I spent a long time working on this one back in December, but it never quite felt right to me. I like some of the tones and I like that it reminds me of home, but I think perhaps it's just too conventional.

It's not so hard to find. You just have to look for it. It's right there waiting when you do.

I have a vague memory of coming to Garland Park with my aunt and my brother, and a man who might have been my aunt's boyfriend, but who could just as well have been a friend. He was tall and lean, dark of hair and skin, with long arms and legs, and a Spanish-sounding name like Luis or Carlos or something. The trail from the parking lot to the waterfall is a bit over a mile with a small incline—no problem for me now, of course, and I've done it dozens of times by this point, but for a bookish and whiny five-or-six-year-old, it was a bit much. At one point either I or my brother—I can't remember which—got tired and demanded to be carried.

The hill isn't too bad even for a desk jockey like my modern-day self, but as I remember it, Carlos-or-Luis-or-whatever perspired like I'd never seen a person do before. (I'm sure that having an extra thirty or forty pounds on his back contributed to his exertion.) He wiped his brow with one palm and flung a handful of sweat along the side of the trail. I can't remember his name or his face, but I still remember the gooey glisten of the droplets as they landed on the dirt.

I fret a lot about how to raise my daughter to be a strong, empowered individual, a person who doesn't value herself solely based on her appearance, and so I used to imagine my daughter as a tomboy. As it turns out, what she really loves is nail polish and dresses and princesses and pink. Maybe this will change when she gets older. Maybe not. Ultimately, it's not up to me to decide what femininity or even feminism means to her. In the meantime, at least I can be happy that we like the same snacks.

In an effort to both get to know my community better and to combat the expansion of my waistline, I've taken to walking in the mornings. My neighborhood isn't highly regarded among San Diegans, but the more I look, the more I find to like.

I've been getting up earlier for the past couple of months, which means I've been able to take Jason to school in the mornings. I like having the little bit of extra time with him, and getting to see him with his friends and in his new environment. Walking back to my car by myself after the bell rings, though, is a little... lonely, I suppose.

I don't know why he sometimes decides to sleep on the floor. He just does. I wonder how long he will keep doing that.

The other day I had an utterly fascinating—to me, anyway—conversation with one of my co-workers. A group of us were talking about our childhood music lessons, and how basically all of us quit relatively quickly. I mentioned how I really wish I'd stuck with it, and that if I had more time I'd love to take piano lessons. I found it interesting that I was the only one who had those regrets to any degree, but I was particularly struck by one guy's attitude. "Who cares?" he said. "I mean, whatever—music, art, who really gives a shit? All that stuff just seems like a way to kill time." Later in the same conversation he said he'd like to learn a new language but it turned out that it was mainly due to how that could expand his career possibilities. Indeed, everything that he expressed interest in had to do with new ways to make money or otherwise materially improve his lifestyle, and being presented with a viewpoint so totally different from mine was, if nothing else, something that made me pause. Intellectually, I've known that there are people out there who think like this guy, but most of the people I know personally are like me in that they take it for granted that at least some aspects of culture and the arts have value—it's a little jarring to see the opposite opinion up close.

Now, at this point it would be easy for me to go on a tirade about how awful it is that people think art is a waste of time, or how our societal values or educational system are out of whack, or bemoan the direction in which we're headed as a civilization. But I think that it would be a mistake to draw too large a conclusion from one oddball co-worker, aside from which, I'm sure that people like this have always existed.

And, you know, I can't even really fault this guy too much for valuing things he can get paid for. After all, he enjoys what he does for a living, and thinks that it's important. I believe in hard work and being part of a team, and so I give my best effort to be good at what I do and to get the job done, but when you come right down to it, the only thing I get out of my career is money. So, really, who's the more mercenary between the two of us?

No, the thing that I keep coming back to as I think about this conversation is that I can't really disagree fundamentally that it's all just a way to kill time.

Don't get me wrong, I love art. I love creating it and I love being part of the audience. There aren't many things I value more highly or would rather spend my life doing. But when you come down to it, isn't everything we do just a way of passing the time, distracting ourselves from the fact that we're going to die some day? Perhaps we like to think we are creating a legacy, or doing some great work, but consider Shelley's Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" the king proclaimed, intending his statue to last forever. And yet, "Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away."

We talk about art in terms of expression and communication, of evoked emotions and shared experience. But what is any of that if not a way of making the time we have here a little more bearable? And, in the end, isn't that really the value of things like art and culture and entertainment? We have only a short time in the world, and for so many of us that time is full of injustice and hardship, loneliness, sadness, toil, or, if nothing else, at least inanity. If by making something and putting it out there for people to see, we can help someone feel a little less alone, make their time seem a little more fulfilling or even just fun, it's hard to for me to see what else could be a better use of your time.

I can't remember now if it was before or after the end of high school. Juliette and I went to the swimming hole at the end of my street with two friends. At first I just sat on the edge of the chalk shelf and let my feet dangle in the water, while the others went straight in. The water was always chilly there, and the trees and the hillside never let any sunlight down to warm us. The other boy—also named Mike—started talking about shrinkage. He was one of those rare few back then, back before "geek chic" was a thing, who could enthusiastically love obscure movies and made his own stop-motion videos and always had a pop culture reference at his lips, and yet he was still cool, authentically cool. Much cooler than I was.

"Shrinkage factor 15!" he exclaimed.

"You have a scale?" I asked. "Like, a measurement? What does 15 mean?"

"Dude, I just made it up right now because it was funny."

"Oh." Right. Duh.

Juliette's friend, a girl who lived around the corner from me, glided through the water scooping up clumps of algae in her hands and flicking it at us playfully. "Gross!" one of us shouted.

"It's just pond yuck," she said matter-of-factly. "It's fun to squish it."

I don't remember when I actually got in, but at some point I must have decided that hanging off to the side looked worse than taking my shirt off in front of two beautiful girls and a guy from the swim team. I imagine that other kids were just as insecure back then as I was, but I didn't know it then. Though, I guess they didn't know it about me, either.

Cold water, shrinkage, pond yuck, insecurity. That's what I remember. It was thirteen years before I came back to the swimming hole, but by then the river had moved and the rock was naked under the sky. Somewhere else along the river, kids are still flirting and playing and feeling weird, but not right there anymore.

(In case it's not clear from the title, I'm going to talk about pornography and sex work in this post. As such, it may not be appropriate for all readers or all reading environments.)

Recently, a friend of mine from high school posted a link to his Facebook feed to an essay from a Duke University freshman talking about her experience as a pornographic actress, and the negative reaction she received when her classmates found out about it. I bring this up because in the piece, the woman defends her sex work on feminist grounds, and this touches on some issues I've been struggling with for the past few years.

Now, before I say anything else, I just want to make it clear that it is not my intention here to say that women should or shouldn't do porn, that porn should or shouldn't exist, or, in general, that my thoughts on the matter ought to be important to anyone but myself. I recognize that while being a man does not disqualify me from holding opinions about feminist issues, it is not my place to say what feminism ought to mean to a woman—nor to anyone else, for that matter. All I'm trying to do here is ask some questions, to try to help me identify my own biases and figure out my own beliefs.

In the course of her article, the Duke student in question expressed a number of opinions, but the passage that has stuck in my mind is this one:

One of the facts Internet commenters have gotten very wrong is accusing me of participating in "rape fantasy porn." This is a horrifying accusation, but I absolutely understand where people are coming from. The site in question that I shot for is a rough sex website. That is how I perceived it at the time. I was not coerced or harmed in any way during the filming of the scene. Everything I did was consensual. I also stand by and defend the right of adult performers to engage in rough sex porn.

Everyone has their kinks and we should not shame anyone for enjoying something that is perfectly legal and consensual for all parties involved.

Again, just to be clear, it's not my intention to criticize this woman for either her sex work or the thoughts she expressed in her writing. This passage just happens to highlight a particular dichotomy within feminist thinking that I've been trying to reconcile, and that is basically the dichotomy between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism and how the two camps view pornography—and, by extension, many other aspects of female sexuality and the female image.

Broadly speaking—and this is likely broad to the point of inutility—radical feminism tends to see pornography as exploitative and oppressive to women, whereas sex-positive feminism tends to see it as potentially empowering, and to see attempts to stigmatize or criminalize pornography and sex work as being oppressive to women. The problem for me in trying to reconcile these two schools of thought is that both offer convincing arguments. Radical feminists argue that by explicitly depicting women as sex objects, pornography and sex work marginalize women, and reinforce and encourage patriarchal attitudes. Sex-positive feminists argue that stigmatizing pornography and sex work reinforces Victorian double-standards about female vs. male sexuality, and that women should be allowed to make their own choices about their sexuality and careers. And both of those arguments make sense to me.

It seems to me that ultimately the difference between the two camps boils down to the degree to which a person ought to be responsible for how his or her actions are perceived by other people.

In passage I quoted above, the woman talks about "rough sex porn." For those of you who are unclear what that might mean, "rough sex" pornography typically depicts sex between a physically aggressive man and a passive or submissive woman. The world of pornography is wide and varied, so there are, of course, plenty of other configurations, but by and large, this is what we're talking about. It's distinct from "rape fantasy porn" in that it's usually clear that the acts depicted are mutually consensual—though in some cases it's more vague—but nevertheless the woman takes a lot of what might otherwise be called abuse: she might be slapped, choked, gagged, spit on, physically restrained, or verbally abused, among other things. Little to no attention is paid to the woman's sexual satisfaction; she is typically only there to be used by the man for his own satisfaction.

Now, whether or not it is degrading for a woman to want to be spit on or choked during sex is not something I feel comfortable passing judgment on. It's not the sort of thing that I would want to participate in, but all I can really say is that it's none of my business what two consenting adults do in private. And insofar as the actors in a porn film are consenting adults, I agree that they should be able to choose to engage in those activities.

Where it becomes problematic for me is that pornography is not merely an act between the people being filmed, but also a product that will be used by other people, and one that depicts human sexuality and relationships in a particular way. Regardless of what the real relationship between the actors may be, there is a power dynamic being portrayed in the film, and that is going to be seen and understood by the viewers. Verbal abuse, physical violence, and spitting are actions that exist in the context of our society at large. They have existing connotations. All of those things have happened to me in my life (in a non-sexual context) and they were all manifestations of prejudice and exercises of power. I'm not saying that it is impossible for these actions to have other meanings for some people, but I think that it's naive to think that they will not be interpreted as degrading and abusive to most viewers, or, indeed, that a desire to degrade and abuse women is not the primary attraction to this type of pornography. (I have no data to support this assertion, and I recognize that I may simply be projecting my own biases, but I don't believe that's the case.) From the perspective of radical feminism, this type of pornography is bad because it encourages men to objectify and abuse women. In fact, its very existence may work to normalize that behavior—in essence saying, "See? You're not weird for wanting this."

But from the perspective of sex-positive feminism, the radical feminist argument is essentially victim-blaming. It is not a woman's responsibility to act in such a way that men will treat her (and other women) as a person, it is a man's responsibility to treat a woman like a person no matter how she looks, dresses, or expresses her sexuality. By putting that burden on the sex worker, all that's really being accomplished is taking more freedom away from women.

As far as I can tell, neither side is wrong. It is a man's responsibility to treat women like people, no matter what. But from a practical standpoint, that kind of porn does encourage anti-woman behavior.

Further complicating things is the fact that in the passage above, the woman draws a distinction between "rough sex porn," which is legal and consensual, and "rape fantasy porn," which is horrifying. But if we are truly to claim that pornography shouldn't be blamed for the attitudes of the men who watch it, and that everyone has their kinks, then why shouldn't "rape fantasies" be OK? Conversely, if we are to say that it is bad to fantasize about raping a woman, then why should it be acceptable to fantasize about slapping a woman and spitting on her?

It's difficult for me to separate my own biases—and, admittedly, my own squeamishness about the alt sex scene—from legitimate concerns about the objectification of women. I am deeply uncomfortable with pornography in general, and particularly with porn that depicts this sort of treatment, but I also can't deny that the sex-positive argument has some legitimate points, which leaves me with an unreconcilable feeling of ambivalence.

As I said, I'm here to have my assumptions challenged and my biases exposed, so if you find a flaw in my reasoning, please leave a comment and let me know. I can't promise that I will come away agreeing with you completely, but I will do my very best to keep an open mind and weigh your argument without prejudgment.