The island was in the middle of a lake, with high brush and small trees. There were no inhabitants on the island, not an bird, not an animal, nothing at all. Sweet paradise and sweeter freedom.
Ownership of the island had passed through many hands back then, from real estate agent to real estate agent without any passion or reverence. Nobody could find a modern purpose for it. It wasn’t suitable for a nuclear plant, or for any other sort of pollution riddled modern industry. It was a small, pure, untouched kingdom. It’s monetary value had slowly sunk over time, to a point where it is more than affordable to a hard-working man.
Five years before the day that the island would come into the hands of four men. Four men who appreciated the island’s beauty, four boys sat in a brick home in a suburban neighborhood. They sat lost in the hustle and bustle of expectation, boys so irrelevant, it‘s a surprise the sun gave them shadows at all. It was a world where they counted for nothing but a small statistic. The curse of insignificance. That’s my curse.
I grew up on early 90’s television. The kind with twisted humor subliminally inserted into its half-hour to an hour of airtime. Doug, Hey Arnold, shows like that. Sometimes these days I still talk about it, and I reminisce. Back to days of innocence, of childish perversion, of nose picking and drinking on the beach. I think back, and I grow sad.
Everybody remembers the day that life became dull. The day when things you once enjoyed, suddenly became trivial and unimportant. You realize that those shows you grew up on have been replaced by educational shows that remind you more of Rubix cubes then television. Shows turning kids into slaves to an educational system. Indentured servants to the dreaded SAT.
My last night was not any different. I had gone off to a town close-by, to hang out at this girl’s house. I knew her faintly from around town, somebody unimportant, hot but unimportant. We drank with the people I had always drank with, the girls from around town. A couple of other faces had showed up, but I didn’t mind some of them. They were ok in my opinion.
The night was much like any teenage party, beer pong, random hook ups, and an overall orgy-like atmosphere. One would think that this kind of night would make your life interesting, but I just couldn’t see that. I had a fun night, I got drunk, I slept. I tried to seduce to no avail, and I tried to help others seduce, again to no avail. I was young.
That night we slept there, me and two friends. I had never slept at a girl’s house before, (oh the adventure in first-times). In fact, thinking back, this was my last good night. My last Truly good night. I am understanding now why there are so many people who do drugs.
Fuck, I really wanted to fuck that girl, she was a real hot one. There were plenty of girls there but I always had a hankering for dirty, sinful sex with her. The kind that you wake up after and say, “I hope she isn’t in pain.” I digress.
So the next day I awoke early, and a friend and I watched some retarded show on Disney (if only TV had been like it was when I was a child). The girls cleaned up the house, and it was very casual. I had to leave, because my parents didn’t even know I was gone, so I called a taxi and took my leave reluctantly. I think I left my childhood in that cab.
Since that night I’ve accomplished a lot of things that I dreamed of as a kid. I had sex, I got a job, I been high and drunk, and none of it feels good anymore. It was kind of like, back when I was a kid, denying my innocence was a way of being free. Back then when I thought I was trapped by responsibility, back then when I was so ignorant. When I didn’t see how fucking free I actually was.
Looking ahead, I see nothing but a downward slope. Adulthood brings weight with it. It brings responsibility, and pressure. You no longer have an excuse to be stupid, and you no longer need to sneak out to the beach to drink, or run from cops. What little freedom you had, that little shred of childhood you had, will be gone. That island is my dream, its my last hope.
There I can play music, I can grow my own food, I don’t need to work at all, I can make my own rules. There I won’t answer to anyone, and I won’t feel like everything I do is under a microscope. The world will shrink again, like when I was a kid, and everything was possible. Somewhere in the mountains, or an island, or even a damn desert, I don’t care. I need my island to be free.



What was the day that you lost your innocence? Where would you go to get it back?