To Name Or Be Named

What power in our words, so oft used with careless ease,
Gives difference a claim between the birds and the bees,
Make of one man, fame,
Another, blame,
When they act for want of what they please?

-Grandpa Ernie Burncock Shywolf

“I’ve decided to name my penis ‘Bullwinkle'”, he said with a calm matter-of-factness that thickened the air with silence. He really didn’t want to bring it up at the annual pot-luck supper sponsored by the parishioners of his church, but the need to rise above the flaccid emptiness of small talk, overcame him. They, in turn, tried to remain congregational in the face of his ejaculatory faux pas, even though it deeply offended their sense of good manners. When the magnitude of his shame threatened to suffocate him with regret, there was only one rescue: he turned to the Pastor’s daughter and said: “I told you we should have named it ‘Angus’!” It made him feel so vulnerable how easily the world would let him perish, when he was driven to be anything but himself; so began his romance with the eclectic realism, fostered by drugs and alcohol, that led him to the priesthood of men named after their penis: Prick.