Mad Atoms

Growing up, I had a friend who was horny. I mean, all the time. Distractingly so. As teens, we're all horny, but he felt the need to let it be known. Everything was a pun on sex. Gymnastics were "gymnasties," Jimmy Carter was Jimmy Cooter, and McDonald's was McAsshump's. He nearly pissed himself when our gym teacher taught us how to grip the shaft on a golf club. 

Eventually, he grew apart from anyone who didn't share his fondness for drawing the Little Mermaid and Beauty in flagrante delicto as the Beast watched, but you have to wonder what becomes of people like that. If they become sex offenders, do you feel guilty for not having intervened and told them that not every hole is an orifice?  

If they become politicians, do you assume that they have semen-spattered skeletons in their closets? About the only legitimate profession for their skill set is a gynecologist, but would you trust a guy like that with your girlfriend's Jimmy Cooter? Or would you hesitate to say anything, for fear that he'd bring up that time you two weighed each other's balls in the ninth grade? For a science project, of course.

Maybe it's my morbid streak, but I rarely think about what became of the popular kids from high school. I think about the rejects: the sex addicts, the slags, the club-footed inbreeds. I can't help but envision their lives of misery, spiraling downward from schoolyard teasing to clinical depression to nail polish huffing, face tattoos, dead-end hairnet jobs, demonic possession and eventually death in a hail of bullets.  

Serves them right for not posing for my mermaid porn.