the rite of spring.

People who don't live in seasonal climates probably won't understand this, but the worst thing about spring is the obnoxious euphoria of the cargo-shorted and spray-tanned as they emerge from their long hibernation. Suddenly, the roadways are filled with tricked out Hondas, with tinted windows, neon detailing, and fancified rims that cost more than the driver's total net worth. These vehicular equivalents of taking out one's penis and waving it around inevitably spill forth a tsunami of bass-heavy music that you feel palpating every organ in your body—even the ones you were never before aware of having. 

Girls who are scarcely old enough to marry Jerry Lee Lewis convene in parking lots and in the Slushie aisle wearing what twenty years ago would have been considered the uniform of the street trade. Their shorts are so short and their shirts are so tight that Vietnamese hookers blush and put on a shrug. Pink and chemically treated in every imaginable way, these apprentice hoochies are somewhere southward on the continuum between Rainbow Brite and rainbow parties, but their parents—whose baby showers preceded their senior proms by two full trimesters—are still in the thrall of the high school politics they never quite graduated from, so they are reluctant to apply the brakes on their daughters' runaway pussies.

The boys, meanwhile, in their preppy date-rape fashions—strange pastel golf shirts and long bleached shorts—have the uniformed look of cult members on the way to a ritual deflowering. Have you noticed that most of the boys these days are always looking sideways for law enforcement, patriarchs, Hollister managers...? 

All of the men, women, and indiscernibly gendered enthusiastically molt their coats and coveralls to display their damp, ballast-like stomachs and backs. They've emerged from their Poppin' Fresh cans and splayed their most uncharted territories for us, the unwilling explorers. Their flesh—so cold and moist and gelatinous—heaves itself into the innocent line of sight in every direction. It's a terrorism of shape and contour that eclipses the newly scorched earth and the slurry of allergens swirling through the air.