two-twenty

cashing in on a literary trendster | alex

It doesn’t seem fair that Joanna should have all of the Sunday Styles-inspired fun this week, so I thought maybe I’d add a little sumthin’ sumthin’. Besides, we ducked out of our Sunday Styles obligations last week since we thought it was the annual joke issue and parodying it would therefore have been superfluous. It was only a couple of days ago that a friend told us she was pretty sure the whole thing was meant in earnest.

So, last week no SS fun, this week a double dose. My contribution is in honor of Kate Zernike’s article about the new genre Miramax the publishing world is trying to foist on us: “Lad Lit”. Born, apparently, of some unholy union between “Chick Lit” (Bridget Jones’ Diary) and “Laddie Mags” (Maxim) or “Lad Culture” (naked chicks and beer), I can only assume that it involves chronicling man’s struggle to balance his inner tenderness and vulnerability with his unquenchable thirst for pussy and liquor (heh. that was like a slant pun), not necessarily in that order. I haven’t read any of it, but how hard could it be to write this stuff? I am, after all, a man, and I read “High Fidelity” when it came out, like, thirty years ago (Nick Hornsby being some sort of patron saint of these laddie-come-latelies). So Joanna got to have her conflicted feelings about the final episode of Sex and The City analyzed by a computerized therapist; I offer you an excerpt from my new Lad Lit novella, titled “Poontang Nation: Curing Depression the Old-Fashioned Way”

Excerpt from Chapter 2: “Top Three Reasons I Will Never Die Old and Alone”

The twelfth whiskey shot went down like it was gilded with shards of glass. I stared across the bar at the witch of a bartender… she looked like she might have it in for me. Just looking at her made me think of my Mother, ball gags, and vulnerability. I tried to chase the venomous shot with a slug of beer but the bottle refused to reach my mouth, rebelling instead with an accusatory crash on the floor. A series of bleary events ensued, none of which I could relate to you with anything approaching objective veracity.

I woke up on the floor of my bathroom, cool tiles burning my naked belly. My tooth was chipped. I vomited explosively, remembering how my father, dead these last four years, used to chastise me about my paltry tolerance for booze. I had shown him. Judging from my state of undress and the stench surrounding me, I would have had to guess that the previous night’s endeavors involved at least a couple cases of beer and no small amount of bourbon. Probably some crank.

I stumbled to my bedroom, only to be greeted by the sight of two naked women in my bed. One of them had a butter face but a rack any man might kill to bury his face in while reciting his Hail Marys. The other was prettier, and her pubic hair was trimmed in such a way as to mark her unmistakably as a senior Psychology major at Barnard. Perfect, I thought, seeing for the first time in months a light at the end of the tunnel. I lumbered towards the tangle of sheets and limbs, openhearted. Just then Butters rolled over and stared at me. Something in her eyes froze me in my tracks. She nudged Psychology Pussy awake.

I slumped down on my sweat-soaked sheets as the girls dressed. Psychology Pussy turned to me.
“Um,” she started, “Um… I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Jake,” I said.
“Jake. Ok, Jake, I’m sorry, but there’s something you need to know. Meredith and I are both emotionally unavailable right now.”

With that the two vixens turned and left. The last thing I saw was Pussy Power’s magnificent ass disappearing beyond my door, the thong she had used to lure me into her trap (ingeniously constructed in my own bedroom) still peeking up above the waistband of her low-slung trousers. I comforted myself with the knowledge that this was my fourth threesome in as many weeks, and that although she had won the war, her ass had lost a battle or two the previous evening.

On a morning like this, the only thing to do was to call my Mother and let her berate me back into health. I reached for the phone, then got a better idea. I would compile a list of the lists I needed to compile that day. I began:

1. Top ten scenes in avant-garde French film involving either animals or bicycles.
2. My three favorite bands who either A. have released a record album the market value of which (mint condition) currently hovers between $350 and $375 or B. have released two consecutive albums on which appear songs whose titles contain twelve or more words.
3. Top ten items I need to buy at the market today.
4. My five favorite Finnish phrases.
5. The three absolute best ever break up songs, in honor of Butters and Psychology Pussy. “Always Something There To Remind Me” (Naked Eyes, Naked Eyes, 1983, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) pops into my head as I eye a thick yellowish stain on the bedclothes.

I prepared to settle into a long, comfortable Saturday of record listening, list making, meaningful introspection and heartfelt calls to ex-girlfriends (and the one ex-boyfriend) to see how life is treating them. That’s when I noticed that in fact it was Tuesday and I was thirty minutes late for my job at a Wall Street investment firm where I while away my afternoons doing rails off my assistant’s inner thigh... as an editor at a large Manhattan publishing house where I specialize in offering bookdeals to streetwalkers... as a reporter for a major newspaper where I write almost exclusively about clown sex at a small underground factory in Chinatown responsible for producing most of the fake plastic food examples you see on display at many Asian restaurants. I specialize in fake sushi. To be more specific, I daub the red paint on the plastic imitation crabmeat before it is inserted into mock display-case California Rolls. I am pretty goddam good at it, if I do say so myself, and if there is anything that living through the 90s has taught me it is that America’s enduring taste for the California Roll will never, ever die. I am very comfortable in my job security. This, if nothing else, gives me the confidence I need to pursue women effectively.

To be continued(!)…

Oh, to Write a 'Bridget Jones' for Men: A Guy Can Dream | NY Times