Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

REAL HUSBANDWhat about World War One? Who was that guy…the Bosnian Serb…the nationalist? Uh…oh fuck!..What was his name, sweetie?

REAL WIFE Gavrilo Princip?

REAL HUSBANDYeah, Gavrilo Princip. Gavrilo Principassassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinandin Sarajevo, right? And it sets off the whole fuckin’ First World War. I mean, that’s a pretty apocalyptic war. If the conditions are right, you never know what can set it off. Club kids and Hasids could conceivably do it.

REAL WIFEI’m not sure that’s the best analogy.

REAL HUSBANDYou don’t think World War One was an apocalyptic global war?

REAL WIFEThat’s not what I mean.

REAL HUSBANDYou don’t think World War One was an apocalyptic fucking global war?

REAL WIFEI never said it wasn’t.

REAL HUSBANDTrench warfare. Poison gas. Fifteen million deaths.

REAL WIFEThe Archduke Franz Ferdinandwas heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. There was an extremely complicated situation…

REAL HUSBANDI’m just sayin’.

REAL WIFE…with all sorts of interlocking alliances.

REAL HUSBANDI’m just sayin’. If the conditions are right, you never know what can set it off. Club kids and Hasids could conceivably do it.

T.S.F.N.You seem to really identify with Ike.

REAL HUSBANDPeople tell me I sound like him — y’know, the raspy, whispery voice and everything. And I have the same kinds of fantasies he does about big, sweaty, uneducated, working-class women, and about being ogled by masturbating Goddesses…

T.S.F.N.Do you think your wife is a Mossad agent?

REAL HUSBAND(looking askance at his wife with mock suspicion) Hmmm…

T.S.F.N.Possible?

REAL HUSBAND(laughing) Seriously, I tend to interpret that whole “everyone’s wife is a Mossad agent” thing in a more sort of metaphorical way — that people you’re intimate with might be, like, “double agents,” y’know? It’s a weird kind of paranoia you get about people you love — that they might turn out to be completely different from who you think they are, that it’s all been some sort of diabolically patient plot against you. I think that’s a pretty normal fear you have in any serious relationship. And that’s why it’s such a popular part of the epic, because so many people can relate to that fear. But personally I don’t really worry about it too much.

T.S.F.N.Why’s that?

REAL HUSBANDHave you ever heard of Cupid’s Stigmata?

T.S.F.N.No, what is that?

REAL HUSBANDIt’s a term they use in online dating. It’s when two people share some uncommon anatomical feature with each other, which usually means that they’re sort of predestined to be together. And my wife and I both have double ureters draining one of our kidneys (which is an anomaly occurring in, like, 1 in 150 people), and we both have port-wine stains in the shape of Nike swooshes on the smalls of our backs (which is, like, 1 in 10 million people), so…

T.S.F.N.Is that true? That’s amazing!

REAL HUSBAND(totally cracking up) No, I’m kidding. I’m busting your chops, man. But seriously — we’re really close. Really really close. And I think that what they say about Ikeand Ruthieis sort of true about us too — that we’re utterly inscrutable figures who, paradoxically, understand each other perfectly well. And we’re both lifelong connoisseurs of The Sugar Frosted Nutsack.

T.S.F.N.You’ve been going to recitations your whole life?

REAL HUSBANDAbsolutely. And I was in one when I was a kid! In, like, fourth grade. It was a school recitation. I played a fuckin’ bard! I probably still know the lines…

T.S.F.N.Do it. Do a little for us.

REAL HUSBANDI don’t have a jerrycan of Sunkist to tap my ring on, but…

T.S.F.N.C’mon, do some.

REAL HUSBANDOK.…This is, like, totally from memory…and it isn’t verbatim, it’s sort of paraphrasing…

T.S.F.N.Go for it.

REAL HUSBANDOK… Ikeis strolling down to the Miss America Diner. Instead of a monocle and a walking stick, this flâneur sports a tight guinea-T and a baseball bat. Uh…he’s loaded with gem-like apercus and aphorisms.…He enters the diner and…no, wait a minute…

REAL WIFEDoomed, elusive Ike, Warlord of His Stoop…

REAL HUSBANDDoomed, elusive Ike, Warlord of His Stoop…never ostentatious, self-righteous, or flamboyantly narcissistic, enters the diner…as if in a trance…a trance abetted by the obbligato of miscellaneous conversations, which is akin to the drone of the bards. “It’s his favorite restaurant!” a friend of the hero tells The Sugar Frosted Nutsack in an exclusive interview. No, wait — that’s not right…” There are two opposed facets to Ike’s character, a friend of the hero tells The Sugar Frosted Nutsack in an exclusive interview. “He abhors celebrity and yet covets immortality.” Ikehimself is said to be troubled by the ambivalence in his character. “I dwell in anonymity. How is it, then, that I am enchanted by eternal renown?” One of the things about Ikethat makes him so indisputably a hero is that he doesn’t leave his own contradictions to the effete disputations of armchair scholars. He grapples with them himself, in his own lifetime.…Uh—

REAL WIFEThree crazy things to report…

REAL HUSBANDThree crazy things to report: The Sugar Frosted Nutsack has received a letter demanding that Ikebe replaced by actor Chace Crawford…six bards were hacked to death by jilted, machete-wielding husbands whose wives had been seduced at a public recitation…we are now learning that the bards have been decapitated, and that the severed heads of the bards continue to cacophonously chant The Sugar Frosted Nutsack …hold on…we have just received confirmation that only one head is still chanting — let me repeat that: only one head is still chanting…we are now learning that drunken Ukrainian Cossacks, Mexican banditos wearing sombreros and crisscrossed cartridge bandoliers, khat-chewing Somali pirates, Indian Maoists (i.e., Naxalites), and Punjabi Taliban are playing Buzkashi with the headless carcasses of the slain bards. OK, we have just received word that all hell has broken loose. Children all over the world are now strangling their fathers with the intestines of their mothers. A single Chinook helicopter has been sent in to evacuate the loyalists, but its blades have been immobilized with what experts are calling “military-grade ass-cheese.” Ladies and gentlemen — we have just received an important clarification: all of this is apparently just part of a Cirque du Soleil show. Let me repeat that, for the benefit of those of you who are just tuning in: all of this is apparently just part of a Cirque du Soleil show. No one could really disregard it or completely purge it from their minds—

REAL WIFEEven though this all turned out to be just part of a Cirque du Soleil show, this notion of severed bard-heads was like a remark stricken from the record in a courtroom — no one could really disregard it or completely purge it from their minds…