LGBTQIA+
From Unicorns to Porn Trauma Before my Morning Coffee
I was raised by straights and I am not ok
CW: Pornography, murder, charlie the unicorn…
It Started with Charlie
I was watching an old YouTube video that Millennials will likely know well — Charlie the Unicorn. Your response says a lot! You either:
- Started saying lines like, “Shun the non-believer, shunnnnunnun...” or “We’re on a bridge, Charlie.”
- Rolled your eyes and moaned
- Did both 1 and 2
- Have no idea what I’m talking about
If you have no idea, let me be the horrible soul that introduces you. For everyone else, enjoy the flashback and try not to fall into the Charlie the Unicorn rabbit hole of episodes because the tongue thing is next next-level weird.
Anyway, this article is not about that in particular, but it was the start of a quick succession of mind jumps that got me to it. It all started when I wrote a quote from ‘Charlie the Unicorn’ in a comment to Logan Silkwood (Yeah, I’m dragging you into this, blaming you, and totally taking you down with me on this one, haha). Me, being the writer that I am (and the student with too-many-unused-degrees-to-be-healthy that I am), I had to check the quote. That meant, watching the episode above.
As I enjoyed the memory and said the lines with the unicorns and noticed for the first time that, well damn, look at the colors of those things, looks pretty trans to me, I thought:
“I should write an article about all that old shit that we used to watch on the internet when it was still a baby.”
Harmless, innocent thought. Hmmm… indeed.
That thought took me to the memory of having a computer in my bedroom when I was ten years old. This was in 1985 (hush, not a word about age, thank you) so there were not yet many computers around and absolutely no publicly available internet.
Another harmless and innocent thought?
Then, a horrifying realization hit me. I had a memory and while the experience within the memory was not traumatic, seeing it now with aged wisdom was grounds for instant trauma.
I’m shaking my head in absolute disgust at this new knowledge. I knew my biological receptacles were messed up, but boy, I had no idea at the time!
I knew my biological receptacles were messed up
A Trip Down Memory Lane — Bring the Bleach!
When I was 10 years old, the live-in sperm donor got a computer. It was an Apple IIc. The Apple IIc can be found in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, NSW, Australia. The computer I used as a kid and well into my twenties is in a freakin’ museum!
And yet, THAT is not my trauma.
Neither is my trauma around the very real probability that he was gifted that computer by his boss — a man who ‘owned’ his transport company and who, a few years later, was executed outside his own home over substantial debts (while the father still worked for him). I see no possible relation to the massive amount of crap we had stacked in the garage that, as I was told, ‘fell off the back of a truck.’ Ten-year-old me didn’t know what that meant.
And still, not the source of my trauma.
So, ten-year-old me had just achieved a top 0.3% in the state for one of those ESSO maths or science competitions we were forced to do, or something like that.
Cue manipulation!
My ‘congratulatory prize’ (6 months after the fact mind you), was to have the computer in my room. I mean, at the time, I thought that was great. I wanted that because I was already a huge nerd and I was keen to become more of a nerd — which I totally did by using BASIC to write a ‘maths game’ — ah-huh. So yeah, I was very happy with that. So instead of having it in their room, or the older sister’s room, or the lounge room, or family room, or the converted garage (it was a decent sized and sparsely filled house), it went in my room. And it was sold to me as a reward. But, of course, it was still very clear that it was a ‘family computer’ which meant that whenever anyone wanted to use the computer, they had to be in my room. Bye, bye, privacy! I mean, that’s got some levels on its own.
And yet, still not the source of the trauma.
Let’s get to that then, shall we? We had this Apple IIc before they had advanced to color screens, so it was a simple dark screen with green text and images. Below is a very real indication of how games appeared on the screen. People and characters were simple green/yellow line drawings.
We’re almost there. The trauma is so close.
The sperm donor, my ‘father’ had a special game. It was a very easy game, kind of like, a choose your own adventure story. I loved choose-your-own-adventure books. This game, when it started, you just, chose which story you wanted to play. Like, The Naughty Maid, or Girls at the Beach.
The Naughty Maid (probably not the actual title, because I don’t remember that detail, but it seems disturbingly accurate), was about a maid who offers to fill a busty socialite’s glass of champagne. It was a pretty weak storyline; no real plot, no turning point, nothing to drive the character development. And then the socialite had a wardrobe malfunction! And wouldn’t you know it, so did the maid! But don’t worry, the maid stayed professional and protected the socialite by covering the poor woman’s nakedness with her mouth. Though I’m not sure why she decided to warm the champagne bottle — especially not the way she did. They didn’t really explain that. See? Bad story writing.
Remember the screen graphics? Right, so each story in this ‘adult game’, was basically just three line images. One for the ‘story’ and then two for the… you know. Those two images would flick back and forth going faster and faster to, I don’t know, give the illusion of movement? There was a sound too — not music, just a sound that got faster and faster until… The image froze. I guess, that was the ‘climax’?
So, that was early computer porn. Hilarious, really.
But the point is, that floppy disk, and no, that is not a euphemism, the apple IIc took 5.25" floppy disks…
WAS IN MY BEDROOM.
I can tell you what was on that disk, because I watched it.
BECAUSE IT WAS IN MY BEDROOM.
WHEN I WAS 10.
It also means that for the ‘father’ to watch it, he had to be in my bedroom. In my room, watching computer porn.
I WAS 10!
There’s the trauma and I haven’t even had a coffee this morning!