Being Desmond Hume

(Tortured Scotsman)

The most epic show ever on your television screen was the seven season run of Lost.  I watched it voraciously, and I bought more than one copy of the box set when it was released.  One for a gift, and one for me.

(Box o'treasures)

As grand as the show was, I realized while I've been re-watching it, that the most touching and most compelling storyline of the show is that of Desmond Hume and his search for his love, Penny.  More than that, it's a story about a guy who constantly tries to get it right.  Kind of like a modern Charlie Brown.

Only Desmond finally gets the satisfaction of succeeding.  He gets to kick Charlie Brown's football that is perpetually snatched away at the last second.

 
Don't fret...this isn't a blog about some show you didn't watch that you know next to nothing about.  This isn't really, REALLY about Lost.  There's a metaphor in here somewhere.
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Desmond's story...

Desmond is the guy who could never get his shit together.  And I totally identify with the guy.

He is a lost soul who joins the monastery and is the most devout Monk in training that they've ever had there.  And verily on the last day of his Monk training, a man shows up and beats Desmond because Desmond had broken a girl's heart before he came to be a monk.  It's then that the brotherhood decides that he's not really "Monk material".  And it's literally when he's walking out the door, that he meets Penny.

(Calling anyone "Brutha" became cool after this show)

Desmond wants to feel worthy of Penny.  Desmond is poor.  Penny is one of the richest women in the world.  So, Desmond leaves her to join the Scottish ARMY. 


Still Penny stays with him.  Again and again, Desmond keeps running away...and again and again, Penny takes him back. 

It's only when Desmond leaves Penny to win an around-the-world race to prove to Penny's Father that he is man enough to be Penny's Husband, that Penny seems to give up on him.


So, Desmond leaves for the race.  His boat crashes on the island where Lost takes place.  And it's here that Desmond sits for years in the underground bunker pushing the button every 108 minutes to keep the world from ending. 

(Push that button, Des!)

It's here that we learn that the only thing keeping Desmond looking forward to another day is that picture of himself and Penny that they took mere minutes before they broke up.  Mere minutes before he was never to see her again.
 
That picture kept him alive.  Years and years passed and all he had to keep him moving forward was that picture of a future he hoped would still be there for him if he could ever get off the island. 

(The picture that was his anchor...his constant)

He is found by the survivors of Oceanic Flight 816.  He becomes one of them in their quest to get rescued.  And that's where we return to our Harvey Walbanger blog...Desmond is on the island, wanting to get off that rock only to see Penny again.
************Penny has been using her finances all along and has been searching the world for Desmond for all the years that Desmond's boat has been missing at sea.  She's longed for him as he's held out hope that she was out there looking for him.

The moment comes where a "rescue boat" is there for them.  At the last second of a man's life, you learn that the boat isn't Penny's boat, as Desmond had believed.  In fact, as Charlie scribbled on his hand, "Not Pennys Boat".

(Bye Charlie!)

So, Desmond knows that the boat he's been waiting years and years for and he thinks is finally there isn't Penny's.  And this scene tore at me and bothered me and was hard to watch.  It's as if he was Charlie Brown another time...the football got yanked away yet again.

As the story unfolds, Desmond and the Oceanic 6 (the six "survivors" that returned to civilization) end up making it back to Penny's boat.  They get rescued.  And this is where Desmond leaves the series.


(Reunited and it feels so good!)

The survivors go back to fame and notoriety.  But not Desmond.  He's never heard from again.  Neither his character nor Penny are ever mentioned again.
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And it's here that I get romantic.  It's here I get to editorialize.  And it's here where all the metaphors start and all the show recap ends. 

After years and years of getting it wrong, Desmond gets it right.  Finally.


After years of being called "coward" and "weak" and "scared", he finally stands true and succeeds.  I identify so much with him because I've been called all of those. 

Either recently or in the distant.

(That's me...Coward McGee!)

The thing that I keep coming back to is that he knew that the first boat that showed up was the wrong boat.  "Not Pennys Boat". 

What made me think...what made me cringe and cry was my similarities to the character Desmond.  And then realizing, like Desmond...sometimes it's the boats you don't get on that save you as much as the boats you do get on. 

Desmond didn't buy into the salvation of the wrong boat...he waited for Penny's boat. 

And it saved his ass.

Here's to Desmond.  And here's to waiting and to being devout and to being patient for Penny's boat. 

Whatever that may be to you.

And more than that...here's to being thankful that you didn't get on the wrong boat.  



I know I am.

(Penny's Boat...may it be this beautiful for you when it arrives!)

Messing with Sasquatch

This is, by far, the most interesting (for me) story I've ever written.  Because (1), it's just funny as hell.  And (2), it happens to be totally true.  The BMX brothers in question have access to this here...let them call me a liar if any aspect of this night when I was a fifteen year old is untrue.  And now...here's the story of when I messed with Sasquatch.
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When you're a fifteen year old boy and you're a virgin, you're supposed to be dying to lose you virginity to the first thing that will stand still long enough to let you do that deed.  You're supposed to be dying for it, ready to pounce on anything that will sit still long enough for you to hump it.  Begging for it.  Like some dog.

(Every high school boy...ever!)

Only it doesn't always go that way.  Sometimes you can be scared of “it.”  At least that's what I found.
 
You see, I was into BMX when I was fifteen, and that was just not cool.  And every Friday and Saturday night was spent with my friend Bob and Chris at Bob's house.  We would go riding our bikes every night till the wee hours of the morn and basically enjoy Beavis and Butthead type of jokes.  It was a great time to be Harvey.  But I found out pretty quickly, girls aren't really into guys on BMX bikes.

(BMX Dirt-bag)

On this one particular Friday night at the end of a sultry summer after school had started back, we wandered into a nearby townhouse complex on our BMX bikes like some adolescent Hells Angels.  And it was here that I met Heidi. 

And the two biggest defining features about Heidi were that she had a huge mouth full of metal braces that dominated her face, and that she was tall. 


Amazonian tall.  She was 6 feet of fifteen year old woman/girl.  She went to my school and was ostracized by boys there because she was beautifully ugly.

And I was, at the time, a whopping 5'6" of pudgy boy-meat.

Somehow, Heidi had already acquired the body of a sexually primed woman.  But she wasn't attractive.  She was sexual, but not sexy.  She was the type of girl that could give a boy a boner, but the boy would still swear she wasn't attractive.

(That's a Sasquatch fo'sho on the left!)

Heidi had been left at home this Friday night as her mom went out to hit the bars.  She was replete in a short miniskirt, white bobby socks and some kind of tight shirt. 

My friends realized that I was trying to scam on Heidi pretty easily, and they took off after an hour of messing up her townhouse and eating all the food in the place.

Eventually, Heidi and I managed to plop down in the grass out front of her mom's townhouse.  And we started to go at it.  Like only two fifteen year old kids can.

Nothing is as awkward as a young white guy fumbling around with his budding sexual urges.  And this case wasn't that different.  It was “unsexy” defined.

(About a sexy as our kissing was)

Eventually, my greedy hands found their way to the contents of her short skirt.  Bear in mind, I had touched a girl's crotch exactly once before this night.

My boyhood groping went straight for the gold.  I poked at that "thing" like a man poking at the Blob with a stick in the old movies. 

Given the difference in our development and our sizes, my index finger was wholly swallowed by the gaping maw of her crotch.  Quite a change from my first finger exploration experience.
 
So, I went for the poky-poke with two fingers.  Still, there was no noticeable friction or resistance from her female parts.

I graduated to three fingers.  And these were side by side fingers, mind you.  And it was no problem for her gargantuan womanly frame.
 
I started to panic.

Three fingers side by side is quite girthy.  Quite rotund.  Hold up three fingers right now side-by-side and check. 

(Three...the hard way!)
 

And I knew, wholeheartedly, that my virgin penis would pose no impact on this crater I was toying with.

My panic turned to terror.

I kept having thoughts of my father's coffee spoon clanking off the sides of his morning coffee cup I heard every morning.

(Hear that spoon clanking away!?  That's my pride and dignity)

And I didn't want this girl to be my first piece of ass, and to spread rumors about me that I was the small dicked BMX loser.

So, I had a decision to make.

I decided I had to go.  I had to leave right then.  I jumped up and got on my BMX bike and pedaled my ass out of her complex.  I looked back once and saw only her two bobby socked feet running after me, and I heard her wailing out in that deep, Vera DeMilo, banshee voice, "Harvey, I want you...!" as she tried to keep up with me.

(Run, Harvey...RUN!)
 

I made the mistake of telling my bros about this later that night.  They ragged me to no end and made me feel horrible.  They ragged me because she was so not hot.  They ragged me because I ran away from a girl willing to have sex with me.

But I have to say...that difference in size...if you saw a Chihuahua having sex with a Great Dane, wouldn't you find that shit kind of amusing?

(Look at little fella go!)
 

And that's why I ran after finger banging Sasquatch.