Porn and the Sacred Heart

Please read the whole beautifully-written piece by Patrick Still over at Godspy.

I was eleven years-old when my best friend Eddie, who was Italian and Catholic, told me he knew what a woman looked like, naked—from the front. Of course I didn’t believe him. I knew what breasts were, and sometimes I thought about them, but I never imagined there was anything below the waist that should interest me. I soon found out how wrong I was.

I can close my eyes and still see what I saw on that stolen porn channel.
Eddie’s father had stolen cable television service from the cable company through a small black box. All I remember about their Chicago bungalow is that the TV shared the living room with a portrait of an effeminate Jesus exposing his Sacred Heart. Though I wasn’t Catholic, I was almost as interested in that alien, pasty Jesus as I was in that criminal cable box, which beamed shiny images of human sex into my adolescent mind.

When his mom left the house, Eddie kept watch while I flipped to the “bad channel” and saw womanly glory for the first time. Now, a decade and half later, I can close my eyes and still see what I saw on that stolen porn channel. And the Sacred Heart still burns, on the bookcase next to the television, His almost lonely eyes watching me, watching.