Mad Atoms

It’s been said before, and it’ll be said again: Kids today have it easy.

And not in the “back in our day, we had to walk to school, uphill both ways, in the freezing cold, our only warmth coming from the innards of a wolf we had to hunt with our hands” kind of way. But in the “back in our day, we had to get porn where we could, even if we had to draw our goddamn own” kind of way.  

Growing up, mine was not a household with cable television. As such, the masturbatorial material of male youths coming-of-age (so to speak) in the 90s was unavailable to me. Instead, I found and hoarded away the bra and underwear section of the Sears catalog, a box for a film entitled Freaks of Nature, Volume 3 which I found discarded in a nearby forest, photos of problematic genitals from medical journals (something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone), photos of naked tribal women from National Geographic magazine, and so on. Which is why, when I finally jerked off for the first time, I had to do it to Channel Cuarenta y Cuatro: Telemundo! 

While Channel 44 might seem like it was the number of cable channel, it most certainly was not. The UHF signal came in crystal clear with your standard rabbit ears. Those in the know – meaning perverts like myself – were well aware of this secret.

Back in the early 90s, before every other video on MTV was of a 15-year-old singer dressed like 45-year-old stripper, our neighbors to the south realized the way to get ratings was by throwing in scantily-clad women. Lots of them. And in everything they produced.

From those annoying telenovellas to the odd talk shows that always featured men in plush animal costumes, there were always at least three women with double-D breasts bursting from their tight swimsuits just hopping around in the background for no discernible reason. While I’ve never seen it myself, I’ve heard rumors of their Sunday morning mass coverage including a nun wearing nothing but her head-thingy. But, of all the various nearly pornographic programs on TelePoondo (I just made that up!) it was their newscast that led me to intentionally spill my first seed.   

Now, I don’t remember the specific story that was being reported at the time – knowing Telemundo’s strict policy of “If it bleeds, it leads” it was probably some gory, corpse-riddled drug-done-gone-bad, although I remember seeing a short skirt so it could have just been (fingers crossed!) the weather – and I don’t remember the name of the newscaster, or even if she still works there. 

But the important thing was that, during Christmas break of my 8^th grade, I had finally found something to get me over the edge and project a sperm geyser that shot nine feet into the air and, frankly, scared the shit out of me. It’s also worth noting that I still can’t watch a news broadcast (even Larry King) without getting a minor throb in my own neighbor to the south.

So, if anyone knows any female broadcasters who were employed with Telemundo during, let’s say, the third or fourth week of December in 1993, then please, offer them my thanks.  

And more importantly, thank you Telemundo. For having the cojones to broadcast hot women in bikinis while other networks settled for having that empty feeling of “dignity”. For that, I can only say muchas gracias.