GOING ALL THE WAY
I remember the day I became a man.
I thought my head was going to explode. As the pleasure swept over my body and I started to lose control I knew this was what I had been put on earth to do.
I could feel my toes curl, pressing downward automatically, as I held on tighter and the two of us bucked and bounced, plowing almost, deeper with each thrust, so loud I'm sure the neighbors heard, but so engrossing I didn't care.
It's different with different cultures.
In primitive societies, I think they have to kill a lion. For ancient Native Americans, they often had to do vision quests, or cut off some guy's hair, or castrate a buffalo on the run.
For others, it is the mastering of long poems or sacred texts or the completion of difficult pilgrimages.
But I'm an American and we define our manhood in a more earthy context.
Either you've done it or you haven't.
And I remember the first time I did it.
It was up on top of a hill, down in the Southern Tier, where the Appalachians string off as far as you can see and there is neither pavement nor electricity.
It was about 2 in the afternoon.
The leaves had turned and the hillsides were as beautiful as the event, and it seemed right that something so natural should take place in nature, in an old hay field, where the fertility of the soil called out to my own.
And she was beautiful.
All in red, so smooth and sleek, with the biggest headlights I'd ever seen. A good front end and a solid backside and kind of a purr that turned to a roar.
And I did it with her.
I became a man.
I goosed her a bit, I put it in, I felt her respond and I held on tight.
It was my first time.
And it was so vigorous that it took my breath away and I felt a little dazed, carried away in it all.
"This is awesome," I said to my son, in the next seat over, watching closely every move I made.
He became a man later the same day.
In the same truck.
That's how it is with four-wheel drive. It changes your life. It transforms you.
It makes you a man.
One minute you're in two-wheel high. Like a woman. Driving along, incomplete.
Then the road ends. But your wanderlust doesn't. So you stop on the edge and breath deep and push the "four-wheel low" button and feel the gears kick in.
It's about to happen.
The forbidden fruit is about to be yours.
She jerks as you give her the gas, and rolls off unstoppable across the countryside, out where the deer walk and the tractors toil.
Around things at first, tentatively, then bolder and more aggressive, going over them soon, weeds and ant hills and anything else foolish enough to get in the way of man and machine.
Through mud and up hills and between trees and any damn place you please.
"We're in four-wheel drive now," you nonchalantly tell the person beside you, as he holds on, desperately trying not to knock his head against the window or doorframe as you bounce and bob over nature's contours.
I remember the day I became a man.
And I remember yesterday, when my 12-year-old daughter took her first turn behind the wheel. Peering up over the hood in four-wheel low.
Five-miles-an-hour across an old alfalfa field under a gray autumn sky, laughing hysterically at the fun of it, trying to remember which pedal was the brake and which was the gas.
Thanks goodness her mom doesn't read this column.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2006
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