Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

Ike

Let me hear all my fuckin’ big-dick drug-addled blind bards from Jersey City say “HEY!”

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

YEH!

Ike

Let me hear all my fuckin’ big-dick drug-addled blind bards from Jersey City say “AHH!”

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

HHA!

Ike

Let me hear all my fuckin’ big-dick drug-addled blind bards from Jersey City say “Tuer tous les célébrités!”

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Sétirbéléc sel suot reut!

Ike

Cut their motherfuckin’ heads off!

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Ffo sdaeh ’nikcufrehtom rieht tuc!

Ike

Death to every name on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list.

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Tsil 001 Ytirbelec Sebrof eht no eman yreve ot htaed.

Ike

Guillotine Jerry Bruckheimer, James Cameron, Bono, Simon Cowell, and Elton John.

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Nhoj Notledna, Llewoc Nomis, Onob, Noremac Semaj, Remiehkcurb Yrrejenitolliug.

Ike

Guillotine Spielberg. Guillotine Jennifer Anistonand Michael Bay. Guillotine Coldplay.

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Yalpdlocenitolliug. Yab Leahcimdna Notsina Refinnejenitolliug. Grebleipsenitolliug.

Ike

Guillotine fucking Jerry Seinfeld. Guillotine Tom Hanksand Ryan Seacrestand Bradfucking Pittand Leonardo DiCaprioand Dr. Philand Judge Judyand Alec Baldwinand Bethenny Frankel!

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Leknarf Ynnehtebdna Niwdlab Celadna Yduj Egdujdna Lihp Rd.dna OirpaCid Odranoeldna Ttipgnikcuf Darbdna Tsercaes Nayrdna Sknah Motenitolliug! Dlefnies Yrrejgnikcuf enitolliug.

Ike

Long live the flesh-eating, subproletarian ragazzi di vita!

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from Jersey City

Ativ id izzagar nairatelorpbus, gnitae-hself eht evil gnol!

Ike

Let me hear all my fuckin’ big-dick drug-addled blind bards from the Upper Peninsula say “HEY!”

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from the Upper Peninsula

YEH!

Ike

Let me hear all my fuckin’ big-dick drug-addled blind bards from the Upper Peninsula say “ XOXO—we takin’ our motherfuckin’ epic back!”

Big-Dick Drug-Addled Blind Bards

from the Upper Peninsula

Kcab cipe ’nikcufrehtom ruo ’nikat ew— OXOX!

In a provocative (though virtually incomprehensible) essay titled “Memory and Obsolescence,” first published in the August 1958 edition of the children’s magazine Highlights, coauthors J. D. Salingerand A. J. Foytanalyze this mirrored call-and-response between Ike(doomed introvert, implacable neo-pagan, coy Taurus, Saint Laurentian fusion of the tough and the tender) and the bards, which is driven by the mesmerizing beat of empty soda can against BMX spoke. Salingerand Foytexplain the incongruity of Ike’s profane, clamorous exhortations (“a full-bore venting of all his fevered antipathies toward celebrities and, implicitly, an impassioned avowal of his devout affiliation with the humble and abject”) by suggesting that they are “whispered, if not wholly tacit”—after all, if you’re addressing bards who are “hyperproximal” or who reside “intracranially” (i.e., in your “minibar”), there’s really no need to raise your voice. Salingerand Foytgo on to claim that “the fact that the bards are represented here as repeating what Ikesays but backward means that, essentially, Ikeis continuously pulling himself out of his own ass, inside-out.”

“ Ikeis continuously pulling himself out of his own ass, inside-out” is another way of depicting the inside-outness of Ike’s simultaneous narration and enactment of the epic. When you think (and you don’t have to actually say it out loud) “I am a hero,” you immediately become a karaoke bard because you’re simply reading what XOXOis inscribing into your brain. But because the epic subsumes everything extrinsic to it, the karaoke bard is instantly turned back into content, i.e., back into a hero. Salingerand Foytcall this unending process “enveloping inversion.” And they liken the inside-outness of Ike’s simultaneous narration and enactment to the In-N-Out Burger “secret menu,” and specifically the “3x4”—three beef patties, four slices of cheese. Not only do the alternating layers of cheese/beef/cheese/beef/cheese/beef/cheese parallel the alternating inversions of hero/bard/hero/bard/hero/bard/hero, but the 3x4 configuration corresponds to the three letters in the name “ Ike” and the four letters in the name “ XOXO” and, most significantly, to the license plate HPG-XOXO, a license plate analyzed in stupefyingly granular detail over the course of an essay that runs some thirty thousand words (every one of which audiences expect the vagrant, drug-addled bards to recite verbatim).

Ike’s “Apostrophe to the Bards” could also be “A Cry from the Smallest Box,” i.e., a cri de coeur from the depths. What Salingerand Foytmean here is that Ikecould be calling out from within XOXO’s hyperborean hermitage or, more likely, that in The Big Lacuna, Ikefinds himself in an extreme spiritual state, in the innermost embedded place, in the innermost and smallest of all the epic’s ever-diminishing Chinese nested boxes or Russian Matryoshka dolls (or “M-dolls”). The smallest, most deeply embedded version of the “ IkeM-doll” (which is a purely practical construct — in theory, of course, there is no terminus in an infinitely recursive reductio ad infinitum ) is basically a freeze-frame at the very threshold of existence which is called “The Minibar.” This is why the Gods are sometimes said to reside in “The Minibar,” which is sometimes likened to an infinitesimal zero-​dimensional point called a Severed Bard-Head, and which is sometimes thought to symbolize Ike’s head. The amplitude of the vibration of a “terminal” infinitesimally recursive Severed Bard-Head is referred to as “high-pitched” or “HPG” (“High-Pitched Gibberish”). And, of course, HPG-XOXO is the license plate of the Mister Softee truck that hit Ikeduring Spring Break and the final license plate that traverses Ike’s field of vision as he orgasms at the precise moment of his assassination by the ATF/Mossad.