PENETRATED

(5) Heat Without GRAVITY; Why chemistry often impersonates intimacy.

(Inspired by Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall)

"If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in popular songs it would come nearer the truth." ~ S.P.

Growing up back in the 80s and 90s, we learned fast...ok, yes, mostly the wrong things, but we learned them with the kind of certainty only teenagers possess. Especially when it came to desire. It didn't arrive politely. It rocked you like a fucking hurricane! Immediate and convincing and Impossible to question because it moved too fast to examine.

Nothing captured it quite like Friday night football. The lights. The noise. The illusion that the whole world existed inside one stadium.

To be a teenage girl during that time, was to live a beautiful contradiction. You could show up looking like the wholesome version of yourself...fitted cheer outfit, pleated skirt, turtleneck shell, Keds, school colors, a bright practiced smile for the parents in the stands...and still spend the evening calculating exactly how far you could push the rules without technically getting caught.

Looking back, it was the ultimate dichotomy...the pristine, naive good-girl
aesthetic, edged with just enough danger to make it interesting. Wearing those innocent colors while moving with a quiet, deliberate confidence, was its own kind of mischief. The uniform said wholesome; the execution left room for interpretation. A pause held half a beat too long, a turn that lingered just enough to be noticed, a rhythm that felt just a little too knowing. Yes, the routines were choreographed, but what slipped through the performance wasn’t. We understood the effect without naming it. It wasn’t rebellion. It was suggestion. And suggestion, we learned early, traveled further

Under those buzzing bright lights, everything felt amplified. The crowd was a blur of school colors and teenage hormones. The speakers rattled with whatever grunge or hip-hop anthem happened to be ruling the night, while out on the field the energy kept building. Cheering, jumping, moving, being watched, watching. That peculiar adolescent alchemy where adrenaline and attraction get mixed together and suddenly everything feels profound.

It wasn't profound.
It was Friday night.
But try telling THAT to a teenager.

I remember carrying that restless energy straight out of the stadium and into the cool autumn air, where the rules thinned and the night opened up even more. Post game had me venturing past the bleachers, through the parking lot, and eventually onto the tailgate of my boyfriend’s pickup truck, the energy still humming under my skin. It felt like something more. It always did.

And my sophomore-year boyfriend was the perfect blueprint for sin...

Strikingly beautiful.

Entirely impractical.

And dumber than a box of rocks.

He had the bone structure of a Greek god and the emotional maturity of a goldfish.

But that long dark hair, those electric blue eyes and a body capable of making rational thought disappear somewhere between the football field and the parking lot. What more can I say?

It lasted about a month. I mean...of course it did. There wasn't much substance there beyond spectacular genetics and raging hormones. But here's the thing:

It was honest.
Unfiltered.
Unexamined.
Undeniable.

We weren't pretending we were building a future. We were just BURNING 🔥
We knew it, and that was just fine.

There was something almost refreshing about that kind of desire. Nobody had to manufacture chemistry. Nobody had to optimize a profile, calculate response times, or decide whether waiting three hours to answer a text would create sufficient intrigue. You wanted someone. They wanted you. You found a place where nobody's parents were looking, problem solved. It was gloriously inefficient, and completely real. That should have been where it stayed. A phase. A lesson. Something we eventually outgrew.

Instead...we refined it.

Fast-forward through film cameras, dial-up tones and the slow death of actually having to wait for something, and we've somehow managed to put that same adolescent rush inside a rectangle we carry around in our hands. The stadium became a screen. The bleachers became a dating app. The Friday-night adrenaline became a notification. And modern lust got very, very good at pretending to be intimacy.

It starts innocently enough. A photograph. A clever bio. A message that lands at exactly the right moment.
Then...
DING!!!
There it is.
That little electric jolt. The digital version of somebody catching your eye across a crowded stadium. Except now you can do it from your couch in sweatpants.

Progress.

The first spark still feels remarkably familiar. Fast, sharp, a little reckless. You haven't touched the person. You may not have even heard their voice yet. But suddenly you're checking your phone again. And again.
And maybe smiling at a screen like an idiot.
The late-night texting begins. A little flirting. A little vulnerability. A joke that somehow becomes an inside joke. Then another message. And another. Soon you're constructing an entire emotional atmosphere with someone you've never actually shared a room with. It's almost romantic...almost.

The old rebellion of sneaking out past curfew, is now secretly checking notifications at 2 a.m. That old thrill of wondering whether someone would kiss you behind the bleachers. Now it's wondering what that little typing bubble is going to say.
Same nervous system. Different delivery system.

Only now we're older, theoretically 'wiser' and supposedly better equipped to recognize what we're feeling...supposedly.

We’ve all had those reckless seasons where we mistake the spark for the fire, letting sheer intensity masquerade as intimacy. Without friction or history, chemistry is weightless. The defenses drop, and we fall for an imagined person. A wonderfully cooperative ghost who never leaves wet towels on the floor or ruins the script. They stay effortlessly, brilliantly interesting. Until reality checks in.

Maybe that's why the modern dating loop can feel so strangely empty despite being so full. More people. More conversations. More choices. More sparks. More opportunities to feel something. And somehow, everything stays provisional, which means...

less weight.
Smoother.
Interchangeable.
Fast closeness.
Easy intensity.
Clean exits.

Some of us built walls so high nothing real could reach us. Others abandoned the walls entirely and called it freedom. But no walls doesn't necessarily create intimacy, it just creates easy access.

Immediate.
Unfiltered.
And often unearned.

"Young Lust” never pretended otherwise. It wasn't trying to be profound. It was lust. Beautiful, stupid, physical, temporary lust. A voice. A body. A moment. Then absence.

At times, we are still those ridiculous teenagers under the stadium lights, waiting for something to happen. Only now we're carrying the stadium around in our pockets, or tuning in on a desktop at home. Chemistry has never been easier to manufacture. Or easier to mistake for something real.

These days, you can skip the actual human encounter entirely and fall halfway in love with a text thread. Which, when you think about it, is both impressive and deeply ridiculous.

And, don't get me wrong, I’ve engaged in my fair share of high-octane digital filthy banter with the best of them. It can be highly entertaining if done right. But, let's be real; for all his glorious stupidity, at least back then my beautiful clueless distraction was standing right in front of me...

He was real.

He was there.

He was also, unfortunately, still dumber than a box of rocks.

But I'll give the kid this:

He had gravity.

"I need a dirty man"

M.