Mad Atoms

I look at people who grew up during the cocaine beach-party mentality of the 80's and the kids growing up now in the post-Britney skanktastic 00's, and I can't help but think I got majorly screwed. The 90's, with its grunge rock inspired baggy jeans/flannel shirts and reactionary political correctness movement, was in retrospect a really lousy time to be coming of age sexually.  

My school wasn’t that religious, so they weren't hung up on moralistic abstinence, but they made sex seem fucking horrifying nonetheless. Grave and perilous, we were prepared for losing our virginities as though we’d signed up to crew a ship on Deadliest Catch. Then, on top of the fact that you were probably going to have a baby made of pure AIDS after having sex just once, my school district seemed to have an almost fetishistic fascination with date rape.  

I walked away from Health class under the serious assumption that making any kind of sexually perceived advance on a girl was assault. Oh, may I link elbows with you as we stroll, m’lady? Rape! Jail. Didn’t these sociopaths remember what it was like to be a teen? It took enough courage at 13 to try and feel a girl up as it was, I didn't need to worry that I'd be emotionally scarring her for life.

And of course, while the boys were all being turned into unconfident pussies, girls were still handed the double standard of being sluts if they were sexually assertive.Rounding the proverbial baseball diamond with a high school girl takes steely determination and a hero’s will to succeed. With neither the girls nor the boys making any first moves it was an unsexy stalemate. The poor girls were just as frustrated as we were! Jesus, it was fucking agonizing.

Where was rock’n’roll to help me?! My older brothers had stupid bands like Poison to fuel their imaginations. Every song Poison ever wrote was about fucking chicks. Nirvana? Pearl Jam? Goddamn Smashing Pumpkins? Their songs were all about how miserable they were! Movies weren’t any better. In the 80’s even PG movies had tits. The 90’s were all indie movies about hitman having wacky out-of-character conversations. Where’d all the titties go?!

And the biggest sex scandal of the decade? Bill Clinton. Dude got like half a blowjob from a fugly girl and everyone freaked out. Now we’ve got politicians flying to Brazil to bang models and people only talk about it for a few weeks. 

After high school when I finally discovered through trial-and-error that girls actually LIKE IT when guys make the first move, I was enraged.American girls expect you to be assertive! This isn’t England. I was cockblocked by an educational system. Looking back I can’t believe I ever got laid in high school. It was a goddamn miracle. 

Thanks, Bloomington Jefferson High School. Thanks, 1990’s. How’d that uber-PC movement work out? We still doing that? No? Oh, well glad my impressionable mind was shaped by a soccer mom fad. That’s cool. Thanks for the memories. And the blue-balls.