[Introduction by Bacchus: Remember Faustus? He’s agreed to guest-blog from time to time, as the mood may strike him. I’m enormously pleased to welcome him aboard.]

Yesterday being the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, also known as Super Sunday, a sermon seemed in order. So I mounted my pulpit and began sermonizing…

Bacchus wrote a discussion of porn back in 2003 in which he defended porn on the grounds that there are a lot of people who are on the margins of society for whom more conventional forms of sexual conduct — that which involves an actual partner — are unavailable. I don’t disagree with anything that Bacchus had to say back then. There really a lot of people out there who are unfortunate in some way. And indeed, pretty much most adolescents — a focus of Bacchus’s discussion therein — find themselves in this position. I am most sympathetic to this discussion. I have two daughters who are very young now, but they will not remain that way. Certain fires will kindle pretty damn soon (as adults measure time). I would much rather that they spend their teenage years — their early and middle teenage years, at least — reading with one hand instead of fooling around with greasy, graceless boys. (I know I am being tough on greasy, graceless boys with this attitude. But I do not think I am being unjust. I was a greasy, graceless boy myself once. Try to trust me on this, young gentlemen, better thing are coming for you in a few years. And in the meantime there is plenty for you to read with one hand yourselves, much more than when I was one of you, so count your blessings.)

But I want to take a step beyond Bacchus and argue that porn (and other products of human creativity that produce sexual arousal, call them art, erotica, whatever) are still more valuable than this.

Almost everyone has at least one something, call it an “X,” that can provoke intense pleasure when somehow experienced. The “X” is whatever it is that can sound the deepest and most resonant notes in our inner erotic music. An “X” might be a person, or a kind of person, or a practice, or a fetish, or a storyline, or even a concept. Some people — often people with especially vivid imaginations — may have many X’s.

Now suppose you’re a successful, relatively fortunate grown-up. You find yourself in the lucky space of possibilities that ranges between “being happily married” to “being a silver-tongued seducer” in which socially appropriate sexual partners are normally available. What then?

Nature sends us into the world with all sorts of X’s. Maybe your X lines up neatly with your actual situation in life. But then again, maybe not. The world is full of people — competent, successful people — with X’s that are imprudent, or immoral, or illegal, or indeed outright impossible. Maybe you have a thing for inappropriate would-be partners, or for non-consensual interactions. Perhaps your X is being a pirate — or being taken by pirates. Your X might even be monumentally weird — at least to others. There are people who claim to have been turned on by the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which Violet blew up into a giant blueberry.

If this is your X, I do not recommend your trying to blow up an actual girl in this manner.

So what should you do?

Well, as it happens the world is full of hard-working artists — and yes, I do think that they deserve to be called artists — writers, models, actors, photographers, illustrators — who are working hard to provide you with at least a simulacrum of your X. And if you can’t find that simulacrum out there, we live in a remarkable era of DiY, where you can write it, or Photoshop it, or draw it (with lots of software to help). And then, you are so inclined, share it with others.

There are those who will counter that if you can find a desirable partner, that you should not try to enjoy your X. “You can have socially-acceptable sex with at least someone,” they will tell you, “so you should confine yourself to that. Isn’t that good enough?”

To which I would respond, how many of our lives are so good that we can just afford to throw away pleasure?