Like most guys, my buddies and I joke about porn — what we watch, when, the craziest shit we've seen. (Topping my list: live-action Smurfs, naked and painted blue, smurfing each other in a field until the paint is rubbed off their smurfiest parts.) And so it shouldn't have been a surprise when I used a friend's computer one day and, as I was typing in a web address, Internet Explorer finished the job by suggesting a blatantly pornographic site. And not just a domain name, but one that was followed by a long string of letters and numbers — the address to a specific video, the exact one he'd once watched, a minutes-long romp that ran as I sat in in the same chair he must've.




And I felt like I had invaded something private and discreet. Like the chair was somehow not something I should be sitting on. Like I'd discovered something I shouldn't have. Which makes little sense, I realized, because the experience revealed nothing new. I know what the guy does in his spare time. He outright tells me. He'd probably show me the damn video himself.



But then, I also knew about the active sex life of a couple I'm friendly with. They're open about it; they brag of late nights and tortured neighbors. But after another friend stumbled upon their anal beads hiding in a desk, it's all I can think about when I'm with them. I run through the logistics of it — the way you'd have to position yourself to get those beads in. They way they must come out, a fleshy thup-thup. I think I'd shit. I think the beads would make me shit right there in bed, at the moment of impact. It's a horrifying vision. And it would have been different if they'd told me about the anal beads, I'm sure. But they didn't. It was never a part of their story. And now, without their knowledge, it is.

I reflected on this stuff as I held Rosa's purple vibrator, because I was trying to figure out just how much of a violation the discovery really was. In reality, it wasn't that bad: I didn't ruffle through her drawers, I didn't break into anything, and anyway, she'd have likely told me she sleeps with a vibrating Rabbit, had only I asked. And yet here was the real thing — an object that both of us have now touched — and that felt somehow more private. It was no longer simply my knowledge of her sex life; it was evidence of it. Cold, hard evidence. Literally.




When sex isn't flesh-on-flesh, it's a massive shared experience. Who doesn't want it? Who hasn't had it? That's why we talk about it so much, or at least that's why I do. But we do a great job of compartmentalizing.

We don't shake a hand and think of what it's been coated in. We don't sit on a couch and think of how many times it's cradled bare skin. We don't leave our condoms lying around. Mine are kept in a small cardboard box in the top shelf of my nightstand. You'd have to really dig around my apartment to find them, and quite frankly, I'd be uncomfortable if someone did.



But isn't that odd? I'm open about sex, about when and with whom I have it, but the physical manifestation of the unused condoms somehow seems like a violation. You could look at the condom, and then, at some later time, I could pick up and use that exact same one. It isn't imagination anymore; it's a specific, visible detail, like the difference between describing great sex and showing someone a video of you doing it. We don't guard knowledge of our sex lives, because that knowledge is abstract. We don't use it in bed. It isn't physical. It isn't what's really intimate.

But if I tucked it under her bed, she could have trouble finding it — and the only thing worse than discovering someone's sex toy, I suppose, is hindering its use. What if her trip was stressful?



I'm not sure how I finally decided to get up and put it on top of her dresser, but that's what I did. It made for a good assortment up there: a notebook, a digital camera, a fleshy purple vibrator. She'd find it immediately, and realize exactly what happened.




Or so I thought. Or so I still assume. I left her a little note the next morning, thanking her for letting me stay there. I bought her some toilet paper, because she was almost out. And then I waited for her to bring up the discovery, to laugh about it or confess her horror. But she didn't. She said nothing. And soon years passed, and our conversations never quite led to a moment in which I could say, "Hey, remember that time I found your vibrator?" So I haven't.




Sometimes I think she never mentioned it because it just wasn't a big deal. Or maybe it was.  n°

RELATED ARTICLES

Early Exposure by Krissy Kneen Remembrance of nudie pics past.

Stinging Fingerprints by Angela Conner When he slapped me, I came alive.

The Little Death by Joe Dornich The girl I brought home didn't wake up in the morning.

Thirty-Two Pounds by Sean Murphy The backyard discovery that kickstarted my adolescence.

Two-Dollar Destiny by Sarah Hepola My impulse-buy psychic reading put everything in focus.

Republicans I Have Loved by Steve Almond They were moral. I was flexible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Jason Feifer is the Malegrams editor at Men's Health, and recently moved to Manhattan. He's trying not to eat too much pizza there, but he's not doing very well.