Headless Read online

  Every night Marnie’s father sequestered himself in a room and delivered a meticulous progress report into an outgoing voice mail so people could call in and find out her daily status. He took copious notes on exactly what the doctors said regarding infectious diseases, inner-cranial pressure, and brain stem functions, and relayed that into the tape recorder. At the end of each day, Mom and Dad and whoever else was visiting piled into a tiny room equipped with a desk, a speaker phone, and one chair, and listened to hours of phone messages left by people who wished them well. I sat on the floor and stared at my feet and listened as each call generated strong reactions around the room. Mr. Puusemp, one of the tougher 50-year-old men I’d ever met, someone who could easily tear the arms off most guys half his age, was by far the most emotional. When he wasn’t weeping profusely, struggling to catch his breath, he’d tell stories or ask me what I thought of his spur of the moment ski helmet design he drew on a cocktail napkin. He was a super successful entrepreneur obsessed with solving problems. He’d sit me down in the hospital cafeteria and ask me how I could come up with the perfect artwork that would enchant the world and make me rich. You have to start with what people need most right now, he’d say, and I’d stumble through the conversation saying incoherent things about organic process and intuition. I told him about my paintings of male robots, how they looked like the Michelin Man with lengthy word balloons about needing a blowjob, while my female robots, with their pink backgrounds and streamline Metropolis-like curves, only thought about science. I was kind of in awe of Mr. Puusemp. His interest in who I was, how I was making a living (construction, pounding nails), made me nervous. It was like talking to a senator. He really did seem lit up from the inside. More than once he pulled a little rubber mouse out of his pocket and playfully terrorized an unsuspecting nurse. If she didn’t respond favorably to the mouse gag, he didn’t want her handling his daughter. His sense of humor was relentless, the only thing that kept us from sinking. I accidentally slammed a car door on his thumb. Without a shriek, he calmly asked me to open the car door.

  At the end of one long day and night, all Marnie’s pals from L.A. crowded into the hospital hotel room like at a slumber party and smoked pot and drank Jack Daniel’s. The hotel didn’t even allow cigarettes. At some point the phone rang and it was Mr. Puusemp in his room on another floor. He’d gotten word of our misbehavior and asked us to stop. He used the expression tout de suite.

  I returned home and started keeping a journal for Marnie. I yacked on endlessly about what went on every day she was out. I made whoever I was with throw in a few words of their own, even if they’d never met her. I got it in my head that I should do everything that Marnie thought was cool, so I dyed my hair blue, bought trail running shoes, ran in Elysian Park, pumped iron, did zillions of sit-ups and push-ups, played tennis, swam laps at the Y, ate Indian food, and pizza, went to more parties than I could stomach, drank champagne, read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, tried to remember jokes I’d heard and retell them with some conviction like her dad (her idol), took lots of photographs, made piles of drawings, and fucked every cute girl willing to take her clothes off. I even golfed. I hate golf. I taped a tiny snapshot of Marnie to the tip of my skis, bought a helmet, glopped a ton of white paint on it and then a sloppy black snowflake, skied three or four days a week, and nearly got caught in an avalanche. After seven hours of skiing on St. Patrick’s Day, I got a call from Mr. Puusemp. I was staying at a friend’s cabin in Mammoth. We were in constant phone contact. He told me that Marnie had died the previous night. I was standing in the hallway, staring at a ceramic Santa Claus. I was wearing these clownish snowboard pants Marnie had bought me for my birthday. She’d been in a coma for 10 weeks. Her doctors weren’t sure what kind of shape she’d be in, if she’d ever be able to think or walk or talk if she did come out of the coma. On her most productive day of physical therapy, Mr. Puusemp said, she willed herself away. He said that it was just like her to do that, to take control of the situation—if she couldn’t be physically active, she didn’t want to live.

  A week later, my blue-haired brain delivered a eulogy in the largest church in Pennsylvania to a zillion people who adored Marnie as much as I did. I told a story about the time she took me on my first backpacking trip through the Sierras. I was a complete novice and didn’t know squat. I’d never slept outside before. After a 10-mile hike through a high alpine canyon we stopped at a lake. She wanted to swim naked. She asked me if I’d mind, her swimming naked. I said no, that it would be all right. I’d guard the lake, make sure no one saw. She stripped. I could feel her naked over my shoulder, giggling. Out of stupidity or some psycho brotherly respect, I didn’t turn my head. I closed my eyes and pictured my sexy naked friend standing on a flat rock. Then I heard a big splash.

  TIPS

  FROM

  THE

  SENSUAL MAN

  TIPS FROM THE SENSUAL MAN

  Do not lay on top of your mate like a dead stone. To avoid squashing, distribute bulk onto your elbows. This allows both parties ample pelvic movement. Caress entire body. Start at the toes and work your way up to the head area. Lick between each individual toe. Partners like that. Lick your way up the thigh but don’t leave a snail trail. Break up journey with dry terse kisses. Approach the anus with caution. Kiss and grip the butt cheeks but do not under any circumstances pull the cheeks apart and root. At the right moment it can be highly erotic for your partner to be on their stomach, legs spread, and have their anus lightly licked. You will see that the anus is shut tight and doesn’t appear to want company. Not so. With your tongue you can say, “Hey, you shy eye socket, no one’s going to hurt you,” and soon enough it will relax, and the rusty door will creak open. Do not poke. During intercourse, be creative and peruse outside the anus with a lone finger and tenderly insert it into the hole itself. The sensual man does not put it in deeper than an inch. Don’t twist, wiggle, or rotate. The point of having a finger inside the anus is to massage the anal wall. Think of an underwater bass player. Handling a woman’s breasts is very tricky. Do not squeeze. Lick them with the tip of your tongue, but do not make a mess. A bosom is not food. Do not slobber. Don’t spend too much time on one breast. Alternate, left to right. Under no circumstances should you chew, gnaw, or suckle. Remember, you are not nursing. Next is breathing, kissing, and licking ears. Be aware of your saliva. Breathe through your nose even when your mouth is open. You don’t want to huff out a blast of sour exhaust. Kissing. Do not flop your fat wet cow tongue into partner’s mouth. Form tongue into a point and probe with subtle curiosity, similar to how an insect would investigate with its feelers. Do not swab the teeth, gums, or throat. Apply the pointed tongue principle to the ears. The ear is sensitive. A whispered word or slurp can sound like a satanic explosion. Licking the nostril induces a repulsive aquatic sensation. If you feel you are reaching orgasm too soon, take a deep breath and think about the horrors of the world: slaughter, train derailments, worms eating out donkey’s eyes, or mundane things like gas and electric bills, laundry, bank, phone Mom, or think of something neutral like solar energy. You must breathe or you will die. After ejaculation, do not immediately dismount. Remain in position for 60 seconds. Allow the pot roast time to cool. Remain silent. Do not say wow, thank you, or I’m sorry. Not even I love you, which can have a disastrous effect. Allow the miracle of time to work its magic. No television. No bathroom, even if you have to (easily taken as a hostile gesture). Lie there like you are in a trance. Sighing is good. Caress partner’s belly. Kiss belly. Kiss face area. Follow these tried and true methods and you’ll be a superlative and sought after lover.

  PINK SLIP OF WOOD

  As you know, you’re a well-respected man in the department, but you’ve got this circus-style organ between your legs and I just think you should be aware of the fact that your colleagues envy the Helen of Troy out of you, and by that I mean that you’ve reduced all the men on the 32nd floor into high-pitched dolls, as if we’ve all had sex changes, or
like we’ve been psychologically neutered; once upon a time we were big growling lions grazing the lush landscape, but now, as the daily mythology builds around you, we find ourselves not man enough to lick the adhesive side of envelopes. We are not quite sure what the longterm effects are, how the presence and knowledge of you will affect us in five, fifteen years down the line, but what we do know is that there are intimidation factors that need to be addressed immediately, issues of morale and self-confidence; there’s genuine fear in the faces of formerly ferocious individuals. The idea of being a man, and the inverse, the whole complex notion of not being man enough—it’s an abstract concept, to be sure, as much as you can be sure of something you’re unable to lock down and understand—but we’re going to have to let you go. W-w-with deep regret, we’re going to have to say bon voyage, w-w-which is unfortunate (I have trouble with my W’s—I used to stutter when I was a kid, now it’s back) because you’re a fine employee, a team player, as they say. You see, the whole giant organ thing is negatively affecting the workplace environment. There was a time when the guys looked up to me as the largest thing since the Louisville Slugger. I once inspired awe and fantasy. It was not uncommon for the guys to mill around the water cooler on Monday morning and discuss their sexual success stories and say they were thinking of me—similar to how football players conjure up Knut Rockney to inspire them to greater levels of performance—that images of Kafka (that’s my member’s name) drifted into their thoughts during intercourse; Kafka thought he was a large beetle that couldn’t quite reach the doorknob of his bedroom and walk or crawl out. Now, I did some research on the beetle and discovered that the beetle in The Metamorphosis is a species that has wings. What I’m trying to say is that the penis could’ve flown right out the window and gone to work or school or wherever the hell that unhappy Jewish guy didn’t want to go. All guys name their genitals. First my mother was calling my thing Ding Dang Do. A bad name regardless of its musical appeal. My father called it Samson. He called his own penis The Lizard, and whenever he had to take a leak he’d say, time to walk The Lizard. Creepy, but now that he’s passed on any sight of a reptile sends me into an emotional desert. Since I’m a bookish type and my favorite writer is Kafka, I thought Kafka would be best for me since most sexual encounters are filled with doubt, confusion, and an infinity of paralyzing dread. For a while I considered calling him Gregor but that sounded a little too granular. Last I heard you were calling your member Area 54. I love the concept, but that’s just my point—straining to be one of the guys. Coming up with the perfect nickname. I’m man enough to concede when a bigger tool shows up that can do the job better, but the problem is that your crank is giving everyone nightmares. The guys are waking up screaming in the middle of the night. No one is sleeping. Everyone’s drinking buckets of coffee and then falling asleep in front of their computer and a little later barking their way out of daymares. We spoke to a horse doctor and he said that we need to get rid of the demon-stud. Productivity is way down and this is all during the Viagra era so we’re all hard but not really up for the challenge. Envy is dangerous, it chokes the victim. There’s actually less oxygen to breathe, we’re gasping—and it logically follows that we’d blame the thing we worship, you, our genital deity, after blaming ourselves, our respective gene pools, and God himself, of course, always an easy target, but in the end there’s no one to blame but you, O Cocklord. We were fine before you stepped in and dwarfed our gentle giants. A businessman must never drool. Robert, Bobby, John, and the other Bob are cramming cotton puffs in between their gums and lips to keep the saliva where it belongs, not pooling around our tasseled loafers. You have little eyes, the skull of a T-Rex, and this turbo sperm log which has frankly made us all a bit suicidal. You know how a big cock enters the brain—no, you probably don’t know this, and can’t comprehend a word I’m saying—a bigass dong barrels in the side door of the normal male brain and camps out like a belligerent elephant, refusing to budge. In another life I hope to be a zookeeper for your cage and mop up all the dick sauce your lower half discharges. Most of us work 18 hours a day and box the clown to slo-mo close-ups of one fleshhead sucking on another. But in this current life, this tedious humiliating strip of tightly wound cable, we can’t even accomplish that. Now, the simple relaxing j.o. session has been stolen from our lives, which is another way of saying, mental grand larceny. Granted, we’re surging in the dollars dept., we all own mucho real estate, but no plot of land can match up to the 20-plus inches of erectile furor you’re packing. Look at you. You’re shy, humble, polite—you flop your meat down right between your toes as natural as pie. We don’t want love. What we want is a bigger, more substantial chunk to suds up in the shower and adjust during tiresome luncheons. And, if at a party, having had a bit too much to drink, we find ourselves in a closet with a coworker, we unleash the Salisbury battering ram, an instant standing ovation, which in turn leads to awe, respect, overall happiness, salvation, and peace for all.

  As you must know, or maybe you don’t, the last thing on the mind of a fellow with a big thing are the little people—you can’t hide a joystick. They broadcast their own diminution. Don’t nod your head. Now is not a good time to agree with me. Of course one can hide it. They go into hiding on their own. They know things. They’re ducking for cover, committing the lower halves of our bodies to a life of chaff by squirming into the flesh bunker. To seek shelter only screams of fear, and most walking, talking, breathing human beings, like other predators, can smell that sour panic like hot sloppy lunch, and find the cowering soldier in seconds, sandwiched between thighs. What all of your colleagues are now forced to do is march straight into the boardroom, strip, jump face-first on the table, flip over, go spread-eagle, and say here’s what I am, a minute steak, a tough little fillet that means business. Act proud, know your limitations, remember names. The phrase I won’t take no for an answer only works if you mean it, if you’re willing to cut your own balls off. I tell my fellow genital mates, leave your balls on. Live your life. But I stray from the singular purpose of these thoughts: You and your thick pylon have thrown the company into chaos. The planet earth, the ground we’re accustomed to treading on, is no longer there. Instability reigns, and you know what that means. We’ll have to say goodbye to you. You’re overqualified. I know this is sudden and not an easy thing to accept; it’s hard on all of us, but let me tell you plain and simple, it’s been a lot harder on me than it has on you. And please don’t take yourself to a surgeon and get a shaft reduction. All that will do is make us look at you in disbelief. What was once a man with Guinness Book—type numbers is now half a man, a fool, someone who’ll diminish his Johnson in order to get his cool corporate job back. That won’t solve the problem. Take your personal monument that I assume never gets completely hard, that droops and flops like a groggy amphibian—I’m sorry, that was uncalled for—and go. Some of us are running out of gas on the interstate, afraid to visit a service station to refuel, because the 10-foot hoses wrapped around the pumps remind us of you. It’s costing us time and money. We’re pulling up to the full service bay, rolling down the window with our eyes closed, and shouting, fill it, to the attendant. No more 10-foot hoses. This is madness. Leave our building and never return. Your cock is not like a baby’s arm or a third leg; it’s like some other type of entity or peninsula, and we just can’t have that here. I’m terribly sorry. Don’t even think of shaking my hand, just go, and please, stop crying.

  TWINS

  People, not just guys, have sex fantasies about my sister and I because we’re twins and we model lingerie. That would make a certain amount of sense. Since we were created in the same package and we’re always photographed together, guys believe they’re entitled to the double set. They start out with one, and then they beg for two. We say, Uh uh, sorry, no good, not moral, bad, because we believe in you know who above our apartment, clouds, planet, and, we think, the entire solar system basically; and somewhere in the Bible, we’re not really sure what page, it says
two girls, especially two sexually active twin sisters, should never lay down with the same guy no matter how much we love each other and no matter how many treats the guy promises us and that includes trips to Bali. We never use God’s name in vain, and we’re not going to do it now. It can get pretty confusing. We sometimes call him HIM—the inspiration for everything that’s ever been done, from the reading of a hymnal on Sunday morning to a climb on the Himalayas.