Sunday was Easter, and an exceptionally temperate & beautiful day, & upon returning from a walk on the harbor, I'm stopped at a traffic light where 6-8 young men were dressed in pastels and wearing "bunny ears." They are also wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the words: "YOUR God made me this way!" As you might imagine, they are provocative, engaging with traffic whose drivers were of varying degrees of "acceptance." You couldn't pay me to live in the suburbs...

It turns out that my "porn industry" patient came upon the industry by chance (if you believe in such matters). His mother had put him out because his "life" consisted of television and marijuana: "She said, ' If I don't put you out, you'll never leave.'" As customary, his affect betrayed nothing; a continuous variation on "diastole." Was this a good move on her part? "I'm out. Even I was afraid I'd never go." Current arrangement? His "boss" befriended him, offered to take him in, give him his own room, meals, buy his clothing, provide a limited amount of actual cash, etc. in exchange for his described work. "And <insert euphemism for masturbation> every night before he goes to bed." WTF. "He's older. He has AIDS. I wear a glove. He gets lonely & I help him out. He doesn't want to have sex with me; never asked me, never pressured me." Were you surprised at the 'industry?' Were you shocked?" "No. I just see it as a business." thump-THUMP. Well, is it (was it ever) arousing? Sexually stimulating?" "No. I pretty much am bored with it all." thump-THUMP. Diastole. Yeah, passivity - and let's distinguish projective identification (where, paradoxically, one can experience the feelings of another as one's own) from counter-transference, which is an unconscious phenomenon - is particularly difficult for me.

To digress for a quick moment. I had the incredible opportunity, back in the day, to train at the Ackerman Institute for the Family on E. 78th St. in Manhattan. I emphasize that Ackerman trains family therapists in an intense & rigorous (make that, for the clinician-in-training, terrifying) manner: every session was observed by a team behind a large mirror in the room & everything was videotaped for later "scrutiny." I raise this issue because one concept that was continually emphasized was self-awareness: how do you appear to the patient. Remedies? Utilize a mirror to see yourself; I was told once to try sitting on my hands to preclude my "physical demonstration" detracting from my spoken words. I raise this only to say that I would love to see the expression on my face when a patient, for example, tells me he masturbates his boss nightly as a function of his work. How would you word that on a resumé? One benefit of working in prison: little direct eye-contact. Wow, I am easily distracted...

Let me again clarify: I'm no scholar, philosopher, "exegete," or classic translator - once, having actually enrolled in a under-grad course entitled "On the Translation of Poetry," one meeting and a few days of sobriety quickly revealed the wisdom of that decision - and while I didn't dream up or invent, I will be emphatic in utilizing bald-face interpretations that serve my argument. But then again, it is my argument. I will say that I have some "unfounded" theories here (i.e. I am only able to support this by a mixed literature), and like any scientist with a "vague" notion, will conclude with the suggestion that "further investigation is necessary." Science is, indeed, sweet. You have been warned.

The Greek word "pornia" πορνια, the "root" of "pornography" (and note that while "graphia" γραϕια frequently is interpreted as "writing" - e.g. think biography - I believe it is better understood in terms of "conveyance," in the sense of "a greater" truth," as opposed to simply "setting pen/pencil to paper") apparently means a lot of things to a lot of people, one-and-all as potentially bald-faced and self-serving as my own: fornication, pervert(ion), and plain old immorality. And the wonder of the internet provides me some (I force myself to limit it to two) ultimate distractions: the truly unexplainable UM " "?. ITY O. PORNIA SAN DIEGO HANDFUL OF EXOTICS, and my support for the Minister, forced by both irony & dumbass parents to tread the way of this life as the Rev. Eddie Pornia (not Ed or Edward, mind you, but "Eddie"). Who am I to suggest a standard for morality (though I'm sure we could agree on some universals), so for my purposes, I will interpret pornia as something contrary, in opposition, to my already-posited position of Evdokimov, below. Contrary to what I suspect to be a highly "rationed," infrequent human experience, pornia suggests to me a lack of transcendence, and so it shall be defined.

The psychiatric literature of pornography is slim to non-existent, save some, for example, fMRI & hormonal studies on sexual arousal and the like. Further, limit your search to studies in regard to industry "performers,"^* and I could find nothing I would consider significant or, for my purposes, helpful. I would point out a notable researcher, the late Robert J. Stoller, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, who wrote several "insider" (behind the scenes) books related to the production of movies and videos. While noting a significant caveat that his material is dated, as near as I can tell (and you can bet I'm not laying out Yale University Press' outrageous price to specifically find out), Dr. Stoller seemed to find very little "pathology" among industry participants. Curiously, however, while concluding that "most porn scripts are not 'simply anti-female' . . . these stories are often full of freedom--women depicted having a marvelous time,"a Publisher's Weekly review summarizes his position as "anger or rebellion against one's parents and society underlies most pornography, that it exploits men as well as women and that a desire to degrade or be degraded is an element of pornography." Um, I don't know, kids, but without the science, this conclusion - and there are an abundance of similar conclusions - strikes me as too, too simple.

Ennui is generally translated from the French as "boredom." However, if one were to pursue Camus, Sartre, du Bouvier, and Genet, for example, ennui has a profound meaning in the nomenclature of existential thought. I will suggest "indifference founded in meaninglessness" is more likely an appropriate definition than, "this blog entry is boring the living hell out of me." Purpose, "meaning," utility. Satre cloaked the whole mess into the word Nausea: "Nausea [is] dull & inescapable, [which] perpetually reveals my body to my consciousness... a desacrilization of the romantic torment and the transforming of it into nausea of ennui" (emphasis mine).

OK. Contrast the patient's statement, "I'm pretty much bored with it all," with Ms. Randall's lament,"What happened to the good old-fashioned, passionate sex scenes?" ENNUI! Why do I seek out the scariest, most gruesome and vilifying horror movies hitting the market in record number? ENNUI! To feel something when nothing feels. To relieve the "dullness," to diminish the desacrilization, to... Um, kids, does this sound too, too easy? I'm stopping at maybe.

I thought I'd be done here, but I am notably verbose & connot summarize my thought in toto. And somehow, I can't leave out my female "talent," whose interaction with began with, "I just got out of jail. All I remember immediately before that is that I was so pisssed that I went into a bar across the street to clear my head..." Further investigation is necessary. You should have seen it coming.

Jo says she'll do you for the cost of weed, but there's more to it than that.
She'll want to talk. Sometimes an hour, sometimes more.
Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir - over and over.
Next thing you know, you're both grinding away under the sheets.
Your mind's been elsewhere, worthless in all this screwing.
You try to catch up, but she rolls you over. She's finished.
And you look down - so are you.
Let me tell you: Existential ennui makes lousy foreplay, but I think she gets off on this whole thing.
She puts out, and yet, she keeps it to herself.