The Porn story

I grew up in a disciplined and a very protected household, with the result being that I never hung with my schoolmates. I was never allowed to join any school team, even though I was very good at sports, and was only allowed once in an inter-school event. I never ventured out to any of classmates places and no one in particular came to mine. The overall effect of such was that I was introduced to most things came late in my life. Especially guy stuff - like knowing all the mallu bad words, and watching porn.

This was before the internet, at a time when video stores were prolific. Sure, there were movies with adult content in them, but these were all fast forwarded by my dad at first and my big sister later on. Dad even yelled at our video store guy for giving a kid a comedy movie (I forget the name) involving a sperm bank. A watchful eye was kept on my viewing activities. Then, we moved video stores and this new one had a rack dedicated to porn. And I would scheme, from being filled with boyish curiosity, on how to go about discovering it. One afternoon, my friend E's place became free and he invited me over. And that was were the first screening happened (I was in the 11th) amongst other gents who had a rather exceptional knowledge about this stuff.

The video store content however remained elusive.

A short time later, my parents had to leave leaving me the sole occupant of the house for a whole weekend. A-ha. Among the list of banned things that I was going to do, a visit to the video rental was going to be one of them. Among the others, if you must know, was trying to play basketball at the nearby church playground, watching late night TV and smoking a cigarette on the terrace. Plans were made, and nervousness was quelled. The video store guy after all knew my parents, both being frequent temple goers. But I had a feeling it might be OK. The day came and I rode the bike to the place.

The rack was empty.

I quelled further nervousness and reasoned with myself. If I didnt ask now, there'll be no tomorrow. Maybe he just shifted it.

I asked.

Er, cheta, what happened to all the ..cough..blue films?

Oh that. I gave them all away and I stopped that stuff.

I was so suprised and taken aback that I blurted out "Why?!" and immediately regretted it. I didn't want him to think of me as a horny teenager, but I was just so immensly suprised at why this guy would do this ..now... after such a long time of harboring these films. Thankfully, he didnt appear to think any such thing.

"I just stopped it. Got up one morning and decided to get rid of it all. It's not because I was scared of being caught or anything. I just couldn't do it, couldn't go the temple every day and look at His face. So I got rid of it, didn't even sell it for money."

Hmm.

As I left the place, I waved to his little girl. Maybe having her in the house was one reason.