The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Michael Phelps indulges Anderson Cooper in some watersports and Dexter makes a 'bitch move.' Plus: the secret of Tina Fey's scar, revealed!
Dating Advice From . . . Engineers by Steph Auteri Q. For optimal functionality, what should go into a first-date emergency kit? A. Fine wine, road flares, a snake-bite kit and Ghirardelli chocolates.
In this week's New Yorker, Lauren Collins alerted us to the diverse sexual content of Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 1996 novel The Apprentice. Today, to further edify the American public, Nerve brings you some longer excerpts.
The book is about a young Japanese man who runs a remote mountain inn and becomes embroiled in a world of intrigue. "A world of intrigue," in this case, involves:
a scene of incest between two uncles and their niece;
a hunter asking his companions if they should fuck a freshly killed deer while it's still warm;
the description of a prepubescent girl's painted "mound" and pleasing lack of vaginal odor;
a story about a girl who's kept in a cage and raped by a bear to train her to become a prostitute.
Thanks, Scooter, for reminding us — once again — about the healthy sexual psychology that lurks within the political party of "family values," abstinence-only education, restricted reproductive rights and opposition to same-sex marriage! Below, some selections penned by the vice president's former right hand:
A dozen guests sat in the main room by the edge of the firepit. Their heads were bent low and they held things to the light. When the youth drew near he saw that they held near their faces cards of lacquered paper and that other cards lay scattered about their feet and others till passed among them hand to hand.
promotion
On the cards were painted pictures of naked women bathing and lovers engaged in odd, exotic practices and on some were monkeys with erections and on one a demon and a maid. The top card, facing outward, bore a half-dressed courtesan and a warrior, reversed upon each other, garments hitched to their waists, with swollen, oversized organs and impossibly reddened flesh, and behind her back the courtesan held a dagger and there were scratchings on the card that bore urgent words . . .
He said that boys from the village took the merchant's daughter places, and word spread that she had many lovers. There were odd tales of her sexual prowess, and they said she had coupled with dogs and men and several of the boys at once. Then to their village came a young samurai, who spotted the girl as all did, and she folded him into her. She took other lovers in the village, which enraged him, but he would not be done with her . . .
The young samurai's mother had the child sold to a brothel, where she swept the floors and oiled the women and watched the secret ways. At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest. Groups of men paid to watch. Like other girls who have been trained this way, she learned to handle many men in a single night and her skin turned a milky white.
Stories of this north-country training for prostitutes were apparently well-known among the guests, who made impatient motions for Ueda to continue . . . "Then," Ueda said, "they trained the young whore in all of the finest ways to pleasure men. They gave her wooden penises and taught her how to handle them. They taught her how to sing out in the night and move to finish off her customers more quickly." . . .
"They taught her how to draw pubic hair on her mound," Ueda laughed, "because she was still too young to have any of her own." A fat woman on the far side of the fire laughed out until tears streamed down her face and her sides rocked. She reached into her clothes while she was laughing and pulled sharply and made a little cry and her mouth opened and then, laughing harder, she pulled her hand out with pubic hairs stuck between her swollen fingers and flung them at the men around the fire. "No ink here," she gasped, laughing, "No ink, no ink" and the laughing men beside her made grasping motions above the fire as if to catch the pubic hair she had thrown. Some clung unnoticed in her moist palm.
"And then," Ueda said, laughing and shouting over the others' laughter, "when she was twelve and ready they gave her to me for the first night, because I had done this for them before."
The others stopped laughing in a series of diminishing gasps and leaned forward intently with glinting eyes to hear the secrets of a man used for first-night training by a house that could afford a bear.
"Is there feeling?" a bucktoothed man asked. "At least on the first night, after a bear?" (p. 78-82)
Dancing, the tiny girl did now what seemed to the youth an amazing thing. Reaching down to her ankles, she parted her kimono and lifted it several inches off the ground . . .
The village woman now threw herself forward on her stomach very near the candle and sniffed up into the shadows beneath the tiny dancer's red kimono. "No smell," she shouted, laughing, "no smell," and the men around her laughed, too, but with a different edge as they looked at the young girl . . . she raised the gathered clothing higher still until she was naked from the floor to her child's breasts . . .
"Her hair's painted," one of the men by the fat village woman yelled and pointed, and the youth saw that the tiny dancer's mound was in fact not covered by hair but by long painted lines. (p. 100-101)
One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her. The sleeve of his other arm was pinned under his side, and this arm he could barely raise. He stretched to touch her with his fingertips, and as he did she slid one leg over him and kissed his ear. Her breath there was warm and moist and then she licked inside his ear. He was startled. He had never been touched like that before. The feeling at first was good, but then it was wet and cold and unpleasant. He could hear her breath just above his ear, but he could no longer see even the ghost of her. She bent down once more, and he lowered his head for the thought of being licked again disturbed him. (p. 150)
"Maybe you should report the strangers."
"Some thought we should. There was a girl raped just before the storm. But we discovered it was a fox-spirit that raped her. Someone even saw the fox-spirit. It had taken the form of a man. She's not right yet, but that is common with such things." (p. 161)n°
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
