It’d been a tough life—especially on elementary school playgrounds. Gomer just seemed the perfect target for bullies, mean girls, and teachers with marital issues. The doctors and specialists his mother would drag him to all said his physical health was excellent. Everything else was up for speculation. Still, he had to admit, 4th grade was probably the best three years of his life.

     Middle school was marginally better, if only for the sex. Rosy Palm was his steady. On the plus side, he was the first kid in his class to have body hair. Those extra couple of years also meant no more bullying since his peers now only came to his shoulder.

     High school meant being in the same building and hallways with his original classmates. They remembered him. While most reunions are happy affairs or at least the participants pretend to be, Gomer’s wasn’t. Hazing in his freshman year was especially brutal. On several occasions, his Toy Story and Scooby Doo grape smugglers adorned the flagpole. It turned out that teenage girls were even more vicious. Most humiliating of all, his elementary teachers had friends and relatives who taught in the upper levels.

     Even being the first freshman in school history with a driver's license didn’t earn him any social creds. All his parents could afford was a ’64 Volkswagen Bug —a sickly yellow vehicle with a faded, scratched peace symbol decal on the back window. The top speed was about 65 on a downhill slope. The inside smelled like a hundred-year-old reefer and patchouli oil.  

     Even the nerd troop avoided his company. Gomer was the social equivalent of nuclear fallout.

Realizing their scion was rocketing into failure, his parents got him a job flipping burgers after school and on weekends. Those Mickey Dee managers make serious bank, his mother insisted. The greasy food gave him zits and increased his waist by two sizes. He smelled like a double cheeseburger with extra onions.

     All things pass, and so did Gomer. Graduating from teen hell, he started looking for a real career and some payback. So he joined the police force and attended their academy. The exercise trimmed his body fat, and his zits cleared up. He adopted a high-and-tight hairstyle, and his new scent was mostly gun oil and leather. He also lost the cartoon skivvies and started wearing tighty-whities. Sex was still a solo affair. A loner with plenty of free social time, Gomer discovered old black-and-white John Wayne movies.

     He graduated with honors, having nothing better to do than memorize the entire police manual. His superiors told him he was a natural. Advancement, rank, the future was wide open. Gomer bought a new leather holster, polished his badge until it was a weapon, and became the most squared away, saltiest new boots in his department. His sergeant rewarded him with a car with cop decals, a strobe bar on the roof, and best of all, a siren.

     Just cruising down the street, other cars slowed down and pulled over to let him pass. Motorists eyed him with fear. Cops may not be rock stars with groupies, but they do have a lot of badge bunnies. Gomer finally had real sex out on the highway in a roadside park by the liquor store. And again in a roach motel on the other side of town, just past the pawn shop. The rumors were correct—women love a man in uniform with a gun on his hip.

     For Gomer, the icing on the cake was getting to pull over his former tormentors and bully them with citations. He exceeded his ticket quota, issuing fines for everything from short stops to highway moppery and attempted sneak. He also learned how to stop just short of crossing the line into harassment.  In no time, he was wearing corporal’s stripes and shaking hands with the mayor.  

     Riding the wave, Gomer was assigned to his unit’s major crimes division, the home of rising stars. Working a case involving a string of home burglaries in a gated community, he closed in on a suspect sneaking around in the backyard of a French Eclectic-style McMansion. Jumping out of his hiding place in the shrubbery, Gomer apprehended the miscreant, taking him to the ground.

     Enjoying the thrill of his first felony arrest, he lay there for a minute, imagining the accolades, a certain promotion, and the mayor’s hot wife. Rumor around the locker room at the station was that she liked a little of the rough in cuffs. In a moment of vainglory and ignorance, Gomer jumped up from the suspect and whipped out his manacles. He cuffed the guy and read him his rights. Then he asked if he understood.

     All hell broke loose. The accused was a well-known local civil rights leader with five stars in Martindale-Hubbell. Gomer wasn’t just going down—he was going to prison. The uproar brought the lady of the house, who vouched for the intruder—he was expected. Why was he lurking in the backyard? To give her husband time to adjust the seams in his stockings.

     The department supervisor was called. Charges were filed, and Gomer was perp walked. Big media got wind of the story. Overnight, it went national. Riots were organized, and neighborhoods burned. Gomer fell from grace faster than Lucifer. Pundits avowed he was a member of the KKK or Proud Boys—did it matter which? The trial was short, the sentence long. Gomer would be making license plates in a crossbar hotel for several decades.

     He was treated like any other prisoner, lest he claim discrimination. Robbed and stabbed, he was assigned a cell with a guy nicknamed The Cherry Picker. Gomer was just another number in the system. Hollywood wanted the rights for a movie of the week. Reflecting on his circumstances, Gomer decided that sometimes, payback isn’t just a bitch—it’s a whole sorority.