Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

Whatever the cause of The Big Lacuna, for the entirety of its duration, Ikeremains frozen in one immutable cataleptic posture. This tableau vivant demarcates in physical space the deep authenticity of Ike’s mode of experiencing the passage of time — to strike a single pose under the unflinchingly prurient gaze of the moaning Goddesses, a gaze which casts him in a sugar frosted nimbus, the “glaze of the gaze,” that Abercrombie & Fitch model and 90210 star Trevor Donovananalyzes in his book The Jade(d) G(l)aze: Twelfth-Century Goryeo Celadon Pottery and Ceramics .

Ikepresses himself like a gargoyle or a figurehead on the prow of a ship against the onrush of his own fate.

This tableau of Ikebatting flies from his armpits as the glassy-eyed Vancespins his BMX bike wheel is, arguably, one of the most famous and iconic in the world.

And although the epic reaches a state of absolute stasis here, this continues to be one of the single most popular parts of the epic repertoire. Its hieratic solemnity and magisterial, almost inert choreography have given rise to comparisons with Noh drama, Khmer royal ballet, and Indian classical dance forms, including Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Kuchipudi. Connoisseurs appreciate the degree to which bards are willing to deform themselves into stunted and crippled shapes as they reenact the interminable tableau, risking grotesque injuries (although probably only the most discerning cognoscenti could distinguish these ​stoop-shouldered, drooling, cataleptic postures from the stoop-​​shouldered, drooling, cataleptic postures that the drug-addled vagrants typically assume, even when they’re not performing the epic). A bard is expected to have extraordinarily precise control over every single part of his body. For instance, when reenacting the scene in which Ikeis distracted from bludgeoning Vancewith his bat by the Goddess La Felina, who swoops down into Jersey City and impersonates a young nanny from Côte d’Ivoire (with a spectacular big-ass ass and big-ass titties), who sashays past pushing a white baby in a stroller, the bard, miming Ikewith his brandished bat frozen in mid-air, must remain perfectly still except for the gentle rising and falling of his erection which choreographically registers the modalities of Ike’s emotions, achieving a tumescence and a flaccidity that’s precisely synchronized with the narration of the nanny’s approach and recession into the distance.

Among the world’s most illustrious blind, drug-addled bards, Meirand Aaron Poznak—feral twins abandoned as infants by their parents at Bergdorf Goodman and raised by a wild pack of Yorkipoos near the pond at the southeast corner of Central Park — are especially celebrated for their performances of the “Bat and Nanny” scene, to which they have added their own inimitable flourish. They can actually swivel their testicles from left to right in tandem to signify Ike“watching” the nanny as she sashays by — a sly allusion to, and literalization of, his cryptic assertion that his scrotum contains “two eyeballs.” In addition to their ultrasophisticated interpretations of Ike’s complex and hieratic poses during The Big Lacuna, the Poznak Twinsare also renowned as unrivaled virtuosos of “high-pitched gibberish.” (Recently, Meir Poznakhas receded from the public eye, purportedly becoming the shadowy leader of T.S.F.N. — General Command. )

Meanwhile…

Ikeseems to see two suns blazing in the heavens, and new mothers who had left their babies behind at home, their breasts swollen with milk, nestling gazelles and young wolves in their arms, suckling them.

“Is this a private jihad, or can anyone join?” a nymph/horsefly murmurs to Ike, flitting from armpit to armpit.

Ike’s aura is sugar frosted.

Vanceis lost in some hallucinatory K-hole of his own.

The mesmerizing metronomic ostinato of the spokes ticking against the empty Sunkist can…the high-pitched gibberish of the nymph/horseflies (the “ Ikettes”)…the buzz of the unmanned drones that represent Ike’s inescapable destiny…

They are SO high. This Gravy is super-potent. It’s military-grade Gravy. Their eyes are glazed over and orange dribble runs down their chins.

They’re SO high.

They’re SO FUCKING high.

According to a report issued by the organization Psychopharmacologists Without Boundaries, the amount of hallucinogenic Gravy which could be contained in the period at the end of this sentence, if ingested on an empty stomach, would be enough to cause a person to mistake a rocket-propelled grenade for a Vietnamese bánh mi sandwich. But is it simply Gravy that Ikeand Vanceare smoking in this episode? They seem SO high. Well, some experts have concluded that the Gravy Vanceis buying from the God Bosco Hifikepunyehas been cut with military-grade ass-cheese, which would make it exponentially more potent and potentially neurotoxic. The amount of military-grade ass-​cheese / Gravy blend that you could snort off the hyphen between the words “ass” and “cheese” in this very sentence is said to be enough to induce a full-blown psychotic episode. And, if all the letters in the sentence This tableau of Ike batting flies from his armpits as the glassy-eyed Vance spins his BMX bike wheel is, arguably, one of the most famous and iconic in the world were infused with the military-grade ass-cheese / Gravy blend and a person were to ingest the entire sentence, that person would almost certainly become an incurable paranoid schizophrenic. (Keep in mind, too, that boldface signifiers like “ Ike” and “ Vance” contain up to three times the amount of the binary psychotropic drug as words in a regular or italicized font do.)

Although it’s not the consensus opinion, many scholars suspect that during The Big Lacuna, XOXOhas kidnapped Ike’s and Vance’s souls and spirited them off to his hyperborean hermitage beneath Antarctica. Vance’s soul doesn’t know where the fuck it is. And it gets a little agitated. And XOXOstarts telling it some bullshit just to calm it down, like “We have a salon on premises and I promise you our stylists don’t push products on the customers. Don’t you hate it when you go get your hair cut and the stylist tries to push a product on you, etc.”—just some bullshit to calm Vance’s soul down. He also tells them that there’s a restaurant at the hermitage: “You’ll love it,” he says. “It’s like a weird version of Hooters. ” He takes the two souls out back behind the restaurant where Zaporozhian Cossack cavalrymen are just returning from raiding an Ottoman village with freshly made cole slaw under their saddles. Inside, all the waiters are famous Casanovas who are now impotent, incontinent, doddering old men, traipsing from table to table in diapers, using walkers, enormous hydroceles sagging their scrotums to the floor— Hugh Hefner, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Wilt Chamberlain, Tommy Lee, Julio Iglesias, etc.

Vance’s soul is like, “I thought he said this was like Hooters. ” And Ike’s soul says, “I think he just meant that there’s, like, a theme going on with the waiters.”