You were writing about me!

Hi, I read the entire article “Pornography” and it read like the story of my life.  I was absolutely astounded, so much so that I am absolutely compelled to respond to it. 

This article has put a name on the transformation that I have personally experienced.  I didn't know what to call it, but now I do: Put off the BAD and put on the GOOD.  In my life with porn I’d repeatedly put off the porn only to have it come back into my life again.  Since I’ve now completed the put of / put on process I’ve been freed.  I never had or even knew there was anything to “put on.” 

Becoming a member of a Nudist Resort caused a major change with my attitude toward pornography.  Taking the leap and becoming a nudist resort member had genuine value and meaning to me.  Because of the influence of pornography I had had some reservations and concerns about my motive for becoming interested in social nudity.  Initially I didn't know if I was just trading one horse for another horse, but of a different color.  But since I’ve become a naturist I have a different perspective and I have experienced what your article says: seeing “good nudity” has changed me, renewed my mind and freed me from the bondage of porn.

Let me share my experience of both the bondage and now the freedom.  For the first 58 years of my life I had a big double standard.  My religion had my mind stitched together with the thread of guilt in all matters that concerned any images of nudity both in pictures and in thought.  Thoughts and images lead to stimulation, stimulation lead to an erection, and an erection lead to masturbation.  In my heart I broke the “adultery” and “covet thy neighbors wife” commandments.  I was so preoccupied with the fear of loosing my salvation that I actually considered it a possibility that I might have to cut off my penis in order to avoid this repetitive sin.  I based this on what I had been told about what the Bible said about: "if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, for it would be better to go to heaven with no eye that to hell with it".  It wasn't my eye or my hand that was at the heart of the problem it was my penis (or so I thought).  My religious leaders would talk me through my sins and offer suggestions to avoid my “problem.”  Their plans never worked.  No one ever suggested a substitute.  I never considered anything as a possible substitute.  And as a result, I was stuck with no way out of the spiral.

Pornography entered my life at an early age.  Your article made me realize its beginnings.  The article mentioned underwear ads.  My father was an automobile mechanic.  He and his brother ran a repair garage.  He was a member of the Independent Garage Owner's association (IGO).  He used to get a monthly IGO publication.  The publication always had a pin up picture, not nude, but a woman in a seductive pose.  When the IGO publication arrived in the mail, I would open it to the picture.  I used the picture as a visual aid, had it memorized and would download it at a later time.

I was under 18 and couldn't buy adult magazines.  But I could steal them.  And I did.  Over time I probably stole 2 dozen magazines from stores.  I never got caught.  I would take the magazine home, look at it and masturbate.  The guilt would overwhelm me.  Most of the time I would burn the book after I completed the act, because that is when I felt the worst about myself.  If I waited too long the guilt would subside, never completely, but I could get past the compulsion to burn it.  Burning it was an act of repentance, at least that's the way I felt about it.  It was the first step toward repenting.  At least I was trying to do the right thing by destroying and thus denying myself of the item that would lead me to sin again tomorrow.  I had to act on that feeling right away because it would not last forever and I would end up keeping the book, hide it, and make use of it the following day.  And then if I did burn it, I'd get angry for having burned it because the guilt would subside and now I didn't have the book any more.  Several times I pulled the magazine out of the fire and put it out and kept what was left of it for future use.  It eventually got burned.

I got very good at stealing magazines.  One day (I was 12 or 13) I went into a regular bookstore and I found this used magazine rack.  On it were various magazines depicting nude females, crotches visible, but no fornication.  I became short of breath, my heart started pounding, I could feel my knees getting weak.  My hands were trembling.  I was going to steal this book if it was the last thing I ever did.  I looked around to see what the clerk was doing.  To my disappointment, he was looking at me.  Stealing this was going to be difficult at best.  To my utter amazement, he asked: "See anything you like?"  Good God, did I just hear what I think I heard?  He knew what I was looking at, and I didn't think he was just making a joke.  So I said yes, and picked up one of the magazines.  There was a price on it, and I had money on me, enough to buy one of the magazines.  Normally I would have been embarrassed to let someone see me trying to buy something like this.  But this publication was in a class all by itself.  There was no way I was going to pass up this offer.  So I gave him the money for the magazine.  He told me I could return the magazine at a later time and he would give he some credit toward another purchase.  I was now standing in a gold mine.  This was prime stuff.  All the other stuff I'd seen before didn't measure up to this.  He put it in a bag and I made an immediately beeline for home.  I kept that magazine until I had memorized every picture in it and returned it and received a credit toward the purchase of another magazine.

As I grew older I became of age to go to “Adult Theaters.”  One opened up in my town and I started going to it.  I concealed going there by not going to an evening class that I was taking at the local College.  I’d skip school and go to the show.  I can say this.  I never did anything STUPID while I was in the theater (as if that has any social redeeming value).  At least I had enough class to wait until I got home.  I really can't say that I ever saw anyone doing anything in the theater.  To begin with, I never sat near anyone.  No one ever did.  Men were scattered all through out the theater.  I didn't want anyone to see me.  Before I bought a ticket, I would look to see that no one else was in line or standing too close to the ticket booth.  Then when the time was right, I would quickly go to the window, money would already be in hand, exact amount, no time would be spend waiting for change.  Get the ticket and get in as quickly as possible so as to avoid a chance sighting by someone driving by.

They always showed previews.  There were always two films being shown, usually 2 hours apiece.  During intermission the house lights would come on, but not bright.   I never went to the concession stand.  That only increased the odds of being seen by someone sitting in the theater that might know me.  And when it was time to leave I would leave only when the picture was being shown – again to reduce the odds of being seen by someone else.  The theater was right next to an alley and that made the exposure out in front and on the sidewalk to a minimum.  I always took the alley.

As I’ve said, for the first 58 years of my life I had a big double standard.  My profession for many years until I retired was in law enforcement.  During my patrol years I never made a vice crime arrest.  I worked a local city for 11 years.  In the city at the time were 4 adult video/book stores.  While on uniform patrol, I went into this one store only once.  Keep in mind that I was in uniform.  Men were in the video arcade, sitting in little booths, watching a TV screen that was showing porno videos.  I'd be on patrol on midnight to 8 shift.  At 2, 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning I noted that there were quite a few cars (customers) parked at adult bookstores.  We never had any calls for service at these places, so we never went inside.

AND THEN I GOT INTO VICE.   My first reaction to this assignment was "now I have an excuse for going into these places".  And I was in plain clothes (undercover).  I could rationalize being inside these stores as being part of my job and could look at all the porn they had to offer.  Previous to myself, absolutely no one had ever done a thing with adult bookstores.  My predecessor was more interested in the gambling aspect of vice.

I walk into my first adult bookstore as an undercover vice officer.  Nobody in the store knew I was a cop.  I looked at a lot of the magazines first.  Then I walked into the darkened video arcade.  The video booths had doors on them.  The booths were big enough to seat one person.  Some of the booths were independent from each other where as most of them shared a common wall between them.  Most of the common walls had holes cut in them at about crotch level.  A man occupying one booth could put his erect penis thru the hole in the common wall and be orally copulated by the person in the other booth.  I walk by this booth and the door is open and its dark inside and the video screen is dark.  A guy inside the booth put his arm and hand out the door to grab my crotch.  I avoided the contact and went about walking around the arcade.  I saw another guy masturbating in another booth.  I didn't know what I was expected to do, so I did nothing and left the store.  I told my sergeant about this and he said I should have arrested the guy who grabbed me. 

What the adult bookstores and adult video arcades did was put an entire new dimension to the impact that pornography had on me.  It was (and is) corrupting and crippling men by the thousands.  The majority of these people were like myself, married men, from all walks of life.  In many ways I was as damaged by pornography as they were. This portion of my story could go on and on, so I'm going to condense it.  I became hell on wheels, a crusader.  I arrested over 2 dozen school teachers, a like number of pulpit preaching ministers, one catholic priest, firemen, doctors, politicians, law enforcement officers, lawyers, a guy who was on a cabinet committee for president Ronald Reagan.  The bulk of these arrests were in adult bookstores.  The bookstore owners hated me.  One storeowner called the police to report that two men were in his store with guns.  The two men were my partner and me!  The police responded and we were taken out at gunpoint.  I was out of control.  I also had a "rescue" mentality.  Not all, but to some I spoke of Christ as an attempt to possibly save them from hell.

Through it all, I had a love/hate relationship with the porno.  Like the moth driven to the flame.  I believe that I was trying to rid myself of the porn via the arresting of individuals who, like myself, were deep in bondage to it.

But nudism has changed all that for me.  Thank God!!!  And apart from my daily experience of freedom, I have some very clear and convincing (at least to me) examples of a deep change:

First was that I was contacted by an ex law enforcement officer who has a private investigation business.  He was hired by a city to do an investigation on this totally nude lounge.  The city has tried to get rid of them by using undercover police officers that try and get the girls to agree to acts of prostitution.  I've worked prostitution before, as a cop you can only go so far and then it looks bad.  But as a private investigator the sky is the limit.  So I was asked to pose as a customer and make frequent trips to the nude club and get to be accepted as a regular.  This nude club features very young, very attractive females.  I would be required to go there for hours, drink beer (at the cities expense!), watch naked females, touch them, proposition them, allow them to touch me, possibly even masturbate if need be.

What did I do?  I told him no!  I had become a nudist, and it had changed my entire perspective about nudity, sex and myself.  The old me could have possibly said yes, after all I was doing it for a “cause.”  The old me most certainly could have done the looking and the propositioning.  But thanks to the goodness found in naturism I’ve had a change.  God has used good nudity to counteract the bad.

The second example happened just recently.  As a law enforcement retiree, I was hired to occupy a market business for 4 days from the time the market closed, until it opened in the morning.  I remained in the business by myself all night.  The market had 4 shelves stacked with XXX rated adult videos that were rented.  The store also had a TV and VCR.  I'm very proud to say that I didn't look at any of the videos at any time during the four nights that I stayed inside the market.  I wasn't interested.  I like my new clothes that I put on – good nudity.  They fit me better and I'm not ashamed to be seen in them.

Anyway, I was compelled to write all this.  What you wrote about is me, from start to finish, including the good part – deliverance from pornography thanks to the power of putting on the GOOD of naturism.  May God bless you in your ministry.

In the mutual belief of the love and salvation thru Jesus Christ,

Finally a Free Man