Sex in the Title (29 page)

“Right,” affirmed Heeb. “And then, no more than about a century after you removed male genitalia from the planet, the last, longest living human has died. And then the roaches take over.”

“That’s pretty grim.”

“It really is.”

“God bless the penis,” Evan declared.

“Amen. God bless the penis.”

The two shared a pause of reflective silence, as if to pay homage to the grand penisophical conclusions they had just reached. During the passage of this awe-filled, respectful moment, Heeb noticed that his “painis” was now only a mild irritation, and merely noting the improvement was enough to return him to the calamity at hand.

“So I think it’s fair to say,” Heeb began, breaking their silence, “that we’ve been injured in the spot that’s most important to mankind.”

“And to manhood,” Evan added, looking over at him.

“How can we get over something like this?” Heeb asked, somewhat distressed. “How can we get over an attack on the organ that is most important to manhood and mankind?”

“We have to.”

“We do?”

“Yes. We just agreed that the future of mankind depends on it,” Evan remarked.

“Well, that’s not exactly accurate. It’s not like every other penis on earth has been decommissioned.”

“No, but that’s how you have to think of it – as if the future of our species now depends on you and me overcoming this terrible penile challenge.”

“That could be an inspiring way to approach it,” Heeb replied.

“Yes. Remember that we’re men. And another prerequisite to being a man is being tough.”

“But maybe I’m not tough enough for this,” Sammy worried aloud. “And if I’m not tough enough, and my penis is broken, maybe I’m no longer a man.”

“Your penis isn’t broken!”

“It sure feels that way.”

“Just give it a few months. We’ll get over this thing, I promise…Look, I’m actually seeing how this could be a good thing for me.”

“What?!” Heeb replied, incredulously.

“Well, I haven’t told you this yet, but I’m a writer.”

“I thought you’re a computer programmer.”

“I am. But that’s my day job. You know, my version of bartending. But I’m really a writer. I’ve been working on a novel for the last five years. And I’ve written several screenplays.”

“Wow! Were any of your scripts made into movies?”

“I hate that question.”

“Why?”

“Because the answer always sounds so loserish. It sounds really hip and glamorous to tell people that I write screenplays. Until they ask if one of my scripts has ever been produced. The answer always takes me from cool writer to unproven wannabe.”

“I actually started with the assumption that you’re an unproven wannabe,” Heeb retorted.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I generally don’t tell anyone that I write unless it’s some woman I’m trying to pick up.”

“Why is that?”

“Because a lot of women think it’s sexy – especially those who don’t ask annoying follow up questions and just assume that I’m a successful screenwriter.”

“See what I mean? I’m becoming a woman. I’m not tough like a man, my schlong is broken, and you’re telling me things that you only tell to women.”

“Would you stop with that self-pitying crap? My little guy is as broken as yours, and I’m telling you that I’m a writer because you asked how I could view this injury as a blessing.”

“Oh. Well excuse me for not seeing the very obvious connection between your creative writing and the blessing of sustaining a dick bite…You know, sometimes I miss these things that are as clear as day.”

“Well, we got sidetracked when you asked me that annoying question that everyone asks.”

“All right. I’m sorry for not assuming that you’re an Oscar-winning screenwriter.”

“That’s not the point!” Evan protested. “People should think that being a writer is cool. Even if you’re just a starving writer. Besides, most great writers were starving writers at one point or another. It comes with the title.”

“All right already. I think it’s cool that you’re a writer. Now would you make the damn connection for me between your writing and your penis injury?”

Evan adjusted himself on the bed a little and exhaled a breath of deep frustration, in preparation for an admission of which he was quite ashamed.

“I’ve been writing this novel for the last five years…” Evan seemed reluctant to continue the confession.

“What’s it about?” Heeb asked, trying to prod Evan along.

“It’s about women…Men and women…Five years…Do you know where I am in the novel?”

Heeb shook his head.

“Five years…And I’m on page fifty-nine.”

Heeb wasn’t quite sure why that was so bad. Fifty-nine pages over five years came to almost a page a month, he figured, and that was far more than he had ever written. But then, again, he had never wanted to write.

Evan saw that Heeb wasn’t so impressed with his tragic confession, and proceeded to explain the problem in greater detail, his voice rising in angry self-rebuke. “Do you know where I would be right now – in the novel – if I didn’t have a penis?”

Heeb shook his head again.

“I would be done. No. I would be more than done. I would have already cranked out the prequel, and I’d be finishing up the sequel. That’s where I would be, after five years. But…But because I have a penis, I’m only on page fifty-nine of the first book. Do you see the connection now?”

“Almost. But I’m still confused. Because you say that you’ve written several screenplays. So maybe if you were writing only the novel you would have made better progress on it.”

“That wouldn’t have helped.”

“Why not?”

“Because the screenplays had almost nothing to do with women, and I had no problem cranking them out quickly. But the novel is all about women. Women and men.”

“So?”

“So instead of writing my novel about women, I would go out and try to meet them, date them, sleep with them. And then I would justify all of that time that I should have been writing as research time.”

“But that actually sounds like a very reasonable and scientific approach to your subject matter: collecting raw data before reaching your conclusions.”

“I’ve got enough hard data, Sammy!” Evan was clearly very disappointed with himself. “No pun intended,” he added.

“I see. And your excesses in the data collection department are all because you have a penis.”

“Exactly….And now we come back to the paradox we started with. If I didn’t have a penis, then women wouldn’t be such a huge distraction for me and I could finish my novel. But then I wouldn’t have as much to write about. And I certainly wouldn’t care about actually finishing the novel.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, if I didn’t have a penis, women wouldn’t be so much more interesting to me than men are, and I wouldn’t feel the urge to write about them. And – more to the point – I’d have no desire to impress them with the completion of a great novel.”

“Why not finish the novel to impress your family?”

“That would never impress them.”

“So you mean to tell me that you want to finish this novel so badly because it’ll make you more attractive to women?”

“Basically.”

“You can’t be serious,” Heeb replied, skeptically rumpling his brow.

Evan reflected on Heeb’s reaction for a moment.

“You’re right,” he said in resignation, as if he had finally been caught distorting the truth. “I’m not entirely serious,” he continued, introspectively. “There’s definitely something deeper going on with this ridiculous compulsion I feel to write…Because there are far more effective ways to attract women than to write a novel about them. After all, who the hell even reads novels anymore?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Come on, let’s be honest. Do you read novels?”

“No. Not since college.”

“There you go…And you’re a Harvard grad.”

“Yeah, but I’ve always been more into math, science, and philosophy.” Heeb opened the drawer next to his bed and pulled out the chocolate Snickers bar that he had asked the nurse to bring him.

“That doesn’t matter. A few hundred years ago, even the math geeks read novels. Because there was really nothing else in the way of entertainment.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Heeb replied, trying to couch his doubts softly, on what was clearly a sensitive topic for Evan.

“Why do I feel the need to succeed in an art form that’s doomed to extinction?” Evan asked, in despair.

“Just because I don’t read novels doesn’t mean they’re doomed,” said Heeb, as he unwrapped his Snickers bar.

“Look, novels made sense as an entertainment form back in the 1800s, when the closest you could get to a soap opera was Dickens and Balzac. Today, you can get dicks and ball sacks on Internet porn, so even soap operas don’t cut it.”

Heeb was somewhat distracted by his Snickers chocolate bar now. Compared to the hospital food, it seemed to Heeb as if it were the quintessence of pure and natural food – grown organically from the earth and full of goodness for the body and spirit. His mouth began to salivate, just looking at the large bar of chocolate and imagining beneath it the nutty and creamy filling that would provide his mouth with an instant orgasm.

Somewhat pained by the social obligation of having to offer some of this heavenly treat to his neighbor, Heeb extended the bar out to Evan while hoping that Evan would decline. To Heeb’s substantial relief, Evan quickly shook his head, almost irritated with such a frivolous interruption of their all-important discussion.

“You’ve got interactive games, DVDs, Internet, 3D films, and an ever shrinking attention span,” Evan continued, as Heeb proceeded to take an enormous bite of his chocolate bar. “Novels don’t stand a chance against such easy and immediate gratification. These days, people just consume whatever gives them the fastest form of amusement, without any concern for the long-term effects that these empty pleasures may have on their constitution.”

Heeb blissfully focused for a moment on the easy and immediate gratification of his Snickers bar, as he methodically chewed on the large chunk of candy bar that filled most of his mouth. He wasn’t at all concerned about its long-term effects on his constitution.

“Are you listening to me?” snapped Evan, somewhat irked that his neighbor seemed so untroubled by the social and technological trends that would doom literature.
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Heeb’s mouth was obviously stuffed, but it was clear that Evan wanted an immediate answer.

“You gotta have sex on the cover,” Heeb blurted out, rather unclearly, with his mouth full.

“Sex under the covers?” Evan asked, trying to make out what Heeb said.

“No. Sex on the cover,” Heeb replied, with his words just as garbled by his glutted mouth.

“Sex undercover? As in, undercover sex?” Evan asked, trying again to decipher what Heeb said, and now impatiently convinced that whatever Heeb was trying to say was going to be an annoyingly irrelevant, inappropriate, or unsatisfying response.

“No.” Heeb shook his head and took a few more bites before trying to speak this time. “You just have to have the word ‘sex’ on the cover.”

“What do you mean?” Evan asked, still not sure that he was hearing Sammy correctly. By now, Sammy had finished most of his chewing and could enunciate properly.

“I mean, the book can be about sex on the covers, sex under the covers, or undercover sex. Or anything else really. It doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got the word ‘sex’ on the cover.”

“You mean the cover of the book?”

“Yeah. Even better: make sex the first word in the title. Like Sex and the City did.”

“But that was television.”

“It doesn’t matter. If it’s a novel about racecar drivers, call it ‘Sex and Speed.’ Or if it’s a work of historical fiction set in antebellum Texas; call it ‘Sex in the South.’”

Evan looked like a priest hearing sacrilege from a proud atheist for the first time in his pious career.

But the appalled expression on Evan’s face only goaded Heeb on more: “Suppose you’ve written a mystery thriller about an evil scientist who changed his identity into someone totally unknown. Don’t just call it ‘Unknown’; call it ‘Sexual Unknown.’”

“Sexual Unknown?” Evan repeated, incredulously.

“Yeah, that still works.”

“How could that possibly make sense as a title?”

“Look, if the disguised scientist is now generally unknown to people, then he’s probably also sexually unknown to them.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“OK, maybe that’s not a good example,” Heeb conceded, before continuing, undeterred. “Take a novel about a man’s self-discovery. A good title for it would be something like ‘Sexually Searching Self.’ You get the idea. Just have the word sex in there, and make it prominent enough so that it’s the first thing that people see when they see your book.”

“Sammy, you’re more full of bullshit than a Texas ranch!” Evan exclaimed, in an agitated, high-volume reaction.

“All right, maybe I’m overstating things a little. Look, I’m a math guy, not a literature guy. So I’m looking at this from a purely statistical perspective: all else being equal, your novel is more likely to sell if it has the word ‘sex’ in the title than if it doesn’t. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You just stated the same bullshit in slightly modified form…But that doesn’t change the fact that what you’re saying is still basically bullshit.”

“Trust me on this, Evan. I’m telling you that if you have sex in the title, publishers can market your book much more effectively, and people will buy it.”

“Please, Sammy!”

“I mean it. Even if you write a novel that has nothing to do with sex and has no sex in it – I’ll bet you could still sell more of it by putting sex in the title.”

“But that would make no sense. How could you put the word ‘sex’ in the title of an asexual novel?”

“Easy. How about ‘Sex only in the Title?’”

“So a story about a man who escapes from prison but never has sex in the process could be called ‘Sex only in the Title?’ You can’t be serious.”

“OK, you’re right. There are limits. But if your novel has at least some sex in it, then it can be somehow mentioned in the title, and – ”