The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner Read Free Book Online Page B

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