Rooting Out the Problem

Believe it or not I am posting about my plumbing again. Yes, yes, it feels like yesterday that I was shelling out $300 for a guy to come to my house and push a metal cord down my pipes, but I had to do it again yesterday. This time the bill was "only" $210. It would have been 50 bucks more if I had not pulled out the toilet myself. I'd never removed a toilet before, though I had seen it in a movie. My experience was almost as awesome. Well, not really.

So, the plumber clears the line (turns out that it took 75 feet of snake from the basement floor, which makes me feel a little better since my snake is only 50 feet and I tend to go in from the roof). Shortly after he leaves, however, the drain backs up again. So I called them this afternoon and they came are re-snaked the line. This time the problem was about 100 feet down and it didn't cost me anything. A 6 month warranty is much better than a one month. In short, don't go with the expensive guys. Sure, they treated me okay, but I still feel ripped off for a couple reasons.

So, we're able to do dishes, wash clothes, and flush the toilet as often as we want instead of only once every hour or so. And, the basement isn't flooding again. All good things.

But just like there's been buildup in the pipes, there's been crap flowing through my life too. One of those things is, of course, porn. I checked out xxxchurch.com yesterday and decided to give their x3watch software a "go". It's free and cake to install, so why not try it?

I've always thought that "accountability software" was a dumb idea. I mean, it's not really going to stop me from masturbating or looking at stuff I shouldn't. It may slow me down and limit my access, but it won't really help anything. Right?

Well, that was my thinking not that long ago, but my opinion has shifted a little.

Limited access may be the point. Sure, it's not going to stop my sexually charged body from desiring porn or stop me from finding images that get me going. But what it will do is stop me from going to explicitly pornographic sites. Now that my wife will be getting a web history of my browsing I won't be visiting obviously bad places on the net. So? Does it stop me from finding "innocent" places to whack off? No. So, what good does it do?

It stops me from getting into the really bad, destructive crap. Does it fix all the issues of the crap flowing through me? No. But it does take out some of the roots growing deep down in the "pipes" of my soul.

But now that I've let my wife in on my web history, she wants in everywhere. That's why I started writing this post in the first place: She's in the basement searching my computer for objectionable content. And that makes me upset. How does she know there is questionable stuff on my computer? Because I told her. What does she want to do with it? Delete it, of course. But I don't want her to, and figuring out why might be a really good thing to do.

1. I have only gathered stuff that intrigues me and I think it beautiful. I don't have any hardcore porn at all. I do have pictures of girls in very little, and even some showing a little more than that, but I kept those images because I liked them more than because I could use them to get off. Most of the images don't show any more than you would see at a beach. Am I just trying to fool myself? Perhaps. But the next point could indicate otherwise.

2. I have been conducting an experiment. Of all the porn I look at, I only really like pictures of a few girls, and only a handful of their pictures. So, for all the girls I've seen on the internet, I like a dozen or so pictures. They are pictures I'd like to return to, not because they are the most effective, but because they are the most appealing images I've seen. It's like the classic nudes of art, in a way. Erotic? Sure. Pornographic? Hard to say. So, I have kept them around to see if they would stop being porn and turn into something closer to art. The results? I look at the images rarely, consistently weed out the ones I don't really like, and rarely use them as "inspiration". So, does it make a difference? Yes, I believe it does. No longer are they the "bad" images online, but the pictures of female beauty on my computer.

Now, to be completely honest, there are times that I open up that folder just to use those images for my own purposes, but it isn't nearly as often as I log onto the internet to look for other stuff.

So what has my wife found on my computer? I'm not sure, but I'll have to go check on her in a minute. Not looking forward to that. For how much I like to be open an honest about stuff, it's hard to do with an irate wife.

What has she done to my prized images? Hard to say since she hasn't returned triumphantly from her quest as of yet. Is she still rooting for the problem? If she is, she's in the wrong place. The issue isn't my hard drive. The issue is me and our relationship.

I've held onto many of these images with a desire, a hope that I could share them with her. Not because I want her to sit down and watch porn with me, but this isn't even porn. I want to share with her what I find beautiful. I want to be able to share with my wife the things about women that excite and move me. But I haven't, and now I won't be able to. Why didn't I just show her the video with nudity the moment I watched it instead of downloading it? Because she'd make me delete it, and the reasons she would have nothing to do with my reasons for keeping it. But how would I go about explaining that one? I can't. It's unjustifiable. And that feels like it has to be wrong.

Odd how messy this all is.

Wait. It's not odd at all. It's just like the drainage main in my house: A few little roots and crap is literally floating in the shower.

~Luke Holzmann