Demons in My Britches

I can't help but use Greg's iconic name to title this post, since he wrote it in high school and the name sums up the feeling of those years. I will try to use a little tact and restraint when writing this post, but the topic at hand is a risque yet meaningful one: sexual adolescence and the fucked-up mind of a teenage boy.

Having always found the sex drive somewhat painful and distracting in life in general, the peak years of the agony were from grades 6 to 10, I'd say. Although I'd already had some crushes prior to this (see here), middle school was when the insatiable snake known as sexual lust began to rear its head. I remember Carl Athey in sixth grade gym telling me about porn Web sites for the first time. Of course back in that day (pre-high-speed Internet, which still hasn't really come to Waterford) it was pictures only, but it was a very exciting time. God knows how many girls I fantasized about in our grade, but it was a lot. It was really just frustrating, because I think for the vast majority of us, we had completely no luck or even hope with girls back then. I know I didn't. There was a long time in my life where I didn't think I would ever have a girlfriend, certainly not have sex. I don't know how many people had it in middle school, but I would say compared to the rest of the world, the numbers in Loudoun County were probably pretty low (I'm sure if you look at a graph with income per capita it would show that the richer areas have people losing their virginities at a later date, and as we've mentioned before, you don't get much richer than Loudoun).

Anyways, this continued for the first few years of high school. As I commented on Matt's post, Greg and I would come up with lists of the hottest girls in our grade/school--a complex process that took place over a week or two and involved much thought and planning. On the whole, I felt we had a very accurate list, although unfortunately I do not have it anymore. Lisa Gillenwater and Kristy Clark were definitely the top two picks on both of our lists, though. They were icons.

Looking back on girls I liked back in the day, it seems obvious that I really only liked girls based on their looks and then constructed some elaborate backstory in my head about what their personality was really like. This had no basis in reality. I would romanticize them, I'm sure knowing full well that I would never, ever date them or anything, and imagine that they were something they were not. Probably the same thing happened on girls' part everywhere. Thought unintentional, it was basically a complete objectification of girls' looks, which still happens to a degree and probably still happens completely with a lot of guys my age.

I think what changed junior year is that I actually really started talking to girls--and not just ones I lusted over. I became more comfortable with the opposite sex. The first girl I would consider a non-lustful crush in high school was Brandi Shackleford. We both ran cross country back when we were sophomores, and were both the fastest in our grades. Looking back this was a poor choice on my part, but at least we actually talked and hung out some. Ultimately I feel like she was just fucking with me, but those were the early years for me. After that, I heard many a story involving her, but I cannot say whether these are true or false, since we never had much contact after sophomore year. It seems like she changed a lot, and obviously did not run cross country anymore. This almost seems like a shame to me, since she had some pretty genuine talent and ran a 20:00 5K sophomore year from my memory. But then again, who cares about those things but me?

Then there was my infamous crush on Johanna Faroe. Now some people who were there at the time will make a lot bigger deal out of this than it was. But in any case, I liked her probably because she talked with me and we had a good rapport (Jake smiles somewhere in heaven). Looking back, I was probably a self-esteem boost for her, but oh well, she's not a bad person and we still talk some. This was one of your quintessential dating-but-not-doing-anything relationships. I mean, what the fuck? At this point in my life it seems ridiculous to spend so much time with a girl and not even hook up and for me not to get a relationship out of it. But I was young and inexperienced with girls, so I went along with what I could get (this is not to put her down, but I didn't exactly push harder for anything more). For a very long time (and still), I was definitely sexually insecure and had some kind of underlying fear of girls/relationships/my sex drive, etc. But that is a twisted psychological story that cannot be delved into easily in this post/on Demons in My Britches (except through popular demand!). So that is probably another reason why I didn't care that much about pushing things farther physically.

Anyways, around this time I also started liking Alex Vlk, who became my first real girlfriend (Lizzie Christy holds the awesome title of first girlfriend in general, and I hope to fuck I'm spelling her name right here or she will kill me). I remember when I started hanging out with Alex more and more (which felt very natural with her for some reason), Johanna got upset and asked me out, which was strange, but I guess was just her way of trying to get me back even though she probably didn't really like me very seriously in that way. Anyways, I eventually lost my virginity to Alex and dated her for a long time, and what a long, strange trip that was, mostly because of me and my bouts of self-destruction which can be read about in other parts of the blog!

Sorry for this long, rambling, pointless post. But there it is. Demons in my fucking britches.

--Edward