Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

When it turns out that the God Doc Hickory(“whose snarky, adenoidal laugh is a snide reproach to those of simple purpose and modest means”) played a trick on Ikeby assuring him that he was entitled to free rice pudding at the Miss America Diner, Ikegets into a brawl with the manager of the diner and is pepper-sprayed.

As he’s leaving, Iketurns back and grabs The Waitressand turns her around so she’s facing him, and he holds her in his arms, tears in his eyes, blinded by the pepper spray, perhaps experiencing a presentiment of his own imminent and hyperviolent demise, knowing he’ll never see her again. “Never forget,” he says fervently, “how close — in the end — we really turned out to be.” The Waitresswatches Ikeleave the diner; then, through the window, she watches him recede in epileptic jump-cuts, a marionette of his Gods, a clutter of spasms and ticks, a nude descending a staircase. She can’t move for a moment. Her throat is clogged with emotion. She knows she’s been traversed by tragedy.

Monday: 10 PM Eastern

“Ten Gods I’d Fuck (T.G.I.F.)”

Ikediscovers that his daughter’s boyfriend, the glassy-eyed, unscrupulous Vance, has been stealing his underpants — two pairs of gray Tommy Hilfigerboxer briefs and one pair of smoky blue Calvin Kleins. Later, as Ikeand his daughter sit together on the stoop in the late afternoon, he gives her a pep talk about an upcoming math midterm, and then casually broaches the subject of the stolen underpants. “What does Vancewant to do, anyway — I mean, as a career?” he asks. “He’s really interested in doing something in music,” his daughter says. “What aspect of music is he interested in pursuing?” inquires Ike. “I think just listening to it,” she replies. Meanwhile, Vance, who was raised by three hard-drinking lesbian fisherwomen in a squalid shack under the PulaskiSkyway, is seen tooling around town on a battered red BMX bike, making various stops, selling drugs. (Some experts interpret the threesome of alcoholic lesbian fisherwomen as a mortal analogue to the motif of the “triadic goddess,” i.e., a variant of the three tiny teenage girls in the terrarium who mouth a lot of high-pitched gibberish (like Mothra’s fairies, except for their wasted pallors, acne, big tits, and T-shirts that read ‘I Don’t Do White Guys’) and also of the three Gods known variously as The Pince-Nez 44sand Los Vatos Locos(“The Crazy Guys”)). After dinner, Ikeresumes work on the fifteen-foot lewd statue of La Felina(“naked, dildo-​impaled”) that he’s begun constructing on the front lawn, adjacent to a jerry-rigged “stage.” Later, just as The Kartonsbegin rehearsing the narcocorrido that Ikewrote at the Miss America Diner (“Do you hear that mosquito, / that toilet flushing upstairs, / that glockenspiel out in the briar patch?”) — with Ikeon vocals and Akai MPC drum machine, Ruthieon guitar and vocals, and his daughter on bass — a neighbor calls the police to complain about the noise. Three squad cars pull up in front of Ike’s hermitage, and, after verbal sparring with the cops escalates into a physical confrontation, Ikeis pepper-sprayed and Tasered. The next day, when he and Vancedrink Sunkist orange soda and get high on a smokable form of Gravy as they sit on the curb in front of a convenience store, Ikeconfronts him about the stolen underpants. But Vancetotally disarms Ikewith the remark “Did you know that hiccoughs are a form of myoclonic seizure?” (One may recognize here an epic application of a folkloric motif found frequently in the tales of every continent: a hero confronts his son-in-law or his daughter’s suitor about stolen underpants, only to be disarmed with a fascinating factoid.) Ikeconfides in Vancethat he knows his violent death is imminent.

“Damn!” Vancesays, with emphatic sympathy, shaking his downcast head as he absently spins a wheel of his battered red BMX bike, which lies on its side against the curb, and he lets his empty soda can rattle against the spokes. “How do you know for sure you’re gonna die so soon?” he asks.

“ La Felinacame to me in a dream,” Ikesays, “and she pretty much promised me.”

And probably because he’s getting pretty high, Iketells Vanceabout the dream, about how there was something dangling from La Felina’s snatch, and how, at first, he thought it was a tampon string, but, as he came closer, he could see that it was a fortune, and he pulled it out and read it, and it said: “You’re going to be assassinated by Mossad in a week or so.” Iketells Vancethat when La Felinaspread her legs, it perfumed the room, that it was like the warm smells from a halal truck, and that it made him so hungry that he woke up from the dream with a ravenous appetite and went straight to the Miss America Diner and ate an enormous tongue sandwich. Vancesays that if he knew that he was going to die in a week, he’d do every fucked-up thing he could think of. Ikegently admonishes Vance. “That’s the wrong approach,” he says. “Here’s what you’d do: You’d shave every day. You’d keep your shoelaces nice and snug. You’d work on your posture. You see what I’m saying?” Although Ikesuspects that beneath Vance’s glazed stupor lurks a reptilian cunning, he senses that the semiliterate underpants-jacker is having trouble with the concept of Bushido asceticism, and proceeds to tell him a story illustrating exemplary conduct in the face of imminent hyperviolent death. How, early one morning in fifteenth-century Edo, a loyal retainer inadvertently offended a thin-skinned and legendarily fastidious nobleman. Stricken with remorse and shame at his conduct, the retainer immediately offered to commit seppuku at dawn the following day. The nobleman, now ashamed of his petulance, attempted to dissuade the retainer from taking such drastic action, but the retainer was adamant that, having offended his master, he must pay the ultimate price. The nobleman, sensing the unimpeachable rectitude and indomitable valor of this man, had no choice but to accept his decision to commit ritual suicide, but he invited the man to be his honored guest at his castle and, for the twenty-four hours before his death, partake of anything he desired — food, drink, concubines, etc. The retainer, bowing deeply, accepted his master’s invitation. Soon after he arrived at the opulent abode of the nobleman, as he wandered the labyrinthine hallways of the castle by himself, the retainer’s nose began to itch. A man of irreproachable manners and discretion, he exerted all his willpower in an effort not to scratch his nose and appear uncouth. But the more he tried to ignore the itch, the more maddening it became. Finally, he furtively reached up to his nose (furtively, even though he was completely alone — such was his rectitude) and felt an overgrown hair curling just a bit out of one nostril. He impulsively yanked it out, bringing tears to his eyes. Now he had the tiny hair between his thumb and forefinger. But so scrupulous was this man that he wouldn’t even consider the possibility of simply dropping the hair and letting it float harmlessly and unnoticeably to the floor. Knowing that his nose hair had befouled the gleaming tile of his master’s palace would have filled him with deep, intolerable shame. So he tried to find a small garbage bin or a pail of some sort or even an ashtray or a chamber pot where he could discreetly discard the nose hair. But the palace of the fastidious nobleman was so exceptionally pristine that there was no such vessel to be found anywhere — all the garbage bins and chamber pots had been tastefully ensconced out of sight. Still, the retainer absolutely refused to litter the floor with this single nose hair. And he spent the next twenty-four hours in their entirety — the very last twenty-four hours of his life — stubbornly, but fruitlessly, wandering the halls of the palace in search of something, anything, into which he could deposit the hair. He ate not a morsel, drank not a drop, and spent not even a single moment with any of the voluptuous concubines who awaited him. And, at dawn, he committed seppuku, solemnly disemboweling himself, the nose hair still pressed between the fingers of his hand.