This letter arrived to my inbox and I found it pure gold, so I’m sharing it with you (with permission of the author of course):

“I lost my porn virginity when I was 12. I didn’t even know I was gay by then (or at least I didn’t knew what it meant).

For years I would sit in front of my computer and Google a random combination of things I knew would get me a boner, just to jerk off as quickly as I could and feel guilty immediately after. For years my self induced orgasms were part of a diminishing psychological pressure that made me feel just as crap as it’d feel good.

I accessed porn sites on a regular basis, with an obvious pick around my first time having real sex. I was so nervous about it that I might have watched 6 uninterrupted hours of blowjob action, praying to not look lost when I finally had a love muscle pumping blood above my tongue. It was hypnotizing, it was absurdly informative, but still – it would feel wrong.

Like everyone else, I stumbled upon this “6 reasons why you should quit porn” articles an infinity of times. They were scary as hell and promised that I would ruin my love life and would never have pleasure with real sex ever again. Just by clicking the X play they’d make me feel like I was on for a 666 route of loneliness, sexual disfunction and just a step away of becoming a pedophile, a murderer or – god helps – a satisfied cummer.

As horrifying the side-effects would sound, I never quit. I just pretended I wasn’t into it for long enough, even to my gay friends. Especially to my gay friends. I grew up in this small town in Sweden and gay porn was the devil turned into pixels: ugly, violent and completely out of tune from our aesthetic preferences.

But then internet proved to be God again, and a suspicious link in a comments section brought me to an article about this new wave of porn films, mentioning some sites that would look more like an indie nordic fashion shop than a dirty lust gateway. And oh wasn’t that heaven!

Finding other people with interests similar to mine, eager to see sex but also struggling with the old boring xvideos brought a fresh breeze to my lonely porn closet. I wasn’t feeling guilty anymore – instead Ì started to feel like a sexual explorer.

A little more time down this road and I found works like Noel Alejandro’s. Not only I would masturbate to actually attractive people but I could also feel proud to show it to my friends.

Alternative porn actually have something to say beyond the regular dick-in-the-butt business. I would find people interested in talking about it, and they would tell me if they liked it or not and why. The conversations made me feel more critical about what I was seeing.

I would start recognizing the directors, their interpretations of sex, their tastes… and I also started recognizing myself. Is threesome something I would really like to try? What about bondage? How would the perfect situation be for me? What if I say all this to my boyfriend? Maybe he wants to watch “Call me a ghost” with me?

When you have the guts to talk about untalked stuff with the people around you, magic happens. You start verbalizing what you like and what you don’t, you think about your preferences and what you would like to try, you learn what turns you on and finally accepts your inner carnal beast.

Cause we all have one inside.”