Yes, I’ve gotten it on in a cemetery. You haven’t? Then either you were a less depraved teen than I was, or your parents were more lenient. Or you had a car with a big-ass back seat.
I’ve always been relentlessly practical about sex. So when teenaged Veronica needed a spot for “fooling around,” I thought of the cemetery—within walking distance, pleasantly grassy, much of it screened from view by the staggered tombstones and mausoleums.
The long strands of grass missed by the mower give you something to pluck at as you lean against a pedestal. A boy sits next to you, crosslegged, his knee brushing against your thigh.
You are waiting for the boy to get up the nerve to kiss you. You’d make a move yourself, but you’re not entirely sure you want to do this. You’re happy letting fate and the boy decide. If he kisses well, you’ll decide then how much further you’ll let things proceed. In the meantime, you shred blades of grass between your fingers and tease him.
So there’s the cemetery as a “needs must when the devil drives” location. Then there are the bodies.
The whole point of a cemetery is to put bodies in. Our culture thinks bodies are important even after we’re dead, but doesn’t want us to talk about them while we’re alive. We can display them if they are young and attractive by society’s standards.
And as Andrew Marvell pointed out, the bodies in the cemetery aren’t enjoying each other—they aren’t making the most of being bodies.
But we still can. Life’s too short to postpone sex. That’s what cemeteries say to me now.
Maybe my next Scavenger Hunt photo can be in a graveyard. What do you think?
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress
I enjoy visiting cemeteries, especially ones that are overgrown. I so enjoyed reading this and love that you featured one of my favourite poems. I have never had sex in one but I can see the attraction. I am sure Andrew Marvell would approve.