When my friend’s mother died, she inherited a steamer trunk. She assumed it held the sentimental detritus of her childhood: photos, baby shoes, grade school report cards, artwork from her early poster paint period
including the cubist rendition of her family who seemed to have triangular heads.
It took two months for her to muster the courage to open the trunk, and instead of the expected emotional tsunami, her reaction was: “What the heck?” That trunk held no sappy grade-school art and goofy class photos; it held her mother’s entire collection of pornography.
Stacks of Forum and Playgirl magazines, soft-core erotic novels and VCR tapes with titles like “The Housewife and the Repairman” and “The Postman Rings Twice, but the Pool Boy Has a Key.” Actually, I have no idea what the real titles were, but you get the idea.
Personally, I’m not turned on by watching strangers make the beast with two backs, and in some cases, three or four backs. Movie sex scenes embarrass me and I rank them right up there with planter’s warts. But that’s just me.
It’s been said that you can’t define pornography, but you know it when you see it. And I don’t think that’s true. I believe that we all have our own private brand of pornography, some titillating concoction, one part lust, one part desire and one part guilty pleasure that other people would never define as pornographic.
It’s not about sweaty, naked bodies, it’s about looking at pretty things that you can’t possible possess.
For years I’ve known what brand of porn I enjoy, and my erotica involves no acting school dropouts and requires no stimulants, lubricants or a shower afterward. To get aroused all I need do is open the Sunday paper to a section called: New Homes, because my porn is luxury real estate.
I admit it; I am a house slut. My 50 shades of gray refers to paint colors.
To me foreplay is reading a model home brochure. Carnal knowledge is touring a Monarch Beach open house. My erogenous zone is a custom kitchen with granite countertops, a Wolf range, and a Sub-Zero refrigerator.
My turn on is a custom home with an ocean view. Oh, yes.
In a private gated community. Oh, yes.
With a library loft. Oh, god, yes, yes.
Six-inch crown moulding throughout. Oh, god. Oh, god.
Ten-foot ceilings. No, no higher, higher.
Okay, twelve-foot ceilings. Yes, yes.
An assumable mortgage under Prop 13. Oh, god, yes, yes! Ohhhhhh.
Sweat runs down my cleavage when I lust over luxury home magazines. But this wanton desire is not my fault. I blame the publishers who openly sell such salacious magazines such as Veranda, Coastal Living, and Architectural Digest, which is the spank rag of real estate porn. Talk about homo erotic.
Luckily, my husband’s porn is similar to mine. He’s aroused by an 8-car garage with an attached house.
Luxury-home porn—like conventional porn—is all about dreaming, and in my case, dreaming big, at least 4-thousand square feet. The only difference between my porn and that of my friend’s mother is that I could leave mine to my daughter she wouldn’t say “What the heck?” She’d probably say, “Mom, I never knew you had such great taste.”