I’ve never had much interest in sport, and one thing I never understood was how much it mattered to my (now ex) boyfriend, John, to watch his sporting events live. I can’t tell you how many times we raced home, or to the pub, so he wouldn’t miss the latest football match on the telly, and that we had a DVR seemed to matter not, for him it had to be live. I used to tease him that his screaming at the screen wasn’t affecting the outcome, but whatever, it made no difference. John and I are no longer together, though his affection for sport had nothing to do with it.
Now I’ll admit that watching a big match at our pub amongst fellow fans does have a unique camaraderie that’s infectious, to the point that I would be cheering along with my fellow patrons, but it always seemed to me that it didn’t make much difference, watching a sporting event from home, assuming that you had managed to avoid already knowing how it turned out, watching a match off the DVR rather than it being broadcast live. However my opinion has since changed, via a most unusual route.
Like any healthy, and particularly single, man, wanking to porn is a near-daily absolution, it’s like maintenance, albeit quite pleasurable maintenance, but quite necessary nonetheless. While I’ve a long history at this, from the first time I saw a skin mag, to internet pictures, to DVD porn to streaming video, it’s all been great, all got the job done, but I recently got introduced to webcams, and I have to say it just might be the hottest development in porn since ever!
It started innocently enough, I was on an online dating site, and the fit lad I was looking to meet told me he wouldn’t until we had done C2C. I knew I had a camera built into my computer, and had used it once or twice, but it simply never occurred to me to use it to verify what potential dates look like. Well we went cam to cam, and did end up seeing each other in real life a few times, which was nice, but more importantly to this story, he clued me into how erotic webcams can be. Maybe I’m just a bit dense, but it simply hadn’t occurred to me.
So now I had been using my webcam to screen dates, which eliminated a lot of the fruitless meetings when you discover that your suitor is using pictures that date back to the Premiership of John Major, the small downside is having to look cleaned up and presentable prior to sitting down at the computer, which all in all is a reasonable tradeoff. However it was communicating with a fellow who lived a bit too far to conveniently meet, that my webcam use turned decidedly erotic.
Whilst meeting in real life was the driver of my dating site use of the webcam, it was my faraway paramour who introduced me to using the webcam for getting off, and once that barrier had been breached, a whole world of erotic possibilities opened up, and here’s when I realized that pre-recorded porn is completely lacking. After several online erotic webcam experiences, watching pre-recorded porn seemed flat and lifeless to me, it lacked the immediacy of the moment that camming provides.
Getting back to maintenance (read: wanking), while I could find suitable men to cam with on gay dating sites, when I’m just looking to get off, I often find I’m at cross-purposes with guys looking to meet, and as this is about getting off, you have to sort through all of the men who are looking for a relationship, looking to meet, don’t cam, are otherwise unsuitable, etc. The solution I found to the best is Cam4. Signing up was easy, there are thousands of men of every type, from all over the world, online and looking to engage in sexy cam fun, and it’s live, so there’s that immediacy and interactivity that canned porn simply can’t provide.
I now somewhat understand why John needed to watch his matches live, there’s a hard to define, but nonetheless identifiable difference in knowing it’s happening right now, though unlike his exhortations at the screen, when I communicate via the webcam connection on Cam4, I can demonstrably affect the action on the screen.