Requiem for a Paper Bag — Seth Rogen
March 31st, 2009I WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD. Sure, I’d seen a Playboy before, and even Playboy had blown my mind. But I’d never seen anything hardcore — to any degree — before this particular day.
For some strange reason, my mom had signed me up to do a play in Chinatown, and I’d arrived early to the rehearsal. While I was waiting, I decided to take a little stroll around the Yun Sat-sen Gardens, which is this amazing Asian garden in Vancouver — it’s actually in a pretty dangerous neighborhood, but I didn’t know that at eleven. So I was walking around, killing time, when I noticed a magazine lying mashed and crumpled on the ground. I moved closer and saw body parts — naked body parts. Holy shit! Even from one tiny glimpse, I could tell it was more explicit than anything I’d ever seen in my life.
I kept walking — literally, I didn’t even slow my pace. But when I reached the end of the block, something drew me back. I turned and walked by the magazine again, just to get one more glance. And then again. I began circling the thing like a shark — stealing little peeks at the pages on the ground. It had been raining all week so the magazine wasn’t just crumpled, it was soaking wet, too. I walked by it a fourth time and then, trying to act casual, bent down and snatched it up. It was just a big wet sopping mess; I shoved the whole thing in my jacket pocket. I didn’t look at it, just shoved it in there and went to my play rehearsal. Every ten or twenty minutes throughout the rehearsal, I sneaked over to my jacket to make sure that the hot, wet clump was still inside.
That night I went home and spread the magazine carefully on a towel to dry out. Then I stared. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It all seemed much more surgical than I’d ever imagined it would be. I mean, I saw the insides of body parts I had never even seen the outside of before. I was shocked at how explicit it was. “They’re just showing people having sex!” At that age sex is such an unattainable Holy Grail. To see it nonchalantly plastered all over this magazine was unbelievable to me. I used to look at these pages constantly. I don’t even think I jacked off at that point — I would go to my room and just stare.
You may not believe this, but I still look at porno from time to time. As you know, they have ads towards the back of porno magazines for phone-sex lines and shit like that. That original porno mag was so waterlogged, the ad pages in the back were, for the most part, the only ones undamaged enough to see. Well, I held onto that magazine for a very long time. Even after I got real porno — movies and whatnot — I still held onto that original find. I’m sure at some point my mom found the thing and threw it away. But believe me when I tell you this: there are literally the same exact ads in the back of magazines today as the ones in that soggy porno magazine I found fifteen years ago. Trust me, I’m an expert.
yawn.
March 31, 2009 at 8:33 pmlee said:
my first experience with porn was at the age of 11. my grandparents had just finished building their dreamhouse and i was assigned to help clean out the trailer they had stayed in on the property. i was told not to throw away any of the magazines, because they contained articles that my grandparents needed to plan their vacations.
behind the stack of sierra club and sunset magazines, i found the ones that i’m sure my grandfather found essential: lots of playboys, penthouses and hustlers. i saw parts of the female body i had never seen before, given my limited knowledge of my blossoming womanhood (which was severely hindered by the fact we had only small hand mirrors in my house!). i had recently only gotten my first bra, saddened by the fact that my breasts were too large for the cute flatsy-patsy bra with the dainty rose bud in the middle, but required an actual b-cup brassiere* which required adjusting of straps and the crossing of my heart.
within those glossy pages were the parts of the female anatomy that you would never glimpse casually, such as when my mother reached for her robe. after all, my mother was not a member of the naked cirque de soliel.
so, armed with this fresh knowledge, i did what any 11 year old girl would do: ripped out the nudie photos and set them on fire in a metal can out in the woods. i made sure that the next time my grandfather wanted to look at the articles, he would get just that: the unillustrated articles.
some of the body parts i saw that day in the magazines i still have not seen on my own body. faced with the good, the bad and the ugly, i will say, i did grow a fine pair of ta-tas. i only wonder how nicely formed they would have been if i had been allowed to wear a training bra, rather than let them grow wild.
*i had to look up the spelling. a brasserie, my first spelling choice, is a small french cafe doubling as a restaurant: probably a nice place but not quite the word i was look for in this instance.
March 31, 2009 at 9:07 pmMark said:
I had a very similar experience to Seth I’d like to quickly share.
I was about 6 or 7 years old walking to elementary school like any other morning except this particular morning, there were a dozen torn out pages of a porn mag blowing around on the street and sidewalk only a block from the school. I picked up 2 or 3 pages and immediately realized the possible dangers and pleasures of keeping them.
I folded them into a small square and stashed them deep in a bush (pardon me) to retrieve on the way home from school that day. I knew that getting caught with the forbidden pages would be the end of me, but I knew that once I got them home safely, I could unlock the secrets of naked girls and sex.
After school, I excavated my stash as casually as I could and snuck it home. It was only naked chicks, no sex shown, but I will never forget my first views of breasts displayed so proudly.
I don’t remember how long I kept the pictures, but I remember eventually destroying them before my mom found them. It was an early start to an adolescent search for more, but nothing will beat that first find.
March 31, 2009 at 9:56 pmamy beth said:
dude is a douche.
March 31, 2009 at 10:47 pmSalty Purl said:
That was beautiful.
March 31, 2009 at 11:04 pmHelen Miller said:
“…hilarious and lurid tale”? This was the link that drew me in to read this on the blog. Sorry. It failed to deliver. This story was stupid and lame. Or maybe you just edited it down to the nothing and posted it as appeared in the email you sent around. I love found - but this was a piece of nothing spectacular. Hardly hilarious. Whatever.
March 31, 2009 at 11:41 pmIlona said:
Haha. This is pretty funny. I remember when I was little and I’d see pieces of magazines like that on the ground and I’d always be like.. WTF IS THAT?!
April 1, 2009 at 1:32 amRyan Bunch said:
Man, this brings me back to my own youth. My older brother and his friends would steal porn magazines from my dad and their dad’s, then go out in the woods where we lived and stash them in our forts. They’d get all rained on and shit, and clump together like that - hot, steaming messes of pulp. I’d go in the woods and find these things all packed with dirt and leaves, heavy as a stone tab, and flip the pages in big chunks. But, I was mesmerized, even though the girls looked like zombies a lot of the time because of the way the pages would deteriorate. Between our dad’s, we had a nice collection of Playboy, Hustler, Gallery, et al. I was young then, not sure how old, but, I know that I knew more about the physical part of having sex, complete with visuals, than any other third grader in my conservative rural elementary school.Thanks for the vivid memories! I can practically smell those rotting pages now.
April 1, 2009 at 9:53 ammlm said:
How cool! Does this mean that Seth Rogen frequents “Found”? I’m a BIG fan!
I wonder: if the ads are the same in today’s porn, does that mean that the people working at said advertised places are the same? Ew.
daniel said:
doesn’t everyone have a crazy story about the first porns they ever found? this one is expertly written and vividly detailed. I love how seth talks about circling the mag on the ground.
April 1, 2009 at 12:23 pmGabe said:
I find your movies Seth truly enjoyable, nevertheless, and although I can relate your story with my adolescence, I advice you stay on cinema.
If in need of a vacation rental, give me a call. Thanks.
April 1, 2009 at 4:02 pmEli said:
uh, Seth, you got the Father of Modern China’s name wrong: It’s Dr. Sun Yat-sen.
April 1, 2009 at 4:34 pmbob said:
Seth - cool story. don’t think you are the only one. what do you think polynesian porn does to a nine-year old? yes. that’s why i am what i am today. sorry - 2day. where do we meet? not the top of any building - been done.
-you know
Chrome Toaster said:
Yeah- Seth frequents Found.. his posting name’s Farmer in the Dell.
I like the passage about circling the soggy magazine like a shark.
I can’t wait to get my hands on this book, Davy!
April 1, 2009 at 11:08 pmLindsey said:
What a touching tale. Almost brings a tear to my eye.
April 2, 2009 at 7:03 amjoe volcano said:
“yawn,” indeed.
the email link i received in promo of the book described this blog posting as a “hilariously lurid tale.” was this an ironic statement? this we barely even funny. i’m not saying it was a bad post, but there was absolutely nothing hilarious about this post.
April 3, 2009 at 6:08 pmMichelle said:
I watched lesbian porn when I was in the third grade. No shit.
April 3, 2009 at 6:52 pmBlack said:
Being a “star” doesn’t really make your stories any more spectacular. People may be able to relate, but this isn’t any more interesting to me than if some no-name jerkwad sent it in.
April 4, 2009 at 1:41 pmBitty on the West Side said:
Boring. I barely believe Seth Rogen actually wrote this. Le yawn.
April 6, 2009 at 6:30 pmstampy said:
i loved it
amy beth, why would you call him a douche? if you think that perversion towards sexual topics is bad then why insult someone by calling him a douche.
gabe, i ADVISE you learn english before you start being all high and mighty
April 8, 2009 at 1:31 amKara said:
I saw a Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalog when i was 10. Back then i thought that was porn. it was seelling men’s speedos that looked like a wrapped christmas present only when you pulled the bow, their junk popped out. scandalous!
April 14, 2009 at 2:12 pmTang said:
There is some real assholes replying to this.
April 15, 2009 at 5:12 pmLarry said:
Do you realize that when kids who are growing up today tell the same story, they’ll all start out, “I was browsing the Internet on an unfiltered account….” How sad is that?
April 20, 2009 at 5:43 pmJuan said:
amazing find Indeed
Seth Rogen is a beast comedy writer.
April 22, 2009 at 1:34 amLeave a comment
