Cuddling

I spent a decade watching the same thing over and over in endless variation. Three guys destroying a blonde girl. Bukkake compilations. Asian rough-sex videos. Crying, gagging, the whole escalation game. At some point the industry locked itself in an arms race with numbness and everyone was losing. I stopped being aroused and just started looking for the next thing louder than the last, the next thing cruel enough to cut through whatever I’d become numb to.

Last night I’m on a pornography website at 2 AM like always, scrolling through categories that all feel identical. Hotel housekeeping scenarios. Rough compilations. Women crying about their jobs. Everything’s the same frequency and nothing lands. So I’m clicking halfheartedly and somehow stumble onto this channel of just naked women holding each other. No plot, no extremity, nothing explicit. They just lie quiet with their eyes closed, running their hands along each other’s backs, sometimes a gentle kiss on the cheek or neck. I watched for an hour and something opened in my chest that the violence had sealed shut.

Tenderness did what all that noise couldn’t. It landed somewhere the aggression never reached. I think I’ve been numb for longer than I realized, and searching for something gentler all along without knowing it.