One man’s pleasureland is another man’s nightmare.
scary peroxide blonde with huge breasts prances around
with a leather belt attached to her neck like a leash
smiles as she invites men to whip her bare ass.
klansman in white hood + robes fucks
laughing black girl in cheap motel room
oriental woman bound + gagged chained to a wheel
spins around little whips flick at her naked skin
skinny little effeminate man he looks sick suspended by
his arms from the ceiling
red plastic ball taped into his mouth
angry woman what a nazi
hits him tells him he’s shit
later on two big guys rape him.
video tapes + magazines
organized by special interest
bisexuals lesbians she-males frat boys
big tits butt fucks blow jobs fat women
bondage rape + torture
it all looks like pain to me tonight.
every face in every picture says
love me i’m bad i hate myself
hurt me let me hurt you
i need to feel something i’m helpless take me
i need to feel loved
if we hurt each other we will feel loved.
gay straight fat black white
men + women bound + gagged
wounded + desperate
unloved children in grown-up bodies.
degradation exploitation
domination subjugation
soul abuse arousal.
most of all the bondage
too much!
intense photos on video boxes
women strapped to boards
bound in leather + ropes
contorted + tied into pretzel shapes
gagged with large red rubber balls in their mouths
fear in their eyes
helpless …
hurt me i like it i like to be hurt
it’s ok to hurt other people
they want you to hurt them
they get off on it.
angry aroused curious outraged confused
I want to see this
no I don’t
just a little
I’ve seen enough
just once
no!
this time I can’t do it
I can’t watch this or bring it into my home
without violating that little boy inside
hasn’t there been enough of that already?
a struggle
I’m drawn like a moth to a headlight
like a cat into a
warm engine spinning radiator fan
on a cold winter morning.
this stuff appeals to everything that’s
wounded + dysfunctional in me
prepackaged soul abuse
choose life!
does any of this turn you on
I used to think those people on the corner were nuts
pornography is child abuse
don’t take my word for it
see for yourself.
women + children don’t count for much in this culture
nobody does
life’s cheap
I’m not kidding check it out.
all this + still I have a need
I go home disgusted go to bed
jack off thinking about an old girl friend
somebody else’s wife
not very satisfying at all.
I used to feel guilty + relieved after masturbation
now I just wish I’d done something else instead.
Excerpted from Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood by Rick Belden. Copyright © 1990, 2008 by Rick Belden. All rights reserved. www.rickbelden.com
Read more by Rick Belden: safe sexx confession
Image credit: chokola/Flickr
About Rick Belden
I was lucky enough to get Belden’s pleasureland for the Porn Recovery UK website last year. As a psychotherapist who works with men and porn ‘addiction’ I think the poem captures something in the subject that essays, articles and comment work much harder to achieve. Rick Belden gives us a close-up view of those difficult thoughts and feelings pornography raises for users and society and his book sits on the coffee table in my office – many a man looking for expression has found something in his words.
Thank you, Duncan. Really great to hear from someone like you who’s found this poem, and my book, useful in his work with men.
Great poem Rick. Captures the essence of the old psychotherapeutic rule that we tend to treat others as we have been treated. This is one of the ways that the cycle of abuse keeps going around and around. The poem helps us to watch it and hopefully, even for a second, to get off of that runaway train.
Thanks for your comment, Tom. This poem has a high discomfort factor for a lot of folks, including me, for a lot of reasons. There’s so much going on, and the theme and the language are so charged, that it’s bound to produce a wide range of responses, often contradictory and often in the same person.
What I’ve written will resonate with some and offend, appall, provoke, trigger, or even enrage others. We are, certainly collectively and often individually, deeply wounded around sex. There’s a shadow side to sex we’ve yet to bring into full consciousness as a culture because it’s so primal, so frighteningly powerful, and so potentially destructive. If sharing my experience in the way I have moves others to reflect on their own history, beliefs, and motivations around sex, then I’ll feel like I’ve done my job.
Thank you Rick for offering your gift to the world. As a trained sexologist I find this poem, and others that you have composed, so helpful in my work with men and the relationship they have to their sexual self which is more often than not buried deeply within the psyche and largely silent. Pleasureland has opened the doors to greater fullness by turning toward discomfort, judgment, shame, and fear. Bravo GMP for publishing works that are so needed! Again, much gratitude for you and your gifts, Rick!
You’re welcome, Shelley. I’ve always hoped and intended that my work would give other men permission to go a little deeper into their own stories (to remember, to feel, and to express) and also provide a template or set of reference points they could use for doing so. I’m very grateful for folks like you who see the value in my writing and have taken the initiative to apply it in the work they’re doing with men (and women) to help them heal, grow, and better understand themselves. It’s a great honor to have the opportunity to contribute to that process.
I really appreciate the subtleties in this poem that tell the tale of men who get trapped using porn more than than they intend. I was particularly struck by the beautiful depiction of the different narratives in the poem that mirror the internal conflict of the mind; one side full of lust, seeking pleasure, novelty, and excitement. The other side struggling with feeling isolation, dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and just wanting whatever it takes to feel better for a brief moment. “I want this, no I don’t, just a little” but how a little is never enough, that the shame from doing it draws you back for more to feel better. The paradox of feeling more hungry from feeding the beast. Rick- I am continually impressed and humbled by your courage to share the raw emotions, to open the dialogue about sex that we so often like to keep hidden.
Thanks, Jeff. That conflict you so elegantly articulated is indeed central to the poem, as it was to the experience that motivated writing it. Even in the absence of options for healthy, soulful sexual expression (a state in which I’ve spent far too much of my adult life), the primal need remains, the drive is still strong, and the energy wants to move and express itself somehow. Knowing how to honor one’s sexual energy and be with it in productive ways when one doesn’t have a partner (or a partner who’s available) can be challenging. However, porn is easy and it’s always there, even if one doesn’t feel that great about using it.
As men, sexuality tends to be the primary (often the only) outlet for expression and experience of sensuality in our lives. In his book “The Shaman in the Disco and Other Dreams of Masculinity: Men, Isolation, and Intimacy”, author James Thomas says, “It often happens for men that sensual deprivation leads to sexual obsession.” I think that, for many men, the hunger they attempt to feed with porn is not just sexual, but also sensual. The fundamental problem with using porn to feed that hunger is that the hunger remains even after the meal finished.
I see so many women in therapy who have “lost” their husbands to porn. Please see the talk, “The Demise of Men” on Technology/Education/Design (TED) on HuLu (online). The male speaker lumps a growing cultural addiction to porn together with a tendency for modern adult males to seek comfort in each other, creating “frat” groups at forty, (such as seen in recent movies) instead of facing the challenging and sometimes disappointing work of relating to (real) women. It’s interesting to think where the broken relationships between men and women might be heading–hopefully, eventually, to more mutually supportive interactions in which sex is better integrated into everyday life while being simultaneously regarded in a more sacred context.