Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist

after the crafts fair, earl and kitty moseyed down to kitty's place and got stinking drunk cosselѕs a goop big earl said lolling in a hammock that squeaked as it swayed back and forth on kitty's porch he knocked his hat back at a rakish tilt and swigged the fiery hooch you heard of bathtub gin well this here's stall-shower mash big earl smirked i lack vitality emotion or warmth tonight admitted kitty but i am free from pathogenic microorganisms the extraordinary rococo preciousness of big earѕs needlepoint style created great excitement at the crafts fair and his piece the dallas cowboys in israel garnered the coveted prix de gauguin

it was "colonoscope nite" at the lucky stiff, new haven's most notorious gay bar — gastroenterologists pay half price for all kahlъa drinks until midnight zelda dance critic for the Italian communist party daily ѕunita Italy's most contentious newspaper bounced into the lucky stiff she never missed a chance to judge the dance contest on "colonoscope nite" the best dancers win all-expense-paid trips to thighland a mountainous kingdom in micronesia the size of tribeca where they'll be honorary guests of the nice maclords at a royal command performance for the king and queen of thighland hyperpituitary giants who as custom decrees eschew toothpaste and speak only in the french passй simple all restaurants in thighland offer ballet parking lanky black youths in fuchsia tutus glissading into automobiles and gracefully backing into rows that stretch elegantly to the sea i've acquired a taste for baboon meat sometimes i lie in bed all afternoon like colette eating it straight from the can he said wanly she measured his penis with a shoe salesmen's metal slide you're about a size 7 zelda said

my horoscope predicts that on may 16th i will marry eddie mustafa muhammad former wba light-heavyweight champion she says wanly i suffer from necropheliaphobia — a fear of having sex with dead people he says wanly who are the new intellectuals who are the new aesthetes now that the old new intellectuals and the old new aesthetes have been decimated by the self-decimating ramifications of their old new ideas? she asks wanly he picks up a copy of das plumpe denken new englanпs most disreputable german-language newsmagazine blast in egg cream factory kills philatelist he turns the page radioactive glow-in-the-dark semen found in canada he turns the page cosmologist claims extraterrestrial maids visit earth every Wednesday he turns the page modern-day hottentots carry young in resealable sandwich bags he turns the page wayne newton calls mother's womb single-occupancy garden of eden morgan fairchild calls sally struthers loni anderson

when a mosquito bites your prick that's called a hoboken blow job in august the mosquitos of hoboken fall deliriously in love with men's pricks drunk with the miasmic froth that floats across the hudson like crиme fraоche the lovesick mosquitos choose their mates haphazardly like the bleary-eyed anomic patrons of a west side singles bar with conversational gambits like i just finished playing two hours of racketball in a poorly ventilated un-airconditioned building wearing a pair of Shetland wool panties and you have the same kind of vestal physicality that makes the sears roebuck catalog, with its artless spread of locker room lingerie, the world's premier stroke book and i feel totally eroticized as if i'd been kidnapped by william masters and Virginia Johnson sequestered in the wine cellars of ernest and julio gallo and finally dumped in the pungent laundry hamper of Sylvester Stallone where i forge a kind of psychosexual tantric mind-lock with el exigente the demanding one whose ability to keep me on the verge of reichian orgasmic unconsciousness rivals nijinski's astonishing ability to pause at the height of his jump complete the 1040 long form and float softly to the ground

heck you know me my name's billy my father runs the vomitorium over on oakhurst and elm street you must have seen me a zillion times 'cause i cut through your backyard on the way to school every day heck you must know my mom too y'ever see that commercial for the kung fu institute of london where jean shrimpton and lord snowden fend off a gang of skinheads with nunchakus? well that's my mom doing the voice-over at the end in new jersey call 201-795-3384 like freud, my dad referred affectionately to his children as fratzen and wormen —brats and worms one Sunday evening he pointed to a couple seated on the sofa and said these are your godparents and in the event of a midair collision or an outbreak of malaria that kills your poor mother and myself you'll be remanded into the custody of these two dear devoted friends who'll provide all the creature comforts a creature like you deserves i hated these two with a fervor that very nearly imperiled my health equally i loathed their son whose cankerous smirk i can barely contemplate without retching here's a kid who decided between attending yale or harvard by killing the family's irish wolfhound and reading its entrails

he was consuming alcohol with the reckless avidity of a hollywood indian his hands were like the hands of italian men caressing and pinching the cheeks of his own behind instead of putting kahlъa in his white russians the bartender had mistakenly added maikua juice a powerful plant-derived hallucinogen used by the jнvaro tribesmen of the eucadorian amazon his head was a vegematic he put a cabbage in one ear and shook out coleslaw from the other i want to tell you something he said sullenly

i can't talk now i'm watching bruno hauptmann, bruno hauptmann she says sullenly i can't talk now i'm reading the part of blondie's himalayas where dagwood resplendent in a ceremonial fur-trimmed robe and dome-shaped gold brocade hat has sleepwalked into the kitchen of the dalai lama's lhasa fortress and topped off one of his famous late-night triple-tiered sandwiches with a large oozy pat of yak butter she says sullenly i can't talk now i'm at the kentucky derby four horses are entered: the butler with a college education, carole lombard says, basil blacknell otolaryngologist, and studying the yanomamo basil blacknell otolaryngologist is the odds-on favorite, carole lombard says is the distant long shot, studying the yanomamo and the butler with a college education are 6–2 and 7–5 bets respectively, she says sullenly perhaps already i've said too much, she says suddenly

it was the night before the night before christmas we were all watching leni riefenstahѕs documentary of the 1936 berlin olympics bubbles eyed the screen quizzically, is that a finn? she gesticulated i like bubbles, she has a pair of dice tattooed on her behind pass the pindar said rabbi gandelman reaching for a volume of the theban poet gandelman, a six-foot-six 275-lb. daddy warbucks lookalike, is the first rabbi ever to score over 40 points in a wheelchair basketball game he refuses to marry although his congregation has offered him a succession of voluptuous high-iq virgins something in the way the eastern european women levitate themselves over the high-jump bar attracts me like no other lover sang bubbles' husband the reverend humberto perez we are all watching how do you spell jew? a new program produced by tennessee public television station wkpt each week a member of the tennessee state house of representatives is sent back in time to meet a famous jew from history this week rep. jeeter maloney tennessee's youngest state representative is sent back in history to rijnsburg, holland to meet the metaphysical philosopher baruch spinoza Judaism's most notoriously heretical luminary please have some kuchen and coffee spinoza says much obliged, drawls maloney sampling the kuchen, ummmmmmm yum… what did you call these — cookin? kuchen spinoza replies please help yourself to more i wonder how many of these kuchen you could stuff into my mouth maloney wonders out loud that's something upon which i have often speculated spinoza says and as maloney stretches his mouth wide open with both his hands spinoza stuffs three and finally four kuchen in there's a long somewhat uncomfortable silence i'm having a lot of trouble lately with my son jeeter jr., maloney finally says, all he seems to want to do is play video games what are video games? spinoza asks as we leave rijnsburg its inhabitants are sitting down to their customarily modest dinners of fish cakes and room-temperature fresca and as the sun sets chattering black-billed magpies lurch ungracefully into the cool tulip-scented evening air it is impossible to adequately describe my feelings of utter resignation and pessimism as i scanned bubbles' apartment and catalogued the moldering dishes of half-eaten food, the psychotic mascara-caked mannequins, the album covers and magazines tossed in a wild miscellany of intoxicated carelessness, the moaning emaciated cats inhaling and exhaling like bony accordions, the scampering roaches and silverfish, the Welch's grape juice bottle containing four ounces of liquid pep but i like bubbles, she has a tiny naked smurf tattooed between her breasts