On yesterday, I received some sad news. A guy that I’ve known since I was 15-years-old was stabbed to death in LA this past Saturday night.
Isn’t it amazing how someone you haven’t thought about in days, months, years can suddenly consume all of your mental focus once you know that they are no longer a phone call, email or My Space comment away?
The person who shared this information with me was an ex of his. I remember her telling me how hard it was being in a relationship with him; one of the main reasons was because he had a porn addiction. Later that day, I spoke with another ex. Oddly enough, she told a very similar story except her recollection of his sexual indiscretions was much more recent—she said she spoke with him a couple of weeks ago and his My Space page was full of porn stars as “Top Friends”.
In between her tears and “I can’t believe it” recitations, there was something she said that motivated me to blog about this man of 34 years: “I guess one of us should put a message on his page that he’s dead, but there are so many porn chicks on there that I can’t tell who his real friends are.”
“I CAN’T TELL WHO HIS REAL FRIENDS ARE.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “Lust is the ultimate love counterfeit.” Can there actually be anything more intimate than a sexual relationship and yet when it comes to pornography, while you may be watching two people “becoming one” (Sex makes two people one regardless. Some of us are a little “off” because we are “one” with the wrong people), because God’s love is not present, there’s no real intimacy there. Like dogs in heat, there’s a physical act of mating, but because the spiritual element is severely compromised (although there is one because the devil is a spirit), there are no healthy emotional exchanges present.
Don’t believe me? I know some people in “the real world” who can’t name all of the people they have been with, so I can only imagine what it’s like for those involved in the porn industry. Yes, they have sex, but are they friends?  Maybe a few—as much as you can be a friend with someone who has sex with you for money—but I’m sure not many.
The crazy thing is that there are many people who’ve participated in porn for so long that, like a well-acted film, I’m sure they “feel” like they know those people on the screen. For a lot of porn addicts, when they feel sad, they turn on a flick. When they feel stressed, they turn on a flick. When they feel scared, lonely, bored or—hormonal, they turn on a flick. Without knowing anything about those people, in a sick way, they find comfort in them being just a remote control away.
But that’s not a relationship, that’s a fix. It’s a serious, personal, gut-check reminder concerning my own legacy that the only real impression that was made on me concerning this man gone too soon is that he had lots of women and enjoyed lots of porn up until the last day of his life it seems.  The real tear jerker is that no matter how much sex he had with or at someone, I have to wonder just how many of those ladies will show up at his funeral? Of all of the flesh that he’s engaged in, how many people’s spirits did he touch for the better? Although he may know the name of every “Top Friend” on his My Space page, if we sent them a message to let them know that he is no longer with us, would they even care? Could they even care?
This, unfortunately, is the cold, hard reality for this porn junkie. As physically attractive as he was and with all of the sex he had at his disposal, those of us who knew him are wondering, at the end of the day, at the end of last Saturday night, at the end of 34 years on this earth, what really did he have to show for it?
Porn chicks as My Space friends? How very, very sad.