Like a lot of guys, I’m the proud owner of a Man Cave. My personal Fortress of Solitude is where I get to unashamedly talk out loud to myself and fart freely when I’m not feeling particularly chummy with the rest of the world. Unlike most guys, my Man Cave just happens to be an actual cave: stalactites, bats, mud, and anything else that growing boys like me love. It is just a small cave that is located in the back of my property. I’d be lying if I said that the opportunity to have my own cave (and the associated addition of a gold star on my man card) wasn’t a major deciding factor when I first looked to buy this property a couple of years ago.
Around the same time that I bought my new house, the local police conducted a major sex sting just a few miles away. As it turns out, some unseen driving force was compelling hordes of gay men, both homegrown and from distant states, to descend on our nearby parks to screw each other silly in broad daylight. The local authorities, at least the ones who didn’t join in on all the fun, were not amused. Undercover officers were dispatched, strange and unusual behavior was observed, and a few officers were unwillingly groped. Major embarrassment ensued as every day newspaper articles exposed the names of teachers, ministers, and other upstanding leaders of the community who had been arrested the previous day. Somewhere in all the furor, a bright young reporter coined the term “Man Cave” in reference to the area of a certain park that was the preferred choice of gay men everywhere for the old rumpy-pumpy. The name stuck.
Soon, every time someone in our region mentioned the Man Cave, everyone instantly knew what the topic was. Everyone, that is, except for my news-oblivious wife.
Shortly after my wife and I moved into our new house, my climbing partner “Jimmy” and I spent a lot of time exploring my newly purchased cave. Days later, some really unusual questions began rolling in about me and Jimmy from my coworkers and friends. I’m talking about REALLY unusual questions, usually delivered with the type of sly smirk that made me want to punch someone. I followed the questions upstream until, you guessed it, I discovered the source: my naïve little wife who doesn’t watch the local news or read the papers. She had been proudly declaring to all the world how much Jimmy and I enjoyed spending so much of our time getting muddy in my personal Man Cave that she was beginning to feel neglected. The name of the game for the next several days was extreme damage control. Some people still avoid me in the men’s room at work.
So a while back I decided to go climbing around in the cave. The wife was gone for the afternoon, so it was just me and the dog. Normally I would leave a note on the table to let someone know when I’m hiking or doing other outdoor activities alone, but I didn’t think my trip in the cave was going to take that long. Once I got there, however, the mood to do a little climbing took over. There are some nice vertical walls in the cave that have good handholds, so I decided to try getting into some remote areas I previously had not explored. The dog tagged along and was happily focused on all the scents left by the coyotes that occasionally roam through.
I lost track of time as I slowly made my way to the room that is furthest back in the cave. This particular narrow room has a steeply sloping floor with vertical walls on both sides. The slope ends in a small but deep hole, which is plugged with mud and rocks. The entire room is kind of funnel-shaped. It was in this hole in the floor that I saw it: there, lying in the muck was a small glass jar. This was once a party cave, full of beer cans and broken bottles. Shortly after I bought the property I spent many days hauling trash out and cleaning the whole thing up to be in more of a natural state. I’m more than a little insane when it comes to my hatred of litter, especially when it’s on my own property.
At all costs, that jar had to go.
The problem was that the hole was just deep enough and the slope above it was just steep enough that I couldn’t reach the jar. At this point a smart man would have left, returning another day with some tool long enough to reach it. After quickly dismissing that consideration, what I decided to do instead was to lie on my belly and scoot my torso into position so I could reach the jar. It worked like a charm – I lowered my upper body into the tight hole. I then tossed the jar towards my feet, and tried to retain consciousness as most of my blood rushed to my head. With the job well done, I decided it was a good time to pat myself on the back, go back to the house, and get cleaned up.
Gravity and mud had decided that my evening would be a little more panicked than that.
I struggled to pull myself out with my legs; no luck, there was no traction. I tried to pull myself out with my arms; the story was pretty much the same. To make matters worse, all the work I had done to free myself was causing the clay in which I was half-buried to crumble, filling in the small spaces of the pit that were not already occupied by my upper body. It dawned on me that here I was, stuck upside down in the back of a cave, alone, with nobody other than my dog knowing where I was. Remarkably, I was able to mostly keep my cool, even when I noticed that a large animal (hopefully my dog) was sniffing around my exposed, highly valued, meaty body parts. I decided that short of waiting for a rescue party that might not come for several hours, I had to rely on myself to get free.
My final option was to wiggle around until I got my arms near my head, and then do what was more or less a shoulder press. With every last ounce of strength that I had, I pushed against the crumbling clay until, an inch at a time, I slowly emerged from the hole onto the steep slope. Wagging ecstatically, my dog seemed really glad to see me force myself out of the hole. I seconded that sentiment. I sat for a while and gathered my strength for the trip back out of the cave. It gave me a while to think about lots of things, like love, life, and one’s reputation. Had things turned out differently, I could picture the headlines my mother would read:
“NuclearNed Found Dead in Compromising Position in Man Cave”
Man Cave Sting (newspaper article) --> http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9003241
Pics of Ned's cave --> http://picasaweb.google.com/rdpoling/Cave9292007#
Around the same time that I bought my new house, the local police conducted a major sex sting just a few miles away. As it turns out, some unseen driving force was compelling hordes of gay men, both homegrown and from distant states, to descend on our nearby parks to screw each other silly in broad daylight. The local authorities, at least the ones who didn’t join in on all the fun, were not amused. Undercover officers were dispatched, strange and unusual behavior was observed, and a few officers were unwillingly groped. Major embarrassment ensued as every day newspaper articles exposed the names of teachers, ministers, and other upstanding leaders of the community who had been arrested the previous day. Somewhere in all the furor, a bright young reporter coined the term “Man Cave” in reference to the area of a certain park that was the preferred choice of gay men everywhere for the old rumpy-pumpy. The name stuck.
Soon, every time someone in our region mentioned the Man Cave, everyone instantly knew what the topic was. Everyone, that is, except for my news-oblivious wife.
Shortly after my wife and I moved into our new house, my climbing partner “Jimmy” and I spent a lot of time exploring my newly purchased cave. Days later, some really unusual questions began rolling in about me and Jimmy from my coworkers and friends. I’m talking about REALLY unusual questions, usually delivered with the type of sly smirk that made me want to punch someone. I followed the questions upstream until, you guessed it, I discovered the source: my naïve little wife who doesn’t watch the local news or read the papers. She had been proudly declaring to all the world how much Jimmy and I enjoyed spending so much of our time getting muddy in my personal Man Cave that she was beginning to feel neglected. The name of the game for the next several days was extreme damage control. Some people still avoid me in the men’s room at work.
So a while back I decided to go climbing around in the cave. The wife was gone for the afternoon, so it was just me and the dog. Normally I would leave a note on the table to let someone know when I’m hiking or doing other outdoor activities alone, but I didn’t think my trip in the cave was going to take that long. Once I got there, however, the mood to do a little climbing took over. There are some nice vertical walls in the cave that have good handholds, so I decided to try getting into some remote areas I previously had not explored. The dog tagged along and was happily focused on all the scents left by the coyotes that occasionally roam through.
I lost track of time as I slowly made my way to the room that is furthest back in the cave. This particular narrow room has a steeply sloping floor with vertical walls on both sides. The slope ends in a small but deep hole, which is plugged with mud and rocks. The entire room is kind of funnel-shaped. It was in this hole in the floor that I saw it: there, lying in the muck was a small glass jar. This was once a party cave, full of beer cans and broken bottles. Shortly after I bought the property I spent many days hauling trash out and cleaning the whole thing up to be in more of a natural state. I’m more than a little insane when it comes to my hatred of litter, especially when it’s on my own property.
At all costs, that jar had to go.
The problem was that the hole was just deep enough and the slope above it was just steep enough that I couldn’t reach the jar. At this point a smart man would have left, returning another day with some tool long enough to reach it. After quickly dismissing that consideration, what I decided to do instead was to lie on my belly and scoot my torso into position so I could reach the jar. It worked like a charm – I lowered my upper body into the tight hole. I then tossed the jar towards my feet, and tried to retain consciousness as most of my blood rushed to my head. With the job well done, I decided it was a good time to pat myself on the back, go back to the house, and get cleaned up.
Gravity and mud had decided that my evening would be a little more panicked than that.
I struggled to pull myself out with my legs; no luck, there was no traction. I tried to pull myself out with my arms; the story was pretty much the same. To make matters worse, all the work I had done to free myself was causing the clay in which I was half-buried to crumble, filling in the small spaces of the pit that were not already occupied by my upper body. It dawned on me that here I was, stuck upside down in the back of a cave, alone, with nobody other than my dog knowing where I was. Remarkably, I was able to mostly keep my cool, even when I noticed that a large animal (hopefully my dog) was sniffing around my exposed, highly valued, meaty body parts. I decided that short of waiting for a rescue party that might not come for several hours, I had to rely on myself to get free.
My final option was to wiggle around until I got my arms near my head, and then do what was more or less a shoulder press. With every last ounce of strength that I had, I pushed against the crumbling clay until, an inch at a time, I slowly emerged from the hole onto the steep slope. Wagging ecstatically, my dog seemed really glad to see me force myself out of the hole. I seconded that sentiment. I sat for a while and gathered my strength for the trip back out of the cave. It gave me a while to think about lots of things, like love, life, and one’s reputation. Had things turned out differently, I could picture the headlines my mother would read:
“NuclearNed Found Dead in Compromising Position in Man Cave”
Man Cave Sting (newspaper article) --> http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9003241
Pics of Ned's cave --> http://picasaweb.google.com/rdpoling/Cave9292007#
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