I grew up in a neighborhood that long ago had been overrun by the Citron Street (CST) and Westside Anaheim gangs. The cholos ignored me at school because, well, everyone ignores nerds. But summers were trying. My parents—both hard-working nine-to-fivers—couldn't take care of me, so they dropped me off every day at my cousin's house in the heart of Westside Anaheim's slummy turf. We were five barely teenage Latinos—brothers Víctor and Plácido, friends Art and Mario, and me—with nothing to do, starving for acceptance by our peers. We should have just lined up against the wall and let the notorious Anaheim police whale on us. But salvation came in the form of a dirty young man and his obsession with double penetrations.
One day at Mario's house, we broke into his uncle's room looking for cash to steal. We found something better: pornos stacked as high as our heads. The uncle had moved back to El Salvador but left his most prized possessions—by mistake? Or providence? Because this was our deliverance. The gangs were only a few steps outside our front door, but we soon stopped caring about hanging out with them. Every weekday for the next five summers was spent watching, talking, breathing and buying porn. I'd be dropped off at Víctor and Plácido's house at 6 a.m., sleep for two hours, have breakfast, pick up Art, and then we'd walk to Mario's house. At noon, we'd take a break for an hour to eat lunch and then go back to Mario's for the rest of the day. And the rest was porn. Any slivers of time not spent watching pornos were spent discussing them or trying to get more of them. Forget the cholos on the street; we had a new lifestyle all our own.
That treasure trove of trashy threesomes had everything: Traci Lords when she was 16, rape fantasy clips, a guy duct-taping his balls into a makeshift dick and then using his new appendage to butt-fuck Nina Hartley. We can tell you exactly when Ron Jeremy became truly ugly, what made Savannah a better slut than Jenna Jameson, and the physics involved in quadruple-dong sex. And as the gang lifestyle became more tempting, we began to explore other aspects of pornography to stay out of trouble. We'd find magazines in bushes, Hustler trading cards at 7-Eleven, even dig videos out of strangers' trash. Once, Víctor found a Penthouse that helped him earn A's on two class papers. I even started a porno repository at my house: anyone who liked porn but couldn't keep it in their house could leave it in my care for a nominal fee. And through it all, our good citizenship—and our fierce teenage hard-ons—never faltered.
And now? All of us are doing well. We attribute our success to porn—we'd probably just be a cluster of statistics if it weren't for our pubertal passion for watching tit fucks. Most of our peers joined gangs or got into some sort of trouble, mostly through friendships formed during those summers. But none of us ever crossed paths with the law. And we still remember those summers fondly: our favorite titles (The Best Rears of Our Lives, White Trash Whore #7), actors (who has the better cunnilingus form: TT Boy or Tom Byron?), even magazines (does Penthouse still have those piss pictorials?). Our idea of a romantic evening now is not an interruption-free masturbation session; regular porno viewing for all of us ended upon graduation from high school. But it's a phase in our lives that's nevertheless sacred and close to our hearts. To this day, we thank God for introducing us to the likes of John Holmes, John T. Bone and Bone Appetit. You see, porn kept us off the streets. And I can't help but think if the Boys N Girls Club really cared about keeping kids safe, they'd give out free porn. It worked for us.
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