The summer of 1993 was also the summer of the dinosaur. Dinosaur T-shirts, dinosaur beach blankets, dinosaur key chains, dinosaur toys, dinosaur book marks, dinosaur night lights, dinosaur Big Gulps, dinosaur candy, dinosaur Big Macs, dinosaur maxi pads.
Even the entire DC universe was battling dinosaurs from outer space in the summer long Bloodlines crossover.
It was the summer of Cliffhanger, the first R-rated movie I can remember seeing in the theater. It was the summer of The Fugitive and Dennis the Menace. It was the summer of mega bombs, Last Action Hero and Super Mario Brothers. It was the summer of Robin Hood: Men in Tights. It was the summer when everyone pretended to be outraged by anti-Japanese sentiments in Rising Sun.
It was also the summer of Jurassic Park.
You couldn't walk two blocks in public without being confronted with a parade of Jurassic Park licensed merchandise and advertising.
It was the last summer that my parents would be together. It was my last summer of childhood before entering puberty and headed to the 9th circle of hell otherwise known as middle school.
I had spent the majority of the summer of 1993 traveling with my parents cross country from Sante Fe, New Mexico to San Francisco, California.
I spent three long weeks sitting in the back of rental car, trying to drown out my parents' incessant arguing and yelling by blasting Use Your Illusion through the headphones of my Sony Walkman cassette player.
Just outside my passenger side window, a majestic landscape of American monuments passed me by unnoticed and unappreciated as I kept my nose buried in my Gameboy playing Alien 3.
We had set out to see America, experience its beauty, witness the awe of its many sights, and marvel at its grandeur.
Intstead, my parents fought over the costs of our meals, argued about the price of the motels we stayed in, debated about our frivolous spending on tacky souvenirs hand made by native Americans who set up shop along the side of the road, and screamed about the expenses of a guided tour through Death Valley.
Indifferent and impartial at the prospects of seeing major landmarks such as the Grand Caynon, the Hoover Dam, and The Golden Gate Bridge, the only thing that I held any anticipation for, the only thing that mattered to my ten year old mind, was seeing Jurassic Park.
I wanted to skip the vacation. I wanted to time travel to the future, and be back home at my local mall multiplex so I that could finally watch Jurassic Park.
My mother, father, and I had driven over a thousand miles to end our journey in my mother's childhood home, a former gold mining town in southern California.
She hadn't been back since she was in her tweens when her mother ran off with her and her siblings to the east coast to escape their father.
We came to visit my great grandmother, a woman who would live to be 104. We came to visit and meet aunts,uncles, and cousins I never knew I had.
The summer of 1993 was a big turning point in not just my life, but my entire family's.
It was the summer of 1993 that would finally stake the divide that would separate my parents.
It was the summer of 1993 when Jurassic Park came out.
It was the summer of 1993 when I masturbated and ejaculated for the first time.
Twenty two years later, and I still remember that first orgasm.
In the summer of 1993, I was ten years old and I had a toy pen with a built in motor that made the whole thing vibrate so intensely that it was nearly impossible to write or draw with. I guess the idea was to make a game out of using the pen while it shook so hard that it was pretty much futile to use.
In the summer of 1993, I decided to stick that pen in my underwear. It was an experiment. I had no concept of sex or masturbation yet. It was pure youthful naivete. I was looking for a simple cause and effect reaction. What would happen if I put this vibrating pen in my underwear?
It was the summer of 1993 when Steven Speilburg released Jurassic Park, a film he had paid 1.5 million dollars for the rights for in 1990, a full year before it was published. 65 million dollars was spent on its aggressive marketing campaign. The film would go on to earn over 900 millon dollars world wide, and has now earned over 1 billion through its additional re-releases.
It was the summer of 1993 when the vibrating pen caused a powerful sensation that shot through my entire body as my penis shot rope after rope of thick murky white goo across the bathroom floor, changing my life forever thereafter. It was a sensation beyond words and description.
While Michael Crichton was initially hired to adapt his own novel for the film, it was David Koepp who was brought in for the final drafts. David would later write The Shadow, The Trigger Effect, Panic Room, Spider Man, and Premium Rush.
My first orgasm was painful. It was pleasureable. It was revelatory.
It was also terrifying. I was scared. I thought I was dying. I thought that I had done something very very wrong. I thought that I was being punished for my curiousity. I was being punished for playing with myself.
Maybe this is why the French phrase for describing an orgasm is La Petite Mort, the little death.
In that first moment, as I held my hard pre teen penis as it leaked out a then unknown substance like a running faucet, I wanted to run out into the other room and find my mother. I wanted to find help. I needed to go to hospital. I was sick. My penis was bleeding, but it wasn't blood.
But when the sensation had finally settled, when the ejaculation finally stopped, I knew that I was all right. I was better than all right, I knew that I had just discovered an incredible thing just like the first time I saw Jurassic Park. It was something that I wanted to experience again, and again, and again.
I would never experience another orgasm like that in the future, but it's never stopped me from trying.
The first time I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters, I felt as though I had experienced something that I had never experienced before. Just like the first time I masturbated. When the film ended, I didn't leave the theater. I just remained in my seat, and sat there for the rest of the day, watching Jurassic Park three more times in a row.
Just like the first time I masturbated.
Forget Jurassic Park, forget dinosaurs.
Fuck soccer. Fuck baseball. Fuck dodgeball. Fuck the pool. Fuck 16bit Sega Gensis. Fuck the skating rink. Fuck Last Action Hero, Dennis the Menace, and Rookie of the Year. The only Willy I wanted to free was my own.
I had become obsessed.
In the summer of 1993, all day, every day, all I could think about was when I would have a chance to be left alone again with that magical wonderful vibrating pen.
It didn't take long before I wore that pen out. Replacing the batteries no longer worked. The motor was dead.
Like a dope fiend, I was desperate to get my fix, to find another way to replicate what that pen was able to do. There was a lot of trial and error before I was able to teach myself how to masturbate with my hands properly. And like any good tradesman who perfects his craft, I was proud of what I had accomplished.
In the summer of 1993, Jurassic Park changed summer tentpole cinema forever, the same way Jaws and Star Wars had before it.
In the summer of 1993, there was also no easily accessible consumer level internet yet. In the summer of 1993, there was no easy access to good fapping material for a ten year old.
Porn had to be acquired the hard way. You had to search for the stores with newsstands that actually carried skin rags. That was a rare thing to come by in the suburbs. And then you had to have the confidence and the gumption to walk over to that rack at the back of the store and grab one of those shrink wrapped issues of Leg Show and then walk back over to the counter and hope that the miserable looking, middle aged, vaguely ethnic looking man by the register was disinterested enough to sell it to you. Or maybe you learned to hide the porn mags in the middle of large newspapers and just pay for those. The New York
Times always worked best.
When you're ten years old, dinosaurs represent the ultimate mystery. They embody every notion you have of your imagination. They are monsters that existed. They are magic that's also scientific and real.
When you're ten years old, sex represents the ultimate mystery, it embodies every notion of your imagination. Vaginas exist, they're magic, but also scientific and real.
When you're ten years old, finding a single discarded page of Penthouse in the woods was like finding hidden treasure. Fuck gold, the Goonies would have been happier with a chest full of Hustlers.
Kids today will never know the thrill of stumbling across pornography in their youth.
Hustler was the holy grail, too graphic to even be erotic to a ten year old mind. The almost medical portraits of open vaginas bearing women's cervixes was something akin to what you might see in National Geographic or read about in an H.P. Lovecraft story. All of it so abstract, bordering on the otherworldly, that jerking off to hardcore porn was like jerking off to an astrological constellation map.
And those torn out pictorials from Penthouse that you found at 10, you would carry those sticky, cum stained pieces of paper folded up in your pocket for weeks. Just knowing they were there, even tucked away sight unseen, would give you a hedonistic thrill.
It was the summer of 1993 when my parents finally decided that I was old enough to be dropped off at the theater alone to see a film with friends. Of course, the film that we saw was Jurassic Park. We saw it four weeks in a row.
It was the summer 1993 when my mother caught me masturbating for the first time.
We had gone to the Jersey Shore for the weekend. We were staying with other family members who had rented a beach house for the week.
I had a stack Jurassic Park coloring books and picture books.
I also found another book on sea life nestled within the shelves of the summer rental home owner's personal library in the living room. Inside of that book was a single photograph of a topless woman deep sea diving in the coral reefs in the Pacific Coast near Costa Rica. Jurassic Park was also filmed in the Pacific Coast near Costa Rica.
That's all it took in the summer of 1993, just a single picture of a pair of titties belonging to woman wearing a snorkel, underwater, and surrounded by a school of fish.
I must have masturbated to that it ten times in the span of two days.
I claimed to have a stomach ache that entire weekend. Every time my family was headed to the beach, or making their way towards the boardwalk, I would tell them that I'd follow behind in a few minutes. I had an upset stomach, and needed more time in the bathroom.
The moment everyone had left and the place was clear, I was running to that book, flipping through the pages, trying to find those boobs so I could rub a quick one out.
It was the summer of 1993, and I was sitting on the living room couch of a summer rental house, frantically slapping my ten year old penis to a photo of a woman swimming when my mother had unexpectedly returned for the sunglasses that she had forgotten.
She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. The emabarassment was punishment enough. It didn't stop me though.
My mother walked in on me masturbating many more times after that in middle school and high school. She would always find, and throw out the collection of porno magazines I had acquired.
In 1993, Batman: The Animated Series was my favorite cartoon. I would also masturbate a lot.
In 1993, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. was my favorite live action show. I would also masturbate a lot.
In 1993, I thought Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was stupid, but I would think about the Pink and Yellow power rangers while masturbating a lot
In 1993, Saved by the Bell was canceled but I would still think about Kelly and Jessie while masturbating a lot .
In 1993, I would sometimes watch Blossom and think about the lead character's ditzy best friend, Six while masturbating a lot.
In the fall of 1993, The X-Files premiered on Fox Television, and I would watch it every Friday night.
I would also masturbate a lot.
It's now 2015 and Jurassic World is opening in theaters nationwide this Friday and I still masturbate, a lot.