In the eighth grade I saw my first pornography. A neighbor a year or two older than me was showing off his dirty magazine collection. I’d seen lots of Playboys and a Penthouse or two, but nothing as graphic as the photos in his collection.

Where my neighbor found his dirty magazines is a mystery. I suspect his older brother played a role and perhaps a dirty bookstore. They were around in the early 1970s, weren’t they?

My scoutmaster had an 8mm projector. I heard about the movies he showed some of the guys, but was never included in the viewings. Being excluded didn’t bother me a bit. In fact, I was kind of glad.

A few years later, the manager of the movie theater where I worked had an 8mm projector in his office. Again, I wasn’t included in the private viewings. By then, I knew more about what was going on and was more relieved than anything else.

I saw my first porn flick at the tender age of 20. We were drinking and listening to albums (I specifically recall Styx) at a coworker’s house. After he passed out, his roommate brought out his projector and movie collection.

Turns out, the roommate was gay. At the time, I was clueless about my own sexual preference. The movie was… informative. Up to then, I had no idea homosexual was even an option. Honest. #SlowLearner

VHS tapes quickly replaced film reels. Rewind and fast forward revolutionized porn viewing. Teehee. It’s funny because it’s true.

Gay porn wasn’t available at the local home video shop. Buying a gay movie required a trip to bookstores in the seedy part of town or ordering from the back of a gay magazine. They weren’t cheap, either. The good ones cost $75 and up — too rich for my wallet.

Friends made copies for friends, who made copies for more friends, and so on. Copies were obviously copies. Some were four and five times removed from the original.

Porn has never been my thing. I was flat-ass broke through most of my twenties and into my thirties — the porn collecting years. My money went for other priorities, like rent, utilities, credit card payments, cover charges, and cocktails.

My porn collection consisted of six or eight VHS tapes I’m pretty sure an ex- stole from a previous partner. He left them behind when we split up because they no longer worked for him. Sooner or later, even the best porn gets boring.

These days, free porn is readily available online. Choose exactly what you want to see from an amazing array of categories. No matter how unusual your tastes and preferences, tons of clips are readily available with a simple search.

Is easy access to an abundance of porn a good thing, a bad thing, or at least a little of both? Depends on who you ask. No doubt, lots of people learn a thing or two about sex from porn flicks. But what are they learning, especially as it relates to the treatment of women?

What do you think?