Of the sexual relationships I have had with men, none of them have extended past the first of August: the unofficial-official death date of the summer fling. What is it about summer that makes me want to just rip a man’s shirt off like a carnal beast, to have my own outerwear shredded to bits like Barbie’s clothes by a demonic five-year-old?
But, it is not only sex. The majority of my hands exploring a man’s body experiences have happened during the ripe, investigative months between May and August. My almost first kiss was the summer after fourth grade, and my actual first DFMO-style kiss was right before starting college.* My first time giving head, my first time getting head. My first time leaving a party with a man and going home with someone from a club have all happened during various summers of my life (all with different “lovers” may I note). There is something in the stuffy summer air — that's not just the plumes from the Canadian wildfires blowing southward — that makes my head giddy about sex in a way that it does not after August 1. Is there something inherent about summer that makes us more sexually explorative?
Yes, inarguably, yes. On three accounts – but I am sure there are more contributors – summer break’s unambiguous calendar start and end date contributes to mass-fucking for young adults. First, the release from the pressure of school obligations and the thrusting into a new environment — whether that means starting “Intern Summer” in the Big Apple or returning to your hometown after hitting the gym between Olin stack sessions — can foster a mental shift in approaching sex. Maybe you now have time to venture to a bar or feel less worried about finding your campus enemy on Hinge, but the changing environment and the change in the people you are surrounded with can give you the confidence boost needed to take more risqué risks.
For a Type A control freak like me, summertime also offers clear boundaries between potentially messy relationships and awkward sex, and my “real life.” There is a reason there are so many cliché songs about summer love; it can feel like it exists within its own vacuum. Without your friends to warn you against pursuing the Monster-addicted finance bro, he seems almost emotionally-available and somewhat into you against the backdrop of 8pm sunsets. Summer break is the opportunity to be like the unashamedly-young and tragically-flawed protagonists in the coming-of-age movies you have been thirstily consuming since you were 13 and bitchless.
The beginning of summer is filled with the hope that you may finally get laid, and sustained by the delusion that the days will drag on forever. But all of a sudden, as you were busy grinding away at your summer job, and more importantly, on your summer fling(s): it is August after all.
Given the lack of peer-reviewed, scientific autoethnographies on summer fucking, my final argument draws from place-based, first-hand experiences of the psychological effects of summer flings: endings make us horny. While at the beginning of summer you may be indulging in options, and in the middle you have settled down with a summer boo to enjoy 4th of July fireworks with, the end is about desperation. Nostalgic over the less than twelve weeks worth of memories that you would argue is equal to a life long marriage, you and your temporary partner are holding onto each other as long as socially accepted. Not a situationship, but definitely not dating, it is something much worse.
Your summer fling is an ambiguously-defined, emotionally-draining, physically-taxing chapter in your life for two months (three, if you are lucky). And like all chapters, it must close. But not before lots of desperate sex. Arguably, the whole summer is filled with desperate sex, because as soon as your relationship begins, it feels like it is rushing towards its expiration date. With no time to waste, you make out everywhere. At the beach, in the movie theater, in your car, against someone else’s car. There is a spike in libido when you know you can not be with that person for much longer. But that is the key point about summer flings: the sex must happen during the summer.
Laws of nature are broken if you are in contact with your summer fling after August. I have tried no contact, I have tried contact, I have tried no contact turned contact (turned back to no contact). I have unfortunately learned the hard way that the only way to move on from a summer fling is to wait it out until it is suddenly shorts and ice cream weather again, and suddenly it has been a year and you are rolling around with someone new. Maybe it was the unforgettable one-night stand you picked up on your first night out or the fling that lasted from Memorial Day to Labor Day that you would prefer to forget, but summer romances are life-altering, both positively and negatively, because they do not last forever.
One of my friends asks me why I do not keep the hypersexual energy from the summer during the school year. Girl trust, I am trying. But as a current senior in college, who has marked her final summer break off the calendar, it is time I learned how to adapt my summer-induced mania into full-time, year-long sexual courage. Because let’s be real, having sex only during the summer months is far from satisfying.
*DFMO (noun): dance floor make-out. I suggest everyone DFMO in their lifetime, but don’t do it at Fishbowls.
Robin McClit is a senior at Cornell dedicated to exploring sexuality through a critical feminist lens and supporting women’s wrongs. File a complaint at rmcclit@cornellsun.com.
