Everyone's A Porn Star

I like the porno. Not the blonde-haired tanned Falcon porn, but the amateur pimple on the butt kind that makes me hot and cringe at the same time. Guys who look real and not always perfectly gym toned and 8th Avenue ready -- that's what amateur porn used to look like to me -- real and vulnerable and ballsy. So what if you've got belly fat and don't suck it in on your Internet sex pic. So do I. Sometimes when I'm naked, seated and look down at my stomach I'm reminded of a very pale shar pei. Today, though, it's difficult to distinguish everyday guys from porno rent boys. Everyday guy now has the worked out body of an Olympic gymnast, sans the tumbling ability, and every guy seems to want to show it off on the web or on reality TV -- a blight on culture if there ever was one. My favorite chat room/profile site is one where some guys pose tastefully while other are in full porn poses --- legs akimbo, ass in the air, come-hither looks enticing you to read their profiles that tell you they are aggressive muscle bottoms who don't like fats or fems and only like straight acting guys (by the way, whatever you call it; straight-acting, dl, banjee, it's still the complex and confusing chestnut "in the closet" ). These boys also cop to loving Britney, Janet and dancing, dancing, dancing! But alas, the wanna keep it real by making sure they are as straight acting as possible. However, eyebrows waxed into a permanently perplexed expression of surprise are dead giveaways that you are indeed not straight, unless you are a Guido, and in that case you are just retarded. I peruse these websites because I'm a letch and because I like to see what other guys are packing and what lengths they'll go to show me and also because I'm horny and stressed and need some new material to fuel a masturbatory fantasy. Lately however, I've been distressed by the bodies. The bodies of these men and boys are beautiful - perfectly and unnaturally so. It's as if they've traded the pusuit of life for the pursuit of a perfection. What looks so perfect, what looks so grand, comes from lots of hard work at the gym, lots of eating the right thing (chalk tasting protein bars), and maybe steroids, lots of unrelenting attention to making the body right to compensate for a perceived wrong -- the gay self. I always see the scared gay boy on the playground whenever I look at these over-confident photos of smiling eyes and winking assholes. And sometimes I see myself. I feel inadequate. I feel low. I feel angry. Where do I fall into this? I spend time in the gym and have for years and have a body that is appreciated. Guys like my legs and arms and chest and tell me this. Still, when I'm at the gym I have an unrelenting voice that tells me I could be better. That I could be leaner, that I don't work hard enough and that's why I feel so inadequate. And then there's a healthier part that steps in. It tells me that I look good. It tells me that this attention to ones' body and the measurement of it against another guy is a fruitless, futile, unnecessarily competitive struggle. Then I jump on big muscle.com and feel bereft. What am I doing wrong? I must be undisciplined. I must be weak. These guys look great. And so do all these famous people who stare at me on the supermarket checkout line. Antonio Sabato Jr. looks great. So does Ricky Martin. And Madonna. Then I realize, they are all narcissistic dicks. And the porno boys that I drool over on the Internet, amateur and professional (is professional really the right term for a guy who grunts and comes the same way I do, except I don't do it in front of a camera and I don't wax my taint) may be dicks too. Not on purpose, but for buying into this body ideal, the same way I do.