So I have this friend who has a thing for lizards and the like …
He has (or has had – who can keep count?) an iguana, a water dragon, a couple of nile monitors, a gecko, a caiman, and other creatures I’d be hard pressed to identify – if it’s scaly with feet and a bulbous tongue, he’s a fan.
His house is all about the damned things: aquariums full of these creepy crawlies – and more than a few running loose, too. The place is over-warm and smells like a jungle with all the humid, rotting vegetables, dead crickets, shed skin chunks, and lizard poo lying around baking to an unsavory fudge under heat lamps. Just lovely.
The thing is, the poor fool thinks this creepy, filthy, cold-blooded menagerie is gonna get him in with the ladies!
He’s not a bad lookin’ guy, friendly, makes a decent wage, and comes off as normal once you get him out of his house, so he can get the dates but then …
He’ll take ’em out to dinner, to the movies, maybe a nice walk in the park, butter ‘em up like a real pro, and then, fool that he is, take them back to his place and, as a surprise, dumps a vicious, squirming lizard in their lap, expecting this to endear them to him. You can imagine how successful he is, right?
Sometimes they’ll actually stay with him a while, give it a shot, you know? Thinking they’ll change him … hah! No dice, no way.
This went on forever and the more he despaired, the more it worried us: his friends. He’d get all hopeful for a week or so then – *bam* – shot down again.
No matter how we tried, we could not talk sense into the poor guy. Finally it got so bad we held an intervention of sorts and were able to convince him to see a professional; even he had to admit there was a problem.
One visit and, embarrassingly enough, he was diagnosed with, you guessed it: a reptile dysfunction.
