I don’t know how many of you have seen Grease, but if your adolescence was anything like mine (full of watching movies and not much else), you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say “Summer Lovin’.” If Danny and Sandy taught us anything — aside from the fact that skin-tight spandex and leather jackets are totally badass — it was that summer is the time for steamy trysts. It’s the time for rolling around in the sand and making short-lived connections and memories that will provide your 80-year-old self with the naughty tingle.
Like everything else I learned in my adolescence (such as a fondness for jelly bracelets), I’ve since learned that the belief that Summer Lovin’ exists is yet another passing phase. Don’t get me wrong: summer is the perfect time for getting sweaty with people you barely know, but very rarely do your trysts go as planned.
At the end of April you found yourself suddenly free as a bird, all wide eyes and big dreams, looking towards summer like it was the answer to all your problems. You thought you’d have free time, travel, hippie out at a music fest and have super-liberated sex under the stars.
But that was not the case, was it? In my experience, your summer sex life will have taken one of four turns:
1. Prolific Hump
You humped like a deranged jackrabbit crossed with a sex-starved criminal on parole. Hopping from bar to bar, fest to fest, beach to beach, you developed the disturbed delusion that you are some kind of sex god and regaled your friends and colleagues with stories of wicked times. Come September you will feel the urge to spend the month living like a guilt-ridden nun, praying to whatever deity will listen that your STI test comes back clean.
2. Hometown Hump
You humped the same person (or people) you’ve humped every summer since high school. This usually happens when you return to your hometown and are resigned to earning minimum wage in a coffee shop or retail job and living with your parents. If you were lucky, this person had their own house. If not, you probably showered every night in order to wash the feeling of dirty teenager off you. When you weren’t humping you tried to evade the disappointed glares coming from your parents and wondered what it is, exactly, you’re doing with your life. Come September you will thank God you’re back in classes while entertaining the delusion that your Bachelor of Arts will lead you somewhere other than a shitty coffee shop job.
3. Monogamous Hump
You spent your summer in a relationship. This is both perhaps the smartest and stupidest decision you could have made because it is the only way you may have actually encountered a fairytale-like instance of summer lovin’. You may have met that tall drink of water that both your mind and genitals had trouble resisting, but they were not your significant other. So you gave into temptation and had some super hot sex but were unable to enjoy it because you were so guilt-ridden, or you withstood temptation and may now be saddled with regret for the rest of your life. Either way, your summer sucked and September has resulted in at least a small amount of depression. Monogamy is for the winter, people! It’s cold and lonely, and you need someone to listen to your complaints about the weather.
4. non-existent Hump
You spent the summer pining for someone who was nowhere near you. This is stupid, but also sometimes inevitable. Scantily clad hotties trotted out in front of you like there was a pool party at the Playboy mansion and you were Hugh himself, but you didn’t notice. You locked your genitals away in a crystal cloister and played the cloudy-headed nimrod. Eventually you realized what you were doing (or your friend dutifully informed you of your idiocy) and were filled with self-loathing. Chances are you were on vacation someplace warm where they think Canadians are super adorable. But you held those legs together like a Jonas Brother waiting for his wedding day. Come September you’ll still feel like an idiot, but there’s always the possibility that you will finally try to hump the person on the pedestal. But since you haven’t had any naked validation in four months, you’re probably in trouble.
Now, I know that I’ve painted a pretty dismal picture, but it was still summer and you still (probably) got laid. It may not have been the best, but it was better than the rest of the year. So here’s to a new school year. Good luck with those doctor visits.
