Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

This is Ike the Chimera—the hybrid beast with the severed head of a bard and the sugar frosted nutsack of a hero.

That statement, “This is Ike the Chimera—the hybrid beast with the severed head of a bard and the sugar frosted nutsack of a hero,” is considered to contain the innermost embedded secret within the many embedded innermost secrets of the epic, i.e., this is the very moment when the epic most suggests a Russian Matryoshka doll or a Chinese nested box.

How can Ikebe ritually reenacting something that he appears to be doing extemporaneously and for the very first time? It is because this takes place in the “realm or the zone of the heroic,” on a “heroic plane”—it is fated, choreographed by the Gods.

Ikeis the hero of the epic about the bard who simultaneously recites and reenacts the epic of which he is the extemporaneous, albeit inexorably doomed, hero. This is why scholars frequently refer to Ikeas the “Möbius Stripper,” i.e., the man whose lascivious dance (i.e., “his life”) is performed for the delectation of masturbating Goddesses.

Ike’s ongoing self-narration (which is an echolalic karaoke recitation of what he hears streaming in his head) is extremely similar to — and thought by many experts to actually derive from — the flowing auto-narrative of the basketball-dribbling nine-year-old who, at dusk, alone on the family driveway half-court, weaves back and forth, half-hearing and half-murmuring his own play-by-play: “…he’s got a lot going on that could potentially distract him…algebra midterm…his mom’s calling him to come inside…his asthma inhaler just fell out of his pocket…but somehow he totally shuts all that out of his mind…crowd’s going ca-razy! …but the kid’s in his own private Idaho…clock’s ticking down…​badass craves the drama… lives for this shit…​ Gunslingaaah …he can hear the automatic garage-door opener…​that means his dad’s gonna be pulling into the driveway in, like, fifteen seconds… un-fucking-believable that he’s about to take this shot under this kind of pressure, with the survival of the species on the line…and look at him out there — dude’s ice …is this guy human or what?…his foot’s hurting from when he stepped on his retainer in his room last night…but he can play with pain…we’ve seen that time and time again…he’s stoic…a cold-blooded professional… Special Ops … Hitman with the Wristband …hand-eye coordination like a Cyborg Assassin …his mom’s calling him to come in and feed the dog and help set the table for dinner…the woman is doing everything she can possibly do to rattle him…but this guy’s not like the rest of us…he is un-fucking-flappable …he dribbles between his legs…OK, hold on…he dribbles between his legs…hold on…he dribbles…hold on…he dribbles between his legs (yes!)…fakes right, fakes left, double pump-fakes…there’s one second left on the clock…and he launches…an impossibly…long…fadeaway…​ jumpaaah …​​it’s off the rim…but he fights for the offensive rebound like some kind of rabid samurai…throwing vicious elbows like lethally honed swords…the severed heads of his opponents litter the court…spinal cords are sticking out of the neck stumps…but there’s no ticky-tacky foul called, the referees are just letting them play…there’s somehow still.00137 seconds left on the clock…now there’s a horn honking…might that be the War Conch of the Undead?…etc., etc.”

Ikeis constantly testing his own self-narration against “empirical reality” (which is itself actually an illusory construct inscribed by XOXOin Ike’s mind, which Ikerealized after being hit by the Mister Softee truck). So, Ike’s tactical response to XOXO(everyone’s, for that matter) is not far from a kind of delirium. Ike’s methodology is to echo the epic: “ Ike’s doing this, Ike’s doing that,” and to compare what he’s saying he’s doing with what he’s actually doing, and see if there’s any “wobble.” This, among other things, is what makes Ikea hero.

Ike Karton, unemployed butcher, inveterate mumbler, Warlord of His Stoop, believes — and justifiably so — that he’s fated to die very soon at the hands of Mossad sharpshooters. And he will stand in front of the Miss America Diner (sometimes in close proximity to this other solitary psycho who angrily paces the perimeter of the parking lot bellowing at passersby, “Are you staring at my girlfriend’s tits?!”) and murmur to himself, “He is fated to die very soon at the hands of Mossad sharpshooters,” to which he will almost immediately append, “He is also fated to stand in front of the Miss America Diner (sometimes in close proximity to this other solitary psycho who angrily paces the perimeter of the parking lot bellowing at passersby, ‘Are you staring at my girlfriend’s tits?!’) and murmur to himself, ‘He is fated to die very soon at the hands of Mossad sharpshooters.’” These bracketing redundancies, the compulsive conjuring up of these Matryoshka dolls or Chinese nested boxes, can occupy Ike’s thoughts for hours upon hours. This is one of the reasons (in addition to the whispering campaign conducted against him by Mogul Magoo, Shanice, and Bosco Hifikepunye) that Ikewas fired from his job in the A&P Meat Department, and it is one of the things, among many, that makes Ikea hero.

For doomed Ike, everything — every concept and every percept — is a totem of death. Everything bespeaks evanescence. Even a brand new Quiznos on the corner of West Side Avenue and Stegman Parkway (a Quiznos that hasn’t even opened yet!) reeks of mono no aware (“the pathos of things”) and lacrimae rerum (“tears of things”).

Of course, we know that Ike’s soul has been repeatedly kidnapped by XOXOand taken to XOXO’s hyperborean hermitage. And we know that Ikehas developed (or is perhaps feigning, as a tactical ploy) Stockholm syndrome.

Ike’s heroic maneuvering to situate himself in an appositional space vis-à-vis XOXO—that is, to juxtapose himself somehow in relation to XOXO, to find a place interior to him or outside of him — may account for Ike’s fractured motion, for the sort of cubistic way he has of moving through space (“the feral fatalism of all his loony tics”).

Ikewas asked at the zoning board hearing if his soul had ever had a homosexual relationship with XOXO, and Ike—ever the discreet, gallant, old-world gentleman — said that they’d merely had “tickle fights.” (And this, among other things, is also what makes Ikea hero.)

None of the above.

All of the above.

ANSWER: P. All of the above.

Note to self: P. All of the above includes O. None of the above. Consider mystical significance.

Ike’s Agony:

Why His Own Family Fears for His Life

How his obsession with polytheism and martyrdom (and online porn) is tearing his family apart. Ruthielashes out! She leaks X-rated pics of Ike, and gossips about La Felina’s “sham marriage” to Fast-Cooking Ali.