The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Our morning roundup gets all pottymouthed with Baltimore's finest fictional state senator! Plus: Fringe, Lisa Ling freaks us out and Ringo Starr breaks Marge Simpson's heart.
Dating Confessions by You "I asked my therapist why you haven't been in touch. He said I should try doing more than hitting the refresh button on my e-mail."
Scanner by Emily Farris Today on Nerve's culture blog: Are "fauxmosexuals" like Katy Perry ruining it for everyone else?
"The future will be better tomorrow." —George W. Bush
Max and I had sex last night the way he likes it — which is "in the present." But around three the next afternoon, just before the terror of permanent unemployment starts mauling me, I run to my couch, determined to have sex in the future.
To start, I swoosh off my jumper, tie a belt around my waist and pretend I'm strapped into a time machine. Weeeooo, weeeoooo, weeeoooo: it's 2020, nineteen whole years after the Black Ballot Ban (BBB) and fifteen years since the War Against Yiddish Negativity And Zen Illumination (WAY-NAZI). I find myself in a whole new era — a fast, abbreviated and bold one (known as FAB-1).
I've been beamed into the domed bunker of President for Life And Then Some (PLATS) of the Federated States of the Americas (FEDSAM), and beamed here by none other than the great PLATS himself — George W. Bush, now called "Geow."* We're in the sixteenth year of the War Against Sexual Pleasure (WASP). Neither side is winning, in spite of FEDSAM's ultrasonic brain-addler attack last week on the blue states, stronghold of Promiscuous and Orgasmic Women (POW).
As POW's Right-Coast undercover op, I consider it my mission to find out if this Geow here is the real head of FEDSAM or a fake. I doubt he's one of those Russian moles, because they only surface when the military budget comes up for review; but he could be a Geow clone.
Thing is, you can't identify a clone until they reach orgasm. It's the one thing they do differently from originals. So the entire fate of POW depends on my making Geow give it up. But how?
Against the harsh black of my vinyl waistband, my stomach screams "succulent twentieth-century flesh!" Ogling my belt-only outfit, Geow's eye forms that warm-yet-omnipotent smirk — the one he gets when he thinks about millions of Mexican children getting educated by federally funded priests. I roll my stomach muscles so that the belt vanishes, reappears, et cetera. It's enough to make any real man reach out to press my Orgasm Button (OB) or better yet, to reveal the location of his own.
But this PLATS knows how to play hard-to-get. Instead of grabbing my Vaginal Activator Gizmo (VAG), he pushes a joystick authorizing the Octagon to recommence their routine bombing of Saddam Hussein's tomb. Damn!
If this Geow is a clone, all I can say is that he's been designed with cunning accuracy. He even gives me one of his famous WASP nicknames: Kitty-poo.
"We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur, Kitty-poo," he says, repeating a statement he made while governor and shooting his cuffs. A sharp thrill goes through me when the folds of his sleeves ride up his arms, suggesting the movement of an agitated foreskin. But I must not lose my focus; not yet. Quickly I review the situation:
Geow has summoned me to his Family Ranch (formerly known as "Texas") for one reason only: to ply me with roasted animal protein and charm me with chumminess so that he can occupy POW territory without first winning popular support. By treating me the way he would a Democrat he hopes to neutralize our resistance before we hit him with our dreaded Pheromone Inundation Spray System (PISS), because once we do, the DNA in their computers will be reduced to so many useless ova.
The twenty-four-trillion-dollar question is: How can I turn his desire to seduce me into a seduction of him? Anxiously, I cast about for a device.
We're wearing SmartShoes™ that cushion our steps with air. Our thirst is automatically satisfied by a SmartBar™ that's pouring SmartColas™. Here in 2020, everything is Smart. Even Geow. Around us on the Broadband Universal Network, Leonardo di Caprio is hosting WWF's 60 Minutes. It's an interview with Sally Jesse Ventura, the new transsexual chieftain of the Yahoo!™ militia. When Sally throws Leonardo to the mat, his boyish squeal causes Geow to turn, and I suddenly see my opening: The button of his Penile Uninhibiting Device (PUD)! It's implanted in his shoulder! In all these years not one of our agents thought to look for it above the waist.
One hearty backslap and he's mine. I move in, haul back, he catches my wrist. I leap into the air, nailing his PUD with a reverse kick. But instead of convulsing and gushing hot spume into his leggings, he falls to the floor, limp, shriveled, shrinking, until he's nothing but one of those little Reagan dolls Moonies sell at Mt. Rushmore.
A clone. They come and they're gone. Sadly I press my own Orgasm Button again. Hard this time. I press it again and again, convulsing and undulating and crying out until all my fury and frustration dissipate into the climate-controlled air of this dreadful bunker. By the time Leonardo's been carted off to the parts shop and the animatron of Kate Hudson's daughter comes forward to accept its Oscar on EEEEE! I'm ready for my next historic mission.
*Pronounced "Joe," the way the Gianni in Gianni Versace is pronounced "Johnny."
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
