You Look Nice Today

In Who Voted?, we discussed the problem of Excessive Realism in Sexual Fantasies: the growing compulsion for our Fantasy Lives to have to conform to the boring strictures of our Regular Lives. A few listeners sympathized, but one brave soul took us on an immersive tour of one of his go-to fantasy scenarios: Satisfaction Island. Sadly, due to a crippling case of ERSF, the island has lost its magic:

For years I’ve had a nighttime fantasy where I’m stranded on an island with an attractive woman. We fill our days with the only activity not requiring a whole lot of equipment and learning. The sex, that is.

I revisited recently, after a long time away from Satisfaction Island. Everything went well, except I felt I had to introduce the situation by first explaining how we ended up on the island, where the others were, and how we got past the initial shock. I had to establish reliable sources of food and water, and explain why the weather is always excellent.

Then I thought about this woman. She would obviously need to give full consent—nay, approach me first—and while I can believe that she would reach out for me the very first night, looking for some comfort, I knew that this would probably make for a rocky long-term relationship.

So I had her wait a few weeks and get to know and like me first.

Then there was the matter of my being married. I couldn’t just jump into this with my wife out there, worrying about me. But I figured we were reasonable people, and eventually she’d move on and I’d realize I would spend the rest of my life on the island. Seeing how this was a fantasy, I allowed about six months for these wounds to heal.

Then there’s the matter of birth control. It was getting late in the fantasy so I just made my island-partner infertile. That made me sad for her, though, so I tweaked it a bit; she had also come from a large family and she had always wanted to go the adoption route. Good, good.

At this point I was starting to feel a little embarrassed about the casual way in which I assumed that our food and shelter were accounted for, so I spent some time justifying how we found ourselves in a worry-free situation. The show Lost was very helpful here.

Between the fruit-gathering and the water-getting, I don’t think I fantasized about any actual sex. Maybe once or twice we tried, but there was sand everywhere, and it just kept getting in the way.

Image by Island-Life.