ATOMIC DOG
Werewolves and Hairworms
by TC

The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in that, just as no man is completely one-dimensional and only interested in one subject, neither are we. If it makes you think or laugh — or even get angry — it's served its purpose.

Let's quickly establish one thing — Ariel's gorgeous.

She's just 19 and that in itself counts for a lot, but Ariel is to many other 19-year-olds what that hearty Dinty Moore Beef Stew is to those powdered Campbell's soups that come in a foil package.

She is tasty and juicy and filled with a bounty of delectable meat.

Her hair is long and blond and she's got an itty-bitty waist that even Frodo could circle with his tiny hobbit hands. How she manages to stuff her liver, stomach, and spleen in that tiny space, Lord only knows. And her butt isn't one of those bony boy butts that you see on a lot of fashion models; no sirree, this one's a J-Lo style butt that's perfectly round and as solid as Teddy Roosevelt's nose on Mount Rushmore.

Her taut, tanned belly, which has been liberally exposed throughout the glorious summer, is lightly coated with blond, downy hairs. If you could get close enough, you can see the different wavelengths of light reflected in them. A lot of guys think a trout has beautiful rainbow skin, but take it from me, a trout ain't got nothin' on Ariel's kaleidoscopic belly.

Her breasts are natural and breathtakingly large. You probably want to know about the nipples, too. I don't blame you. Well, I once saw her leaving an aerobics class in a soaking wet, white tank top, so I know they're as big as the hubcaps on one of those Mini Coopers and as pink as the nose of an albino bunny.

And she doesn't just appeal to the eyes. She's an olfactory delight, too. I can't even guess how many guys tell her, if they can stop stammering, that she smells good.

"What's that per...per...perfume you're wearing?"

Then she looks at you with those teal-colored eyes, flutters the preternaturally long lashes and says in a soft musical voice that sounds like a nightingale, "Why, I'm not wearing any perfume, silly."

Of course she's not wearing any perfume, you big dope! She's a supernatural beauty! More Venus than most who share her genus! Her hair smells like fields of lilac! Her breath smells like the fresh-cut infield grass of Fenway Park! Her hoo-hah smells like a Mrs. Field's Cinnamon Sugar Nibbler! Her very cells exude new car smell!

Girls like her? They don't even go to the bathroom like the rest of us mortals! They eat ambrosia and drink nectar and instead of producing disgusting waste, they make, I don't know, riboflavin. Anything else is unimaginable.

Ariel's pretty smart, too. She just left town to go back to college in the Midwest. Here's the thing, though: Ariel has left the dormitory and she's moving into a house with three friends — all male.

"They're my buds!" she exclaims.

Oh Ariel. If only you knew the hormonal hurricane Katrina you're about to initiate. If only you knew how shallow their "budness" truly is.

While the prospect of sharing living space with a beauty like Ariel is no doubt exciting to these poor saps, the reality of the situation is soon going to look like one of Dante's Circles of Hell, complete with tiny female scale-covered harpies raking and poking at their genitals with pitchforks who then pour peppermint Schnapps over the lacerations and giggle with malicious glee.

Here's what I predict: Within 3 months, all three of her buds will be enemies and at least two of them will have flunked out.

Ariel doesn't know it, but she's like that species of parasitic hairworm that infects a grasshopper, eats most of its innards, and then releases nasty neurochemicals that take over the grasshopper's brain and make him jump into the nearest body of water. The grasshopper then drowns, at which point the hairworm vacates his soggy corpse and goes on with its happy aquatic life.

Neither Ariel or the hairworm are malevolent creatures, but they destroy lives nonetheless.

Can you imagine the sleepless, tormented nights her buds are going to experience, knowing that only a few inches of drywall and insulation are separating them from that gorgeous naked body and that mane of hair spread out on her silken pillow? Oh tortured nights! Oh perpetually crusty sheets and mattress covers!

Her buds won't do much studying, either, because they'll have brain fever. Ariel's inside them. They'll try to absorb the drivel in their textbooks about agrarian reforms or whatever, but they'll be looking at her out of the corners of their eyes with pupils fully dilated, the better to drink her in.

When men are in the same room as a beautiful woman, they reach a whole new level of sensory awareness. It's similar to all the werewolf movies where the lycanthrope starts to sprout hair — the senses sharpen, respiration increases, and the warmth of the suddenly released epinephrine and Testosterone cocktail permeates his mind and muscles.

It's really quite extraordinary. But he can only bear this heightened state for so long. There has to be some sort of release. He's got to eviscerate some sheep, or in the case of the non-werewolves, masturbate once, twice, or a dozen times; that, or have a few really bitchin' sessions on the X-Box, but even those things won't help when the source of stimulation is there all the freakin' time.

Even the werewolf gets to have some respite from the full moon, but the poor bastards who share the house with Ariel are exposed to her spectacular moon every single day!

Ariel's buds will begin to compete with each other the first day they're all together. Each will try to be wittier, more courteous, and more helpful than the others. Each will laugh at the other's jokes, but through clenched teeth. Ariel will get two or three backrubs a night and she'll never have to get up to make her own popcorn. They'll rub her feet. They'll even watch The O.C. instead of Ultimate Fighting.

Of course the situation will have some drawbacks for her, too. She'll probably come home early from class every once in a while only to find that any one of her buds has dug a pair of her thong panties out of the laundry and slung it over his face while inhaling deeply like the nitrous-oxide addicted Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet, but if he's a quick thinker, he'll just tell her something about how the Department of Homeland Security just issued a red alert and there's no gas masks in the house and how you'd better just whip out a pair of thongs and do the same, Ariel, if you know what's good for you, by God.

While their mutual frustration will give her buds a common bond, woe be to their happy home if one of them is lucky enough to actually bed Ariel.

That's when the sniping will begin. That's when the hostilities will surface. The guy who got lucky will have to use a different toothbrush every night because it's a sure bet that his has been dipped into the toilet or been used in malicious glee to scrub lint off one or both of his roommate's foreskin.

After that, it's just a matter of time before they start to throw fists.

Ariel will shake her head in wonder as the household dissolves and then move on to infect another group of grasshoppers.

What I can't figure out is whether Ariel knows that any male buds she might have aren't really her buds. I don't care how evolved any of them might be — I don't care how intelligent she is or how great her personality might be — chances are they can't get past her raw, natural sexuality. She's simply a beautifully abundant pork chop in a world full of hungry wolves.

Do beautiful women really fall for this whole male friendship thing?

Do they really buy it when male friends greet them with lingering hugs? Most men I know would rather get a root canal than hug someone, but when a beautiful female friend comes along, they're suddenly warm, affectionate bastards.

I suppose it's the same problem faced by males who have a lot of money. Do the women they date appreciate them for themselves or their money?

When Bill "Body for Life" Phillips got rich from selling creatine, he managed to bed a few strippers, fitness models, and even Playboy bunnies. He'd start blathering on about how he thought he had really connected with some babe and I'd ask him, "Don't you think maybe that they might be interested in you because of your dough?"

His response was to get all pissy and abuse some employees, but deep down he had to know the truth, didn't he?

While Bill was a gifted businessman, he had all the personality of an empty Larry King sock puppet, and while he wasn't ugly, he looked more like a steroidal Rick Moranis from Ghostbusters than the Greek God he probably imagined himself to be.

Are beautiful women similarly deluded? For that matter, are women with any degree of attractiveness similarly deluded? I'm not arguing that male/female friendships aren't possible, but I doubt there are many where the man doesn't from time to time at least consider boning his female friend.

I just know that in Ariel's case, it's an all-consuming obsession with any male who's even remotely heterosexual. I suppose women like her will end up marrying the rich guys so they can both live in a delusional haze, each convinced the other loves them for their glorious self.

I guess nature knows what it's doing.

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