By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Where’s the Porn?
God bless free speech. Without it censors would enslave us; with it we get letters to the editor such as Melanie Kurdyz of Plainwell wrote last week to the Allegan County News last.
She corrects columnist G.C. Stoppel saying the issue isn’t book-burning but pornography-burning; look up bookslook.org for examples. Google said that website does not exist. Maybe her letter had a typo or Big Tech banned it.
Both conflate “banning” books with “burning.” Ban, it goes somewhere else, back to haunt you maybe. Burn, it’s transformed into carbon ashes.
“I find it worrisome,” Kurdyz writes, “that we have lost community recognition of what pornography looks like.” I, for one, recognize it every time I get a chance.
When I was young, Larry Flynt, Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems defined “porn.” Now fantasy websites have taken over, it’s in experts’ hands.
I share Jamestown Township residents’ concerns about LGBT materials in Patmos Library “grooming” children. I prefer them ungroomed: rotting teeth, head lice, diapers unchanged until old enough to write letters to the editor.
I’m for banning or burning forms that ask what I “identify as,” i.e. my gender preference. Can I identify as a man who prefers women? Were you me you’d prefer someone else as well. When porn was born, it was “he/him” for guys and “she/her” for gals, but what if you’re sexless? No woman chased me; I was chaste by choice.
“I identify as me,” I told the Inquisitor.
“You,” he/she/it said, “are not inclusive. By the way, call me ‘they.”
“There’s just one of you.”
“Safer.”
“But grammatically inaccurate. I have my own mind.”
“That’s a policy violation.”
“I’m trying to sign up for porn,” I said.
“You’re in the right place. You must be cisgender.”
“Cis- like in cistern? Sisyphus? Was St. Francis A Sissy?”
“Someone who identifies with the sex assigned them at birth based on what is between their legs. That’s discriminatory. What if someday you augment or cut it off? When you say ‘me’ it means I’m not you. That is not inclusive.”
“I have much to learn, O Master/Mistress/Theyness. I’m a male who gives birth to stories, ideas …”
“Sterilize him! Heil Hitler!” they cried.
“Would you stop looking at my zipper?”
“People grow to identify in their own ways. Say someone says, ‘Sam’s coming.’ Don’t ask, ‘What’s he like?’ because ‘Sam’ may be ‘Samantha’ or questioning their true self. Who doesn’t?”
“What if I’m Son of Sam sexual?”
“Your .44 caliber Bulldog revolver might make me suffer gender dysphoria. This is awful! More!”
“Now I know you!” I cried. “You wrote to the Allegan County News! What’s a sweet tart like you doing in a joint like this?”
“I’m the librarian, I look up skirts,” Mel said. “Over with the quilts.”
In the Highland Games Room I found tartans, cabers, Baskerville Hounds, haggis, stiff shots of Scotch. My head spun like Linda Blair’s in “The Exorcist.” “Where’s the porn?” I asked.
They hushed me.
“WHERE’S THE PORN?”
In walked Clara Peller from 1984 Wendy’s commercials. “Porn’s here,” the 36-year-dead actress said.
“That’s all? I meant I want free porn, not porn-free.”
“Porn free, as free as the wind blows …” they sang.
“Not the book, song or movie about a lioness!
All I see are two fluffy buns and a dime-size …”
“Dime bag’s nothing.”
“Not pot! Porn! Genitals exposed. Michelangelo’s ‘David.’ Solomon’s concubines …”
“The Bible’s over here,” they said.
I knew The Good Book would overhear me. Now I was free to be born again, unassigned a sex, to find and define my own way. “Nothing else?”
“We’re in Plainwell,” Mel said.
“I’ve got a beef.”
“Well, that’s plain.”
“You cited a nonexistent website.”
“Don’t blame me for Google censors.”
“I don’t want to burn your dime bag,” I said. “Or ban it. It’s just Solomon’s concubines don’t do it for me. They’re older than Clara, even.”
“Hey, that kilt looks good on you …”
“I want a chemical transformation!” I cried.
“I’ll light your fire,” Mel said, spraying me with propane. “Where’s our match? We’re matchless. Who’s on first? Second? Third? Why are there just four bases?”
“Fourth is home, you score,” I said. “Lot of ways to do it. Say you’re driving through spare, fallow fields outside Plainwell or Patmos Library. You see open skies crossed by power lines, sunset streaks intercepting. Beethoven’s Opus 131, String Quartet 14 in C-sharp minor is on the radio. You know this scene is in your movie.”
“Its score, you mean?”
“Yes. Or outside your window bare trees sway in wind and you think “Yes, this.”