments

While there was a definite, complete and very sudden turning point in my sexual development in my youth, there’s something more significant that is also significantly harder to define.

I came up with the idea to start a sex blog where I get all my ideas – in the shower. I didn’t really have a name, or a concept, or anything I wanted to say that I was entirely sure hadn’t been said before, but I had just read Girl with a One-Track Mind and had managed to convince myself that I could do something similar. By the end of my shower, I had decided that “innocent loverboy” – something I had written on a list of Battle Royale characters to describe Hiroki Sugimura – was an appropriate enough sobriquet.

The rest could come later.

I almost didn’t start this. Halfway through signing up to Blogger, I thought it was a bad idea (and too much faff) and closed Firefox. A second later, I opened the browser again and started from the beginning.

That one second could have changed my life.

Imagine, for a moment, that I didn’t have that moment of decision and decided to keep the browser closed, letting my idea of starting a sex blog go and carrying on with my life as it was at the age of 22. Let that roll around in your head for a while. If you yourself write one of your own, what would it have been like without it? If you had your own spar of indecision and went along the other path?

I’ve heard people wonder aloud at how impactful something as simple as an online diary can actually be to a person, even its author – but then, they may not have experienced what I have. Blogging caused a seismic shift in my life which set me off on a completely new trajectory: something I never would have sensed, or dreamed of, the day before I wrote my first post.

After the beginning

I did wonder, at the beginning, if I would manage to get laid as a result of blogging. What I didn’t expect was three long-term relationships coming from the emergent community. Blogging did give me the confidence to approach people – the two that I did have sex with first off, snowdrop and Lilly, were from other sources – but the girlfriends that came afterwards were different. They were genuine and interesting. These were relationships – something I’d desired for so long – and they were real and adult and exciting.

Without my blog, I wouldn’t have been beguiled by gin-soaked kisses on Broad Street in the centre of Oxford. I wouldn’t have set foot in Yorkshire, never mind go for rambling walks in the Northern wilds with someone almost as tall as me. I almost certainly wouldn’t have ended up living with a queer Belgian. And I certainly, certainly, wouldn’t have had as much sex.

I’d like to think that I’m more sexually aware, although how much of that comes from the sex blogging community and how much from a cultural shift remains a mystery. I’m more aware of terminology concerning gender and sexual orientation and proclivities (I also now know what “proclivities” means) than I was when my only connection to sex was through IRC. I now enough to be able to teach others, which is exciting in its own way.

The fact remains that I have never had any sort of romantic or sexual interest from anyone who hasn’t read my blog since 2008. While there were certainly attractive people in the circles I travelled in – there still are – my involvement in those circles was beginning to erode. (While the youth camp in summer 2007 was the last time I saw some key players in my life up until that point, its end was like the termination of something. I retained my crush on Leaf for months afterwards, despite not having her in my life any more.)

I am aware, realistically, that I’m not a particularly attractive guy. Physically I’m not and have never been much to look at, and the amount of idiotic glossolalia that comes out of my mouth is astounding. At the very least, though, those who found something to be attracted to through my writing was – although confusing – something I was (and am) extremely grateful for.

The second step

While not without their issues, the real-life events that I was finally persuaded to go to – Erotic Meet and Eroticon shortly afterwards – were transformative, not only insofar as facilitating being able to meet, mingle and shoot the breeze with other sex bloggers (there has been such an explosion in the community since the fledgling days on 2007!), but also simply being able to introduce myself as “Innocent Loverboy” and actually have people recognise that name.

I didn’t start going earlier due to the fact that the cutieloveheartgirl I was with at the time was particularly resistant to the concept, although by that point she wasn’t happy with the fact that I still wrote a sex blog (despite being attracted by that in the first place). I went along anyway, while politely befuddled by the hectic anarchy of Erotic Meet and feeling gleefully adventurous on my way to the first Eroticon.

In the bathrooms at Telephone Avenue in Bristol, I paused for a while to look at myself in the mirror.

“I know who I am,” I said to myself. “I’m me…” (here I inserted my other IRL nickname) “…and I’m ILB, and I’m okay with that.”

This, for what it’s worth, was another turning point.

To be continued…

Youth is not wasted on the young

November 13, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 1 Comment

I was an opinionated little boy. Ask ten-year-old ILB and he would tell you that he was a pacifist. At nine, he became a vegetarian. At eight, he cried to his mother that he was upset by boys in his class using the word ‘gay’ as an insult. At two, a Tory canvasser came to the door and he squeaked “Vote Labour!” while sitting on his father’s shoulder.

I had my moments at the age of eleven, just after I started secondary school. A woman in uniform came to assembly to recruit young children to be cadets and I got up and walked out. My head of year said we had visiting rats who came to the playground after dark so I left food for them in hidden corners. I complained loudly about the school selling Nestlé products and refused to use the tuck shop unless they stopped (they didn’t stop; I stopped buying tuck).

My one blind spot was sex.

I’ve known about sex since I was about two, but the concept never appealed to me. I’d missed out on the year 5 sex ed video because I was sick that day, but I didn’t miss anything I didn’t really know. I knew, basically, the mechanics of it all, but I considered it dirty, and disrespectful, even – that is to say, I pretended I did. In reality, I was starting to get interested in sex; I still didn’t want to have any, but I found the concept a fascinating study.

And this was a rapid change.

A teasing young girl came up to ask me if I was interested in someone I’d never heard of before. When I said that I wasn’t, she answered with “So you don’t think she’d be good in bed?”
“I don’t know what it’s like in bed,” I said theatrically, with an eye-roll. Later that day, I tried to envision what it would actually be like. The following day, I did the same. And again, and again, and again…

My brain invented my sex machine once we’d had the biology module and I knew what sex could actually look like. By this point, I was too far gone – and, although I wasn’t masturbating (because I knew that was wrong), I had come around the idea that sex, although it still wasn’t for me, was okay.

By the end of the year, the eleven-year-old boy who wrote the sentence “I don’t know why humans would want to have sex other than to have children” was twelve, standing in his RS classroom, making a speech about how sex outside marriage was perfectly OK, consent to such an act was perfectly dependent upon the individual, oh, and that there was nothing wrong with being gay. (That wasn’t in the question: I just added it on.)

Young ILB grew quicker than he would have liked, but his opinions kept coming. He fiercely defended his opinion on gay people in year 9 when his History class seemed resistant to the concept. He stood outside biology classes when they dissected animal hearts. He stopped fights by standing between the belligerents, preferring that they hit him instead of each other.

And, by the time he was fourteen, he was a full-on sexual justice warrior, fiercely defending the right of people to have sex when, how and if they wanted to – talking freely about consent, what an orgasm was, how to use a condom, and wondering exactly what periods were, since they didn’t tell us that bit. I even tried to talk to my parents about sex (they were a little abashed).

Remi Himekawa from eroge game True Love. Fan art by ILB. — Young ILB’s first real sexual obsession.

At 17, I was one of the first (and few) young people in my year to lose his virginity; by 18, I was one of the… two? three? ish? people in the year who was actually having regular sex with a regular partner. I was dumped when still 18, and until the age of 21, while not having any sex at all I was getting in touch with my sexual identity, pleasuring myself all the way through university.

36-year-old ILB looks back and wonders where the binary switch was.

And now it comes to me that maybe I wasn’t alone here. Maybe everyone had a moment where they woke up and suddenly a “sex is gross” / “sex is great” volte-face clicked into place. Possibly a single epiphanic event or possibly a number of experiences. Or, like me, it just happened.

It’s just occurred to me that I’ve never really asked anyone.

So I suppose I’m doing that now.

TMI Tuesday: ILB Laid Bare

October 26, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I spent a large amount of time hating myself for not writing a blog post. It is, however, Tuesday, and I remembered quite late in the day that there is a quick and easy meme available for my disposal that I used to do every week.

What I didn’t realise was that I have, in fact, been incredibly introspective all day, and so my fun little confessional meme is presented here as a visceral, raw exposé of my deepest flaws.

Let’s Play!

1. What’s for breakfast?

This morning I was genuinely sinful and actually ordered McDonald’s breakfast. I had it delivered to my flat and everything.

There’s a reason for this.

Last night I didn’t sleep well. In all honesty, I’m not sure if I slept at all. I went to bed at about 9:30, convinced that I felt tired, whereas in actuality I genuinely wasn’t. I was labouring under the impression that I would just fall asleep – which I didn’t – and, that, if not, I could entertain myself until I did. Which I couldn’t.

What did happen was that I spent hours mentally beating myself up about the failure of my first relationship. What happened, how I handled it, and the eternal question – why? I should have moved past this, of course – I was 18 when this happened – but it comes to me at night. Terrified to move into another room as I felt the creeping night surround me, I huddled there in my bed, unsure, uncertain and full of self-doubt and unresolved trauma.

And that’s why I ordered McDonald’s. Because I needed something quick, easy, and indulgent.

2. Three words you don’t want to hear during sex?

“Call me names.”

I’m genuinely not good at dirty talk, and especially not on command. My second girlfriend used to say this during sex, and it immediately put me on the spot: I didn’t really want to call her anything, in case it was the wrong thing – even during sex, one can be insulted.

The worst thing is, of course, that I’m meant to be good with words. I just can’t be that good all the time.

3. Stupid shit you shouldn’t do but do anyway? List two.

Only two?

(i) I pee in the basin, and then wash it up afterwards. I’m genuinely self-conscious about the fact that I occasionally miss the toilet and end up with pee on the floor, which of course I clean up, but it seems like my control is getting worse. Sometimes – like immediately following orgasm – it doesn’t even go in a straight line; it’s more like a spray. The basin is, essentially, safer.

(ii) I spend a huge amount of time every day fantasising about being in a band that doesn’t exist.

I’ve got it figured out in my head. Mane Jr. is on drums. Robinson plays bass; Lovely is on the keys. Weightlifter is at the front shredding lead guitar and singing backing vocals, while Mane thrums rhythm guitar and sings lead vocals. I’m at the back with a couple of synthesisers and card table full of percussion, adding all the strange ethereal sounds and adding backing vocals to boot. I’m also the producer, and I do the spoken word introduction.

This band doesn’t exist and it never will. Those people can genuinely play those instruments as well, so it’s not impossible to imagine.

To me, though, it’s practically real. If a song comes on on my iPod, it’s us playing it. If I hear something in a shop, I start working out who would do what part. If it doesn’t fit into a set, maybe it’s something we’d try in rehearsal, or do spontaneously in the middle of a street, like Glee.

But it’s never going to happen, so I’ll never live it. I have to do so in my head, and I do. Every day.

4. One thing you love to hate?

Gladiator.

I genuinely don’t get it. It won all sorts of awards and everyone seems to love it except me. I find the film genuinely boring – it’s nothing but fight after fight after fight – and yet nobody else seems to say this!

This isn’t the only film I have an adverse reaction to. I dislike Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I didn’t like the American translation of Howl’s Moving Castle, and I’ve never liked Titanic, even when it first came out. Nobody agrees with me on these.

But then again, I like the Star Wars prequels, so I’m not one to talk.

5. Today is a great day for…

…rest.

I’m supposed to be on holiday.

But I am finding it impossible to relax.

If you figure out how, let me know.

Traaaaaansmute!

October 15, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

When I’m at work, I sit in the break room every lunchtime and think about how much I’d like to go home and wank. It’s not my only thought – usually I’m thinking about how unsatisfying the work lunches are (but they are free, and that’s what matters) or shooting the breeze with my colleagues. Today, I spent most of the time astounded that one of my workmates had never heard of Waltzing Matilda.

But most of the time I’m just unspeakably horny, which isn’t helped by the fact that I’m scrolling through Twitter or catching up on the blog posts I’m missing. It’s the only time I check my ‘phone during the day.

And so I think to myself, I want to go home and pleasure myself. In the moment that is all I want to do. Perhaps I’ll have a particular scenario in mind – is there a porn scene I want to revisit? Is there something I want to read or remember to help me get to where I need to go? Maybe there’s a fantasy writing itself for me. Or perhaps, like today, I’m remembering the warm splash feeling of a vagina contracting around my shaft.

I want to go home and pleasure myself.

On the bus on the way home, when I have my head down pretending to sleep, I have other thoughts.

Princess from Battle of the Planets looking particularly hot right now. — I mean, yeah, I may be horny, but I’m still not going to wank to Princess, no matter how bad-ass she is.

I no longer wish to go home and wank. Now I want to go home, eat a chocolate chip cookie and watch Battle of the Planets. In fact, I realise, I have hot chocolate available now, and maybe I can have hot chocolate and a cookie and Battle of the Planets and nobody can begrudge me for any of that.

[Short interlude while ILB actually goes to make himself a hot chocolate. Here’s some hold music.]

When I get home I find my girlfriend half-asleep on the sofa watching The A-Team, so I watch some of that instead. I muster up what remains of my energy to make something for dinner. It involves pasta and vegetarian bacon and grated cheese. Very simple; an idiot could make it. I’m an idiot, so I make it. They are very grateful. I watch more of The A-Team while they decide, at some length, that they would be happier in bed.

Then I watch Battle of the Planets with some pistachio nuts.

I have long since made the decision that I’m not horny any more. It has faded, I tell myself. My horn has faded and it won’t be coming back.

The executive decision is made to take my clothes off after I turn off the TV. I’m not sleepy – although the hot chocolate now is making me so! – but I need to wash what I’ve been wearing, and it’s easier to do that if the clothes are in the washing machine.

I take my clothes off, put them in the machine, and then return to the living room.

Naked.

And I’m not not horny any more.

Poetry: The Pleasure of Agony

October 7, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I used to write a lot of poetry.

It was, for a while, my ‘thing’. I’d sit in the library at breaktimes and write angsty love poems while Einstein and Lightsinthesky tried to solve the puzzle of what the inside of a black hole looked like. I never, for a single moment, considered actually approaching the girls I was writing poetry about – that was well beyond my capability – but I did put a lot of my pain into words.

Yes, I was that guy, before you ask. And, no, it wasn’t terrible poetry, it just wasn’t good.

Because it’s National Poetry Day, I’m sharing here one of the first poems I ever wrote, about one of the first crushes I ever had.

You are agony,
Yet the agony you bring I have to endure.
If I’ve decided that I love you then I’ll have to face the consequences.

Trying to look at you, then trying not to.
Trying to cry, then trying not to,
So I can try to look at you again.

The dark is rising,
And all I can think is:
Let them hit me, hurt me,
Let them batter me, beat me,
Let them do this to try
To make me cry.

You will lead me to salvation
By pulling me through the
Inexplicable
Agony
That you don’t mean to bring.

It is through this agony
That I am sad,
Yet at the same time
I am so happy
Happy within the agony.

You’ve Been Framed!

September 28, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

At some point in my teen years, I inherited a cardboard picture frame. It was a very simple affair – one sheet of glass, several bendable metal tags, four cardboard sides – but it was appropriately chunky, good to the touch, and – and this bit is important – it was resilient.

My picture frame could be deconstructed and rebuilt a seemingly infinite number or times without falling apart completely, and I had a colour printer in my room, so hypothetically I could have put a picture of whoever (as long as there was a picture of them available….) in my frame. Understandably, a print-out from a basic inkjet was both more fragile and lower-quality than a genuine photo, but since I didn’t really have many photos, I had to make do.

Like I said: resilient.

Media tells us that a picture frame on (or near) one’s desk often has a picture of one’s significant other in it. I decided to repurpose my frame – which had been empty up until this point, acting as a decoration in its own right – for this purpose. The problem, being, of course, that I didn’t have a significant other.

For the next few years, therefore, my picture frame would inevitably be occupied with a printed-out picture of my current crush – who, inevitably, I would have a picture of, somehow. Its longest-standing resident (the girl-I-used-to-have-a-crush-on who I have mentioned here several times) was (and still is) a friend, and was particularly close to my sister, so there were plenty of picamatures around for me to ~~steal~~ borrow (there was also a flatbed scanner…).

Whichever picture was in my frame (which was getting increasingly battered as the years went by) served as both a decoration and an indication of who I was crying about in the foetal position on my bed every night. I wasn’t particularly shy (and was admittedly a little blasé) to my friends, or my parents, about the indication of the picture(s), and as my token black friend said about the time my current crush was in it, “oh, she actually is really quite hot.”

I almost always had Wednesday afternoons off during the sixth form, and it became a sort of ritual that I would check, think about, and change my picture frame between coming-home-from-school and going-to-see-my-clinical-psychologist. If I had the same crush, it would stay the same; if there was someone new (or if I had more than one crush), I would flip the picture. I even put a picture of someone I saw in a newspaper there once, because I thought she was pretty.

Usually, the act of putting a new picture in the frame was a maudlin, wistful act – here’s yet another person that I can’t have – but, as time went on, it became more of a relief. With some – those on whom I felt I had something of a lead – it was nothing more than jubilant, and in the very end – when my first actual girlfriend went in – my eventual feeling was one of absolute victory. This was someone who would go into my frame and stay there, and this time, I used Superglue to fix all the bits back together.

As much as I hated year 12, year 13 was one of the best years of my school life. And, as my picture frame stayed on its shelf gathering dust, I was out having adventures, no longer seeing life through a lens.

It was still a comfort, though, to run my hands along its thick, rough cardboard frames.

Eighteen

August 21, 2021 / Innocent Loverboy / 0 Comments

I’ve been to the cinema a lot recently and, although I have yet to see an 18-rated film, I will doubtlessly be seeing one at some point, possessed as I am of a girlfriend who has an unhealthy obsession with horror. They mentioned, yesterday, as the 15 came up for the second film we watched, that they still feel a sort of naughty thrill at seeing a 15-rated film, even at the age of thirty.

I’m thirty-six and I still get that with 18s, mostly on DVD.

I have a complicated relationship with the BBFC rating system due to the fact that my mother was so stringent. My dad was a little more lax with what I was allowed to watch – I didn’t want to watch anything more than PG until I was about 15 myself anyway, so it was probably easy – but my mother was both nervous and worried about anything more than a 12, pulling us all into the lounge to have an hour-long talk about the ethical considerations of taking me to see Shakespeare in Love at the age of 14.

And then we have porn.

I started ordering porn – if you can call it that – at seventeen. I was underage, and I’m aware of that, but I had my Visa Electron card and an Amazon account. Amazon, in those days, had a “video erotica” section (now sadly lost) with a surprisingly varied collection of VHS titles… all rated 18, of course. Ordering one – even one as pedestrian as Emmanuelle: Queen of the Galaxy – gave me a curious feeling somewhere between excitement and guilt. I was doing something I could, obviously, but something I shouldn’t.

It was probably illegal. I mean, I don’t know, but it probably was.

Anyway.

When I got to university I ordered a lot more. I didn’t have a DVD player before, but my new laptop had one, so I could hit up Amazon for softcore basically whenever I wanted. In my first year I even paid money to sign up to a site where you could download individual scenes (which now seems passé – don’t move so fast, technology!). I still felt incredibly guilty, and when they arrived at the university hall postbox, I basically smuggled the goods up to my room as if I was doing something illicit. Even if they were in cardboard packaging.

I got to the age of about twenty when I realised that I was, in fact, well over the age of eighteen and, in fact, was not doing anything wrong, nor anything I wasn’t allowed to do. Indeed I was paying for the porn I was watching, which isn’t the wrong thing to do at all!

But I still felt like I wasn’t doing the right thing. Going back home at the age of twenty-one with a growing collection of softcore DVDs, plus a case full of Discs of Wonder (all hidden inside a D&D box), made me feel like a wretch. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve, and was readying myself for the conversation when it hit me.

They don’t need to know.

And then came

You’re 21. You’re well over 18. You’re allowed to buy porn and you’ve been allowed to do so for three years now.

Yet I still feel odd even considering doing so. It’s helpful, therefore, that I have a collection.