Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

“A person’s name is a fate-conjuring incantation,” Iketells Vance, and then proceeds to tell him a story illustrating the mystical significance of names: “A guy walks into an agent’s office and says, ‘I’d appreciate it very much if you’d consider representing me. I hear you’re one of the best agents in the business and that you could really give my career a terrific boost.’ The agent says, ‘OK, what do you do?’ And the guy says, ‘I do a bit of everything. I sing, I dance, I do impersonations, I act — straight drama, musical theater, comedy, slapstick — the whole megillah.’ And the agent says, ‘That sounds great. What’s your name?’ And the guy says, ‘My name is Penis van Lesbian.’ And the agent’s taken aback for a moment, and then he says, ‘With all respect, son, you’re going to have to change that name.’ And the guy says, ‘Why?’ And the agent says, ‘That name, Penis van Lesbian, just isn’t going to work in show business. So if I’m going to represent you, you’re simply going to have to change it.’ And the guy sighs and says, ‘That’s a shame, because van Lesbianhas been the family name for generations upon generations, and it would be terribly disrespectful of me to change it. And my parents gave a lot of thought to naming me Penis, and I wouldn’t want to offend them in any way either. So I’m afraid changing my name is out of the question.’ And the agent says, ‘Well, I completely understand that, and I wish you all the luck in the world.’ And the guy leaves. So, about five years later, the agent’s sitting in his office and there’s a knock on the door. And in walks this same guy, looking a little bit older and considerably more prosperous. And he takes out a check for fifty thousand dollars made out to the agent, and he puts it on his desk. The agent’s totally nonplussed. ‘What’s this for?’ he asks. And the guy says, ‘Well, about five years ago I came in here and you told me that to make it in showbiz, I needed to change my name, and I said no. And after knocking my head against the wall and getting absolutely nowhere, I finally changed my name, and I’ve been a fabulous hit. You were completely right, and you deserve to share in my success.’ The agent shrugs. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘What did you change your name to?’ ‘ Dick van Dyke,’ the guy says.” As he recounts the parable, Ike’s whispery rasp is almost inaudible against the percussive rattle of the soda can thrummed by the slowly spinning spokes of Vance’s battered red BMX bike and the buzz of several enormous iridescent-winged horseflies who sip at dazzling rivulets of bright orange soda that trickle from the mouths of the discarded cans. Vance, because he’s so high on Gravy, is momentarily fixated on the flies — a surreal tableau of mutant nomadic nymphs feeding on chromium sludge in some postapocalyptic wasteland…he’s thinking. And the horsefly/nymphs seem to be serenading each other in some sort of high-pitched gibberish.…Tiny, voluptuous nymphs plucked out of a painting by the English Pre-Raphaelite John William Waterhouseand cast in some Disney/Pixar 3-D animation…he’s thinking. The very words he’s thinking — the very language he’s thinking in — scrolling across the bottom of his visual frame…like karaoke, he’s thinking…he’s SO high…

For Ike, the Gravy seems to have deepened his understanding of his relation to XOXO. Ikeis “reading” (i.e., thinking) what XOXOis writing, what he’s inscribing in Ike’s mind with his sharp periodontal curette. Ike’s denken is XOXO’s dichten. XOXOhas also has made a series of “drill-drawings,” for which he inserts a periodontal curette into a motorized drill to produce circular patterns in Ike’s mind, thus divorcing the hand of the artist from the work of art. This is what produces the effect that links Ike’s simultaneous enactment of hero and bard to “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.” (A periodontal curette inserted into a motorized drill to produce circular patterns would also explain the epic’s “tail-chasing, vortical form.”)

Some of the nymph/horseflies are attracted to Ike’s armpits (which are said to be “redolent of sex and death”).

Meanwhile, Ikeexpounds further upon the talismanic power of “the name,” about how — whether you’re mortal ( sterbliche ) or divine ( göttliche ); Ike Karton, Vance, or DJ Doorjamb; Mogul Magoo, Bosco Hifikepunye, or Mister Softee—when you’re given a name, your defining destinies magnetically accrue to that name, and about how the infinite contingencies that arise at every given moment in your life are magnetically reconfigured by that name, and about how a person is just a hash of glands and myelin sheathing and electrochemical impulses, but there’s no discernable context, no recognizable pattern, it’s all incoherent, until it’s organized and orchestrated into a story, into a fate, by that name. “Isn’t what you call something the crucial question?” he asks Vancerhetorically. Certainly, the experts have always maintained that what you call the epic is the crucial question. Is it The Sugar Frosted Nutsack ? Is it The Ballad of the Severed Bard-Head ? Is it T.S.F.N. ? And, at one point, near the finale, swilling Scotch and swinging his bat at flitting nano-drones, Ikecalls out “ XOXO!” as if that were the title of the epic: Trotzdem schrie Ike noch aus aller kraft den namen, der name donnerte durch die Nacht. (“Nevertheless, with full force, Ikeshouted out the name, the name thundered through the night.”)

Vance—louche, semiliterate, BMX-borne Gravy dealer — was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and put on a daily dose of 72 mg of Concerta (Methylphenidate) when he was twelve years old, and was kicked out of high school for “habitual truancy.” Because he’s so high from the Gravy and/or because the God XOXO(“The Ventriloquist”) is using his sharp periodontal curette to indelibly engrave these ideas into his mind, Vancenow finds himself discoursing upon the “problematics of the name,” identifying naming as both a taxonomy (a “hegemonic system of classification”) and a taxidermy (an “attempt to capture, chloroform, and neuter the referent”).

He shrugs, befuddled by the stream of high-pitched gibberish that’s coming out his own mouth. Then he loses his train of thought, and they both totally crack up.

At first, it seems as if Vanceis finishing Ike’s sentences, as if he’s able to anticipate verbatim what Ike’s going to say…as if they’re performing some ritual they’ve reenacted countless times before…soon they’re actually riffing back and forth, a spirited give-and-take, the teasing interplay between tabla and sitar in some woozy raga they’ve played countless times before. (Note again here, as throughout, the tellers and the told folded in on themselves.)