Missing Softcore

I watched a clip the other day—some seventies film with soft focus and diffuse light, the camera moving slowly across skin like it was stealing glances. Three minutes and it was hotter than scrolling through porn sites for an hour.

I was young the first time I saw those films. Late nights with friends, catching whatever came on cable that showed the old stuff. They barely showed anything. A few seconds of nudity, then fade to black. The camera looking away at exactly the right moment. You had to imagine the rest, and the imagining was the whole point. The arousal was real.

Now everything’s visible. Every position, every moment. The image does all the work and you just consume it passively. There’s no gap between what you see and what you imagine, and that’s where eroticism lives. Without the gap, without the wanting, it’s just mechanics.

You can look at unlimited sex and feel nothing at all. Which is its own kind of deprivation.