Four Comments Left on Diverse Pornhub Videos, June 9th through August 1st, 2024, by James Tadd Adcox
Comment, “Kinky Blonde after Riding,” Porhhub, 9 Jun 2024, pornhub.com/kinky-blonde-after/comments?id=4773125
There are certain things one would prefer not to imagine. For example the moment she discovered the poor thing, whose name was Humbert, half-shredded by the neighbor-dog, with whom we had been on friendly relations preceding that point. Prior to that point? Humbert Humbert. Named after a character in a book she had never read but which she imagined was a love story about a sophisticated gentleman like yours truly who swept a young girl off her feet and took her away from a dreary existence in a dreary town like this truly. Humbert would squawk from morning to night and start up earlier again the next day. Bought in a sort of revenge, one must imagine, for not sufficiently sweeping her off her feet nor taking her away. But then, according to her, though only recently, I’ve never had much imagination. When we first met, I a newly minted faculty at the local suitcase college and she behind the corner at the student cafeteria (open weekdays 7am-9.30am, 11.30am-1.00pm, weekends never), o then, I was full of it. Now of course I am still full of it, though the it in question has changed to be less imaginative and more, one assumes, scatological.
Comment, “Pinocchio Boy Discovers Her Magic,” Pornhub, 11 Jun 2024, pornhub.com/pinocchio-boy-discovers/comments?id=1139222
I thought that for a certain period of time I would look up the etymology of each word I said. For example, that canary derives from canine, owing, according to Pliny, to the large number of dogs who were present originally on the Canary Islands, where the birds are native and who would aggravate them to no end. Or that clue originally referred to a ball of yarn, such as one might unspool to entertain a guest or escape a labyrinth. Or that sinister refers to left-handedness, as she was left-handed and seemed always flummoxed to find herself in a right-hander’s world. Or as he was left-handed and to my mind always sinister. In this way I would always track the undercurrents of whatever passed for conversation between her and I, or betwixt her and him, as I listened in on the landline which we still, inexplicably, had in the year 2023, or which she still inexplicably used. She was in some ways quite traditional. In bed she preferred the lights out, although what she did with the lights out I will not touch on here.
Comment, “Mephistopheles of Boners,” Pornhub, 14 Jun 2024, pornhub.com/mephistopheles-of-boners/comments?id=3336991
An awkward conversation. Thomas, the neighbor-dog, poisoned. Thomas or Tommy, that’s what they called him, named after an honored great-uncle who had fought in the war. Who was still alive, apparently, and occasionally bodily present at family functions, and who would start with a horrified start whenever anyone called the dog. Who would not, unfortunately, be called once more now, or ever. On the phone the night prior, or preceding, between or betwixt her and him, plottings of vengeance, canary-related. He would go over and show those neighbors and owners of Tommy what’s-what. He would do it now, this very moment, or in the morning, if now was too late. He, for one, and unlike others, was not afraid of a neighbor-dog, no matter its size, no matter whether one was currently on good terms with said neighbor-dog or no. And now the owner, whose name is also Tommy but after whom the dog was not named, trudging angrily sadly over, tow-headed daughter in tow, with the labs from the vet. What good now the treats I once slipped him? What good our merry times, me displaying for him the cloth with the bird-scent, him ragdolling it around like nothing or anything? The poor beast had thrown up in every place of their yard except one.
Comment, “Cemetery Latenight Assignation (One Last),” Pornhub, 1 Aug 2024, pornhub.com/one-last/comments?id=1980052
And to return thereafter cruelly to a cruelly emptied home, albeit quieter. No phonecalls in all hours of the night, no neighbor-dog barking, no Humbert Humbert. No her. No him, who I knew ever only as a voice over the landline, croaking promises into her nighttime ear. Who I imagine now as a figment of my imagination. Which he was and remains, other than the voice. One who, judging by that voice, measured somewhere in the neighborhood of six feet and had cruel smoky gray eyes. Such being always, she told me, even in the early days of our love, when she continued to want me to take her away from this dreary town and I continued to not, her ideal. No note from her upon the kitchen table. No kitchen table, her grandmother’s which she had always loved and which I must assume now rests legs-folded in the back of a van somewhere, rocketing elsewhere. What we imagine, o, is always better and worse than the reality, isn’t that it? And as I have no way of telling her so, these notes, which she or her smoke-eyed beau may one day see, in their new life wherever the van arrived, or not.
James Tadd Adcox's work has appeared in 3:AM, Granta, and previously in Barrelhouse, among other places. He is a founding editor at the literary magazine Always Crashing. His most recent book is Denmark: Variations, a collection of sixty sets of instructions for variations on the play Hamlet.