Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

“So what do you suggest?”

“A tariff. A tariff on foreign-scavenged severed bard-heads.”

“I don’t believe in tariffs or quotas or any form of protectionism. I think that protectionism leads to reduced consumer choice, higher prices, lower-quality goods, and, in the long run, economic stagnation and coercive monopolies.”

There’s a long pause…then—

“What does ‘military-grade ass-cheese’ mean?”

“I’ve always thought that military-grade ass-cheese is just basically the shit that gums up the works in your life. Do you know what I mean? This is just my interpretation, but I think it’s basically the shit that just fucks everything up.”

“OK. Is it true that Ikebuys a grenade launcher from an undercover FBI agent at the Miss America Diner?”

“No, that’s not true. This whole business of Ikebuying a grenade launcher from an undercover FBI agent at the Miss America Diner is what experts call a ‘noncanonical blooper.’”

“But is it in The Sugar Frosted Nutsack or not?”

“It is now. Thanks to you. Thanks to you bringing it up.”

“OK. I guess this is my last question: There’s a vignette involving a pet groomer named Rebecca Nesbitand a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon by the name of Dr. Giancarlo Capella. And I’m not sure why it’s even included in the epic — if, in fact, it is — because it doesn’t appear to involve Ikeor any of the Gods. And I was just wondering if it’s also considered a noncanonical blooper. And I’m also curious as to whether you think that noncanonical bloopers are the work of XOXO.”

“First of all, yes, this is an out-and-out noncanonical blooper that was not part of the original epic, although, again — as of right now — it’s considered totally authentic. Rebecca Nesbitwas a pet groomer (actually, I think she advertised herself a ‘pet stylist’) who, following her divorce in Jersey City, New Jersey, moved out to Southern California with her kids and had a laser vaginal rejuvenation performed by Dr. Giancarlo Capellain Beverly Hills. As a result of the procedure, Nesbit’s vaginal muscle strength was increased so excessively that it resulted in traumatic penile injuries to two of her boyfriends— Donald De Vries, who, during intercourse with Nesbit, suffered a tear of the tunica albuginea (an injury sometimes referred to as a penile ‘fracture’), and Sonny Ghazarian, who, under similar circumstances, suffered a crushed penile shaft with extraalbugineal and bilateral cavernosal hematomas. De Vriesand Ghazarianfiled a joint medical-malpractice lawsuit against Capella(who was uniformly portrayed in the press as a combination Richard Simmons/ Josef Mengele, or luridly compared to the Mantlebrothers, the twin gynecologists in David Cronenberg’s film Dead Ringers, or to Dr. Heiter, the demented surgeon in Tom Six’s The Human Centipede ). In a dramatic courtroom demonstration before a rapt gallery, a pneumatic squeeze-bulb dynamometer was used to show that Nesbitnow had a vaginal grip-strength of well over 4,500 pounds per square inch (PSI). (Keep in mind that a commercial trash compactor typically has a maximum operating pressure of only about 3,000 PSI.)”

“This is exactly why we need comprehensive tort reform in this country. There’s an epidemic of these frivolous lawsuits and it’s bankrupting our health care system. I have a very good friend who’s a pet stylist in Jersey City, and he’s been doing 2,500-PSI vaginal rejuvenations on some of his dogs, but he told me that because of all the publicity generated by the case in Beverly Hills, he’s had to stop. He can’t afford the insurance anymore or risk the litigation.”

“There are a number of experts who actually think that Nesbitand Capellawere impersonated by Fast-Cooking Aliand La Felina.”

“Why?”

“You gotta look at the injured parties here, the plaintiffs, these guys Donnie De Vriesand Sonny Ghazarian. They’re exactly the kind of rich, privileged, good-looking scumbags that Fast-Cooking Aliand La Felinaloathe with a passion, tooling down the PCH in their little Porsche 911 Cabriolets, in their fuckin’ Moss Lipowsunglasses.”

There’s a long pause…

“You there?”

Another long, long pause…then—

“Are you still on?…I can barely hear you.…I’m going to put you back up in boldface.”

CALLERI was just saying that I was listening to Tony Bennettsinging “The Shadow of Your Smile” on YouTube. And I read this comment that someone had posted about how “The Shadow of Your Smile” had been her late father’s favorite song. And how he always used to sing it walking down the street, and how, when this person was a little girl, she would be so embarrassed and beg him to stop singing. And she ends the post by saying, “Oh, what I would give to hear him sing one more time!” And that made me so sad that I just started crying. And it’s so weird because my own father died recently, and I don’t really think of him that much and when I do it’s not with much emotion. My first conscious memory of my dad — he’s wearing one of those, y’know, those belligerent T-shirts that say, like, “Stop Reading My Shirt, Asshole!” and these polyester Hawaiian swim trunks, and Velcro sandals he got at Dollar Tree, and socks, and he’s drinking fuckin’ Keystone Light from a go-cup, and I was like, “Ewwwww, that’s my dad?” So, y’know, I don’t really miss him in that painful way you miss someone when you’re really grieving. But that comment on YouTube made me feel so much intense grief on behalf of this person I don’t even know. It’s so weird…

REAL HUSBANDI don’t think that’s so weird at all. I completely get that. Everyone typically thinks that when you’re intimately close to someone, like your husband or your wife or your mom or your dad, that it opens you up so much to all these powerful feelings of connectedness and enables you to understand the other person with such incredible empathy. But I really think that when you become habituated to someone, it can actually do completely the opposite — totally anesthetize you, totally numb you out and blind you to the other person. But then you’ll be somewhere completely random or you’ll just be reading, and you’ll come upon something so abstract, like, I don’t know, an equation in a math book or some mask in a museum or a comment by a complete stranger on YouTube, and suddenly you’re just flooded with all this raw emotion. I really think that the idea of grieving for a father, I mean in theory —the abstract notion of children grieving for fathers — can actually cause us to experience so much more anguish than our own personal grief for our own fathers.…Do you know what I mean? Does that make any sense?

CALLERI love you. If your wife ever leaves you for a vagrant, drug-addled bard, I’ll be waiting.

REAL HUSBAND(cuing Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl Like You”) She’s already left me for a vagrant drug-addled bard.

There’s a long pause…like an eternity…and then…nothing.

It’s sometimes said that, here, for a moment, the world disappears, that there’s a fade to pure white…like a T-shirt bleached of sentiment…like an empty page…like the tabula rasa of an erased mind…and then—