The Mask of Deception: The Ultimate Test to My Recovery From Porn Addict
March 12, 2017 12:27 PM   Subscribe

Novelist Benjamin Obler was feeling secure in his recovery from porn addiction. Then along came Franny, to test it.

When we first talked, it was on tenuous terms. That is, both telling implicit lies.

My lie was wearing a leather jacket and smoking cigarettes that night, which cast me as carefree and rebellious. In reality, I was a bookish Senior Editor with an educational publisher, a teacher, and a writer with aspirations. I loved my tennis and workouts—usually kept fit.

Her lie was the exact opposite: she cast herself as more straight-laced and serious than she was, and literary, noting that she was reading a challenging novel in the literary realism vein. But she wasn’t really of a literary disposition. I would learn soon that she was much more visually oriented, a photographer. She liked to go dancing, and to shoot guns at a range just for the thrill.

On the surface, these lies were harmless, but they masked deeper deceptions. She had no idea I was a recovering porn addict. I had no idea she was into taking semi-nude photos of herself and posting them online.

Her name was Franny, and I fell madly in love with her.
posted by holmesian (73 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite


 
Oof, does this guy get any less exactly like a Toast-parody-White-Male-Novelist after the first few paragraphs?
posted by ominous_paws at 12:32 PM on March 12, 2017 [57 favorites]


Reminds me a little too much of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Neat story, though.
posted by Slinga at 12:44 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Self indulgent tripe
posted by dmt at 12:49 PM on March 12, 2017 [11 favorites]


shoot guns at a range just for the thrill.

I am so confused about the other undisclosed possible reasons he imagines a different kind of woman might have. like if you want a concrete achievement or a confrontation with mortality, you'd go shoot a defenseless animal or I guess start a fight with a man or a bear. of course she shoots at a range for the thrill, that's all they're for! they don't let you kill a man at the range even if you pay extra, gun ranges have a strict cap at the thrill level. you want murder, you got to go somewhere else. or at least make it look like an accident.

oh well I suppose that is completely beside the point


A compassionate friend and good listener, Josh knew all about my recovery from porn addiction.


and to think they used to say men don't know how to do emotional labor! Josh is a model for us all.

Her goofy way of saying, “Cool,” with her mouth poking to the side belied her inner seductress, her practiced way of lifting off a top


hey did you know some women put out AND have personalities? that's the kind of telling detail that really gives a female character depth. it's like they have two sides to them. one side says words and the other side is their tits.

also if a woman has lived for 29 years and does not have a "practiced" way of taking her top off, I would wonder about her motor skills far more than her sexual history. we do actually get undressed every night whether there's a grizzled old poser in a leather jacket watching or not. it's pretty easy honestly
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:00 PM on March 12, 2017 [204 favorites]


The act of writing might accurately be described as self-indulgent, in varying degrees depending on how well a writer succeeds in thinking about and connecting with an audience.

I'm not sure how one might conceive the act of drive-by criticism as a higher point of reference from which to talk about self-indulgence, though. Perhaps someone who's thought about the distinctions involved can educate me.
posted by wildblueyonder at 1:09 PM on March 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


This is an interesting read--thanks!

I'm a little unsure if porn addiction is much more than a byproduct of the kind of click addiction many unscrupulous web marketers exploit, only with a content load that taps into even deeper instinctual drives than the usual kinds of clickbait, but it's an interesting question. The author believes his condition was compulsive and I don't doubt it, but I'm not sure thinking of "porn addiction" as a special form of addiction distinct from, say, slot machine addiction makes sense. Maybe so because it might be that the convergence of basic human sex drive with the kinds of compulsive-click promoting dark patterns skeezy marketers use is an especially potent mix.

I had a partner once who argued I had a porn addiction at one point. I think she was mistaken. I knew what I was doing, though there might have been brief stretches of time when I might have used porn as often as nightly (especially when I was trying out and adjusting to various stimulants as treatment for my ADHD, which sometimes revved up my sex drive to levels that were a big part of why I eventually stopped using those medications in preference for vaping, which also helped me manage the smoking addiction I'd had since I was fifteen).

I never felt any sort of compulsion to view porn, but she was prone to long spells when she had no sexual interest in me whatsoever while I wanted to be faithful but still had normal levels of sex drive.

I didn't want to pressure her to put out, so I figured I would just take care of the problem myself and that would be a work around until my partner was in a different place and ready to consider making an effort to rekindle our sex life. We'd had a very active sex life most of our time together and had only lost the habit due to certain changing life circumstances/medical stuff.

I was shocked when my partner told me how she saw it, because I had thought I was doing her a favor. Turns out, from her POV, she felt I had given up trying to make the effort to seduce her and resented what she viewed as a habit.

In my mind, I was grappling with issues of consent and unsure if it would make me an asshole to even try to seduce her. She had always told me in the past she took no moral issues with porn in principle, so I thought she might even be appreciative I was leaving her alone and "getting it somewhere else" like she had started jokingly/dismissively suggesting when I was still making at least fumbling attempts to "get her in the mood" as she understood it.

Anyway, this is a great, honest read about a stigmatized topic, so I think there's value in it, even if I'm not totally convinced personally that porn addiction as a special case deserves its own DSM entry. I don't see it as self indulgent to try to describe what it's like inside one of these meat suits, to foster understanding and I can't discern a self interested agenda here. He doesn't seem to be shooting for redemption or justification, unless you view his claims that he felt he had no control over the habit as dishonest, which they most likely are not.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:12 PM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


she reared her gusset to the crowd

So...Franny was a girdle? A pair of pantyhose?
posted by 41swans at 1:19 PM on March 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


If there was a point to this article, I missed it. I do admit to some skimming, but, still...
posted by kozad at 1:21 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


This guy makes my skin crawl about as much as the sketchiest porn I've stumbled across.
posted by northernish at 1:28 PM on March 12, 2017 [16 favorites]


drive-by criticism as a higher point of reference from which to talk about self-indulgence, though. Perhaps someone who's thought about the distinctions involved can educate me.

you bet. for starters I like to criticize from a position of equality, or as close as I can get, not from some higher vantage point. it's more fun and more fair. for seconds, in preference to drive-by critiques, I park my car and get out and stretch and take out my picnic basket and sit a spell and do as close a reading as I can fit into a comment that is not so long as to get deleted right off the bat. for thirds I think self-indulgent is usually a deprecatory phrase that is somewhere between meaningless and actively hostile to art so I try to avoid it. but in a context that is literally masturbatory I understand the temptation to whip out the criticism, even if it offers the kind of immediate gratification that is unsatisfying on a deeper critical level.

I also think the author's description of this woman is unsettling on a level which has little to do with sex and almost nothing to do with pornography. the combination of distanced contemplative regard, insistent objectifying obsession, and fawning fearful desperation is something that rings a familiar note. I don't know from porn addicts but I do know from unhappy men who date considerably younger women for a whole bunch of reasons they don't always care to go into, and that is what I think I just read about. he says just enough about this to function as an awareness disclaimer but it does not satisfy. the porn angle is the part of the whole business that interests him about himself the most but naturally enough I do not share his perspective.

I have some empathy for him insofar as I am personally acquainted with the tactic of thinking and talking about oneself at great length under the belief that this is the same thing as self-awareness.
posted by queenofbithynia at 1:30 PM on March 12, 2017 [77 favorites]


they don't let you kill a man at the range even if you pay extra

This raises so many questions, and I'm not sure I want to know the answers.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:33 PM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


I'm not sure how one might conceive the act of drive-by criticism as a higher point of reference from which to talk about self-indulgence, though. Perhaps someone who's thought about the distinctions involved can educate me.

Nobody pays me to do this
posted by ominous_paws at 1:36 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I took my first selfie, shirtless in the mirror, with my chest tattoo showing: “FROM SHAME TO GRACE,” illustrated with the sun breaking through clouds—an image straight out of the Big Green Book (the S.A.A. handbook). I had just gotten it a few months before, a gift to myself for my one-year anniversary in S.A.A.

I mean. Are we sure this isn't an elaborate piece of satire, written by a millenial Jane Austen?
posted by Aravis76 at 1:45 PM on March 12, 2017 [42 favorites]


queenofbithnya, I wanted to talk about her behavior too from a red flag angle. I saw some emotional abuse tactics - things about using provocative sex as ammo to keep someone around, then disappearing for days at a time with male strangers to show off her body to someone else - total red flags. but the difference to me is in intent vs. impact.

to her, either the intent was disregarded in the thrill (likely) or the justification was that he would find the end result desirable and she'd fuck his brains out when he got back. the impact, though, because she did not communicate the need for REALLY FUCKING EXCITING SEXY STUFFS (that wasn't actual bangin') and a need for kinda hahaha fun times and not something too intimate, yeah, he feels like he got sucker punched in the sex.

poor sod. this is a story for a therapist though and was kinda painful to read. I have met too many people in the nonmonogamous community who are this way.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 1:46 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


It would take me until fall to understand that Franny had been the final exam in my porn addiction treatment.
My understanding has always been that if a person really is addicted to (whatever) that there isn't a final exam ~ ever ~ but rather that it's an ongoing One Day At A Time process. That addiction recovery is a process, and not an event.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:53 PM on March 12, 2017 [10 favorites]


she said that having just gotten out of a long relationship with Ted, maybe she shouldn’t jump back into anything. Whatever hesitancy she expressed I assumed would fade as she let herself fall in love with me.

It sounds like she communicated fine? He made an assumption that ran directly contrary to what she told him that turned out, unfortunately, not to be true. That is hard luck, when it happens, and I sympathise. But I don't see the emotional abuse angle. She seems to have been pretty frank about her needs and desires, and I doubt she could have guessed how he would turn her into the embodiment of Porn in his head. (A move I agree is creepy and dehumanising; he seems not to see her at all as a flawed human, who it turns out he was incompatible with. Instead, she gets to be either his reward for being so virtuous about porn, or maybe his final exam in avoiding porn, or maybe porn made flesh. All three of those are gross and dehumanising ways of characterising a person you supposedly once loved.)
posted by Aravis76 at 1:54 PM on March 12, 2017 [39 favorites]


What a tool . Seriously, everyone has their demons and addictions. This guy is addicted to the sound of his own self loathing. If I were her I woulda skedaddled after the first date.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 1:55 PM on March 12, 2017 [12 favorites]


I also think the author's description of this woman is unsettling on a level which has little to do with sex and almost nothing to do with pornography

i'm not making a comparison to pedophilia

but i honestly thought at first that the author was trying to write humbert humbert, only to realize - no, the author does not realize he is writing an unreliable narrator, isn't aware of the warped lens through which he's describing this woman, and this isn't a piece of satire

also, seriously - gusset???? that's the euphemism he settles on?

so i think it's safe to say i was unimpressed.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:55 PM on March 12, 2017 [13 favorites]


thebotanyofsouls -- I am highly biased because I think burlesque is so silly (sometimes on purpose) that I can't take seriously the idea of being helplessly brought to one's knees by the heated sexuality of it all. this is my own limitation, I know. but additionally, I can't see her as very manipulative because of this, early on:

I was never sure how I figured in her world, what her intentions were exactly, whether she saw me as her exclusive boyfriend, and that made me nervous, put me on edge


this would make my heart bleed with sympathy if he were SIXTEEN. but when you can see forty from your house, you ask. her. intentions. in words such as "what are your intentions?" and "can we be exclusive?"

When I was in my twenties I took it for granted that worldly older men knew how to communicate and express themselves clearly. now that I'm in my thirties I know how silly that was, but, crucially, I remember that younger people do often think that. so I force myself to pantomime the maturity they have a reasonable right to expect from me. it isn't easy or fun, and that is one reason among many I think a lot of people should think twice about dating younger. but if you do date younger, you have to do that. you just have to. and this guy did not seem to understand that.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:03 PM on March 12, 2017 [32 favorites]


she reared her gusset to the crowd

So...Franny was a girdle? A pair of pantyhose?

also, seriously - gusset???? that's the euphemism he settles on?


Based on the overall writerliness I also read "gusset" figuratively--as in hugs gusset or love gusset. (*shudder*)
posted by pullayup at 2:05 PM on March 12, 2017


I get the impression that an editor never looked at this piece.
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 2:07 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I think it's impossible to guess at any of Franny's motivations, because he gives us so little to go on about Franny's personality or interior life. She's not a character: she's a thing that happened to him. She's the embodiment of his fantasies, and she's the final exam in his treatment for porn addiction. Who the hell knows what she was thinking? Either he wasn't a good enough boyfriend to notice or he isn't a good enough writer to convey it.

Anyway, this seems like a very ill-advised thing to publish under one's real name, but I guess it will be a good warning to any women in the future who might be tempted to date him!
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:08 PM on March 12, 2017 [28 favorites]



also, seriously - gusset???? that's the euphemism he settles on?


I don't think it's a euphemism. these are goofy soft-core dress-up cheesecake costume shots he describes so I imagine she was wearing some lower garment that did indeed have a gusset she could aim wherever the spirit moved her.

other people's erotic dreamscapes are special places
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:09 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


I also think the author's description of this woman is unsettling on a level which has little to do with sex and almost nothing to do with pornography.

I picked up on that, too. The guy obviously has issues with women and sexuality. That's exactly what he's saying, so it's not too surprising his POV seems creepy, but I also recognize what looks like the standard literary mode in his language. Some of that distancing to me reads like him straining for a kind of elegance that reads falsely. But it's interesting to see anyone actually talking about porn use without being glib and jokey about it, or universally morally condemning, because those are the only two modes we usually discuss these subjects in, rarely just coolly and calmly and self reflectively, using the occasion to examine our own experiences and sort through them for points of connection, disagreement, and understanding in the details.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:12 PM on March 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


But, like, where would the gusset be? And why is there only one of them? This may be a paucity of imagination on my part but I can only imagine that diamond-shaped crotch gusset you see on cycling or climbing pants, which is clearly a functional rather than erotic gusset.
posted by pullayup at 2:14 PM on March 12, 2017


He has no empathy for her at all; he sees her as one of his porn fantasies come to life -- with no past or future.

He doesn't so much as ask himself what she sees in him, or what she could conceivably be getting out of their relationship.

Being a porn addict was bad for him, I don't doubt, but it might have been best for society.
posted by jamjam at 2:14 PM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


She was gone a week when I got an email with a big .zip attachment. I downloaded it right away and unzipped.

I can't even
posted by pomomo at 2:28 PM on March 12, 2017 [30 favorites]


He doesn't so much as ask himself what she sees in him, or what she could conceivably be getting out of their relationship.

It seemed like he was trying to imply there was something almost predatory about her interest in him most of the time, then he backed off in the last line and sort of "graciously" declined to judge her that way, which definitely seemed... off.

It's kind of interesting there are men's groups for these things. He might be better off at least talking through his issues in groups that also include women's perspectives. Women do get addicted to online porn, too. Are the support groups gender segregated to make the participants more comfortable, or is the idea that men and women's porn addictions have different root causes, or what, I wonder.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:58 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


But, like, where would the gusset be? And why is there only one of them? This may be a paucity of imagination on my part but I can only imagine that diamond-shaped crotch gusset you see on cycling or climbing pants, which is clearly a functional rather than erotic gusset.

I'm pretty sure he's just using "gusset" as a synonym for the crotch portion of the underwear she had on.
posted by limeonaire at 3:19 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


I saw some emotional abuse tactics - things about using provocative sex as ammo to keep someone around, then disappearing for days at a time with male strangers to show off her body to someone else - total red flags.

Except this didn't happen. There is nothing in this story to indicate that Franny ever used sex to keep him around, or that she did anything during her time away (two weekends during a six month period of dating) apart from take some pictures of a guy in a horse mask and a woman in a dress on a swing. She did some amount of burlesque at some point, although it's very unclear what or when, but if you think that is abusive, I don't really know what to tell you.

More generally, I really don't like this piece at all. He seems to be unable to conceive of Franny as a person at all - he thinks of her as pornography, not as a person. This piece, in particular, is telling:
A writer friend, who spent a fair amount of time in Al-Anon (the Twelve-Step program for people with addicts in their lives) recently told me how she can relate: she described a time in her life when she was trying to stop choosing “the same bad, addict boyfriend in a different body” over and over again—a kind of addiction itself.
The only way for this equivalence to make any sense is if he sees Franny not as person, but as a piece of pornography​.

Ultimately, I think this reads like a post hoc justification of the fact that he dated someone who wasn't really that into him, pressured her to try to get her to move in with him (because he never actually s, and acted like a complete arsehole when she, understandably, ended the relationship. It has nothing to do with his porn addiction, although that problem may well have its roots in his apparent inability to conceive of women as subjects with desires and interests of their own, rather than objects to satisfy his desires for sex or love, or as tests on his road to redemption.

I hope he's a nicer person than this piece suggests.
posted by howfar at 3:29 PM on March 12, 2017 [17 favorites]


I redact that argument the more I type this followup. He certainly feels slighted by it, but the second read through, now I see this is his processing of the whole event - hence why he feels anguished enough to belabor our eyes with 5,900 words. It's a public journal entry.

She did communicate in the beginning, but it doesn't sound like she held that boundary she stated as he became emotionally attached (totally human soft squishy feelings go here, both parties had them to varying degrees) and he got hurt when she said through distance and actions, 'this isn't what I want. I can't handle this kind of attachment' (a thing she has every right to say! Huzzah for empowered women who communicate) Wah wah wah noise and all that fun jazz. I believe he should swallow his pride, his assumptions, and his general emotional pigheadedness after the fact and realize, sometimes we start something we didn't consent to the end product with human relationships, we take a deep breath, and we walk away from that. Therapists are really great for this! They save us from embarassing ourselves with our self absorption in 6000 words.

he totally came across as a self absorbed sex focused douche to me - throughout the entire piece. He viewed his entire relationship with this person through the lens of his sexuality. He does not talk about anything about this person that does not relate to her sex throughout the entire piece.

IMHO, his whole difficulty with her would have been solved had he simply not thought of the first few meet-ups with a stranger as 'dates' (his projection of his desire) and instead as 'meet-ups' to get to know someone. I get our emotions our powerful and sweep us off our feet, but the connection that it sounds like he REALLY wants - that deep soul abiding love - takes time to build and the initial pieces of it are always friend type things anyway, so what's the rush? He didn't give it that time because the blood rushed below his waist and omg sexy times is hard wired and life is hard because of that. He mentions that in the piece too, that she resembled the girls he'd fap to so many times. Not totally self oblivious, but could use some time with a therapist to get some perspective.
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 3:52 PM on March 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


could use some time with a therapist to get some perspective.

and maybe the occasional hand shandy to take the edge off?
posted by Sebmojo at 4:22 PM on March 12, 2017


also if a woman has lived for 29 years and does not have a "practiced" way of taking her top off, I would wonder about her motor skills far more than her sexual history.

Dear sweet jesus, this made me laugh until tears rolled out of my eyes.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:40 PM on March 12, 2017 [21 favorites]


I thought it was a funny piece (accentuated by noir-esque stylistic touches) about a pompous idiot but then it turned out to be serious I guess? I think it's much better as satire
posted by clockzero at 4:43 PM on March 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


also if a woman has lived for 29 years and does not have a "practiced" way of taking her top off, I would wonder about her motor skills far more than her sexual history

This redeems the post.

That article gave me colossal douche chills, I couldn't read more than a few bits at a time.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:12 PM on March 12, 2017 [6 favorites]


The piece becomes better if you imagine that each reference to a body part of an intimate piece of clothing is replaced with a super-duper immature word. Imagine this guy twirling his Gauloises, voice cracking, eyes closed and weeping, whilst pining for the bing-bong gazongas in her over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:24 PM on March 12, 2017 [9 favorites]


He treats objects like women... man.
posted by fullerine at 5:49 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Are we sure this isn't an elaborate piece of satire, written by a millenial Jane Austen?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a novelist recovering from a porn addiction must be in want of an edgy girlfriend.

However little known the feelings or views of such a woman may be on encountering him, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of porn addicts, that she is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of them.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:01 PM on March 12, 2017 [17 favorites]



This redeems the post.


oh well I was starting to feel bad about saying that because who among us has not had a little too much to drink and gotten lost in her own bra once or twice? but then again who's to say that's not the sexiest move of all. and regardless, being awed at someone for not doing that is what you call the soft bigotry of low expectations.

for sure the last time I got caught in a sweater during the tricky over-the-head part I was well under 29. no question. there was a lot of writhing and thrashing around during the escape maneuver. this kind of behavior is probably what makes very young women so extremely attractive all around.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:30 PM on March 12, 2017 [24 favorites]


who among us has not had a little too much to drink and gotten lost in her own bra once or twice

I was nearly defeated by my own sports bra this morning when I was dressing for a run. Because Daylight Savings is cruel. Especially when you're not a morning person.

And guys like the guy who wrote this article are, at best, a good example of why I hate dating.
posted by thivaia at 6:56 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


but in a context that is literally masturbatory I understand the temptation to whip out the criticism, even if it offers the kind of immediate gratification that is unsatisfying on a deeper critical level.

I just wanted to make sure, if you've read down this far, that you had an opportunity to re-read this sentence by queenofbithynia again, in case you missed it the first time.
posted by Merus at 7:02 PM on March 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


What's the sex addict word for a dry drunk?
posted by rhizome at 8:14 PM on March 12, 2017 [5 favorites]


Some people have a practiced way of taking their tops off. Others have a practiced way of putting them on.

(Content Warning: liberal porn, not safe for Aaron Sorkin fans who have things to do tonight.)
posted by jacquilynne at 8:27 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


Saulgoodman: I think gender segregated support groups for sexuality related addictions are probably the only way to prevent rampant 13th step-ism
posted by midmarch snowman at 8:45 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm using up my daily ration of favorites on the comments in here. I've never laughed so hard at the word 'gusset' before.
posted by pattern juggler at 10:32 PM on March 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


in a context that is literally masturbatory I understand the temptation to whip out the criticism

I see what you did there, and it was hot
posted by flabdablet at 10:55 PM on March 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


Pity the lesbian, gay, or bisexual porn addict, I suppose. Gender segregated doesn't quite do it, there.
posted by Deoridhe at 10:56 PM on March 12, 2017 [7 favorites]


Memo to self: if a guy I'm flirting with reveals he's a Porn Addict, politely but firmly extricate him from the list of people allowed in my panties. Or at least consider it a serious red flag given that I've done burlesque, have posted selfies in nothing but an animal mask, and have considered a career as a purveyor of cartoon porn.
posted by egypturnash at 11:36 PM on March 12, 2017 [4 favorites]


I tried to engage with this at the very least on a purely literary level, since its pretensions to such lofty heights seemed to follow me around like a cranky toddler, demanding my attention. I gave up as soon as he showed me he didn't know the difference between 'diffuse' and 'defuse.'
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:44 AM on March 13, 2017 [4 favorites]


I gave up as soon as he showed me he didn't know the difference between 'diffuse' and 'defuse.'

Oh! That would be much less icky than the obsolete sense of "to pour out as a fluid". Here's the passage if anyone wants to see what we're talking about:
other young boys around me would pass around a centerfold, laughing at it, pointing, saying lewd things to diffuse their excitement

posted by Joe in Australia at 2:01 AM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


15 years ago this would go in a personalzine.
posted by rhizome at 2:02 AM on March 13, 2017


You, a Common Man: Wow, your hot 29-year-old girlfriend does burlesque and sends you naked selfies!

Me, a Deep Intellectual: [tears open shirt to reveal YOU CANNOT KNOW MY PAIN tattoo emblazoned in gothic script across my magnificent torso] Get out
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:53 AM on March 13, 2017 [29 favorites]


I'm fighting the temptation to pile on. So I'll go sideways.

Between the lines it seems clear that he has always felt intense sexual guilt about masturbation. He was literary, not statistical in his confession, so I'm missing out on a chance to judge how many times a day/week he was doing it. Whatever the number, I'm sorry he feels bad about it. There aren't very many other ways to light up the pleasure centers of the brain that strongly. (Maybe some drugs, but I'd rather not know.)

It does seem like he's trying to hold his own desires at arm's length, as if desire is something that he downloads and consumes, not something he feels, not a natural part of him. And he skirts pretty close to the cultural trap of blaming women for his stirrings, as if what he finds 'provocative' must be from a conscious campaign to provoke him. (I mean the way she takes her top off and the glimpse of thigh in the swing picture, not the zip files. Mailing files is active provocation in a way that existing and being desired by someone who sees you isn't.)

There's a Kurt Vonnegut story, titled Miss Temptation, that is a good antidote to this essay. A grumpy man believes a woman is sashaying in front of him just to drive him crazy with lust, but she yells at him and explains that she's a person, too.
posted by puddledork at 9:53 AM on March 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


On the one hand I understand people get a lot of help out of AA-like frameworks and I know people can certainly have disordered relationships with porn and sex, but on the other hand, his description of his porn habit just seems like such a weird combination of overwrought and sparse that I don't really trust it. On the one hand there are references to him going against his values and damaging relationships, but those values are never named and it's never detailed what exactly harmed those relationships and how porn contributed. Meanwhile, the details he seems fixated on seem, to me, totally unworthy of the intense shame response they appeared to elicit in him. Everyone has embarrassing laundry and draws the blinds from time to time, yet those details are dropped in as if they prove the depths of his depravity.

At times he sounds enamored of the idea of having had a sordid habit, or something to triumph over. It sounds like he treats his own sexuality and anything that triggers it as a potential enemy; any other interpretation of events is crowded out by the Manichean addiction narrative, so that other people become tests to pass or fail, badges to collect or lose, vaguely long-suffering wives or temptresses etc. Not only does there seem to be so much unnecessary black-and-white psychodrama, the drama itself doesn't even seem particularly introspective (where did he learn to feel and project this much shame about his sexuality, for instance?).
posted by en forme de poire at 10:31 AM on March 13, 2017 [7 favorites]


(Kinda jinx on the shame angle, puddledork.)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:33 AM on March 13, 2017


To be fair, he's currently shopping both a porn addiction novel and a porn addiction memoir around, you can't expect him to spill all the details​ just in order to make this piece comprehensible or interesting.
posted by howfar at 10:39 AM on March 13, 2017 [6 favorites]


with my chest tattoo showing: “FROM SHAME TO GRACE,”


Hahahahahahaha, no dude, no. I'm speculating over the hilarious possibilty of font choices and wondering if he asked his tattoo artist to make it "Memento, but not too Memento, you know?"
posted by lumpenprole at 11:53 AM on March 13, 2017 [9 favorites]


It's like he almost can see that the way this piece dehumanizes his ex is the way he dehumanized the women in pornography and other images he watched, but he just can't - quite - get there...
posted by fast ein Maedchen at 2:38 PM on March 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


"Picnics with erections and short dresses."

Oh man, this one sentence. He's the erection, and she's the short dress. He's a single human body part and she isn't even that.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 2:51 PM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh good golly, the writing on this thing.

And really, he should have gone with (picnic, erection).
posted by mochapickle at 6:40 PM on March 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


And really, he should have gone with (picnic, erection).

(golf, applause)
posted by Sebmojo at 11:40 PM on March 13, 2017 [3 favorites]


shopping both a porn addiction novel and a porn addiction memoir around

how dreary
recovery memoirs in general are boring
posted by thelonius at 4:06 AM on March 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


It would take me until fall to understand that Franny had been the final exam in my porn addiction treatment.

This is the big reveal where we see that the author does not see her as a person in and of herself, with her own story and her own rights and her own dreams, but rather a prop in his story, a character in his play - not a human being in other words, an object. That is and always was the foundation of this relationship and this piece.
posted by PercussivePaul at 4:29 AM on March 14, 2017 [4 favorites]


Who wants to read not one but two books about somebody addicted to porn? A sex addict, okay. Sex addicts go places. And when they get there? They have sex! That's exciting. Someone J/Oing over porn is not interesting. Unless it's someone really hot, and they filmed themselves doing it. Then it's porn. That's cool. A book about just a random guy watching porn? What do you call it, A Million Little Pieces of Kleenex?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:16 AM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


A Million Little Spermatazoa!

And now I'm so squicked out I can't eat breakfast.
posted by mochapickle at 6:32 AM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Picnics with erections and short dresses."

man he was just trying to do a "My Favorite Things" allusion and couldn't get the scansion right. I hope when they make a film of the essay and cast whoever may be today's Julie Andrews as an enterprising young convent-trained burlesque artist, they have a montage of her hand-sewing her own gussets out of curtains, to show her resourcefulness. that's the moment when the author, played by a sleazy Casey Affleck type, will realize the truths of his own heart.
posted by queenofbithynia at 10:16 AM on March 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


Well, now, that would be a song!
Picnics and short dresses, oh the erections!
Memories stored in my mental collections
Zips to unzipper and bras to unhook
It's kind of boring, but please buy my book...
posted by mochapickle at 10:30 AM on March 14, 2017 [10 favorites]


Okay this is a little mean but it's much funnier to imagine the entire thing as the memoirs of Archer's Cyril Figgis [slightly nsfw clip].
posted by en forme de poire at 12:40 PM on March 14, 2017 [3 favorites]


That article gave me colossal douche chills, I couldn't read more than a few bits at a time.

I got the douche chills, and then I read on and realized this happened where I live.

I attempt to defend myself from this sort of person by being aggressively silly and vulgar and too old.
posted by louche mustachio at 5:10 PM on March 14, 2017 [6 favorites]


"I was recovering from porn addiction and then I met a woman I could break down into Pornhub tags. Let me list some of them here."
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:52 PM on March 14, 2017 [9 favorites]


Tagged as: "gusset" (0 other videos found)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:45 AM on March 15, 2017 [3 favorites]


Reading back, I see his habit had already cost him his marriage. It looks like he sought a new partner, not to replace his ex, but to replace his porn addiction.
posted by El Brendano at 2:58 AM on March 16, 2017


I wouldn't say this about most people, but the author really needs a dose of old-fashioned theology. He's already got all the heavy, guilt-inspired stuff, but he doesn't have the release mechanisms that should go along with it. Calling Franny his "final exam" made it all clear: 12-step programs are about management and control, not cures. He's obsessing over his relationship with God, and consequently Franny and everybody else are merely figures in his passion play.

In theological terms he believes that he is a sinner, and he longs for salvation (i.e., freedom from lust). He calls Franny an "exam" because he thinks he has been tested by God (i.e, the "Higher Power" of a 12-step program). That's a reaction to a sense of religious guilt, not a 12-step reaction to addiction. What he's looking for is forgiveness and absolution, and he isn't going to find it in any of the places he's looking.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:03 AM on March 16, 2017 [5 favorites]


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