The Biggest Slut in South Park
Butters Stoch likes to categorise people. It's great when he can organise everyone into their own proper space, like cleaning his room, and maybe he won't get grounded if he does it properly.
Generally, the residents of South Park are easy to label. Goths, hippies, melvins, fatasses (Eric Cartman's is so huge it gets its own category), and the ones like Craig Tucker who try their best to be normal. Poor kids like Kenny McCormick, and filthy rich ones like Token Black. Jewish ones like Kyle Broflovski, and non-Jewish ones like everybody else. Butters can segregate them all easily.
There's just one question about them he can't answer, and it's been driving him crazy lately. Sometimes it's all he can think of, and he knows it's weird, he's not normal, but god, he has to know, has to figure it out, like it'll restore the balance of his world when he does. Just who is the biggest slut in South Park?
It's a question that seems pretty easy at first glance, but if you asked everyone in town, they'd all have a different answer. And when you think twice about it (and Butters has been thinking about it twice, thrice, four, five times over) it's not such a simple question after all.
For instance, the person most people would pick straight away is Bebe Stevens, but she's hardly the definition of a slut. She may have the biggest boobs around (and they're not even fake), but she doesn't dress like a whore (except for that one time with Paris Hilton) and she and Clyde have been dating on and off for the past few years, so she doesn't sleep around. In fact, none of the girls in South Park are sluts. Bebe's friend Red has been going out exclusively with Token for almost three years, and Wendy Testaburger started hanging out with Kevin Stoley after she broke it off with Stan Marsh. It seemed like an odd pairing at first, but really, they're both so nerdy they suit each other perfectly. No sexual deviance there then.
Stan and Kyle? Definitely out of the question. It would be the funniest thing, Butters thinks, if one of them cheated on the other. The long, preachy speeches they would both deliver, about trust and forgiveness and honesty and mistakes and we've been best friends for so long how could you do this to me and it was an honest mistake pleasepleasePLEASE. But sadly, it'll never happen. They have this sickening devotion to each other; it's hard to watch but harder to look away. Is it really possible for two people to be so happy together?
Then there are the ones who Butters can't really count as sluts, because even though they act like whores, it's all out of ignorance. There's Tweek, who goes running to Damien every chance he gets, but pretending that it's the other raven-haired that stars in his wet dreams holding him instead. Damien lets him have his fantasy, doesn't complain when Tweek cries out Craig's name instead of his, because he's too far gone in his own delusions about a different blonde, one with a charming British accent. The one who begs Craig to hurt him, make him scream, make him bleed, the one who looks at Craig and tries to see Damien instead. Craig obliges, taking all of his frustration out on Pip, because he doesn't think he can ever get what he really wants, and the more he hurts Pip, the twitchier he gets, and it gets so much easier to imagine he's with Tweek instead.
It's got to be the most fucked-up love quadrangle ever, and Butters finds the whole thing highly entertaining, because really, all it would take is one confession and everyone would get their happy ending. But Tweek will never tell Craig what he wants because he thinks it'll be way too much pressure. Pip is too shy to confess anything he feels for Damien, and Damien is too stubborn to admit he feels anything for Pip at all. And Craig has resigned himself to never getting any happy ending whatsoever, so he'll make the best of what he has. And the four of them will carry on like this forever, round and round, over and over, until all the strings inside them snap and they fall apart one by one.
Then there's Eric Cartman. Probably one of the least likely candidates, because he's never shown all that much interest in sex, girls or guys. Not until a few days ago, when he shoved Butters hard against a wall and hissed "I can't take it anymore!". Butters just smiled widely and let it happen, because honestly, it was the moment he had been dreaming of for years. Cartman, Eric Cartman, the person who thought of everyone else as dirt beneath his feet, had chosen him. HIM. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Until he realised the name Cartman was whispering over and over was not his. It was fucking Kenny McCormick's.
Later, after Cartman finished and left him there without so much as an acknowledgement, Butters went to Kenny's house. It sounded like a really stupid idea, even to him, but he figured Cartman of all people deserved to be happy, and if it took Kenny McCormick to make him happy then Butters was glad to help.
When he got there, Kenny was sitting alone in the snow in his threadbare orange parker, leaning up against the front of his house. Butters could hear his parents arguing inside, and occasionally, the sound of shattering glass.
"Hey Butters" Kenny said, waving. His voice was muffled by the hood of his parka, but Butters could still understand him.
"Are you crazy? You're gonna freeze out here" he replied, scuffing the snow nervously with his foot.
"Better out here than in there" Kenny slurred, nodding in the direction of the house where his parents are still screaming at each other, and Butters realised that he was totally wasted. He was clutching a half-empty whisky bottle in one hand, and the smell of alcohol made Butters' eyes water.
"W-well I suppose" Butters said, not really sure how to go about telling Kenny. He was starting to rethink his plan after seeing him, because stupid alcoholics don't deserve to be loved by Eric Cartman. Just what the hell did he see in the McCormick boy anyway?
"Hey c'mon, let's go f'r a walk" Kenny said, stumbling to his feet. His hood had fallen off, exposing his messy golden hair. He grabbed Butters' hand and dragged him through the steadily darkening streets and past the railway tracks. They trudged through the snow in the direction of Starks Pond, still holding hands, like two little kids on a playdate. There wasn't a single living thing in sight except the two of them.
When Kenny looped both arms around Butters' neck and pulled him down so they were face to face with their foreheads touching and their warm breath mingling in the cold night air, and whispered "Can you fuck me? Please?" in that sweet voice of his, Butters started laughing so hard he couldn't stop. Here was the proof that Kenny didn't deserve someone like Eric Cartman, because he was nothing but a stupid, poor, alcoholic whore. He pushed Kenny down roughly, still laughing.
When he was done, Kenny looked up at him with something like hope shining in his amazing blue eyes and said "Thank you so much. You helped me figure out what I wanted".
Butters just looked at him blankly for a while, before asking "What is it that you wanted?"
Kenny turns away slightly so his face is obscured by shadow, but Butters can still see him smiling. "Butters, do you think Eric could ever love someone like me?"
The question was like a slap in the face, and with it came the cold realisation that all it would take for Kenny and Eric to get their happy ending was one little confession, and then Butters would be left alone on the outside.
"No, I don't think he could ever love someone like you, Kenny" he said, his voice dripping with syrupy sweetness, "because you're nothing but white trash after all".
Kenny's face fell, and he still looked so beautiful, even in his misery, that Butters couldn't help adding spitefully "Besides, he likes me more than you. He came to me this afternoon. Not you."
And then he shoved Kenny backwards, so that he crashed through the ice covering the pond and slipped under the chilly water. The pond was shallow enough that Butters could see Kenny thrashing around as he breathed in water instead of air, see his eyes bulge open, his lips turn blue, and then become perfectly, deathly still, his golden hair still shining faintly under the moonlight.
He would come back tomorrow, come back to haunt Butters like his own personal ghost, still trying to take away everything he wanted. But he would never get it, Butters would make sure of that. He would keep Eric Cartman no matter what, even if he was only being used by him, and even if he had to tear Kenny McCormick's world apart to do it.
And that's why Butters was so obsessed with finding the biggest slut in South Park. If he could completely destroy someone for his own selfish reasons, and do it without giving a damn about the feelings of the one person he cared about, then he must be a really horrible person. But surely, surely (oh god, there's got to be someone), there is someone out there who is a worse person than he is.
And one night, the answer comes to him, and his world is righted. It doesn't matter if Kenny's a stupid, poor, alcoholic whore, and if Eric is a sociopath who is too cowardly to confess his feelings to Kenny, and if Butters is a horrible slutty person, because the biggest slut in South Park is still Lianne Cartman.