You Would Do What To Ben Franklin?

The Independent gave us all the confidence that we so desperately needed. Being the “alternative” school newspaper, meaning that it was produced without the consent of the school, The Independent, whose tagline was with big bold letters “FUCK YOU”, made it quite clear of its disdain dislike of the new school administration with wit, humor, sarcasm, and satire.
The student body ate it up. They ate it up as if someone’s mother made a beautiful cherry pie and left it out on the table in front of the cafeteria. As the saying was around school about things that were deemed awesome, The Independent was “golden, baby”, and indeed it was—“fucking golden” to be precise.
The poll of the month was the best though of December, in which Charlie Rose asked me for an idea. I, of course, was terribly unoriginal at being creative and having people laugh at my work. So in all honesty, I really had no ideas as to what to suggest. However, things often seem to just click and suddenly an argument one day became the poll question itself.
It started at lunch, like everything usually does—complete nonsense.
“You know, I feel weird every time I pass his statue at the Franklin Institute. I feel his eyes just staring at me.” Vincent Ross stated out of the blue. However, the conversation stuck.
“Is that the white statue of the guy sitting in the chair?” Matt Springs asked before he gulped down his Wawa Iced Tea.
“Wow Matt,” said Charlie. “You go to museums?” He asked with a smile on his face. I tried my best to hide my laughter, but others didn’t. It was quite a shot at the point guard of the basketball team.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Matt, annoyed. “I love the Franklin Institute. I just don’t like that statue. He looks like he’s about to rape someone.”
“Excellent point,” I added. “Did you know Ben Franklin slept around more than Holly Brown?” I asked after I saw the head cheerleader make her way through the crowd of people in the cafeteria.
“I don’t think that’s possible Jim,” Charlie stated quite sincerely.
“It would be a close race, though if you think about it.” Matt added as it looked like he thought about it a little bit more than everyone else did. I remembered slightly a rumor that he or Holly had an interest in one another. Yet, I don’t think anything developed out of it.
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be the same. Holly would still be a slut while Ben Franklin would be more of the fucking man. He’d be a fucking national hero!” Tommy Maddox said as his face animated with joy.
“He already is, moron.” Charlie said as he rolled his eyes at Tommy, who simply ignored him with a sigh.
“I know, but in the world of man, he would be awesome!” Tommy exclaimed quite passionately.
“But he already is awesome in the eyes of men all over the universe! The dude fucking created electricity. That’s pretty badass.” Charlie replied.
“He also created the fire department,” I stated.
“You can’t get anymore macho than that.” Charlie added.
Tommy just shrugged as if to say “I guess you’re right”. But that was how Tommy was. He didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of defeating him in a conversation battle. IT was just how he was. Although, he wasn’t as extreme as Vincent Ross, who surprisingly, remained extraordinarily calm.
“So, okay, the guy is pretty macho. But what are you saying Jim, he’s a pimp or something?” Matt asked as he redirected the conversation back to Ben Franklin’s wild sex life.
“Pretty much,” I said as I acknowledged the incoming laughs and snickers with a nod. “Ben Franklin, when he was like seventy got women three times his age junior.”
“Damn…” Matt said as he sounded impressed.
“Wait, are you telling me that a twenty year old would just go down on him? Why the hell would a girl do that? I mean he would be so old and wrinkly!” Tommy said on the verge of being outright pissed. I only assumed this was because he was having trouble of his own with the ladies, although he never told us anything about his love life. We could only make assumptions.
“He was also pretty drunk and high off medications during the Declaration of Independence creation. So basically, our independence is based off of a drunk, drugged up man who picked up young chicks and railed them.” Charlie said gracefully as if he was giving a poetic, rousing speech.
“Wow, I never knew that about him.” Tommy said surprised.
“Yeah, I didn’t know anything about that stuff. I might go read about him now.” Matt replied as he too looked impressed.
I laughed loudly. “Ha! You reading…”
“You know Jim, I think we just found our poll for this month’s edition of The Independent.” Charlie said as his eyes lit up.
“What? About Ben Franklin?” I asked as I didn’t know where Charlie was going with this at all.
“Yeah, we should ask the ladies of FDR high school if they would go down on Ben Franklin, America’s first national hero. I think it would be a fitting tribute to a man of such stature.” Charlie said as he tried to fend off a huge smile.
“That’s sick, Charlie.” I stated as I tried not to think about Ben Franklin in such a way. Yet the others seemed pretty entertained with the idea for the poll.
“I think it’s brilliant,” said Matt as he snickered. “It would certainly put the ladies here in their place. You know, since a lot of them are fucking whorebags.”
“You know Matt,” I said as I just thought of something that irked me. “I don’t understand you’re complete reasoning and opinion on such a thing. You can have any girl you want in this school, and yet you turn around and call them whores? What’s the deal?”
Matt simply laughed it off. “Jim, just because I call them whores certainly doesn’t mean I’m not getting any. I don’t know where you get such an idea like that from, but I can assure, I’m doing pretty well in the ladies category. You don’t have to worry about me, friend.”
“I’m just looking out for you, man.” I said with a smile. Matt reached over and gave me a slap on the back as if he approved.
“Besides, it will give guys like Vince a chance to maybe grab a girl, if not at least some confidence.” Matt remarked. Vincent, who was reading a book, simply lifted his hand and promptly gave Matt the finger without looking at him, instead focusing on his book, which surprised me. Vincent Ross was one to be explosive.
“I don’t know Matt, from the looks of it; there are a lot of sluts here who would certainly fuck Vince. I mean look at him, he’s one ugly motherfucker, but I’m sure someone would do him.” Tommy said as he smiled. Vincent looked up and gave Tommy a nod before going back to his book. “And another thing, I don’t think these whores would even touch a dirty old man like Ben Franklin. Sure, they’re sluts. But they’re sluts with priorities and standards.”
“Ben Franklin did a lot of shit, I think he’s up to standard.” I replied.
“Word,” said Matt before he got up from his chair. “Alright, I’m outta here. Have fun with the whole poll question, I’m sure it’s really going to go over well next week when it comes out.”
With that, Matt disappeared into the sea of people who were getting up. Lunch was over and everyone began to make their trek to class for the rest of the afternoon. I was one of those people, and looked shockingly at the clock to see that I only had three minutes left to go to class. I quickly hurried off leaving Tommy, Charlie, and Vince to discuss more about the sexual expectations of Ben Franklin with FDR girls. It was something that I was surely not going to miss.
The next week, on Monday, The Independent came out with the exact words of the poll question: Ladies, given the chance, would you bang Ben Franklin? I could only wonder as to what kind of responses I would be hearing in the hallways from girls at the school, but by the time classes were over that day, everyone seemed to be enjoying the rather crude, and disgusting poll question to the dismay of the school administration, who once again scrambled teachers and others to gather up the remaining copies so that lies and hatred of the administration couldn’t be spread like wildfire. Yet, at 3 o’clock Monday afternoon, even more students hated the administration for such an act, and afterwards, the Philosophers came together to count up 53 girls who, over the course of the day, could be heard saying, “yes, I would fuck Ben Franklin,” or some other type of combination of words. Those little whores—we all knew it—the sluts.
The poll was a success.