1145: Sure Fire | Andrew Rihn
"Sure Fire"
Andrew Rihn
Back in 1997, when I was in 7th grade,
my white suburban school brought in
two speakers to give us budding teens
a talk about abstinence (the only 100%,
sure fire method). They used time from art class,
the most expendable period from
the administration’s point of view,
to schedule them. (Later I would read
that in college, art majors have the most sex.)
I remember the man announced that he,
at thirty-one, was a virgin and proud of it.
Some of the class laughed, a mixture
of bravado and nervousness. Most of us
were virgins too, then. But at thirteen,
we banked everything on the awkward
day that we lost that title. The woman skirted
the issue of her virginity, extolled the virtue
of adopting a second one, which left us, so eager
to lose our first, baffled. I don’t remember
what they talked about, probably marriage
and rhythm and the supposed ineffectiveness
of condoms. They gave us pens with little slogans:
Put out the fire of your sexual desire.
The pens were shaped like matches:
the length of golf pencils but thinner than usual
and with a large, red cap. I
am very serious about this:
they looked exactly like little penises.
And we, already long-time members of the Pen15 Club,
carried them in our pockets as jokes.
We took them out whenever we needed to break-up
the standardized monotony of class with a laugh.
We learned the pens were not intelligently designed;
our teenage heat was too much for them.
In our pockets, the ink would burst
from the ends, staining our pants,
ruining our shorts to the world.
Andrew Rihn
Back in 1997, when I was in 7th grade,
my white suburban school brought in
two speakers to give us budding teens
a talk about abstinence (the only 100%,
sure fire method). They used time from art class,
the most expendable period from
the administration’s point of view,
to schedule them. (Later I would read
that in college, art majors have the most sex.)
I remember the man announced that he,
at thirty-one, was a virgin and proud of it.
Some of the class laughed, a mixture
of bravado and nervousness. Most of us
were virgins too, then. But at thirteen,
we banked everything on the awkward
day that we lost that title. The woman skirted
the issue of her virginity, extolled the virtue
of adopting a second one, which left us, so eager
to lose our first, baffled. I don’t remember
what they talked about, probably marriage
and rhythm and the supposed ineffectiveness
of condoms. They gave us pens with little slogans:
Put out the fire of your sexual desire.
The pens were shaped like matches:
the length of golf pencils but thinner than usual
and with a large, red cap. I
am very serious about this:
they looked exactly like little penises.
And we, already long-time members of the Pen15 Club,
carried them in our pockets as jokes.
We took them out whenever we needed to break-up
the standardized monotony of class with a laugh.
We learned the pens were not intelligently designed;
our teenage heat was too much for them.
In our pockets, the ink would burst
from the ends, staining our pants,
ruining our shorts to the world.