(originally written 6/10/2007)
I know that a lot of times people use exaggerated language. I had the best time ever. I ate the worst meal of my life. It was the longest sermon in the history of mankind. I’m guilty of language inflation as well, but I am not exaggerating at all when I say I’ve experienced the worst thing that can happen to you. Trust me.
The first leg of our study abroad program included stops in England, France, and Germany on our way to Austria. These first two weeks were a time for introductions to world travel and, more importantly, to the each other as a group. First impressions were of paramount importance when these thirty or so people would be your only social circle for the next few months. One fatal mistake early on, and you were forever branded the group klutz or the unfortunate kid who didn’t wear deodorant, banished with the other outcasts who were never picked for gym class teams. The first impression pressure was crushing for the self-conscious like me.
Despite this, I was determined to enjoy the German portion of the first two weeks, which included seeing the real version of the Cinderella castle I had constructed out of Legos as a kid, experiencing the wine vineyards of the Rhine despite never having tasted wine in my life, and Dachau.
I’ve always had a strange fascination with the Holocaust, which I admit makes me a bit of a freak. When I was little, I would watch World War II documentaries recounting the American soldiers storming into camps full of victims barely recognizable as human. I read the diary of Anne Frank. I did reports on concentration camps for school, reading about how Nazi scientists used the Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals as lab rats for their experiments. They would leave them outside for extended periods in the winter to test the human body’s reaction to extreme exposure. They would construct machines to simulate atmospheric pressure, testing how much the body could withstand. It was almost too gruesome for belief, and yet I was a junkie.
I could see it all so vividly that it almost became my own experience. I would imagine I was a victim in the know about all the heinous activity of my Nazi captors. I chronicled all the horrors in a secret code of markings on the bottom of the bunk above me so that I could expose them to the world when I was liberated. I would become the spokesman of the oppressed, the face of hope, the name associated with determined stele in the face of adversity. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mother Theresa. Nelson Mandela. Luke Anderson.
Needless to say, the opportunity to finally see a place I had spent hours visiting in my mind was thrilling. I knew it would be a solemn experience. Impactful. Possibly life-changing.
As our tour bus full of idle chatter screeched to a halt with the sound of airbrakes, we disembarked in silence. Wide-eyed, we approached with the proper amount of reverence. We toured the entire camp. The site of the barracks. The crematorium. The infamous “Arbeit macht frei” sign. It was overwhelming.
And then, it happened. The worst thing that can possibly happen at a place like Dachau.
I got a boner.
Any guy can tell you that one of our biggest fears is getting a boner at inappropriate places. Church. School. Family Dinners. In your late teens and early twenties, you have no control over your penis. The wrong person walks by and it salutes. You accidentally remember the website you looked at three weeks ago and your penis remembers it, too. But it’s not always a sexual cause for this phenomenon. Your boxers brush it the wrong way walking and it pops up to say hello. The wind blows your pants a certain way, and here we go. I’m telling you, half of the time, it’s just a physical reaction. It’s like your penis is afraid you’ll forget about him without regular reminders.
My penis decided an appropriate time for a reminder was at the most inappropriate of places. So here I am in a concentration camp with a boner. It’s ironic that my personal version of hell happened at hell on earth.
Any guy can also tell you that we have a few options when it comes to de-escalating the situation should it arise. You first try for the pocket adjustment. A usually effective first line of defense, at Dachau it came up short. Next you can try a quick turn and grab, but you must have some kind of cover for this to work, and there was no way I was getting busted grabbing my crotch at Dachau out in the open. There were no bathrooms in sight, which is normally option three. So, I was stuck trying to adjust this abomination in my pants with option one. I felt like a pervert to the enth degree, and then it got worse.
My roommate saw me walking funny and came to ask me what was wrong. I’m sure he assumed I was moved by the experience being such a sensitive soul and was preparing his best comfort-the-wuss speech. I don’t know what came over me. I should have lied and said I was fine. I should have feigned a deep connection with the emotional pain of the place. I guess I froze under the horror that was my life at that moment, and said, “You know how sometimes, without there being a reason, you just accidentally get hard?”
The best-case scenario would have been sympathy from a fellow guy who had experienced church wood himself, followed by him nodding while walking away. My destiny has never been best-case scenarios.
My roommate’s eyes got huge, his face twisted in a look of utter disgust. It felt like he had a megaphone as he answered. “You have Dachau wood?!?” I tried shushing him without drawing any more attention to myself, but the damage was done.
Now, the best-case scenario at this point would have included him being stunned to the point of silence… for the rest of his life. Again, my destiny has never been best-case scenarios.
This kind of information was too bizarre and glorious a story for secrecy. By the time I got back to the bus, my pants tent successfully taken down, the story had spread like wildfire through the group. Some of their faces were twisted in the same disgust as my roommate’s, like I was a Neo-Nazi getting excited by Holocaust atrocities. Some looked at me with pity, but not sympathetic pity, the kind of pity you have for televangelists or crooked politicians. Others just look at me like I was Hitler’s offspring. I took the walk of shame down the aisle, sat by myself, and immediately started planning to jump off a bridge at our next stop.
Of course, I was affectionately referred to as “Dachau Wood” throughout the rest of our three and a half months together. It was just too big a first impression to shake.
My Name Means Light 