First Time I Got Bananas

From smoking a banana. The era was Beach Week. The day was mid-week. The air was hot. And people wanted to smoke, bananas. So our good friend, we'll call him Cameroon, he was our great spiritual guide into this new world (well at least for me, I know J1 had smoked before, and I think J2 might have (names concealed for various internet privacy/courtesy reasons)). Cam was also there when I first tried bananas but didn't actually get bananas. This time, he said, it was sure to happen.

We found ourselves a space in the bathroom-damn all those who had to pee or worse that night for some hour(s) - and Cam took the helm on the toilet while the rest of us gathered around like disciples of the great herb-- er banana. I think I was standing in the shower, J1 was sitting on the tub, and J2 was sitting on the ground. Matt had also entered himself into the running for a bit in the beginning but he soon lost the will, and he scrambled off into the house for more booze and drunken romancing of the night.

Meanwhile, Cameroon was already lighting up the banana, and passing out the inaugural hits. I remember it taking some time to take effect, maybe years, but I kept at it, because damn it I wanted to get bananas. As per typical in big trips/boozing sessions involving many a people and species of people there tends to be drama and problems and life lessons dished out like hotcakes, and the only reasonable response to such things is to continue to lay ruin to yourselves and perceptions of life. I had various things mess up in the earlier days of the beach week, but those would probably be best left to later posts, the point being, it was time to get bananas.

I had the oft-experienced "I'm not high yet / I don't feel anything yet / it's not working" as many a naive youth does when venturing into contraband only to be struck across the face with its effects ten-fold in an instant, as it catches up to your body. My initial feeling was this, the bathroom was in space as a capsule, and we were in it. There was only space surrounding the small bathroom cube were in, as in cosmic space. It was an intense high for sure. We spent a good while in there, or at least it seemed that way against the warped time-space continuum we now occupied. The main conversation that occurred between the passing was J2 giving us the rundown on his relationship at the time. I'm not sure how we got there, but he was going deep into it, while jumped around on the shower curtain rod, J1 sat smiling I'm sure, and Cam sort of stared out into the depths of space. At a certain point towards the end of one particular anecdote involving this girl, there was a bit of a pause, and Cam suddenly chimes in, "Wait, what are you talking about?"

J1 and I burst out laughing, like humor was suddenly woven into our bones controlling our bodies when it so chose. I also realized that most everything I laughed at was just plain mean, but I couldn't stop it. Everyone was funny, and everyone was dumb, and I was the dumbest of all, but none of it mattered. Before we knew it, we were apparently finishing up and preparing to exit the great bathroom. Cam sat up from his Buddha/Jabba the Hut pose in the middle of the room, and we got up with him. He cleaned up the remains and went to the door, but before he opened it he turned to us with a big delirious smile.

"Today is the first day of the rest of your lives, boys!" He started. "You're never gonna be able to look at your mothers the same way! Nothing will be the same! You're minds will be altered from here on out, and although the man might be staring you down, you'll be laughing in his face! This is where we break free and learn to live! Now, go! Go! Go!"

And he waved us out the door, each of us bolting out with big dumb smiles slapped across our faces as we fell into an abyss of images, scenery, and record-skipping time lapses. J1 and I quickly paced into the living room looking around at the faces then back at each other. We were already starting to crack. We couldn't take trying to pretend to be normal, even if everyone around us was trashed. We kept walking onto the other bathroom on the other side of the house. We were safe, and when we tried to talk about, we just started laughing, and didn't stop for maybe a good twenty minutes.

The rest of the night went less sequentially as it did in portraits, like when we were back in the living room watching what appeared to be Cameroon and Zachariah Bohemian clash drunkenly. These are large, large young men, and they battled wildly as I stared on in disbelief. Another short portrait was on the way back to the other house where we were staying. We took the back way to avoid my crush of the era so I wouldn't have to interact on bananas (we got word she was headed our way). I was a nervous wreck around her most of the time those days, and being rather paranoid it wasn't going to get any better if we went the normal way. We also spent a good hour or five in one of the bedrooms lying around and just listening to shit happening outside like some female cop yelling at kids. I remember seeing J1 looking like he was depressed and I told him that everything was all right, and that he shouldn't be upset with himself over everything, but he didn't respond. Turns out later, as he told me, that he was simply bananas and didn't hear a word I said, and he was actually rather happy.

The night was capped off with a big and stupid argument with a highly inebriated friend of ours (who'd actually pushed for us to get high earlier that night) about which drug was worse, weed or booze. Then we passed out and forgot ourselves.

first time i saw a porn video

hi all,

im new here, ed invited me. hopefully this post is entertaining enough....

so i must have been in 8th grade (obviously i was a late bloomer) and for some reason was in my mom's room snooping around when i found some vhs tapes (remember those?). so i grabbed a couple and popped them into the vcr. i was crazy 80's porn. i remember being so weirded out. the music was awful. i had never actually seen anyone having sex before. while i was completely appalled by what i was seeing, i was so intrigued, became almost obsessed. i would sneak into my moms room all the time and find ones that i hadnt watched yet. i think was only a phase and didnt last very long, but i will never forget the blonde chick and the black dude doing it in the shower to awful music.

My First Crush(es)

I'm going to include two here--my first real, "adult" (I was in seventh grade!) crush and my first, first crush.

Onto the first ever crush. The location was Waterford Elementary, school of the damned. I do not remember what year this crush started, since its origins come from a time and place very primeval. For those trying to keep a timeline, let's just say second grade. The girl was Aubrey. Now I don't think this was unusual, since it seemed to be pretty much accepted that she was the most attractive girl in our grade. This consensus never changed during our stay in the hallowed halls of Waterford, even when in 5th grade the principal changed to Mr. Vickers and our lives changed forever.

So I doubt I was the only person who had a crush on Aubrey (see: Josh Nesbit, the actual winner of her heart). What really sealed this crush in my memory was the fact that she was my cousin. Not a close cousin, mind you. I don't even know how she is related to me. I asked my dad once before, and it didn't even make sense. But that mark of shame was there for all to see. People like Tim Cotter's dad would always give me shit about this. When it first started, though, I seemed pretty shameless. After all, these were the early years of elementary. I remember writing her love notes and giving her (I'm sure very cheap) gemstones, since gems were my passion at one point. Of course she never seemed particularly down with the idea of liking me back, and instead dated the alpha male of Waterford, Josh Nesbit. I believe him and I even had conversations about our attractions to her, but I mostly forget what they were about. Probably just me being like, "You are so lucky, Josh."

One day I should ask Aubrey about these days, but then again, I'm frightened to death of her now. I think I've talked to her about it before, though, but there is always time for more in-depth analysis. Unless of course you are frightened when a person even messages you. But that's another story for another day and poster (cough Colin).

Okay, so onto what I consider my first "real" crush. My Waterford Elementary crush was pretty one-sided and almost chivalric in its sense of courtly love--I gave Aubrey gifts and expected apparently nothing in return. Oh, that innocence.

The time is seventh grade. Math class. Blue Ridge Middle School. I sat next to and almost immediately became buddies with Erin. What differentiates this crush from my previous one is that our relationship was actually pretty mutual. We were friends. We talked all the time and laughed. I had had this in limited doses in sixth grade, but not to this extent. I got the idea that she actually liked me back, too. I liked Erin because she had a sense of humor and because she wasn't (at this point) the typical bombshell that all the other guys liked (see: Jacque Christy, Aubrey, the Everharts, et. al.). I don't know why, I've just always liked a girl that wasn't hounded over by other guys. I don't want the trophy wife. I want someone special to me in a way that others missed. I'm not sure why this is in terms of deeper psychological reasons.

Anyways, we got along well enough, and talked every night online on AIM, which was a humongous communication tool back then (see here)--I think an even more meaningful equivalent to today's Facebook. At this point I made the mistake that will doom me the rest of my life. I guess she already knew my best friend, Daniel. But I was the one who gave both of them each other's screen names, starting a relationship that would lead to actual dating, surely a step I probably would not have gotten to (although if there was any girl I would've felt comfortable enough with back then, it was definitely her). I got relegated to the position of going on double dates with them in the friend position with another girl I was just friends with. Being a bitter fuck, I tried my best to repay them by making fun of them excessively, but we all know you can't really ever crawl back out of that hole. Moral of the story: Never let any girl you like near Daniel.

--Edward

First Time I Let Go (of Youth Soccer)

One of the worst elements of my favorite sport, soccer, is the penalty kick. There's nothing really good about the kick except for maybe some sort of spaghetti western duel aspect that hypes up an easily tangible, simple, and ultimately suspenseful moment. But that aspect is really only good for those watching, and I don't even like watching PKs. Basically, the shooter is expected to score by all means. This means the goalie is basically fucked unless he pulls off a brilliant stop, but even then that outcome will make the shooter feel like shit because he was supposed to score. Either way, someone's going to feel crappy.

Our team, the Fury - my opus magnum of my career as a soccer player, spanning five years with sometimes two seasons a year in fall and spring through tournaments, trials, and tribulations, the loss of friends, the growing pressure to travel further, to win more, to become better conditioned, better skilled, better mechanized cogs in a monstrosity of a division-climbing machine that inevitably drove itself into the ground winning only one game in its last two seasons finishing off any last urge within me to satisfy some sort of athletic achievment in life - needed a designated penalty kick taker. I was far from the first choice. Being a defender with very little experience touching the ball in the attacking half let alone the 18 yd. box, I held myself back from volunteering or even being noticed during the scan over the team by the coach in his selection. I think we actually had some sort of mini-tournament of PKs to decide who was going to be the one to take the kicks in game. This process, although efficient, logical, and excruciatingly simple on the outside didn't really make sense in the long run when concerning PKs, because the nature of the kick was so variable on the immediate state of mind that even the kid that scored cleanly 50/50 kicks was bound to trip up in game depending on the various outside forces and internal pressures, and that botched kick will be in the most important game of them all.

Either way, I don't think I placed first or second in the mini-tournament of PKs, but I also wasn't that far off from the top, leaving only a couple games where the top few missed kicks, and the coach's gaze inevitably fell on me. And in the first few times I came to kick in game (which happened pretty damn soon after I was picked not to my liking), I got the goals and tried not to think twice about it. These were also some of my first ever goals in my stint on the Fury so it took a lot of effort to downplay these shots, because I knew the second that I thought I had a PK gift, or even thought about it at all for that matter, it would be all over.

It was a home game, which in our warped division meant traveling 40 minutes away instead an hour and 20 minutes + away. Our home field was right beside the man-made pond area of a freshly carved suburban development characteristic of Loudoun's burgeoning wealth. The field itself, because of position depressed into the land, surrounded by a sloping hill on the other three sides opposite the reservoir. This gave us a finely chewed and over-saturated mud plain to play on. The ball skipped and stopped on a dime as it chose, and inevitably someone just ran straight into someone else, the whistle blew, the card was pulled, and the kick was set. I was pulled up from the back for what was to be a momentous kick, not for what it meant to the game, to the shaking parents atop the hill or my fellow teammates and coach sunk in the mud behind me. I approached the ball, trying not to look left or right, showing a little right but knowing I was to pull left, and then I hooked it, hard to the left. I hooked it so far to the left that it wasn't even a question for the baffled goalie, seeing my shot stumble over the ground more than maybe five or ten feet to the left of the goal post. I wasn't even close.

I anticipated the approaching disappointment, shame, and weight of a potentially game-losing miss, the shot hopes of those behind me along with their pitying words and pats on the back. I waited for all the shit to hit me and make me feel like it. But I didn't. I felt nothing of the sort. I think I may have even looked forward to going to McDonald's or some crap food after the game, trying to make the most of what was left of the weekend. I realized I just didn't care. None of it mattered. Perhaps I was years later in this realization than most kids, but then again, I was also years ahead of those that continued on after me into high school, college, adult leagues, coaching their own kids, and preaching sports to be the ultimate life lesson mechanism ever on and on. Fuck that. Sports are fun. You forget that and you're not playing anything.

Firsts: Suggestions

Time will tell how many of these I answer myself - if I can remember any of them, but here are some suggestions of firsts that people could post about:

First...
Sexual encounter: yes that is the cliche Sydney mentioned, but it's still so entertaining, and it can be any of the many, many types of encounters - I'm not sure how gutsy anyone is feeling for a blog post, but we'll see.
Black-out: from drug, injury, act of god, etc.
Epiphany: moment of sheer brilliance/happiness at a realization
Drug experience: to continue to fill out the sex, drugs, rock and roll categories, this would be first time I did (blank).
Time you truly regretted something: I don't know why I'm proposing such an awful thing that people wouldn't write about (including myself), but I like the way it sounds as a title.
Time you quit something: inspiring the generation-wide motto, "I don't care".
Time you won/lost something...: big? worthwhile? good/bad enough to make you shriek?
Time you were truly hurt: heart-broken or got a football in the crouch, or both!
Time you questioned God: pretty self-explanatory
Time you laughed so hard you soiled yourself/caused a major disturbance of some kind
Time you soiled yourself/caused a major disturbance of some kind/something humiliating
Time you had crush on somebody: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

This is really just a pretty standard sampling of generic things that people may or may not have anything worth writing about, but just trying to stir it up a bit, spark some ideas.

First Horror Movie

God damn old folks homes and their eternally buzzing televisions with no one watching them. It must've been a Sunday afternoon because of the type of programming that ended up on the tube that day, as we (my sister and I) waited around for whatever was going on with my parents and my grandparents. I'm sure we were probably just restless and annoying everyone else pretty good and were sent to whatever recreation room or lobby with a TV (I do love that retirement homes have some kind of game room with ping pong or croquet or some puzzles - why aren't these rooms required in every type of building?). Either way, I found myself unsupervised and staring, unflinchingly at the scariest thing I'd ever even possibly imagined that could manifest itself in my head. Fucking Chucky was on TV. For those somehow lucky enough not to know about this bastard, Chucky is a scary-ass doll with flaming red hair that comes to life and kills a shit ton of people and things for no particular reason (I don't recall a plot in that movie or know of one in the other movies, and I refuse to believer there are plots other than what I've described - even if they throw in a Betty White or a bride of Chucky or whatever the shit they tried to pull to keep that monstrosity of a series going).

Anywhom, those images plastered themselves to my head, reeking of evil, paranoia, and hatred of such ideas that dolls could have motivation to take a big ol' knife to everyone, let alone be alive to do it. I'm pretty sure this was the first horror movie I ever saw, because it's the first time I remember being so scared to sleep at night for weeks, maybe months at a time (although I did see some sort of Lifetime movie around the same time in which some woman friend/neighbor/babysitter/relative? torches a family's house with the kids in it - not sure if they survived - but that's just Lifetime for you, not really horror). It seems kind of dumb to be afraid of something you could easily punt, and although this is not as truthful when you're a kid, it still seems scary for dolls that people fawn over and give names and love could be so damn evil. Anyone remember their first horror movie?

The First Time I Killed A Man

The day was long and beautiful, lit with rays, golden like a lantern in the mines of Moria. He was tall and brooding, guarded about his tour in Bosnia. I passed him a couple times as he sat there on the train station benches, reading a romance novel with blind eyes. My hand started to sweat over the screwdriver that was tucked in my pocket, and I counted to fifty. But he got up, his frame reaching up to the sticky fluorescents above, and he sent me a stare of anguish. It appeared he had cancer or a likeness to it. The train shot by us, and I launched myself at him. He caught me by the throat, and I kicked him in the groin. Having lost my sight, I jabbed rapidly at the air as my feet dangled a foot above the platform. Jaws bit my ear off and I stuck the screwdriver in his ear. Twelve minutes passed before the next train came, and I'm just glad there was no one else waiting.

November Topic

Instead of focusing on the possibly last time we'll do things (before the end of the world as we know it), November's topic is focusing on the first time things have been done. From the cliche sexual encounter to the feeling of hearing a really great song for the first time, post your firsts, regardless of importance or significance. I personally just remembered the first time I dipped my Oreos in peanut butter as a child. Glorious.