For those of you who don’t know me, I sailed in college. I’m talking about hardcore, varsity sailing (excuse the oxymoron). No, I’m not particularly proud of this fact. For example, when I’m shooting the breeze with someone new and the topic of what sports I played comes up, I always say soccer and lacrosse. But when asked if I played either in college my default response is: “No, I wasn’t good enough to play D1. But I did, uh, sail.” Depending on that person’s familiarity with the sport I either get: “How can someone be better than someone else at sailing? Do you pull the rope harder?” or “Let’s change the subject to something that won’t make me want to leave this conversation.” Don’t get me wrong: I don’t regret sailing, nor do I hate the sport. Rather, it’s just kind of a boring subject to talk about, especially with non-sailors.
But the sailing team itself - a tight-knit group of raging, incestuous boys and girls – was the source of many worthwhile stories, many of which have been atrophying in my memory bank for years. Here’s one from the vault.
The Gay Porno Card
It was junior year and the team again decided to spend spring break training in Charleston, S.C. My buddy Diskant and I arrived at one of the two houses first and began scouring the place for the best bedroom. In one of the rooms, we came upon a deck of playing cards. Upon closer inspection we learned that these weren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill playing cards; these were porno playing cards that featured naked studs from the 1970’s, all of whom were showcasing fantastic erections. As I flipped through the cards I stumbled upon one that caught my attention. It was this wiry guy, with brown hair and mustache, and he was sitting spread-eagle with a huge, simmering boner in right hand. What caught my attention was that his resemblance to our mutual friend, Wakelin, was simply uncanny. I turned to Diskant and said, “Dude, this looks
exactly like Wakelin. Even the face.”
I loved that joke and so when we got to the docks the next day, I couldn’t resist showing everyone my special card and saying, “Even the face!” Most people got it, but some couldn’t get over the prominent, tube-like protrusion running along the ventral side of the guy’s rod. This sparked an engrossing debate:
What the heck is that thing? Is it a vein? An artery? Something really cool that I don’t even know about? Everyone had a theory, though I refuted most with some razor-sharp logic: “All I know is that when you stab it with a paper clip, it usually doesn’t bleed.” I recall my coach looking at me like: “What the heck is wrong with you?” By the end of the week the youngsters on the team, performing the traditional, often hilarious “freshman skit”, explained to us laymen that the anatomy in question was in fact a third chamber, called the corpus spongiosum. So that settled that.
A few weeks later I was back on campus, playing pong and looking to hookup with girls not on the sailing team. (Please note that I had nothing against hooking up with girls on the team; in fact, I had taken most of them down already. It’s just that by this point in my college career I was trying to expand my horizons and get with girls whose hands were not completely calloused and whose legs were not completely covered with bruises. Yet.) So this one night I was in the basement and it was late, and I hit it off with this crazy, somewhat attractive girl who was surprisingly into me (probably because she was blackedout.com and I was the only guy left in the basement). We went back to the Gym Triple to mess around and after a disappointing and uneventful hookup, she said she had to go. I woke up in the morning and to my dismay, I discovered she had taken my jeans, including my wallet. Being the crazy, obnoxious Dartmouth chick that she was, she made me go to her off-campus dorm to retrieve my stuff, which she had borrowed without my consent.
When I got to her place, I was greeted by four stoned girls ensconced on some couches, and they were laughing at me like I was the funniest thing in the world. I awkwardly snatched my pants and left the place in a hurry. On the way out I looked through my wallet to see if anything was missing, at which point I immediately realized that my reverse walk-of-shame wasn’t the reason for their laughter; in the clear plastic sleeve where I usually keep my drivers license was my gay porno card. And it looked exactly like Wakelin.
