American porn

Yayoi Kusama —  Infinity Mirror Rooms 

The first time I saw a woman in a porn with nipples as small as mine
          I thought: Thank god.

I must have been about 10 at the time because I remember trying to
dodge the babysitter and still tune the satellite TV to channels 85, 98, or 99
while always keeping one finger on the pre-programmed "Nickelodeon" button.
I lost my virginity to that flickering image and nearly muted sound.

I grew up in Van Nuys, California (the un-official porn capital of the United States)
So I had a vague notion of what to expect when, in 9th grade,
I brought home the first boy with a mowhawk.
As we sat with out backs up against the white picket fence in my front yard,
waiting for his mother to pick him up, he slipped two painted finger
up into someplace I didn't know I had. I thought:
          I know this. I've seen this before.

In 10th grade I smiled familiar at the stoner who went down on me for the first time,
(As the family dog looked on)
Smiled, because the view down my bare belly looked just like it did in the movies.
And in 11th grade, I knew all the right things to moan for the girl with the goldilocks
who bit like whiskey and broke me like promises.
We were crossing things off a list. Any beauty in this was accidental.
There was no magic. Only small favors.

The only conversation my mother and I ever had about masturbation
Occurred after she caught me in the act. It went like this:
          What the hell do you think you're doing? You look like a dog.
We never spoke of it again, but for the next 10 years I would run the shine
into this newly-minted shame, taking solace only in the porn,
at least I knew I wasn't the only one disappointing their mother.

So I watched.
I studied.
It was my addiction.
It was my permission.

I lost my virginity to American Porn.
Those naked cocks and tan lines, the thick-necked boys and breakable girls,
the absences of time, hesitation and lube, the forbidden ubiquity,
the empty passion, the adulthood shaved bare, but at least this sex, this
imitation of sex, when pounded from our bored, frightened bodies
smelled honest.

Honest?
I lost my virginity
On the 4th of July
In the back of a Chevy suburban
In parked traffic.

When it was all over I walked two blocks to the Marriot, locked myself
in a bathroom stall and stared down at the burning between my legs,
sure that I would see my aborted uterus floating in a pink bath,
Convinced he must have broken something.
I used some wet paper towel to cool down
the nothing that had apparently happened.

We slept that night in an empty parking lot next to where the boy scouts
were selling off the last of their fireworks. He kissed me on the mouth
so thick I choked on his gratitude. Coughed up my shame.
And that was like nothing I had ever seen before.

Emily Kagan Trenchard