Beneath the flickering light of an overhead firework at a summer camp up north, Corey Lieberman talks to himself, mustering all his strength and courage, and walks towards Amy. He slaps a shit-eating grin on his oversized sweaty fat face, and with every ounce of willpower, with every gram of body fat, with every inch of teenage manhood, does his best to put one on the scoreboard. Across the field, Matt Fusco is holding Jessica's hand, watching the reflected light of fireworks exploding in her blue-green eyes. He shuts his eyelids, grits his teeth, and tries unsuccessfully to suppress the erection that is rapidly turning his mesh shorts into a miniature circus tent. Under a tree behind the crowd, Fritz Freiman, a 4 AM pizza pioneer, is obviously too fat to even try, but by God he wants to have sex too.
Independence Day is a fucking hormone firecracker, and this is not a new trend. The 4th of July has come to represent people wanting to get laid ever since England stopped giving us the willies a while back. Gone are the days where if someone said, "The King of England is furious," Americans would shit their pantaloons. These are the days where if an American gets fired, he can go home, throw his briefcase on the ground, say "I got sacked" in a bad British accent to his friends, have a good laugh, and get stoned and watch Honey I Blew Up the Kid with Rick Moranis on DVD. The mother country may have lost her grip on Americans, but a clenching vagina never will. So now, when I think of the 4th of July, it takes me back. Way back. Images begin to run past me: The Great Drug Fog of '99, fat shoelaces, "More Than Words," Olsen Twins (still too young to think about in that way), Go Ninja, Go Ninja, Go!
The year was 1996: the year that Saved By the Bell graduates Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Lark Voorhies finally stopped pussyfooting around and got married (Not to each other, that would be crazy!), and the year when natural causes finally knocked that damn cigar out of George Burns' prune-mouth for good. I was a Dodo (the oldest camper group) at Ken-Mont camp in Kent, CT. I was scrawny, no doubt...and hideous! I had those braces where you get pity head-pats from disgusted onlookers, I hadn't grown into my nose yet, and I started to get pimples but liked them because I was going through puberty at last. So if I had pimples, then that meant that I was mature enough to get to sloppy 3rd base on a regular basis, right? Well, regardless, that Independence Day was great for me because I took the true meaning of July 4th to heart, and hooked up under the firework light with this girl a year younger. She was slightly cute. Actually she was pretty ugly but she was blonde. Not developed yet really, but who was? Well most of the girls in fact, but whatever, I still hooked up and that was good enough for me. Her brother was in my cabin and so I told him that I kissed his sister, and would continue to do so. He didn't like that, so I promised him I would stop if he drank an entire bottle of Tabasco Sauce. He did, and he vomited until most of the blood vessels in his face exploded and he had to go to the infirmary. Camp can be messed up sometimes. The truth is, I didn't want to hook up with his sister anymore regardless, she had acid-reflux in her stomach, which gave her nightmarish breath whenever she exhaled. I asked her to stop doing that but she only thought about herself, so I broke it off.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. There was a point embedded in that story, and it is that July 4th these days is nothing more than a standout night in the calendar. Standout nights imply that something standout should occur, and since there are no heroes any longer, no role-models or model citizens, and since England is a puss factory, the standout thing to do is have sex. Ask any red-blooded American man if he wants to have sex on July 4th, and he will absolutely say yes. And on Halloween, Labor Day, Flag Day and Cinco de Mayo as well, because who gives a shit about underlying meanings. All I know is that my American Flag was fully raised on that standout day -- July 4th, 1996 -- and its been flying at full-mast ever since. God bless America indeed.
