Information-Seeking Behavior

My internet porn addiction didn't begin in the usual way with the occasional fanfiction dirty story exchanged between high schoolers or finding videotapes in the upstairs closet and then looking online to find more. Most people look for a set of anonymous genitals or a mouth or set of hands interacting with another set of anonymous genitals. Others look for certain scenarios or fetishes, but don't really care about the obvious c-section scar the "schoolgirl" has or that the "hot, uptight professor" has a barbed wire tattoo around his bulging bicep once he strips off his tweed.

No, I was looking for a particular person.

I knew every inch of his body, from the slight cowlick that always stuck up no matter how much he grew or cut his brown hair to the size and placement of the scars on his body. I had loved him more than anything in this damn world and loved fucking him just about as much. So, of course, when he left, I went through the usual heartbreak before hitting the dating scene again. Yet no matter how well we hit it off on the first date or how technically good the sex was, I couldn't get off.

Of course, online amateur porn isn't like the public library and can't be searched by author or creator name, at least not by their real names. "69_4_u" doesn't exactly reveal much other than the person's proclivity toward mutual oral gratification. This was the sort of search done in a broad range with a fine-tooth comb as opposed to scattershot within known limits. I would spend hours late at night scouring the amateur sites, going through grainy footage, squinting through the boxy pixels to see if he was somewhere out there. I would try to find things uploaded from Portland, Oregon or Boston, Massachusetts from 2005 onward.

He was always secretive, private. It wouldn't have surprised me if he had filmed himself fucking and it wouldn't have surprised me if he hadn't. The weird attraction and repulsion I had to the idea of him fucking someone else on camera mirrored the overall contradiction of the exposure in showing everything while hiding the face for anonymity in amateur online porn. If I couldn't see his face, how would I recognize him?

So I would keep watching. Would I recognize his cock, and how it would angle slightly to the left erected when he stood? Would I recognize its curve being engulfed by a mouth that was not mine? Was the video detailed enough for me to recognize his circumcision scar? Were the angular, bird-like hipbones slamming into that woman's ass as he fucked her doggystyle his? Was it his chest that some woman was raking her nails on, across the sunken sternum and down his ribcage like a xylophone? Oddly enough, it never had occurred to me that it could be my hair being pulled or my mouth or my hands getting fucked on camera.

Even if none of those wiry, vigorous fellows were actually him, I would find myself remembering things so vividly I could almost feel them. The rasp of his five o'clock shadow against my thighs as he starts going down on me. Or when I ride him, I feel my cunt grasping his cock, his fingers gripping around my hips pushing me harder. His teeth sink into my shoulder as he fucks me from behind.

Any of these scenarios play in my mind just as real as any video of a young horny couple in a crappy apartment. Except in my mind it's his place with the mattress on the floor and the music turned up so his roommates won't hear how loud I came, or my old basement studio on top of the futon I got from Craigslist. The windows would fog up in the winter due to the crappy radiator. It would be so hot in the summer that all we could manage was either the slow, languid fuck, sliding against each other or the quick, spare-contact fuck and then hop in the shower.

I saw a recent picture online of him and his current girlfriend and it made me fly into a rage. All I could think about was her lips on his cock or her legs wrapped around his neck as he slid his tongue deep into her. Did she taste like me? Better? I would wonder if he fucked her the same way he fucked me, teasing and gentle at first, but building in speed and force to the point I would wake up the next morning bruised and sore, but still satisfied from the night before. Did he pull her hair? Did she thrust upward or backward in time with him? Did usually he take her from behind or did her prefer facing her in a missionary position, kissing her tenderly on the neck and mouth? Was she more adventurous in sex positions than I was?

Then I'd have these sick fantasies of him tying me to a chair in the closet, gagging me and leaving the door cracked open slightly so I could see them, but she couldn't see me. I would watch him fuck her hard, make her scream and be tormented with being able to look, but never touch, not even able to touch myself. I would just have to sit there and watch while the man I loved fucked someone else. Yet these scenarios would swim through my mind late at night, even as I touched myself. I would try to fantasize about someone, anyone else, from some hot stranger at the bookstore or on the T to whichever film or television star had struck my fancy lately. No matter how hard I tried to block it from my mind, I couldn't make myself come until I saw his mouth open in ecstasy, cock filling her as I looked on helplessly.

I know I'll never see him again, except maybe in this liminal space between past and present, watching and being watched. So, I keep searching, watching video after video, night after night.