The Remote Island by Bryan Christian NBC discovers Facebook, what happened on Gossip Girl and Terminator and our obsession with Mario Lopez continues apace.
PERSONAL ESSAYS
posted 4/9/2003
NN-I-C-K-Y
My parents liked to joke about how narrowly
I escaped being named Chantal. My father, an occasional translator
and lifelong Francophile, had lobbied for the name. Possibly
to apologize for not giving him a first-born son, my mother consented.
But as her pregnancy advanced — along with my parents' plans to move from
a tiny apartment in Brooklyn to the suburbs of Long Island — my mother and
father gradually realized they would be giving me a name which, when pronounced in the local accent, rhymed with "mantle." They agreed to go with the runner-up in Gallic monikers: Nicole.
I am fussy about the spelling of my nickname, Nicky. Though, in middle school, I briefly experimented with alternate spellings
A
single pussy or cock could have doppelgangers across the country.
(the most ludicrous being "Niikkiiee"), I've always disliked any deviation from N-i-c-k-y. That instinct was satisfied when I was twenty, shortly before I began work at the shop. In a Manhattan Barnes & Noble, I found an unabridged index of adult film stars. The book contained lists of actors and actresses arranged by both their first and last names, with titles of their movies beneath. The space devoted to the Nikis, Nikkis, and Nickis covered a whopping six pages, edging out the Ambers and Tanyas by a good page and a half. I didn't think to look up the Chantals.
O ORGAN DONORS
The store carried dildos and rubber vaginas that were supposedly molded from the actual genitals of famous porn stars, like Jeff Stryker and Jenna Jameson. One of the boxes depicted an actress sitting in something like a reclined dentist's chair. She was nude from the waist down, her head tilted back with easy laughter. A small man in a blue smock crouched between her legs, adding to the frieze of white rubber latex that covered her crotch.
A single performer's pussy or cock could have doppelgangers across the country. I imagined true devotees scrutinizing gangbang scenes for Jeff's uniquely sloping glans or Jenna's pouty, asymmetrical labia, as though searching out old friends at a crowded cocktail party. These were high-quality, expensive products. The flesh tones had been rendered in lush, vibrant colors that put the peach/brown/black palette of cheaper toys to shame. The veins on the cocks were carefully shaded and sculpted. The vaginas seemed to be bashfully, winsomely smiling. All these ersatz genitals appeared to have been temporarily detached from beautiful bodies in the pink of vigorous health. Their enterprising manufacturers had created products that — instead of appearing goofy or tawdry — were almost too lovely to fuck.
P PARABOLA
Growing up, I envied the conspiratorial nature of male sexuality. My guy friends pilfered the porn stashes of their fathers and older brothers, holding group screenings of Genital Hospital and Flesh Gordon in
their basements. My girlfriends and I never even told each other that we masturbated. Our respective
virginities, while intact, were bemoaned; when lost, they were duly noted and
dismissed. "Horny" was a term used to describe boys, not ourselves. In my experience, the female sexual imagination was nonexistent.
Naming or defining sexual orientation becomes irrelevant, a kind of freedom indebted to the triumph of capitalism.
Because of this, there were no stock characters to subscribe to, no impossible
body types presented as templates of what we were supposed to have sex with.
There was always the possibility of shaping and mapping one's own desire.
I had loved learning about parabolas in high school calculus, especially the ones that
had infinite endpoints. These were signified by arrow heads, placed where the lines threatened
to breach the boundaries of the blue grid paper. I was always excited by the
idea of an infinite equation no paper could contain.
Brendan sat in front of me in high school math. His skull and scent drove me crazy. He was bashful, hunched a lot and rarely kept eye contact during conversation. He made short, funny jokes that seemed funnier because of their brevity. He crouched in his seat and always wore T-shirts, even in the winter; his posture stretched the fabric over his shoulders and back. He always looked weighed down by something. I thought of Atlas and Hercules, and wondered if our attraction to the muscular male body was the physique itself, or the visible strain of the burden, the labors.
I never noticed him until he shaved his head. His bare scalp put his entire body into sharp relief. For the first time, I was aware of the odor he exuded: strips of fresh turf, the tang of dead leaves, the brack of marsh. Growth and rot. My head would swim with the smell from the moment he sat down in front of me until the bell rang. How do you tell a shy, soft-spoken, seventeen-year-old boy that you want to cram your nose into his armpits and under his jaw? I barely passed calculus; I spent each class strangled and drunk on smell. Q "QUEER"
"Give me back that dodgeball, you lesbo."
"I heard Nicky Beer did it with some girl behind some curtains during dress rehearsal for the school musical."
"My roommate's girlfriend's cousin swears that he walked in on Jeanette Sherman and Nicky Beer, and that Nicky was wearing this, like, strap-on dick or something."
Since I was ten, people have assumed I'm a lesbian. Although it is true that I wore a necktie to fifth-grade picture day (I was prompted by adoration of my father), the real inspiration for the taunts and jeers was the word that conveniently rhymed with my last name.
Desire and sexuality, it seems, are mutually opposed. The first is all ephemera. The latter is simply a question of language, the stricture of words. In the pragmatic world of the sex shop, you don't greet a customer with, "Sir, are you a homosexual?" Instead, you ask, "Is there a particular magazine you're looking for?" Naming or defining sexual orientation becomes irrelevant, a kind of freedom indebted to the triumph of capitalism: your desire is only defined by what you need to buy.
R RECEIPT
— Box of condoms, ribbed, purple, 24 ct. (1)
— Fur-lined handcuffs, leopard print (1)
— Bottle of Wet lubricant, water-based, strawberry flavored, 14 oz. (1)
— Military-style gas mask (1)
I was always amazed by how much stuff sex could
require.
My favorite dirty-movie title of all time is Girls Who Suck Cock and Eat Cum.
S SHEEP
The guy was looking for a video of people having sex with animals. I told him that because bestiality was illegal, he would have a hard time finding a store that would admit to stocking anything like that. I pointed out the shelf with the blow-up sheep. I heard myself say, "Perhaps I can interest you in one of our inflatable companions?" I knew I had been working there too long.
T TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
My favorite dirty-movie title of all time is Girls Who Suck Cock and Eat Cum.
Consider how much subterfuge and symbolism usually exist in the title of a novel,
a poem, a painting. The title has to be a well-chosen phrase or word, the purpose
of which is to seduce, deceive and enlighten. Often, it seems counterintuitive
to its content. The Wizard of Oz is about a hallucinating Midwestern girl
named Dorothy. According to any museum-going grade schooler, the decorously titled "Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe" should be called "Naked Chick Picnic." The relationship between title and content, or language and being, is one of friction and subversion. The name of a sex toy can't contain its possible uses or determine the gender or sexuality of its owner. The title is never shorthand for the story. The name is never a substitute for the person. The term is not the desire.
iantronudia: arousal from exposing oneself to a physician by faking an ailment
U US
Louis was on the phone with his latest boyfriend. "Okay, fine. When does the movie start again? Eight-thirty. Okay. So they'll meet us in front of the multiplex, on the Second Ave. side? Great. See you then, hon." He cradled the phone, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Usss . . . " he kind of hummed, rocking his head back and forth slowly, his lashes two mink crescents on his cheeks. "Usss-uh," he rolled the word around on his tongue, feeling its slippery contours. "Us-us," he singsonged a little louder. He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked directly at me, chirping the word again in a bright, brittle syllable: "Us!" V VOCABULARY
agalmatophilia: arousal from statues or mannequins
capnolagnia: arousal from watching others smoke
entomophilia: arousal from insects
gynelophilia: arousal from pubic hair
hodophilia: arousal from travelling
iantronudia: arousal from exposing oneself to a physician by faking an ailment
knismolagnia: arousal from tickling
maschalophilia: arousal from armpits
nanophilia: sexual attraction to a short partner
ophidiophilia: arousal from snakes
psychrophilia: arousal from being cold or watching others freeze
siderodromophilia: arousal from trains
taphephilia: arousal from being buried alive
undinism: arousal from sex in bath tub
vicarphilia: arousal from other people's exciting experiences
W WEST 4TH STREET SUBWAY STOP
Someone had scratched the word "TITS" into the thick glass of the subway car window. It looked as if it had been done with a key. The bundles of vertical scratches were the color of salt, and each of the letters was end-stroked with a dignified serif. The first "T" was slightly thicker than the second, as though the artist had run out of time between the two. The overall effect was one of great effort. One could picture the graffitist laboring over each letter with the bluntly serrated metal, perspiration collecting under armpits with each sawing motion. Perhaps when it was finished, the artist felt a passing feeling of loss when stepping out of the train. And imagine, months later, the breathless shock of recognition upon stumbling across the same word on the same line. Imagine stepping back into that fateful car where the inspiration had come! To feel so spontaneously, deliciously, anonymously famous! X SEVEN X'S
Patter from a Tom Waits concert film: "I once stayed at a hotel across the street from a dirty-movie theater. It was advertising a movie with seven X's. Seven X's! That must mean . . . I dunno . . . girls without skin."
Y "YES. WELL . . . NO."
"Nicky, are you really twenty-one?"
Z ZOO
Shortly after I quit, I visited the Central Park Zoo. In the steamy enclosure of the rainforest exhibit, I watched a bright orange poison-dart frog clamber onto the back of its lipstick-red mate. As they held perfectly still, a small pool of what looked like tiny wet pearls spread out beneath them. The little fuckers made it look so easy. n°
Nicky Beer is a writer and occasional radio DJ who lives in Houston. Her work has appeared in Columbia, Cider Press Review and Indiana Review. She has recently taught her dog to catch a Frisbee.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
