I view, or -- perhaps more accurately -- consume, a great deal of pornography. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, but now, at the half-way point of my life, this irritating faculty of retro/introspection is advancing unabated like a Sherman towards the Sea; if only my undeniable impulse were more like that of that Great Ohio-born Phoenix, who knew which Carolina towns to avoid en route to Columbia; if only I had but a few sympathetic elements in my psyche to act as scouts, pointing out possible hornets' nests: Sherman benefited from his reports: Oh, these Rock Hill Rebels are dug in too deep, so steer towards the coast. If I might have heard: this gender-bending genre of adult-entertainment might well compromise the niche of love-'em-leave-'em rake we've assiduously chiseled out for ourselves -- onward to voluptuous.com.

But no, one is left to haplessly plod on, like an oblivious Sumner to Antietam, until self-realization sparks, and that's always at the least-opportune times. Inside the pre-ejaculatory fervor, damn near anything seems like a good idea and the boundaries of the Truth are never more elastic, including "I've never had it like this either" and "Of course I'll love you forever." This, of course, constitutes the old cliché of the man promising tryst till dawn only to shuffle off for the eleven o'clock Sportscenter shrouded in post-coital apathy. But it's much deeper, or equally more shallow, than that.

Everything elicits the same charge, from the thought of missionary style to that of bukkake and everything in between. (And I mean everything: no matter how adroit the two dudes on any given BangBus.com pictorial are at avoiding one another's touch while assuming acrobatic double-penetration angles, it's still there, and that goes for all you one-thirty Saturday morning Double Door basement aspiring tag-teamers out there [you know who you are -- and another thing: keep the fuck up off my girl everytime I go to the bar]).

A least-opportune time might be (and so often is) sitting in front of the computer, Nivea lotion caked under cuticles and forming a half-inch casing over the entirety of the organ, keyboard speckled with innumerable white dots, discharge seeping through jeans and staring blankly at the monitor, which displays a stunning (in the same -- or perhaps completely different -- way in which crime scene photographs are "stunning") transsexual: uber-female (to use the unfortunate parlance of our times): cheekbones cut out by steam shovels (I believe the look is referred to as "fierce" among our friends who frequent such fine establishments as Circuit and Berlin, the latter famous for its Thursday night shower contest [I'm in charge of listings at a local magazine -- be assured that's the only reason I know this]) and decked out in unhinged front-clasp bra (sea-green lace cups delicately hanging off the sides of conspicuously symmetrical breasts), matching thigh-high stockings which hide French-manicured nails poking out the toes of appropriate leave-em-on shoes -- no baby, leave 'em on -- (translucent hard-plastic six-inch crack-whore platforms are popular without pre-op friends and, presumably, their audience) and of course, same-make thongs, pulled to the side to expose a bikini-waxed rigid member, the tip of which brushes the bottom of the navel, or lower-abdomen, for those upon whom genetics did not smile. And it's there, as unshakable and of the same spectacular impact as a swath burned through the heart of Georgia in early winter: under no circumstances should I be turned-on by this, yet here we are.

Now, I'm not on about some fluidity of sexuality. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are confirmed, if not sometimes boring, institutions, but bisexuality smacks of either greediness or a complete inability to make up one's own mind. My interest is precisely this: to whom are the transsexuals attractive and why? Why are these trannies, these chicks with dicks, dolls with balls, babes with bats, North Avenue angels fucking with our plotted, nice and tidy realms of sexual orientation (read: individual identity) and why can't I stop jacking off to them?

Now I will bring up Pavlov. This reference is accompanied by heartfelt apology -- in the name of good taste, to which I am rarely, if ever, linked. Bringing up Pavlov reeks of ignorance, just as the half-baked dilettante at the party immediately counters your point by bringing up Hitler, whose reference categorically signifies stupidity: "Oh, yeah, and Hitler was just a super guy; I bet you love him." Never mind that said dilettante resembles so much post-Weimar sentiment by responding to any comment spoken under the guise of political-correctness with a head-nodding that smacks of "I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm behind you one-hundred percent." I bring up Pavlov because, admittedly, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but allow my head stone to quote Mr. McMurphy in spirit and truth: "I tried goddammit, at least I did that."

Porn is marked every bit by gateway capacity as drugs, which is to say not at all in and of itself, but so much so left to vacant imaginations, such as mine. This is why the thrill that went from tip to base to brain when you discovered a Hustler 900-number ad in the attic of the abandoned house across the street one afternoon when aged twelve no longer cuts it: the sensation once concomitant with craning your head to discern the action between the wavy lines of scrambled Cinemax can now only be reduplicated after finding a suitable underground Japanese mpeg clip on ConsumptionJunction.com or, yes-transsexuals.

Now, there is an uncrossable gulf between transsexuals presented by the artist Loren Cameron, whose photographs portray the pain and suffering and thus sense of indefatigable identity of M-F transsexuals forking over eighty dollars an hour for electrolysis and fifty dollars a tube for ELA-MAX 5.5% topical anesthetic to be able to endure the hair-removal process, not to mention the pain of having the penile skin transformed into a facsimile vaginal vault, the scrotum split into labia, and the glans of the penis thrashed into an approximation of the clit, which, depending on the competence of the surgeon, may or may not remain sensate. There's a big difference between that and what you'll find on trannybrothel.com. These glammed-out actors/actresses willy-nilly sodomize, get sodomized, give head, receive in kind, perform cunnilingus, penetrate women, participate in foursomes and moresomes, making the porn fingernail gallery hyperlink caption writer nuts wondering if MMF or FFM designations are appropriate. Who's coming and going here?

And you felt bad for the knock-kneed digitally-enhanced Playmate for being objectified.

Trannies are the great dumping ground for lasciviousness. They are in-flux, completely incapable of het or GLBT -- well, GLB -- attraction. They are freaks and exist as a perpetually-Pavlovian ringing. It's impossible, as some of us do for a Melissa Lynn Khan or Alysza Lim, to say under that sheet of sperm is a person who enjoys cinema and horseracing and maybe -- to stretch the train of thought beyond plausibility, needlework. No, trannies are the ultimate object, signifying no specific advance save that past the biological imperative of the mouse-clicking voyeur. The search for bigger, better more has ended in a place we don't know, and in our malicious greed, we feel at home there.

This bit of editorializing was also published concurrently at Lost at Sea in their 'Sell Me to the Mayor' column: http://www.lostatsea.net/.

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