I'm sitting here going through my music collection, remembering a time when I was actually excited by things I heard on the radio and such. I can remember listening to "The Top 9 at 9" on Power 99.7 FM in Atlanta (before it became 99 X), and the songs on it were actually things I wanted to hear.. things like Faith No More, or Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Pearl Jam (oh, shut up.. you liked them too). Songs that didn't SUCK.

Anyway, I am sitting here thinking about simpler times in life, remembering when the hardest thing about life was trying to get girls to notice me while pretending I didn't care if girls noticed me. Wrestling practice. Mowing the lawn. Not getting caught lifting extra cartons of milk from the cafeteria. All of that stuff.

This song currenty playing, "Saturday" by De La Soul, reminds me of a guy I knew named Dallas Regan.

Dallas was a smoking, swearing, thieving, better dressed "Waldo" (you know.. from "Where's Waldo?"). He looked EXACTLY like that hidden little bastard...

Dallas introduced me to several things in life that played major roles in my development into the person I am today: Underground rock, underground comics, fanzines, ska, and getting my ass kicked by my mother for having a hardcore pornography tape that I never even got to watch.

Dallas was 2 grades ahead of me. While I was a naive and pretty useless Freshman, Dallas took me under his wing and kind of put me instantly in the "Cool" crowd. After about a month of hanging out with him, there was practically nothing I wouldn't do for him, mainly because even at that young age I realized very deeply the fact that any social status I MAY have had at that point in my life was directly related to him. So, naturally, when Dallas asked me to hold his prized possession, a copy of "The Pleasure Hunt" starring Ginger Lynn, so that his mother wouldn't toss it, I GLADLY accepted.

Sure, I could tell you that this was my way of helping out the older, far more socially accepted person who had really been the person that made things much much much less difficult for me as a Freshman in high school (now that I look back on it, I think it might also have to do with the fact that I was 6' 3", 240 lbs and looked like a deranged skinhead) ... but the truth is, to a 14 year old male, a hardcore porn tape is worth approximately double its weight in pure platinum. Maybe triple.

I IMMEDIATELY stashed it and told my best friend in the world at that time Jay about it. He and I were flipping out.. we had PORN! FUCKING A, WE HAD PORN! Now, of course at that time my family was dirt poor and my father, who is the greatest example of an American hero you will ever find, was feeding my sister, my mother and I on his early withdrawl of his Social Security.. so we had one VCR and one television, both of which were located in the living room which had no locking door. Watching this thing in the... shall we say... proper envirionment would require a great deal more stealth than I had available to me at the time, so I did what anyone in my position would do: I prayed and begged God to let my parents go away for a weekend. Begged. Pleaded. Groveled before the Almighty. Etcetera.

Meanwhile, Jay was already making moves, trading on this treasure he considered ours (but it was mine... well, not even mine. But still). He told his neighbor, Todd, about it, who offered a pretty good trade: for me, his porn tape. I hadn't even seen mine yet, so I said "Sure." Since I had no clue what was "my" tape, I figured what's the difference anyway? Unwatched porn is just as good as other unwatched porn, right? Jay ended up scoring some of Todd's fathers cigarettes and a bootleg of Metallica's "Garage Days Revisited" album. I just got the other tape.

As was customary for my porn situation, that day I just stashed the tape and prayed like the dickens.

Well, Todd took a different tact. You see, Todd was a fucking moron. He left the tape in his VCR one night and the next morning, when his mother came to yank the silver spoon out of his mouth and clean his room for him, she found it.

Now, did Todd do his duty and deny all knowledge? Did he do exactly what he would have done had he never traded? Did he do the only thing that could have saved his ass and blame it on his older brother?

Fuck no. He spilled ALL the beans.

Unfortunately, this all happened while I was away for the weekend with my (HAHAHAHA) church youth group. When I got back, my parents picked my sister and I up, and proceeded to tell me that when we got home, they had something they wanted to talk to me, alone, about.

My sister, who had no clue what it was about, just looked at me and said "It was really nice having you for a brother. I will miss you."

That night proceeded to be one of the longest, most painful, most GOD I wish I could forget it but never ever will the horrible thought of it be seared from my memory nights I have ever had in my entire life.

I had to watch Ginger Lynn have lesbian sex with 2 other blonde women dressed as nurses in the living room with my parents.

I can't even begin to describe the agony of sitting there hearing Ginger scream "YES" with 2 women licking her body and giving her pleasure with a gigantic massage wand, fingers thrusting into her repeatedly while my mother stared at me in disgust.

After finally hitting the stop button, I was asked "Where did you get this?"

I wanted to tell them the truth. I wanted to tell them I was holding it for Dallas, and that I hadn't even gotten the chance to watch it until that point which was far less fufilling than I had really hoped it would be. I wanted to come clean, but I knew that even though my story was 100% true it would come off sounding like pure bullshit, so I just blurted out "A guy on the football team sold it to me, but I can't tell you who because then I won't ever be able to play football again.. they'll kill me."

It turned out that this was probably the best thing I could have possibly uttered, because immediately my father jumped in and said that he didn't care where I got it and didn't want me to name names, that the tape would be destroyed and that my mother would handle it from there.

Thank God for testosterone.

I sat there for the next 2 hours while my mother discussed with me the nature of making love versus having sex, how porn does not at all describe making love, and how she and my father make love, not have sex.. blah blah blah.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the point of any of this is, but there is a lesson to be learned here:

Young men reading this story, do yourself a HUGE favor.. go to a yard sale, buy yourself a VCR for 15 bucks, and keep all of your porn to yourself. Trading porn only leads to trouble.

Better yet, save the 15 bucks, download Kazaa Lite, get FREE porn, whack off till you go blind, and make damn sure to delete your porn before your mom uses the computer.