What a funny thing.

Everybody looks at pictures. Erotic pictures. I do.

I shouldn't be ashamed, no one should. They're just photos.

It's funny, really. For people to be so ashamed of their needs, their natural needs. Many say we're commiting sins if we do. The ones with overpriced crosses around their skinny little necks tell us that we can't be sin free if we act our on urges. We can't ever see the light of God if we look at a tit or two. But everyone does. Why would God give us those urges if he never wanted us to act on them?

Shame is such an odd thing. The feeling of it just sits in your stomach. It makes your face red, it makes you feel like you're a guilty man. I'm not a guilty man.

I've haved my pleasures. Not common ones, I suppose. I've been told its wrong my whole life, to act out a sexual pleasure alone. Hell, I believed it. Not anymore, of course. I'm like everyone else. I go to work, come home to my family, and I look at pictures. I fullfill my needs. No one should feel shame. Sometimes I do. I guess that's the cost of being a happy man.

It's my own fault really, no one knows my urges. No one knows about the box under my me and my wife's bed. Except my wife. She thinks it's funny, to have Playboys in this day and age. It's not the Playboys. I don't care about a tit or two. It's the pictures I hide in them. That's where the shame lies. The red faces, my secret humilation.

I didn't take those pictures, I don't have the guts to anything like that. Not with my own kids around. My shame would just explode. I didn't take them, I swear. They're just pictures. Maybe it's not what is in those photos, maybe it's the fact that I have to hide it in an 80s Playboy. But I shouldn't be ashamed, these are my own urges. I haven't hurt anybody. There shouldn't be shame in my pleasure.

Sometimes I get scared, though.

That one day my kids will be scrambling around the house, looking under my bed.

That they'll pull out the Playboy.

That they'll see little Jimmy down the street in them. With his own little face, his own shame sitting in his bare stomach.

My face is red.

My shame sits.

I was born with these urges. I shouldn't be with shame.

Everybody looks at pictures.

I do.