Porn Watcher

Although it was in the later part of 1976, I remember the first time I went to a porn theatre with extreme clarity. However, my trip to Seattle's Midtown Theatre was not my first adult film experience.

I grew up in a smallish town near Seattle, and the day I turned eighteen the local family movie theatre was coincidentally showing the "adult version" of Alice in Wonderland. If you've figured out anything about me from this blog, you can easily guess how I spent the evening of my eighteenth birthday. Now you may never have seen the cinematic masterpiece that is Alice in Wonderland. It was made by porn pioneer Bill Osco, who also created the soft-core hit Flesh Gordon. Alice tells the Lewis Carroll story almost exactly, but with a lot of nudity and several sex scenes. Two versions of this film were apparently released. I rented it on videotape a couple years ago, and although it was clearly the same movie, the version I rented was much more explicit than I remember seeing all those years ago. What's shocking, of course, is the soft version (or any version) was actually playing main stream neighborhood theatres, like the one I attended. Osco knew what he was doing however. Amazingly enough, Flesh Gordon and Alice in Wonderland grossed a combined $165 million worldwide.

Alice in Wonderland (1976)

I remember sitting at the back of the theatre where in the past I had gone to see Disney films, The Planet of the Apes, The Poseidon Adventure ... all the films I grew up with. There were very few other patrons in attendance, and I sat in a row by myself. Two rows behind me were two young couples, who had arrived together, and they were having a great time. I was smitten enough with sex, and thrilled enough to be seeing it on the big screen (no matter how tame it was) that whacking to it was a natural response. I just wasn't very subtle about it, unfortunately. I had my coat on the seat next to me, and whenever screen sex seemed eminent, I looked around to see who was looking, acted as if I was very cold, and put the coat over my lap. As the movie progressed I did this seven or eight times, and the four people behind me became increasingly amused. At one point they actually laughed as the coat went back on my lap. Ah well, live and learn.

While this taught me to be discrete jerking-off in public, it also taught me I had the desire to see more adult movies, but I wanted those films to be hard-core from then on. At my first opportunity I made a trip to Seattle by myself. Sure I was eighteen, but I was still living at home and had to come up with an excuse to give my mother for the trip. I don't remember what I told her, it may have been I wanted to see a matinee of the new Monty Python film, or maybe it was that I just wanted to hang out in downtown Seattle for an afternoon. It doesn't matter, I told her some lie, and off I went.

I had already checked out the porn theatre ads in the Seattle Times and decided on the movie that was going to burst my hard-core cherry. Sadly, I've tried to recall but I just don't remember the title or any of the actors. It was called something like The Joy of Making Love, or at least something like that. I've done Google searches for years trying to locate a copy of it, but I've never had any luck.

However finding the theatre that day was easy; the Midtown Theatre was somewhere in the Fourth and Pike area (the Midtown as long since closed and been torn down.) Once I found it I didn't immediately go in. I had to make several passes back and forth before I worked up my courage. When I finally did go up to the box-office the ancient woman selling tickets almost wouldn't let me in. I looked younger than I was, and I didn't have a driver's license or ID. Finally she accepted my voter registration card as proof of age. In the seventies that's all you needed, I guess.

Outside was a sunny afternoon, but inside the theatre was pitch dark. Of course, it had once been a glorious movie palace, but those days were long over. It was very dark, very dirty, and more than a little scary. I saw many porn films at the Midtown in the subsequent years, but it always seemed kinda spooky. I passed through the lobby and then through the ratty, once red curtains into the auditorium. I couldn't see a thing except the screen. The movie was already running and was in the middle of a lengthy dialogue scene. I groped my way to an empty seat. There weren't very many people in the audience that afternoon, and they were spread out almost evenly among the many rows.

I watched the movie carefully; it was, after all, my first hard-core porn film. Following the talky dialogue sequence there was a scene with a guy who had been kidnapped by two women. The ladies tied him to a chair and had their way with him. I remember thinking, "Wow, there's a hard cock on the screen, and it's fucking someone's pussy. Cool!" The next thing that passed through my head was, "I bet they don't show any cum, that's probably too much." As you can guess, my next thought was, "Oh, fuck, there's the jizz! That's really cool!"

The only other scenes I remember is a woman hiding in a closet watching a couple fuck, and a scene with a man shackled to a wall while his wife and another woman do it on the bed, using a dildo with a little spinning fan on the end. The guy is so turned on that he blows his wad even though his hands are tied above his head. After he shoots, his wife walks over to him and looks on the floor. There is a mat with measurements printed on it. He has squirted his load over two feet away from his cock, and his wife is very impressed. That's really all I remember about the movie, except I thought it was stunningly hot and knew I wanted to see much, much more.

I had learned my lesson at Alice in Wonderland and so I jacked-off very clandestinely that day. It took a few more trips to the Midtown to discover that that really wasn't necessary at all.

I was hooked.