a bright young man,” Ms. Kemp said one cloudy afternoon. “I’ve arranged for you to have something, if you would like it.” She led me to a storage room. “We were required to wipe all of the information off the hard drive other than DOS, but if you can get someone to come pick this up for you”—she pointed at the lifeless, monstrosity of a machine, an IBM computer—“then it’s all yours.” She then handed me a bag filled with various types of software.
“For real, Ms. Kemp! I can have it? Flat out own it and take it home with me?”
She smiled. “Yes, flat out own it and take it home with you.”
My mother came and got the computer. She couldn’t thank Ms. Kemp enough. Some five years and a brand new computer later, I learned how Ms. Kemp had actually purchased the old and the new computer for me with money from her own pocket.
What most folks in my neighborhood and school didn’t know was that I could take a computer apart and put it back together again. And there wasn’t software out there I couldn’t master. My mother was right: at the library I found all the answers at my fingertips. Books upon books contained answers to any questions I even thought about having.
True: books can be a blessing. However, I also discovered, some things in print can be dangerous. My uncle on my mother’s side came to live in our home shortly after I turned eleven. If my mother hadn’t taken him in, I believe he’d still be homeless today. For certain, none of the other family members wanted to put up with his drinking and womanizing ways. But my mother didn’t have the heart to turn anyone away, especially someone with nowhere else to go. And particularly not her own blood. He didn’t like the fact that I had my head inside of a book 24/7 or that I was forever on the computer.
Uncle Tank had been a promising musician. From what the family says, there wasn’t an instrument Uncle Tank couldn’t play. The way they talk, the artist originally known then formerly known now known again as Prince, had nothing on him. I’m told Uncle Tank learned to play instruments by ear, and he started playing the piano for the church. They say he could practically raise any roof off any building with a saxophone. But they claim he had a little too much sass laced in his playing for a church or gospel career.
“There wasn’t much money to be made in gospel music back when I came along, Bentley,” he said during one of our little talks. “For some reason, church folks don’t seem to believe in paying folks like the world will. ’Course now, things done changed a whole lot since folks like that Kirk Franklin fella and the rest of ’em done come on the scene. I guess I was just born ahead of my time. You know that song he sang called ‘Stomp’?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, do you know he took the music track of a classic from back in the day by the Parliament-Funkadelics and put Christian words to it? Made it into a Christian song. See, that’s something I would have done if the church folk had’a left me alone.”
I looked at Uncle Tank with a deliberate smirk to let him know I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Saying something like that had to be the result of those spirits everybody said he carried around in his pocket and sipped regularly.
“Don’t believe me? All right then. Give me a day or two to get my hands on my album collection. I see right now I’ma just have to prove it to you, young blood.”
And that’s what he did. When I heard the original song, I couldn’t believe my ears. That was so tight! Soon afterward, Uncle Tank and I became good buddies.
That’s when he told me he thought I was a bit out of balance, reading all those “smart books” all the time and “living on the computer.” He believed every young boy needed other “book-learning,” especially in my case, not having my father around to teach me men stuff. I needed to expand my “reading repertoire” was the way he put it.
That’s when he pulled out a magazine, flipped the pages so I could see it was chock full of pictures, and gently laid it down before me like it was a mint condition Michael Jordan rookie card or something.
My first reaction was that I was too old for a picture book and that he really didn’t understand boys my age at all.
“Uncle Tank, I don’t know if you realize this, but I am thirteen now. For sure, I’m too old to be reading picture books.”
“See what I mean, boy? Most boys your age would have picked up on just seeing the cover that this is no children’s book. That there is a pure, double-D, Grade-A, certified woman right there on that cover. I guarantee you won’t find these here pictures in no children’s book.” He turned several pages and began to grin. “Here.” He handed it to me. “Take this and try studying somethin’ other than all that boring stuff you done got brainwashed to. And if you find you like what you see, I’ve got plenty more where this one come from stashed away. Plen-ty. You just let your good ole Uncle Tank know, and Uncle Tank will take care of you. You can believe that.”
“I don’t know about this,” I said.
“Boy, do you want to grow up and be a real man, or do you want to grow up and be with a man? This book is like a test. If you’re straight, we’ll find out by how you react. Consider this my gift to you. Just don’t let your mama know or see it. Women don’t seem to understand or share our appreciation for God’s human art in full, living color.”
And that was how it all began, where the seed was planted and my addiction to pornography took root. And like most addictions, it has only progressed over the years.
Now here I am married to Marcella, a wonderful, smart, beautiful woman, with a baby girl on the way, and I still find myself sneaking—late at night after my real, live, can-actually-be-touched wife is asleep—to look at porn. That’s crazy. I have my own stash of magazines, videos, and DVDs galore, conveniently squirreled away. And the very thing Uncle Tank claimed a huge waste of my time—the computer—as it turns out, actually gives me the greatest access (via the Internet) to unlimited sites. There is categorically no shortage of porn lurking in cyberspace.
The thing that disturbs me is the amount of deceptive e-mail sent to people who really aren’t interested in viewing pornographic sites, a good many of them being sent to innocent children. Children who, like me, could later become hooked. After all, it wasn’t that long ago when I myself had only been a naive boy, minding my own business.
Now look at me. As a grown man, I can’t seem to stop myself from practically gawking at naked women whose certain sexual acts I have no place or business looking upon. Marcella deserves better from me. Our new baby, due in about five months, deserves better. Although honestly, some of the books Marcella and her friends have been reading lately (called erotic fiction) seem to simply be just a more acceptable version of my own stronghold. Much of it is, from what I’ve seen and heard, clearly porn in words—sexual pictures created through the power of language.
And as Pastor Landris just said in a recent sermon, “Imagination is imagination. All images—real or imagined—are equally real when it comes to your brain.”
True, Pastor. They’re all images. And some of them just need to be pulled down.
Dr. Xavier Holden
I can’t believe I actually stood and walked up to the front like this. I’m the one who is usually helping others to get their lives together. I’m the one people look to for answers, although in truth, I merely pose the questions that help draw out the answers.
“Dr. Holden, I desperately need your help.” “Dr. Holden, it’s urgent that I
