Mark Leyner - The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

After the performance of the narcocorrido, Ikeis supposed to retreat back into his hermitage. Rocking Colter Dale’s cradle as canisters of nebulized military-grade ass-cheese and 3-Methylfentanyl (the aerosolized fentanyl derivative that Russian Spetsnaz forces used against Chechen separatists in the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis) shatter the living room window, he taps his ring on the tabletop, and, blind from the gas, begins chanting The Sugar Frosted Nutsack 2: Crème de la Sack to the infant, in its entirety, from the very beginning: “There was never nothing. But before the debut of the Gods, about fourteen billion years ago, things happened without any discernable context. There were no recognizable patterns. It was all incoherent. Isolated, disjointed events would take place, only to be engulfed by an opaque black void, their relative meaning, their significance, annulled by the eons of entropic silence that estranged one from the next. A terrarium containing three tiny teenage girls mouthing 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”) would inexplicably materialize, and then, just as inexplicably, disappear.…” And using his distinctive periodontal curette, the God XOXOengraves the epic into the smooth tabula rasa of Colter Dale’s mind.…( Colter Dale(half-​divine) is immune to the nebulized mixture of military-grade ass-cheese and 3-Methylfentanyl that the Mossad is pumping into the hermitage.)

Ikeis then supposed to go back outside, “opening the front door onto his stoop, stepping into the maddeningly bright klieg lights of the Mossad,” take out his pistol, wave it — making looping figures in the air to signal all his Goddesses that his “climactic moment is nigh”—and fire wildly into the treetops.

There are supposed to be scores of Mossad sharpshooters, hundreds perhaps — they were supposed to have been abseiling onto rooftops and into the trees from black helicopters. They each aim for the hero’s sugar frosted nutsack, and Ike, laughing, whistling the Mister Softee jingle (“those recursive, foretokening measures of music; that hypnotic riff ”) over and over and over and over again to himself, amid this fusillade of gunfire…until a sniper’s coup de grace to the head.…This was supposed to be Ike Karton’s fate — dying to an orgasmic chorus of masturbating Goddesses. This was a scene that had replayed in his mind over and over and over and over again since he was a boy. Ike Karton—riddled, infested, consumed, devoured by Gods.

Experts wonder if Ikethinks his neighbors will rise up on his behalf. (“What does he imagine? Cheering crowds? Fluttering flags?”) But they don’t. They shutter themselves up in their identical, brick, two-story houses and peer out from timid apertures in their drapes and blinds and watch Ike, the pariah, haranguing the Mossad and murmuring lascivious things to all his heavyset Goddesses, as bullets bounce off his magic groin cup, creating a mesmerizing beat…until a sniper’s coup de grace to the head.

And then, years later, seated at the kitchen table, Colter Daleis supposed to compose his “Coda”: “To Whom It May Concern: That the Gods only occur in Ike’s mind is not a refutation of their actuality. It is, on the contrary, irrefutable proof of their empirical existence. The Gods choose to only exist in Ike’s mind. They are real by virtue of this, their prerogative. Yours, Colter Dale, aka Ahab, King of the Ants( Reichsführer of the Upper Peninsula), age nine.”

And none of this is going to happen, of course, as anyone with even the faintest familiarity with The Sugar Frosted Nutsack 2: Crème de la Sack knows, because it all has to be set in motion by Ikemaking his list of Ten Gods I’d Fuck (T.G.I.F.), which XOXOis thwarting in his effort to sabotage the epic.

In place of this traditional sequence of events (foretold and guaranteed by blind, blitzed-out bards for thousands of years) XOXOnonchalantly interpolates a miscellany of spurious scenes:

Paratroopers, in hooded leather S&M bondage outfits and armed with automatic weapons, are dropped into Jersey City one night.

While batting flies (and imagined nano-drones) from his armpits, as the glassy-eyed Vancespins his BMX bike wheel, Ikementions the fact, apropos of nothing, that “Hanukkah menorah” and “labia minora” rhyme.

Ikegoes in to see his urologist to get his prostate biopsy results. The urologist tells Ikethat he has low-range prostate cancer with a Gleason score of 3/3 in one out of twelve cores. Hilarity ensues. When the urologist tells Ikethat it’s a slow-growing cancer (“You’ll probably die of something else long before this”), Iketells him, “Yes, I’m destined to be killed by Mossad sharpshooters this Friday.” The urologist then advises “Active Surveillance”—a term used for a conservative treatment modality that Ikemisinterprets as proof that the urologist is a Mossad agent. After threatening to sodomize the urologist and, for several side-splitting minutes, chasing him around the office, Ikesettles for giving him a “taste of his own medicine”—an extremely rough digital exam during which Ikeactually detects a hard nodule in the urologist’s prostate. The urologist has a follow-up biopsy, which yields a Gleason of 1/5 in seven out of twelve cores, etc.

A Goddess helps Ikeshop for jeans. ( Ikeholds two pairs up to the sky: “Do you like these or these ?”)

Ikesneezes so hard that it momentarily unfurls his rectum out his asshole like a New Year’s Eve party blower.

La Felina, watching Ikedo a set of lat pulldowns, produces an orgasmic torrent of paraurethral fluid so forceful that it reminds many baby boomers of the water cannon used to disperse civil rights marchers in southern states during the 1960s.

Three bearded, bare-chested men in cargo shorts come up to Ike. “We’ll give you all the gold in the world in return for your daughter’s firstborn baby.” Ikekills them and bakes them into pies, which he puts on the windowsill of his hermitage to cool. When he returns from the gym, there are only two pies. “Who stole my pie?!” he thunders.

Ikehas a long, Pinteresque dinner with his elderly father (“like two stammering antagonists in a Pinter play”), who’s wearing a red lucha libre mask. (It’s hard to imagine Ike’s favorite topics of conversation — masturbating heavyset Goddesses, the interpenetration of sex and death, Ukrainian women sumo wrestlers, the demise of the Professional Women’s Bowling Association, how sexy Kim Clijsterslooks at the end of a hard-fought third-set tiebreaker, etc. — holding any interest for a man like his father.) “You don’t think that being the inducer of a form of folie à famille makes me a more interesting person?” Ikesmiles wolfishly, an incisor gleaming in the candlelight, then bats his eyes coquettishly, trying to make his father laugh, trying to defuse the situation. Ikewaves the fork crazily in his father’s face, “I’ll gouge out your eyeballs, you senile fuck.” “Is that any way to speak to your father?” he replies. Waitress: “Would the schizo with the spasmodic torticollis like another whiskey?” “ Ikiewant whiskey?” parrots the father, who’s brushing his teeth at the table, the senile old man in a red lucha libre mask. His mouth is foamy. There’s an occasional squeal of feedback from his hearing aid. (“Of course Ikehad been drinking, which clouded his thinking, and though his judgment was impaired, none of his feelings were spared…”)