› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Readers:
It’s a dull, drippy week in California and when the weather gets like this a writer’s fancy turns to tentacles.
Manifestly untrue, I know, but mine did. Recently while researching something else (the famous Sybian ride-on sex toy, the one whose dealer claims it will "cause a female to literally explode on it" — I hate it when that happens!) I came upon a repository of tentacle porn, and boy did that take me back. Once upon a time I had somehow managed never to hear of tentacle porn until one night when I was hanging out with my friend Annalee Newitz, the high tech high-weirdness expert and she was all, "Oh, blah blah blah this weird thing and that weird thing and tentacles" and I was all, "Wait, what was that last thing again?"
It’s tentacle porn. It’s Japanese. Extremely Japanese. Innocent schoolgirl types, drawn anime/hentai fashion with giant eyes and giant boobs and teensy little bodies clad in teensy little schoolgirl uniforms, until they’re not, get non-consensually multipenetrated by … tentacles. How did you think that sentence was going to end?
Anyway, I got the idea and I stored it away and brought it out occasionally to amuse or shock people and I totally forgot I’d still never seen any myself until I went looking for something else and somehow stumbled over the tentacles (another "I hate it when that happens" thing) and it all came back to me.
It’s the dullest thing ever. I’d seen enough hentai (anime porn) to expect this (it tends to be weirdly slow and standardized and repetitive and badly dubbed). It’s not the easiest sort of porn to project yourself into, even for a person who likes porn more than I do. And that’s the stuff without tentacles. The odd thing about the tentacles, beyond the fact that they exist at all (they were invented to get around restrictions on depictions of non-tentacular intercourse), is that they are so … uninspired. They never seem to be attached to an interesting monster with any motivations besides rape, and they have a very limited repertoire of sexual acts. They’re very "bad teenage date" — stick it in, stick it in, stick it in, but unlike a bad teenage date, they can do all the sticking-in at the same time. Whoopty-do.
Here’s what I do like about tentacle porn:
1) Making fun of it has turned into a sort of online cottage industry, and if you look around you can find some hilarious examples, like the grumpy beasties at Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic: Tentacle Monsters and the Women Who Love Them (www.ghastlycomic.com) who are offended that anyone might think they’d commit an act of "bestiality." See also "How To Avoid Tentacle Rape" (uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/HowTo:Avoid_tentacle_rape) or Dwight Schrute’s blog (www.nbc.com/The_Office/dwights-blog/2008/05/the-curious-rise-of-tentacle-sex-in-manga).
I think Cthulhu might like it, and whatever keeps Cthulhu happy … It has its own soda (www.tentaclegrape.com).
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
I found some very weird porn on my boyfriend’s computer (I swear I wasn’t snooping!) It’s bondage stuff with Japanese girls and really, I don’t know what’s going on. He’s never even mentioned an interest in anything like this! Does he want to tie me up? (Not my thing.) Does he wish I was Japanese? Help!
Love,
Tall, blonde, not tied up
Dear Blondie:
I‘m sorry! I don’t believe you weren’t snooping, mind you, but I’m still sorry. Please don’t take this too much to heart, though. Boys will be boys, and boys will look at bondage porn.
You have two ways to go here. The first is to ask him about it and (probably) feel better when he (probably) insists that he likes you just the way you are, and if he wanted a Japanese bondage girl he would have tried to date them back when he was dating, and he’s sorry he freaked you out. The second is to just shrug and go about your business. I do kind of have a preference for the latter, but I will understand if you can’t let it go and feel like you have to confront.
Just practice telling yourself that fantasy is fantasy and reality is reality and many people harbor fantasies they not only can’t act out, but wouldn’t even want to given the opportunity. Make sure you believe this yourself before you confront him. Otherwise your skepticism is sure to show, and he will get defensive and end up accusing you of not trusting him and going through his stuff — and that is not somewhere you want to be. See why I’d pick the second option, assuming you gave me ultimate power over your decision-making processes?
What? No, I don’t have creepy power fantasies about running your life, but even if I did I wouldn’t tell you about them, and I’d thank you not to go looking for them on my computer.
Love,
Andrea
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