#and i have made myself known as a trekkie on this website

[chroniclesofawkwardness]

Q

When I was a kid, I loved watching Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) with my dad. I'd marvel at the imagined 24th-century technology, and plots that seemed feasible even though they took place 300+ years in the future. I developed affinities for certain characters and recurring themes on the show; it took the Trekkie in me a long time to come to grips with Lt. Yar's death at the hands of a bitter, blob-like creature who'd been left alone on a desolate planet by beings determined to rid themselves of evil. But, as I got older, I started watching each episode more carefully. Some of the technology seemed cheesy, some alien costumes unrealistic, and occasional storylines so far out there that I had to wonder if the writers were just trying satisfy contractual obligations. They may have known their audience better than we knew ourselves. Maybe they were banking on the fact that even an obscure, throwaway episode would turn out to be someone, somewhere's favorite TNG moment ever (mine was Skin of Evil). I didn't mind that Denise Crosby was miserable on the show. Something about her character's death and the cast's response to it resonated with me. Something still does.

If Lt. Yar was a compelling character despite her short run on the show, one of the most compelling storylines centered around Q (John deLancie). Q was part of a continuum of ageless beings to whom the constraints of time and distance did not apply. With a snap of his fingers, he could send the Enterprise or any member of its crew to any time or place. Q seemed both fascinated by and contemptuous of the crew and its continuing mission. Once, after sending the ship hurtling through space into an encounter with the Borg, Q teases Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) who asks him, "Why?” Q’s response is chilling, “Why? Why to give you taste of your future. A preview of things to come." The Borg was a collective that threatened to assimilate everything and everyone in its path. By the show's end, Q admitted his enjoyment at watching the Enterprise face the tribulations of exploring space, but this admission was made in the context of a trial. The continuum was unable to curtail its mockery of what it considered the vastly inferior human race, so they put Picard on trial for the existence of life on earth.

When TNG went off the air in 1994, I was twelve going on thirteen. I was on the cusp of a revolution brought on by puberty. The world was on the cusp of a revolution brought about by the Internet. I remember the unmistakable squelch of a dial-up modem and praying no one would call the house while I was online. If that happened, my connection to the World Wide Web might have been broken. Any songs downloading at the time would be frozen at whatever percentage of completion they'd reached prior to the interruption. This was especially devastating. There there was no guarantee I'd be able to find the same live version of Pearl Jam's Yellow Ledbetter again -  a tragedy on par with the OJ verdict or my dad's singing voice.

Flash forward (but not all the way).

Until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to the awkwardness of puberty since I've been occupied with the awkwardness of adulthood. A new job. A new routine. I've been busy, or at least able to convince myself of such. About a year ago, a co-worker told me to look up a video on YouTube. "Don't use your work resources to do it," he cautioned. His warning made me only put it off for three weeks instead of my customary two months. The clip was a song called The Internet is for Porn from the musical Avenue Q. If you haven't seen Avenue Q, it’s a cross between Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but the themes are far more grown-up than how a rubber ducky assists with bath time, or a given letter of the alphabet. Visible puppeteers manipulate puppets that interact with human characters and other puppets as they hilariously address topics like racism, life trajectory, and of course, why the Internet was born.

While TNG was on the air, I was consumed by the notion that my life should turn out like what I saw on TV. As Seth, a character from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Invisible Monsters says, "Television makes us God." Like God, by watching TV, I could supposedly see anybody or anything I'd ever want from the comfort of my couch. I believed it would be possible to battle Romulans on the Enterprise, diplomacy would always win, and the key to better health was juicing. If I didn't like what I saw, all I had to do was change the channel before uncomfortable thoughts or feelings made me throw the remote at the TV. Minimal effort. Minimal thought. Perfect. I still had to be careful. If I broke the remote, I would have had to physically get out of my chair the next time something or someone on the screen pissed me off. Manually changing the channel just as my parents had to when they didn't like what was on one of three stations was unacceptable. God did not like being inconvenienced, and still doesn’t. Besides, it would never suck to be me. I was obediently striving to make my own life a carbon copy of whatever fantasy world the small screen put in front of me.

Watching the cast of Avenue Q perform The Internet is for Porn made me think of the first time I looked at at porn. When I was 14 or 15, I snuck downstairs, logged on as surreptitiously as a dial-up modem would allow, and visited the website of a popular gentlemen's magazine. I don't remember what I saw, since it wasn't long before I heard the creak of the stairs above.

Oh shit! Shit! Shiiiiiit!

Why? Why to give you taste of your future. A preview of things to come.

I don't know how I didn't get caught, but I do know that's when the guilt started. Though I somehow managed to delete my browsing history before anyone came downstairs, I couldn't shake the notion that it was only a matter of time before someone found out exactly what I'd done.

I spent the next few years jerking off in the shower, and frequently spraying my sheets. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t compete in, let alone win, the be-fruitful-and-multiply contest, the same one my ancestors (real men) had been winning for millions of years. Their efforts had prevented the very genetic code I was dribbling away one involuntary penial contraction at a time from being eradicated. If I'd faced a trial like Picard, my case would've been settled out of court. Citing overwhelming evidence that I didn't value my own masculine power because I could be so easily persuaded to part with it, the continuum would've mocked me too.

I'll never know exactly why, but one morning, my dad came into my room while I was on my back saying hello to my very visible monster. Maybe he was feeling nostalgic since my closet was full of his clothes from middle school and old police uniforms. The moment he appeared, I froze, terrified that any attempt to move my hand would attract unwanted attention. Dad didn't acknowledge me; he just rummaged around in my (his 1966-1976) closet looking for God knows what. He left after maybe ten minutes, but it felt like ten years. I told myself  I'd never again come (ha!) so close to getting caught masturbating. Going forward, I was almost always on my stomach whenever I felt so inclined.

It started out as a means to fulfill sexual fantasies, then It became a way to relax. If I was feeling tense, I'd rub one out, and promptly go to sleep. I never addressed the root cause of my love affair with choking the bishop: a complete and utter lack of confidence. I was conditioned to focus almost exclusively on school since getting an education was the only way out of my town. For the most part, I obeyed. Every other aspect of my life suffered. I was physically weak, had few friends, and filled with teenage angst. I thought the only way I could cope was through sex with myself. Minimal effort. Minimal thought. Perfect.

In college, a high-speed Internet connection brought with it limitless opportunities for both enrichment and shame. There's a stereotype that a dorm room is used for only three things: fantasizing about sex, getting ready to have sex, and having sex. One of my roommates once played a prank on me by downloading a bestiality video onto my computer and obscuring it with several other open windows. I didn't remember leaving my browser open to the university's homepage before going to class that day, but imagine my surprise when I finished checking my email. The donkey in that video was not nearly as enthusiastic as the one from Shrek.

By the time I got to grad school, I'd advanced the degree to which I used porn to cope with stress. I had to meet academic obligations, but whenever I didn't feel like it, I'd make sure the blind in my window was closed, turn my PC's volume all the way down, and consume whatever porn fit my fantasy. If I was feeling adventurous, I'd wear big, over-ear headphones because their bass output was better than my desktop’s alone. Maybe I was jealous that my classmates seemed to have fulfilling romantic relationships. Maybe I just didn't feel like putting in the work to build one. Maybe I didn't feel I was worthy of love. I knew my excessive porn use was fucked up, but this was when it started to seem normal. Why would I have invested in building something real when, as God, I could've seen anything or anyone with just a click of a mouse?

Watching porn when you're a guest in somebody's home is hard.

in 2007, when I was staying in Sombor with my yoga instructor and his wife, I didn't even have a computer in my room. My host did eventually bring his laptop for me to use, but if I wanted to connect to the Internet, I had to make sure the computer in the other part of the house wasn’t connected at the same time. It wasn't worth the effort. I had other things to worry about, like culture shock and practicing yoga. Thanks to yoga, not only did I stop watching porn, I didn't jerk off for almost four months. (Blowing your load on hosts' sheets isn't chic.) And, I had the best sex I’ve ever experienced.  

Flash forward about a year.

I hadn't practiced yoga since abruptly leaving Sombor, and my relationship with my fiancée at the time was on the rocks. I loved Tuesdays because she was at the university all day; I could dream of leaving her without even saying goodbye. The sex was nowhere near as good. We weren’t even really compatible to begin with. While she was away earning her degree, I was exploring strange new worlds across the pornscape.

Why? Why to give you taste of your future. A preview of things to come.

I was a shell of a man who’d sworn off women (at least the natural ones) when I finally came home in June 2011. I didn't date for three years. Instead, I focused on getting out of my mom's house at first, then my career. My earlier pattern was repeating itself. Only the driver was different. Friday nights consisted of rendezvous with the laptop where I'd often bring myself to climax multiple times in one sitting. Omnipotence at the keyboard made real women obsolete. Minimal effort. Minimal thought. Perfect.

Love is overrated. Love is chemically no different than eating massive quantities of chocolate.

I’d turn on the music of Chopin after each session, and swear that would be the last time. But I came back over and over again for years. That's what addiction is. An addict knows he's addicted, but he feels too small, too weak, against the rush that only his addiction can bring. As my consumption of porn increased, waves of feel-good chemicals grew larger and crashed harder. I know now that I was an addict. In the dark recesses of my mind, maybe I always will be.

By 2014, I’d decided to give dating a shot. I spent far too much money on dating advice courses designed by self-proclaimed gurus who used to be shy, skinny, and introverted, just like me. Without fail, each guru had either stumbled upon "declassified government research" on female psychology, or spent hours decoding Literotica like Fifty Shades of Grey, which had given them insight into what women really want. If these guys were to be believed, their discoveries had changed their lives. No longer were they "nice guys who never got laid.” Women were approaching THEM.

I was hooked on their promises to share their secrets with me. I thought all I needed just one more trick, one more hack, to put myself over the top. I was so gullible that I began to look at dating as a numbers game that I only needed one yes to win. To me, it was a classic case of a blind squirrel finding his occasional nut. Every time I thought I'd learned a new trick, I'd say to myself, "This is it! It’s so simple! How could I have been so blind?" I couldn't wait to use it on whatever girl I was talking to at the time. Today, I know that I was only fooling myself by treating the symptoms rather than the cause of my difficulties with relationships: A deflated sense of self-worth. A lifetime spent comparing myself to others.  

If a date didn't go well, I'd stew about it for a few hours, then go right back to navigating the pornscape. After starting a video, I'd almost immediately send my life force cascading down into the toilet or gushing against the fabric of my pants. I couldn’t even last beyond the foreplay in most videos. Looking down at the stain meant the cycle was completely free to begin anew. I just had to work up the courage to try the same failed strategies with a new girl. Doesn't doing the same thing over and over yet expecting different results define insanity? In the throes of my addiction, I didn't really care about anything. I believed I wasn't hurting anyone (I didn’t count), and the amount of damage I was doing to myself, if any, was debatable. As long as I got off, who really cared?

I did some stumbling of my own the day I watched the documentaries Hot Girls Wanted and After Porn Ends. These films address challenges at the beginning of, and after a career in porn. I began to realize the toll working in the industry could have on those who chose to. Porn actors and actresses had to learn how to fulfill a fantasy. New names. New bodies. New pasts. Uncertain futures. The industry probably chewed them up and spit them out as soon as someone younger, more flexible, or more suited to a particular niche came along. Everyone is/was expendable. Whether you got into porn from Flyover County, Nebraska, or Nonspecific Hamlet, North Carolina, your time in the spotlight would eventually end (if you even managed to get your career off the ground at all). There's always someone with bigger tits, or a longer cock. Supply and demand. Consume. Consume. Nobodies always want to be somebody.

It's your dirty little secret. Peta Jensen doesn't give a shit about you. You'd better hope no one knocks on your door or peeks through the blinds.

To the best of my knowledge, recovering porn addicts don't get sobriety coins like the ones they give out at Alcoholics Anonymous. I wouldn't want a cum-colored coin anyway; it’d remind me how easy it is to fall off a cliff. I'd prefer a totem (like in the movie Inception) to help me distinguish dreams from reality. Mine would be a female breast that could spin on its nipple, like a top.

Perhaps the most insidious element of pornography addiction is that the brain rewards itself for doing nothing. I’d say a porn addict's brain can't distinguish real sex from pornography because watching the sex in porn still rewards him with a release of dopamine, even if he didn't earn it by engaging in the real thing.

On my path to recovery, I've learned to reward myself by doing things that I know in my heart I really want to. Temptations like porn, television, movies, and YouTube videos will always be there, but taking time to write, exercise and simply think has given me a new perspective on the mental masturbation I was performing even when I wasn't touching myself.

By consuming useless information on the Internet, reading books just to pass the time, and listening to music every chance I got, I'd created my own prison. As I became aware of its walls, what I’d done to myself made me cringe worse than hearing Scott Stapp's voice. I'd been watching others live life instead of crafting my own, and substituting their pleasure for the hard work required to pursue my own delayed, but truly fulfilling gratification. 

It started innocently enough when I began dreaming of a future someone else had made, on TNG. It continued as I imagined coins the color of jissum and breast-shaped totems. I don't necessarily need symbols of sobriety. I should just get a tattoo of an hourglass on my arm to remind myself of one important fact:

Time waits for no man.

Grant me the strength to value actions over dreams

And the wisdom to know the difference