Come a Courtin'

It’s 11:00 on a Tuesday night. Ensconced in the velour of my most comfortable robe, I lounge about my sofa, soothed by Burt Bacharach’s mellow tenor. Scented candles bathe my room in muted light and aromas of French vanilla. My roommate is at his girlfriend’s, and I have the place all to myself. The mood is perfect for my date with myself.

I grab Cyber Seduction from my roommate’s desk and pop it into the DVD player. “Matt has good taste,” I think to myself. “It sounds pretty kinky, and there’s even a hot mom on the cover!” The movie begins normally enough, complete with cheesy synth music and the production value of a junior high news show, made standard for the genre by such tour de forces as One Splooged Over the Cuckoo’s Breast, Forrest Dump, and From Justin to Kelly.

About five boob-less minutes into the movie, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. This wasn’t porn. This was a Lifetime Channel Original Movie.

Cyber Seduction is, in fact, a made-for-TV propaganda film preaching against the perils of online pornography addiction. Although my date was ruined, I still had a great evening watching one of the most ridiculous, poorly written, and unintentionally hilarious movies I’ve ever seen.

Jeremy Sumpter, the embarrassingly awkward kid from that lame Peter Pan movie no one saw, stars as Justin Petersen. Justin was your average American high school student. He was a white, upper-middle class suburban varsity swim team member with a girlfriend so out of his scrubby league that she must be dating him for a charitable tax deduction, and a mom that could pop open a dead man’s coffin with his boner. Like most teenagers, Justin’s first glimpse of porn was at a drinking party, during a group viewing of a classmate’s nudie website. Sadly, this taste of the forbidden fruit wasn’t enough. Justin stayed up all hours of the night to fill the pornless, sexless void of his life. His fondness for filth soon spiraled wildly out of control. He was caught watching latex-clad bondage porn, both on his girlfriend’s PDA at a swim meet and on a school library computer. Yes folks, Justin had the perfect life, but he threw it all away for soft-core smut and copious quantities of energy drinks.

What the self-elected morality fascists who made this film fail to understand is that the adult film industry is so much more than schoolgirls and latex. It’s also sadomasochism, feet, legs, stockings, lingerie, hentai, pirates, ninjas, smoking, girl on girl, guy on guy, girl on guy on girl, orgies, MILFs, GILFs, teachers, secretaries, golden showers, Cleveland steamers, Dutch Ovens, licking, slurping, dribbling, burping, salad tossing, sixty-nining, bangbuses, dildos (single, double, and steel studded), fur-suiting, fatties, enemas, anal, oral, vaginal, blowjobs, boobjobs, footjobs, bestiality, necrophiliacs, and dinosaurs, performed by men and women of all colors, shapes and sizes.

It’s a wonderful world where humanity’s natural perversion is celebrated and accepted, not written off and judged. Pornography is the one industry where customer service truly comes first. If you can think of it, chances are you can watch someone having sex with it in two minutes. Bear Nasty’s, on the other hand, takes half an hour, pronounces your name incorrectly, and forgets to put the goddamn pickles on your burger every time. You tell me which business is corrupt and immoral.

After Justin loses his girlfriend, gets suspended from school, and hits rock bottom, our pantywaist protagonist raises his arms and jumps fully clothed and spread eagle into a pool for a chlorinated spiritual cleansing of his filthy smut-addled soul. This metaphorical baptism, awash in blinding golden light and uplifting music, is so moronically tacky and clichéd that even Miley Cyrus must be groaning with her fake, overdone drawl.

Unfortunately, it’s a little too late for my filthy smut-addled soul. Slap some A1 on my ass, because I’m going straight to the Big Texan Barbeque. There’s a special spot reserved for me in Hell next to Paris Hilton and down the hall from the guy who made the New Facebook. The unending torture doesn’t really bother me, but I sure will miss those delicious Maté Factor smoothies.

All joking aside, the real sadomasochists are the people who think the simple joys of choking one’s chicken are evil and immoral. Masturbation, aided by pornography, eases pain, reduces stress, and even lowers men’s risks for prostate cancer. Of course the gentle touch of another person is preferable to virtual company. But during the 15 months of Ithaca winter, when the snow is up to your face, you have to peel the frostbitten skin off of your feet to get to Orgo on time, and you’re on your fifth cup of coffee while studying for a prelim, members of the opposite sex are hard to come by.

Lifetime, please keep your hands where they belong. Away from my genitals.

Daniel Eichberg is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. Contact him at dge35@cornell.edu [15]. Straight No Chaser appears alternate Wednesdays.