The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

by Mark Leyner

  7.

  The key narrative event in (what is now considered) the Seventh Season is Ike sitting down at the Miss America Diner and writing the lyrics to the narcocorrido “That’s Me (Ike’s Song)” that his family’s band (The Kartons) will sing at the “Last Concert”—the front-lawn performance Ike intends to give for the benefit of his neighbors earlier on the night he’s destined to be gunned down by ATF and Mossad sharpshooters. His expiration date (his “fate”) is pre-encoded into his genome. In fact, Ike’s whole genome has been decoded. He has the East Asian version of a gene known as EDAR, which endows people with armpit hair that is thicker and more lustrous than that of most Europeans and Africans. Another gene suggests that he has dry earwax, as do Asians and Native Americans, not the wet earwax of other ethnic groups.

  The Seventh Season begins with that heavily cadenced and folkloric cadenza subtitled Ike Always Keeps It Simple and Sexy:

  Ike Always Keeps It Simple and Sexy

  What subculture is evinced by Ike’s clothes and his shtick, by the non-Semitic contours of his nose and his dick, by the feral fatalism of all his loony tics—like the petit-mal fluttering of his long-lashed lids and the Mussolini torticollis of his Schick-nicked neck, and the staring and the glaring and the daring and the hectoring, and the tapping on the table with his aluminum wedding ring, as he hums those tunes from his childhood albums and, after a spasm of Keith Moon air-drums, returns to his lewd mandala of Italian breadcrumbs?

  Ike always keeps it simple and sexy. He’s wearing a hot little white wifebeater. It works for his body and he goes for it! It exaggerates his ripped torso—those monster pecs and sick, big-ass pipes. He’s bodaciously buff, and (unlike Charlie Sheen) he’s never been arrested for beating his wife! And look, when he reaches up to point at those birds (“They’re house sparrows. And they’re gonna eat my fuckin’ Italian breadcrumb mandala!” he screams with mock consternation, then cracks up. “But seriously—that’s the whole point. It’s a sacrificial mandala for the God Fast-Cooking Ali. The basic symbolism is that the birds come and carry the crumbs to him up at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai”), look how beautiful Ike’s abundant chestnut-color armpit hair is, how lustrous and soft and fluffy. (It almost looks as if he blow-dries it for extra volume!) And his baggy gray terry sweatpants look as if they’re falling off, which amps up the sex appeal!

  Then, in a section subtitled Ike Shares a Laugh with a God, Ike considers what to have for breakfast, an issue that will eventually lead him to the Miss America Diner. “I can’t decide what to have for breakfast today. I don’t want something breakfasty—that’s the problem. You know what I’d really like? A shawarma and a malt. But you can’t find good shawarma in this fuckin’ town now that it’s full of Jews and Freemasons.…I’m serious! ” he cracks up laughing. He muses out loud about several alternatives to shawarma, including pastrami and sliced beef tongue with cole slaw and Russian dressing on rye and a Sunkist orange soda, or maybe just a big bowl of Beefaroni and some chocolate milk. Suddenly, like some hapless Beckettian tramp in a white wifebeater and saggy terry sweats, he inadvertently airs his ass-crack as he jauntily genuflects in the general direction of the rocket-shaped Burj Khalifa. “If there’s a God who has a minute for an unemployed neo-pagan butcher with a bodaciously buff body who’s been out here all morning in his fuckin’ guido dishabille making a breadcrumb mandala, I’d appreciate a quick breakfast suggestion. Please—something relatively inexpensive. I’m unemployed.” Then, almost immediately, Ike’s cellphone rings. (His ringtone, as we know, is 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny.”) He sees from the caller ID that it’s Doc Hickory, the God of Money, who was also known as El Mas Gordo (“The Fattest One”)—the God whose static-charged back hair became the template for the drift of continental landmasses on earth. It’s Doc Hickory who suggests that Ike go to the Miss America Diner. “It’s like three blocks from your house, it’s cheap, and they have a million things on the menu, including a gyro, which is pretty close to a fuckin’ shawarma, big guy.” Doc Hickory cracks up laughing. His laugh, which is more of a snicker, sounds like that rhythmic, shrill, squeaky-hinge sound that women make in Japanese porn. Ike finds Doc Hickory’s laugh mocking and malevolent. But, hey, Doc Hickory’s a God, and he’s supermercurial, and you always have to put up with his cryptic moods and his petulant fatwas. He can be mocking and malevolent one moment and inexplicably generous the next. “Oh, I almost forgot,” says Doc Hickory. “The rice pudding’s on me. Just remind your server or the cashier that Doc Hickory—the God whose static-charged back hair became the template for the drift of continental landmasses on earth—is treating you to a rice pudding, and they won’t charge you. But you have to use those exact words, that exact epithet. Buon appetito, Mighty Mouse-olini.” The God’s snide parting interjection is followed by another dose of that squeaky ee-ee-ee-ee-ee laugh of his.

  Although the Seventh Season wildly exaggerates his extroversion and loquacity, it does accurately represent that, at the end of the day, there’s one irrefutable, fundamental fact about Ike (who hit the big forty-eight last winter, on the same day he got laid off from his butcher job at the A&P Meat Department): he’s all about Family and Home (Blut und Boden). Priding himself, above all else, on being an exemplary husband and father, he’s fanatically devoted to providing for his wife and daughter, and maintaining their modest two-story brick house on Towers Street in Jersey City (his “little hermitage,” as he calls it). Ike’s a Taurus and, like the typical Taurus man, he’s very quiet, practical, composed, and humble. Taurus men are very protective of their loved ones and will always be very gentle toward them. They possess a calm strength and are always prepared for the worst of circumstances. Taurus guys dislike synthetic or “man-made” things, have a tendency to become paranoid and anti-Semitic, and exhibit a higher incidence of thyroid nodules than non-​Taurus guys. The Taurus man is stubborn and, if sufficiently provoked, can lash out with genocidal fury. But otherwise you’ll have yourself a real man, who’ll wrap his big, muscular arms around you and give you money and make you cum. (Famous Tauruses include Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Jessica Alba, and Megan Fox.) FYI: Ike blames losing his butcher job at the A&P on a whispering campaign conducted against him by several Gods, including Mogul Magoo, Shanice, and Bosco Hifikepunye.

  Ike’s Horoscope

  “The stars show that your long-term finances are precarious. Don’t try to solve everything all at once, though. Events are fast and furious, but take things one step at a time. Have a conversation with your daughter about why she’s failing math, and also try to ascertain whether her boyfriend, Vance, is a drug dealer. Also, this is not a good time to try to persuade the zoning board to grant you permission to build a huge statue of a naked, dildo-impaled La Felina on your front lawn. Think positive—try not to obsess about being killed by the ATF or Mossad. Remember, at the end of the day, you’re a bodaciously buff unemployed butcher and the Gods (especially La Felina, champion of the unkempt, the plain-spoken, the Frontschweine, the Lumpenproletariat, etc.) love you very much.”

  But It’s Not the End of the Day. It’s Morning.

  Ike’s wife (she’s trendy and gorgeous and believes in the Gods too—it’s a folie à famille! ) comes out to talk to him on their tiny front yard where Ike’s just putting the finishing touches to his Italian breadcrumb mandala for the God Fast-Cooking Ali. (She makes all her own clothes. She’s an anarcho-primitivist too, but she’s super-sexy! Her décolletage and sheer prairie dress don’t leave much to the imagination!!)

  One Good Grab Deserves Another: they both grab each other’s asses. Hey, it looks like his wife is sticking her middle finger up Ike’s ass! Like she’s checking his prostate! False alarm—she’s just tickling him. But the marriage is obviously still muy caliente. The Jersey City Fire Department might have to come and hose these kids down!!

  Ike’s wife (“Her name is Ruthie!”) has an incredible figure. But her secret isn’t counting calories. “I eat what I like, but I try to keep it clean and hea
lthy—fruit, vegetables, lean protein—lots of sushi. I don’t eat like Ike. He likes tonkatsu, shawarma, Beefaroni, Double Whoppers with Cheese, jalapeño poppers, Dairy Queen shakes, and shit like that. But look at him! Where does it all go?! If I ate like he does, I’d look like Gabourey Sidibe!” (Here’s the “skinny” from Ruthie: “Try swapping out the mayonnaise for mustard.”)

  8.

  Ike Karton: Super-Sexy Neo-Pagan Martyr or Demented Loser?

  Cast Your Vote Right This Second! You don’t have to go online or call in or anything. Just cast your vote in your own mind! And the Goddess Shanice (she’s telepathically omniscient!) will tally it all up.

  He’s paranoid and maladaptively hostile. (Paranoia and maladaptive hostility can be super-sexy, right?) He oscillates between chip-on-the-shoulder belligerence and Talmudic introversion. (Isn’t the extremely high amplitude of this vibration, in fact, what produces Ike’s radioactive charisma?) He operates under what skeptics (his dreary neighbors among them) might call the erotomaniacal belief that Goddesses, high on Gravy, are obsessively watching him, that they are forever peering out the windows of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, across the Gulf, across the desert, and gazing at him and masturbating. (Compare the visual acuity of the Goddesses here with the blindness of the bards.) He states it in no uncertain terms: “The Goddesses watch me like pornography.” That’s the reason he’s such a total gym-rat—he always wants to look SUPER-SEXY in case La Felina, high on Gravy, is watching him from the 160th floor of the rocket-shaped Burj Khalifa! His neck and head intermittently jerk toward the Burj whenever he feels he’s being ogled by masturbating Goddesses. (As would yours.) He’s an anti-Semite, although many experts interpret his anti-Semitism as a form of playacting intended primarily to torment his father. (FYI: Ike went to Hebrew school until he was thirteen!) He has a catarrhal rasp and a criminal record. (Super-sexy!) Whenever he goes to a restaurant, he always flirts with the waitress by asking for a tongue sandwich—same line, every single time. (That might be a little demented loserish.) But check out how he looks at night—a little looped, a little bleary-eyed from all the beer and whiskey, standing there in “the soft pink glow of the sodium-vapor street lights.” (It’s unanimous—that’s SUPER-SEXY!!) He likes to sit in the dark at home, wearing night-vision goggles, watching the Military Channel, drinking Scotch. By day, he warns men on his block that their wives are probably Mossad agents. He firmly believes that most women are Mossad agents. (If you’re a married man and you’re reading this, your wife is probably a Mossad agent!) But obscured by all his whispery trash talk, and embedded deep within his algorithmic solipsism which transfigures every single thing in the world into a reiteration of his own mind, is his extraordinarily tender devotion to his wife. Even Ike’s philandering is uxorious. His infidelities do not, certainly in his own mind, seem incompatible with what he considers his incorruptible rectitude as a husband. They are either seen as the most practical expediencies—before he leaves the house, Ike routinely announces to his wife and daughter, “I might have to kill someone or maybe fuck somebody today, but remember, it’s for you guys”—or as consistent with the cultivation and honing of his virility, the very virility that Ike so solemnly bestows upon his wife as his tribute to her. Would Ruthie (or any self-respecting woman, for that matter) want to be married to a man whose appetite for life was so meager and whose libido was so governable that one woman would suffice? What manner of husband would that be? (Surely not a super-sexy one!) And what would his love signify, if not a groveling insult?

  Sixty-one percent of women say that a scrupulously faithful husband is a TOTAL TURN-OFF!

  Of course, some experts say that Ike—Implacable Warlord of His Stoop—would kill a human being as casually as a normal person would pop a pimple. But then you see him brushing his wife’s hair or coloring her roots, nuzzling her neck, even popping one of her pimples, softly singing “The Shadow of Your Smile” to her.…And, of course, we know how—in so many secret, unacknowledged, uxorious moments—he dotes on her, how if he’s getting Fig Newtons for them and there are only two left and one’s normal and the other one’s all mangled and misshapen, he’ll take the mangled, misshapen one for himself, or if there are only two Frozefruits left, one normal, one with freezer burn, he’ll invariably take the one with the freezer burn for himself, or—great example—when he and Ruthie were completely obsessed with these crab cake sandwiches with lettuce, tomato, and lemon aioli on ciabatta bread and Ike would go to the little deli and then realize he only had enough money in his wallet for one crab cake sandwich, he’d get the sandwich for Ruthie and he’d just eat a Slim Jim or make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when he got back home. And no one knows he’s doing any of this, there’s no showy, self-aggrandizing display of being a good husband, no “He went to Jared!” moment. It’s just part of the texture of uxorious doting that Ike is weaving every single moment of every single day. (There is the obvious irony here of characterizing these gestures as “secret” and “unacknowledged” or saying “no one knows he’s doing this” since bards—blind, vagrant, and drug-addled—have been chanting these very words for thousands of years, tapping their chachkas against jerrycans of orange soda to maintain that insistent trance-inducing beat.) The portrayal of the Kartons in the Seventh Season—cavorting on their front lawn in the early AM—is exaggerated to the point of being almost defamatory and flaunts the hyperrealism and saturated colors of a Claritin commercial. In real life, the Kartons are, yes, exceedingly loving with each other, but they are also unusually protective of each other’s privacy. (It would be considered a monstrous offense even to ask Ike if his wife was in good health!) They are utterly inscrutable figures who, paradoxically, understand each other perfectly well. One morning, Ruthie came downstairs and found Ike sitting at the kitchen table, writing. And she said to him, “You look like you’re writing letters to all the officers in your army.” There’s such profound sympathy and insight and tender irony to that statement, because Ike is so alone, so utterly alone in the world of men, so much an army of one. (When Ike sits at the kitchen table in the early morning, he’s not writing letters or composing narcocorridos, he’s typically making lists—lists of which celebrities he thinks should be guillotined, which should go to the gulag, which should be rehabilitated, etc.) In his heart of hearts, Ike knows that he’s going to die soon at the hands of the ATF and/or Mossad—his “suicide-by-cop”—but he believes that a golden age will come—what he calls “the time when all fettered monsters will break loose”—when he and his wife and his daughter will be reunited for eternity. The bonds uniting this family have been exceptionally strong from the very beginning.