Sex in the RV Campground? - Night 3

Night 3*
There is a rumor… I don’t know if it’s true… that there is a lot of extracurricular sex going on in RV campgrounds. I will not disclose who I heard this from, but let’s just say it’s a reliable enough source that I feel comfortable including the rumor in a blog post that is constrained by no significant legal or ethical standards of accuracy. Apparently, an upside-down pineapple is the signal.

Seems to me there’s a real opportunity here to create a camping hook-up app called “Wanderlust” and bring this sexual signaling into the 21st Century. It might almost be worth it to get up early in the morning to watch the golf cart rides-of-shame.

Fig. A: Fancy a breakfast sausage?

I’ve also heard (again, second-hand) that, when grocery shopping, placing a pineapple upside-down in your cart signals a similar openness of spirit. I do not know how all this changes how one should receive a guest showing up at a holiday party with a pineapple upside-down cake.

In any case, after the storm and the cheeseburger, I drove back to St. George Island State Park and my campsite. The cold weather hadn’t set in yet, so I pulled out a beach chair, speaker, wine and a book. Straight across the gravel road was the bathroom, so there was lots of foot traffic.

It’s not until I’m off by myself that I begin to wonder whether my compulsion to talk to other people is a sign of my need to connect with humans or of my need to not be left alone with myself. I quickly grew bored of reading and wondered how I might go about making acquaintances in this campground - JUST acquaintances - who want to sit around a fire and drink.

I walked a loop around the small campground to see if any opportunities for fireside chatting came up, and none did. No one even asked me to have sex, although I admit it was too dark to see if any pineapples were out.

Once I got back to the campsite, I went to refill my cup and realized the wine bottle was empty. I pulled out the spare (never travel without a full spare in the car), and realized I’d made two mistakes: 1. I’d bought a bottle of wine without a screw top (very unlike me); and, 2. I did not bring a corkscrew.

I am so much a wine aficionado that I base my purchase decisions on how long it will take me to get to the wine. This is 100% true. If I can save 32 seconds by just screwing off the top, that is the wine I will buy (as long as it also is under $12 and in a 1.5 liter bottle).

Fig. B: This one is literally a figure!

So here I was, with a corked bottle of wine, no corkscrew, and an empty cup. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so went around the back of the Pilot with the wine bottle, mostly out of sight of the bathroom foot traffic, and pulled out a Phillips head screwdriver. I braced the bottle on the back bumper and began stabbing the top of my Yellowtail Cabernet Sauvignon repeatedly.

I know what you are thinking - no, I didn’t not drive that screwdriver through my hand (somehow). After a few seconds the tool broke through the cork, but I was still stabbing and now wine was shooting up and out.

So to recap: There’s a guy in the campsite by the bathroom stabbing something behind his car and red liquid is spurting out all over.

Fig. D: Why would a guy stabbing something behind this car seem suspicious?

It was only the next morning that it dawned on me what that must have looked like to passersby.

Bottle open and sweatshirt stained with the crimson evidence of my crimes, I sat back down in my chair, next to the road. I was trying to watch the moon rise, but the clouds were covering it, so actually all I was doing is sitting in front of the bathroom in what looked like a bloodstained sweatshirt. I wondered if this might impact my campground influencer rating.

Despite my aspirations for traveling and seeing the world around me, a trip like this is a challenge for me. I’ve learned that, after a little bit on my own, I like to get a dose of being around others.

This goes double for being away from Stacy. I love to go out to our dinky little sailboat down on the Rappahannock River and spend a few days, but even by the first night I’m feeling like I wish I was back home with Stacy. It’s something of an anxious attachment trait, and I have to work not to fall into it.

So, in addition to learning how to enjoy the journey rather than just rushing to the destination, a goal of a trip like this is to exercise my “see ya’ later, I’m going to do stuff” muscle, which is good for me and good for our marriage.

One of my favorite books is “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran. About relationships, he wrote:
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”

Fig. E: I have no idea how to make images smaller in these posts.


I’m sure there’s some sort of high-level Zen method or psychological jujitsu move that is more effective, but sometimes it feels like the only way I can move forward as a human is by wrestling my default thinking or emotions to the ground, then dashing by them through a doorway toward a better me. That’s what this trip is, in part. A dash toward a better me.

And a reminder to always carry a full spare AND a corkscrew.


* Moment of Truthiness: I’m already back from my walkabout. In fact, it occurred LAST year about this time. I was going to post about it after the trip, but I sort of ran out of steam. So now I’m going to pretend I’m posting about my walkabout real-time, just like a reality show pretends to be reality.

Take the whole trip! I’ll even cover the gas!

TravelChuckpineapples, upside down pineapples, camping2 Comments