I found my boyfriend's porn last night.
It's not the first time. I have always been aware of its existence; I'm not stupid. It was just the first time I'd happened to see it in a while. I was a little surprised, mostly annoyed. I had just woken from a nap, stumbled to the computer to check Hobby Lobby's hours. I only made it to 'ho' before the website fill-in suggested hotbabesfiles.com or some such. I was still disoriented from the nap and maybe still a little dazed from the smoking and the sex that had led to the nap, and didn't know what to think. I'm not saying I wasn't upset - I was. I was just mostly confused. So I decided to leave, to run away, like I hadn't done in so long. I gathered up my keys and my wallet, and scrawled "Intend to return." with a silver marker on a Scholar's Green paint sample card. Stuck the note to the wall next to the door with a safety pin, hoped he would see it, and took off.
I drove to the Wal-Mart across town and bought seventy dollars worth of random groceries and other supplies, in a mild state of mental turmoil all the while. Considering all the different angles, trying to decide how I felt about the issue. I wanted to discuss it with my boyfriend, but he'd been rather hesitant in discussing stuff related to sex recently as it was and I didn't want it to be uncomfortable for him.
He came out of the computer room to greet me at the front door. I carried in the groceries and he put them away. I sat down on the couch and he went back into the computer room for a while. When he returned, we finished watching Gangs Of New York.
When he went to bed, I stayed up on the the couch for a while longer, trying to decide if I wanted to join him or not. I decided to while brushing my teeth.
When we were nearing sleep, but both still quietly awake, I asked, "Why do guys look at porn?"
"Why do you ask?" he countered.
"Because I don't understand why they do," I told him.
He didn't say anything for a while, then said, "I don't know how to answer that."
I wish that I had said, "Honestly," or, "As well as you can." But I didn't. I drifted off to sleep. And now I'll have to bring it up again.
I woke up this morning when the alarm went off and got ready for work. I ate a cookie, got dressed, and was smoking.. thinking, again, about my boyfriend's porn.
It's not that I really mind, although I do - it's just a little hurtful, a little confusing. I don't understand its attraction. None of it was repulsive or horrid or anything, nothing I saw shocked me in the least. I try to remember that porn is a part of the human sexual sphere, especially for guys. It's as much a part of sexuality as reading books with erotic themes and passages, imagining how someone feels and looks naked, fantasizing about one's lover, just a part of it all, like sex, like masturbation. I guess that it can even be somewhat of a habit, just something you do... But I still don't like it, and I'm not sure if I really accept it. I know that I would rather not find it, and that I would rather it wasn't there at all.
So I was thinking about all this, and I decided I wanted to know -when- it had been, at least. I didn't know how in the world he had time to be porn-gazing at home, and if he was sneaking up in the middle of the night to view it, then I was going to be worried. So I checked his history and that's when things began to be touched with hilarity.
At first, I felt a little sick, a little heartbroken by how much of it was there. I hate feeling that I'm not enough. So I swung real low mood-wise for a while, then went back to the computer..
I wanted to know how long before I'd came across the websites he'd visted them, and I was very perplexed by what was showing on the screen - the date and time said 8:20pm, July 12. That was yesterday's date, yesterday evening. How was that possible??
And then I realized that I'd woken up from my nap at 7:10 yesterday evening, stumbled to the computer and came across the porn, which upset me into running away. And when I came home at 8:30, he had been in the computer room. And then, this morning, I find that he was looking at porn in between then, while I was gone because I was upset about porn in the first place.
I laughed, and didn't bother to find out when he'd looked at the porn I'd seen before he left. History snooping is not a habit of mine. I just went back to my morning.
So, okay, there's this porn thing going on, definitely. It hurts that it's there. And I know why it's there, but I just don't get it. I just don't understand why it's needed or wanted.
I'm a little upset about it, mostly just confused, but I still think it's funny as hell that I return to the computer to see when the porn was viewed only to find out that more had been viewed since I left because I was upset about the porn!
I crawled back into bed with him after I brushed my teeth and took my jeans off. He snuggled up to me and I layed next to him and I continued to think about the whole thing, laughing occasionally. We made love and then we got up and we shared a bowl and he drove me to work. And I wrote this up.