I was doing some standup for the first time and a good friend of mine, Dan Simmons, brought up the rather interesting topic of "dick pics" on cell phones. I was instantly thrust into a flurry of pontification on the sociological originations of such an exhibitionist act. I was launched into images of the first sexually weighted emails, the kind vaguely alluded to in 1998's "You've Got Mail", in which that slut Meg Ryan plays says things like, "I'm wearing a smile right now, everything else is either skin or negligible... plus I want your cock (not in movie)". Its easy to see that by the late 1990's this erotic tone was already welcomed into the forefront of the social-tech scene. But where does this stem from? Why was it so easy for us to adopt this new medium of non-verbal non-visual sexual stimulation?
As though the wonderful nuance of texting hasn't gotten complex enough with all the T9-ing and self-correcting dictionaries that somehow think I mean "Eat Shut" or that I misspelled "Motherfucker", which is definitely not hyphenated. In all the current textual mutterings its easy to get lost in the present and the ever-expanding 'voc' of annotated verbs and syntactical contractions of "vertxns" as I call them. But to have any idea where we're going in the sexual textual consext- er I'm sorry, context, we need to know where we came from.
Who was the first cell phone user to bear the societal epiphany "What if I just TEXT her that I'm horny right now?" or "What if I TEXT him that I'm wet for him even though I'm really watching cooking channel and thinking about puppies?" Whoever the first technologically enabled coward was, its easy to imagine that their opting out of the usual avenues likely hinged on the low-investment high-potential-yield nature of such a hands-free interaction. But aside from risk/ yield ratio appeal, perhaps the act of throwing a quick sext is just a modernized new york minute style manifestation of an ancient tradition of love letters.
Surely, as soon as man could write he was writing about women, and as soon as women could write, people were shocked (Don't worry!! I'm kidding!!... women can't write). Throughout out the ages pornographic writing has evolved and contorted befitting each new medium as it came about. From the Kama Sutra to Shakespeare, from "Arabian Nights" to "The Diary of Anne Frank" erotic literature became ubiquitous rather quickly once we stopped carving in stone and eating each other, or whatever was going on before 1776. So if thats all sexting is, then what about the rest?
On the subject of visual erotica we shall narrow our discussion to visuals as related to textual interactions. You can't compare Photographers to Writers, so instead we'll compare journalists to photojournalists. So... from whence did 'dick pics' arise? Forget the trashy romance novellas that had integrated shoddy lithographs from amateur pervs that devoted their time to mastering their illustrations of the rolls of flab on a 17th century woman's rib cage. Lets just look at those who had the gusto and entrepreneurial insight to write a personalized erotic message while integrating visual lures.
I imagine there were no ancient peruvians sprinting across the mountains to deliver and erotic array of knots coupled with a strangely shaped squash. And likewise, the other hemisphere of the earth likely contained few 'hardcore haikus', or "harkus" as they must now be referred to save time during which I would otherwise be aroused. So lets think to a time when writing and common man's art work were at their synergistic pinnacle.
Though this has occurred a couple of times throughout history we have to assume that the Romans, at their peak, were too busy screwing to have time to write or talk about it. Also it seems unlikely that even during all of the progressive revolutions of the renaissance, that Pope Pius II would have done anything less than rape and murder someone for drawing and writing erotic works. So lets look to a time and demographic in which man was more and more liberated from religion and more skilled with writing and drawing simultaneously. There it is, no wait, too far, back a little bit, THERE! Early 19th century naturalists!
We found it! Just picture a young George Wallace or Darwin, writing a heart/ crotch felt letter to his loved one/ cousin. "Darling, today I noticed six new species of butterfly, and I was reminded of you and your warm buttocks. I thought I saw a leaf that resembled how it feels to crush you under my masculine bearded weight. I long to be long for you this spring and I hope this etter arrives before then. And as promised my sweet , to tide you over until June, I give you an anatomically correct pencil rendition of my penis, witha cross-sectional diagram of my glans penis. I hope you enjoy it my sweet and remember don't send this to TMZ".
Wherever and whenever this odd habit picked up into the mainstream its likely to stay integrated until we have a three dimensional way of sending images of us thrusting, or some way of transmitting the musk of our scrota and freshly washed hair smell through a smell-transceiver (smeliever). Until then, this is Mike Minto saying "Smell ya later, forever".
