It’s almost poetic that two and a half years after I have my first major dream about Jessica and write a blog post, I have another dream under vastly different circumstances.
I got married! I have been married now for four-and a half months, but I believe that the thing that brought on this dream was not some conversation I had, but in my own sexual behavior.
I have felt guilt and shame about masturbation since my mom took a strong stance against it when I was 12. I wanted to look at all of these images, watch pornography, basically go through what every modern prepubescent boy experiences. Instead my mom reacted by putting on a “safe search” firewall on all of the computers, effectively stunting that exploration and delaying the path I would eventually take when I got out of the house.
I went through the phases on addiction. I read on Go Ask Alice that as long as masturbation doesn’t affect your day to day life, then you can masturbate as much as you want; I didn’t feel like it was, so I did. But that lingering guilt kept a running tally in my head. What was my rolling average for the week? Can I go a day without jerking off? Usually the answer was no.
My position on masturbation didn’t dramatically change until I saw this TED Talk. There is a disclaimer in the description of this video talking about the disputed scientific validity of his claims, but the thing that stuck with me is that the dopamine, the feeling that I get when I watch some woman get plowed keeps me coming back. And as discussed in the underappreciated and rated[1] Don Jon discusses, jerking off using your imagination is a different experience than jerking off to porn. I personally find that the dopamine levels are lower when I use my imagination, but still released. I would call it a less addicting high.
Which brings us back to the topic in which I started. The night after my fourth day or so of masturbating only using my imagination (or not masturbating), I have my first dream about Jessica since the last blog post. The entire dream was Jessica and I rolling around in bed kissing. My wedding ring kept flashing to let my brain know that this was happening while I was married. I tried on at least two occasions to go for second base, but she was having none of it. The only thing that was said in between bouts of kissing was me stating, “You could have had it all”, which I understand to mean “You could have had all of me”.
This raised a lot of questions when I woke up: would I have become a different person had I dated Jessica, would I have changed myself if I had the opportunity to date Jessica, how long would we have lasted if I didn’t change the person I am now. All of these are unanswerable hypothetical questions, and I can add them onto the pile of unanswerable Jessica hypotheticals.
I looked up her Facebook profile and two things brought some satisfaction: she still has stuck to her religious convictions and it seems that she has moved away from our hometown. So even though I am married, I can move on with my life knowing that she is still inaccessible. I had intrusive thoughts of cheating over the weekend, so I dosed that with a stronger shot of porn dopamine, and it seems to have done the trick. I’ll go back to jerking off with my imagination and see what happens (other than the eventual orgasm) to my long-term sexual health.
Talk to you again after another Jessica dream, I guess.
But I digress…
I love the Over/Under series by Pitchfork. I often use the expanded Appreciated/Rated scale, originally done by Killa Mike, as a point of discussion.
It's not a Diary, it's a Di-Journal! 