Dear GS:

I started dating this guy with genital warts. I like him but I don't want to catch them. What should I do?

"Worried" in Atlanta.

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Ah, Dear Whorl-ed of Atlantis,

The Lesion Genitalia are indeed difficult to catch. Allow me to relay the story I have upon this subject to you. It comes to me by way of the Three Crabs, from whom I have taken much consultation on this subject. They claim intimate knowledge of the Mundial Genitalia, and my lab assistant Rob, separately interviewed, has concurred.

Quoth Robert: "What? Crabs? You want to know about what? Well... yeah, shit, I guess they would know a lot about people's, you know... junk down there." He paused and then looked rather pale. He glanced downward and then back to my optically perfect eye. "Hey, Tremulon Dude... you aren't planning shit? Are you?"

I assured him I was not. I thanked him for the confirmation of character and I returned to interviewing the crabs on this most vital of subjects.

And so now, I present to you the story, translated by me from the singsong interweaving voices of the three wise crabs:

Genital Worts and How To Catch Them, a parable

The Lesion Genitalia is an adorable creature the size of a thimble which lives most of its life in the cool surf of the northern sea.

Homunculin in nature, Lesion bestrides the gritted sands on two little pink legs and it grasps at the wisps of the world with two tiny pink hands. The Lesions dance and play in the surf for their entire lives, riding deep into the coastline waters upon the backs of crabs and in great cavalries of sea equines. They brew a sweet, light draught of beer in the shells of dead clams and the compose tinkling, glittering little songs about the tides, and about their great love, that glorious, inconstant sky-eye, the Moon.

The Moon, within the cultural context of these miniature specks, is the subject of both fear and joy. For it is on those nights when the moon is full that The Great Carriers come to the seashore. The Carriers are like giant, straight-shaped lesions from the inland world, and in the dusky moonlight of spring and summer, they shed several layers of epidermis and intertwine in what is assuredly one of the great and terrible holidays of the Lesion year-cycle. As these giants wrestle in the surf, lesions often trapped between and usually at the point of most close inter-connection. And it is here that Lesions on their many storied adventures.

Most Lesions live their lives in the waves. They are idyllic, simple creatures. But some grow and prosper upon the hides of these giants, living varied and sometimes exciting lives.

To be entirely french on the matter, I found this explanation of much dubisity, and thus returned to Rob, who tends to be remarkable helpful in such matters, for further guidance.

"Rob," I called out, as he returned from his daily 4:20 business meeting in the parking garage, "Dearest Rob, I have further questions about the genital warts," at this he stopped, not unlike the suddenly deadened, his one foot hanging mid-air and mid-step, "as I believe the Three Wise Crabs are existing in a state of either flippancy or error."

"Um . . ." he lowered his foot a-floorward, "Yee-ah. That's . . . I mean, not like the Crabs to be wrong about stuff."

I agreed, that it is indeed the true that the Three Wise Crabs are seldom in error, per se— and it is the fact that their tale of Genital Warts is fanciful in the extreme— but their tale, it possessed little of the sense common, and was nigh-unto-impossible to rectumize with the implications of your question, Whorled of Atlantis: if you like the Genital Warts (which, indeed, by description are a delight rare to behold,) then why worry of catching them? What does "catching them" even mean in such a context as this? And, for that matter, how precisely is this Guy "with" them? Perform, do they, in a musical combo? Are they business partners? Or partners d'Amour? Confusion was great, and I laid it out as such before Rob, for his consideration and, ultimately, so he might satisfy the curiosities.

But satisfaction he refused to tender, instead responding with much of the hemming and the hawing and the beating cirumlobushward. Finally, in a fit of pique, I called him directly upon the matter of his evasions most vexsome.

To which he replied, "Well, remember that one time when I said something about them using subliminal messages in the muzak at K-Mart and the mall to get you to buy more crap, and you asked about what 'subliminal' meant, and I told you all about subliminal messages and shit, and Judas Priest and that one episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack puts a subliminal message into a crappy pop song and all the chicks, and even that hunky latino dude, fall for him (specifically, episode 15 of season 2, The Zack Tapes— Sang), and then you had me go pick up a copy of "Ooops, I Did It Again," and then you made up all those bootlegs and had me go shill 'em out in the suburbs, and then, in the papers about a week later, there was all that shit about those 14 year old kids in Ferndale and Rosewood getting, like, their wangs stuck in lubbed-up shop vacs and shit?"

"Yes, I recall."

"Yeah, well, that shit made me feel really fucking bad. Really, really fucking bad. So now, yeah, I get a little freaked out when you ask questions about shit."

"I see. Rob, I now offer unto you my most solemn, conditional promise that, at this time, and descending down from this particular instance of this asking, I plan no larger projects based upon any information you now put forth, apart from answering Whorled of Atlantis' question on the subjects of warts genitacular."

"OK."

"Is this sufficient to you?"

"Yeah."

"Good-well then. Please tell me all that you know, in matters of genital wartery."

"Yeah, OK. Genital warts— and I'm not saying how I know this shit, it's just that I know it, so don't even fuckin' ask— but they're a disease, like warts, which are little tough skin patches—"

"Nodules?"

"—uh, yeah, I guess: Nodules. Sure. And they're just little patches, but then, sometimes, they grow into little, fleshy, growth-nubbin-thingies— nodules— that looks like cauliflower. I saw a picture once, on the Internet. It was totally nasty as hell."

"These are much different than what the Three Crabs described."

"Sometimes the Crabs— they see shit different, is all. I guess."

"How are these warts 'caught'?"

"You get 'em from stickin' totally skanky bitches who, as it happens, are also riding your fuckin' best bud on the side. Fuckers. Fucking both of 'em."

This talk of sticking reminded me much of the lovely Archituethic pas de deux— unfortunately, a dance I have been unable to practice in earnest for quite some time, owing to my most un-Architeuthic living arrangements. As of recent, Sang pressed upon my glass a printing-out of an article on these matters which I felt, most stirringly and aptly, captured the true charm of those enchanted moments deep within the sea. To whit:

Male giant squid have been found to have a long, muscular penis . . . Scientists believe that the male squid literally injects his sperm into the female's skin during mating.

"The two of them mount beak to beak, so you've got arms and tentacles flying everywhere . . . The male is co-ordinating this enormous penis, and he's implanting spermadaphores into the female's arms."

"He uses the penis like a plunger or a huge hypodermic needle, and he's physically stabbing the female's arms."

The females then store the sperm in their bodies until they are ready to lay eggs . . . [and] "Either the skin starts rotting and the sperm gets exposed . . . or the female may even physically open the skin up herself with her beak or her suckers."

Ah, to again be young and in the love and in the biome toward which your form has been so perfectly evolved. sigh

I at that time broke from my revery brief. "Rob," I said, "I bear much sorry and tender toward you apologies for the discomfort I have caused with my rampunctions and experimental projects, and demanding your assistance there-in."

"I have nightmares, man."

"I know."

He looked down, footward, and then up again, locking to my optically perfect eye with his wee , round, watery orbs. "Thanks," quoth Rob, "Thanks for apologizing"

And I nodded my great and terrible headsac, for I could say no more.

So, in final advice to you Whorled of Atlantis I say this: Stick not the skanky bitches, for despite the loveliness of that tender dance of passion, the danger of making captive on your person the nasty-as-hell caulifloriform nodules is simply too great.