The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: Dance, Hipster, Dance! Plus: our latest NewsCrush — and why one army brat is breaking up with Army Wives.
PERSONAL ESSAYS
posted 9/3/2003
Today, I'm surprised that I didn't
spontaneously explode before losing my virginity. Before I had any kind
of handle on what sex actually was, before I knew anything beyond the fact that
it was called "humping" by those in the know and involved moving up and down
while on top of another naked person, before I had any inkling that it might
even involve my genitals, I wanted it. I wanted it bad. I wanted it so bad that
in the summer of 1985, at seven-and-a-half years old, I dug a hole in my neighbor's
back yard.
promotion
The people next door were an eccentric family of three Mormons. Ward, the patriarch, was an amateur beekeeper who listened to The Coasters on A.M. radio and would occasionally have "spells" which led him into our house searching for his parents. His wife, Julie, was a round woman who spent much of her time on the phone with a grown son from her previous marriage; he always seemed to be getting out of jail. Their son Luke, oddly the only redhead in the family, was pasty and freckled with a permanent Kool-Aid mustache. He was my age, though a grade behind me. Because he was also the only other boy on my block, we were friends by default.
Filled with energy and imagination and offered few constructive outlets for the two, we spent most summer days on mischievous nonsense — trying to build a time machine from rusty junk found in my garage, melting action figures on a recently used barbecue grill. So it wasn't out of the ordinary that one day we just started digging in his backyard. Using a garden tool that I can't identify and haven't seen since, we were able to reach pretty deep into the ground despite our seven-year-old statures, so the hole grew.
After we dug for a few days, the hole became substantial. One of us decided that there had to be a logical end to our digging, some sort of goal we were trying to reach. Cue hormones.
"A sex pit!"
We continued digging for several days, never stopping to consider such minor logistical issues as who we would have sex with.
I don't know which of us thought of it or who named it. I do know that we agreed that it was the finest idea we'd encountered in our short lives: an underground lair where we could take girls and hump. We would furnish this sex pit with couches and beds, and these couches and beds would be made of dirt. We'd also build bookshelves of dirt where we could store Playboys smuggled from my father's stash.
With this promise, we were encouraged to continue digging for several days, never stopping to consider such minor logistical issues as who we would have sex with. We eagerly dug and dug until one day, without warning, we were told by Luke's mother to fill the pit back in. Unable to argue that without the giant hole in the yard we wouldn't be able to lose our virginities a decade early, we begrudgingly complied. The sex pit, our brilliant and magnificent dream, would forever remain just that.
A few years later, Luke and his parents moved to Arizona,
but not before he was caught trying to convince a younger neighborhood girl to
show
him her vagina. At that point, I was told never to play with him again. Looking
back, I use that to comfort me. It's proof in my mind that he was the
twisted
mastermind,
and I was merely a horny accomplice. Not that there's anything inherently devious
about being a curious kid, but I can't help but imagine that while I've grown
up to have a mostly normal, fairly satisfying sex life, Luke is somewhere right now, struggling
to find a woman who is understanding of the fact that he can only come if they
fuck in the hole in his backyard. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
You are Matthew
Tobey . You are an editor at Haypenny.com. You are married and enjoy writing about yourself in the second person.
