Taming of the Dude: One man's Journey with Jesus

Chapter 3 Sweet Sixteen

Chapter 3 Sweet Sixteen

"You can do anything you want as long as you don't hurt anyone else"? By...... the world in general.

My mom, for whatever reason, did not have a clear concept of what children needed growing up. I mean she was not physically abusive towards us, or at least not to us boys. My sister might have a very different opinion. They had a lot of heated discussions about her parenting or lack of parenting. My sister even, at one point, decided to become our mom. She found a job at 16. She wanted the work to gain independence, and to get out of the house. She may have thought she did this for herself, but in a way, she did it also for her brothers. She bought me my first bike. It was an antique and lacked any cool factor, but to me, it was the bomb. I loved my bike. It meant that I could get to places quicker and I could leave anytime. I repainted it and gave it a name. The bike is one of my earliest memories of getting something I always wanted and feeling loved. My sister even went on to give my brother and me an allowance. Now, I am not saying my mom did not give us an allowance, but it was never regular. We usually would get some money whenever one of her sailor boyfriends would come into town. My brother and I used to love it when they would come into port. They would usually give us 5 to 10 dollars, and tell us to get lost. We did not have to be told twice. We would leave, go to the arcade. and spend 3 to 4 hours playing arcade games. We played all of the classics: Galactica, Space Invaders, and Pacman. If we wanted a little variety, we would go to the movies. It was a good time, and we were naive so we never saw it as the boyfriends did not want anything to do with us, or we were only in the way. We saw it as if the winds of fortune had blown our way. We were going to milk it for all its worth. Unfortunately, it did come with sacrifice and sorrow, but that is a tale to be told later.

The story at hand is gift-giving and getting what you ask for.

Besides the bike that my sister gave me, there is only one other gift that stands out. It was my sixteen birthday. The funny thing about pornography is its ability to hold captive the person who has opened Pandora's box of visual coke. It is not like the first time you see the rotting carcass of a raccoon, or if you are in Texas, the lovable armadillo. You are not leaving the scene at 70 miles or 120km an hour, thinking, ' that was good. I hope I see the decaying carcass of another sweet nocturnal animal'. It is not the same, even if most pornography is viewed nocturnally. That, my friend, is about the only similarity. By the time I had reached 16, I had pretty much left the book porn of my mom's boyfriend when I was 8. Not necessary because it got old, as much as my mom and he parted. I was now getting porn from other boyfriends and as many other sources, I could get my hands on. I truly feel sorry for kids today because the internet makes it way too easy to access porn. I am not saying hunting makes you appreciate it more. In fact, porn is destructive to men whether you get it off the internet or if you have to steal from your mom's boyfriends. For me, I had it pretty easy, which was and still is, the shame. All I had to do was ask my mom. If I wanted my friends to come over and watch movies, I could ask my mom if she would go to the VHS store and get us porn.... and she would. She even would make up the snacks. I did draw the line at her watching with us. I mean a person has to have some standards. Even if those standards seem pretty low to non-existent.

The thing about porn is you can never be satisfied with it and it screws with your thinking about everything. I could not go to a hospital without thinking that a nurse wants me, or the dentist office, or an airplane or shopping mall. It is absolutely frustrating and a battle that rages on and never ends. Even as I write this down, I am struggling with images of days gone by. In a way, I wonder if that is one reason I never had a boy. I do not know if I know how a real man needs to behave in everyday situations. My view of normal was so skewed by porn that I have to lean on God and His Words to correct my past and help me live today.

Again, Sweet sixteen and my birthday gift. I do not know if I was tired of my porn collection or I was testing limits but I asked my mom if she would get me a subscription to "Playboy". She laughed and said sure. For the next year, I would get a new magazine with pictures and articles. I did not read all of the articles, but I know I did read what the centerfold like to do. It is funny to think that none of them had the ambition to settle down and raise a family. Life can be cruel without anyone even knowing it. I gave away so much because of porn. I gave away innocence and a chance at having a healthy perspective of women and what they want. I took gifts from God and made them objects for pleasure. It is tragic, but at the same time exciting.

Porn never destroys immediately, but it is a slow ticking bomb that eventually explodes when you hear the words, "sorry hon, not tonight. I am too tired. It is not you just me." This is when the bomb explodes and porn tells you that women are ready and wanting all the time. There is something wrong with you, or your wife. When, in reality, there is no bomb. Your wife really is just tired, and she does love you, but she has a deeper love, a much deeper love, which is not grounded in porn.