Sex in the Title (34 page)

Chapter 24
Operation Repulsive

During the three months that followed their serendipitous introduction, Heeb and Evan helped each other through the persistent difficulties and insecurities that accompanied their injuries. The bad news for Evan, which he discovered about two weeks after his release from the hospital, was that he had contracted syphilis. The good news was that he was spared the uglier effects of the disease by promptly obtaining treatment. Within one month, he was completely cured of the disease and no longer infectious. However, the fact that he had contracted the STD increased his anxiety about the HIV and Hepatitis B tests that he would have to take three months after his fellatio bite.

Aesthetically, Evan’s member seemed to be healing well, and he was hopeful that within six months, the scarring would be relatively minor. Heeb’s injury also saw substantial improvement, but it wasn’t nearly enough to restore Heeb’s confidence to where it had been before he hit the Jackpot.

“It’s not like my SQ wasn’t already really low to begin with,” Heeb remarked, a few weeks after his hospital discharge.

“At least you didn’t get syphilis with a chance of getting HIV or Hepatitis B,” Evan replied.

“Why is that supposed to make me feel better about having a scarred penis?” Heeb asked.

“Because things could be worse. A lot worse. Hell, you could have gotten rabies on your dick.”

“True. But things could always be a lot worse.”

“They could be. You could be dead.”

“But then I wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Yeah, but you’ll get there anyway. So you might as well enjoy the ride along the way as much as possible.”

“OK. But why do others get to enjoy a better ride along the way?”

“Others? Like who?”

“Like all those guys who have a penis without scars, a scalp full of hair, and a bank account with millions of dollars in it. Can’t I be depressed about the fact that I don’t have those things?”

“Look, the scars will improve with more time, you’re on way to becoming a partner at your actuary firm, at which point you’ll have millions of dollars too. And science is working on a cure for baldness. Isn’t that close enough?”

“I guess it’ll have to be.”

“How about this: if we can still get you laid with a hottie, will you feel better about things?”

Heeb grinned and they shared a laugh, acknowledging that virtually any worry or woe could be cured by a beautiful woman. “You realize that it’s a contradictory idea. What you’re really asking me is: would I feel better about having such a low SQ if I had all the benefits of a high SQ?”

“But that’s not totally absurd,” Evan insisted. “People can still have very successful lives despite relatively low IQs. So maybe they can have very successful sex lives despite relatively low SQs.”

Evan decided that he wouldn’t pursue women again until his hepatitis and HIV test results arrived in early December 2000; if they came back negative, he would jump back into the game. Until then, he decided that he would focus all of his free time exclusively on his novel, because he couldn’t be sexually involved with anyone for several months anyway, and – more importantly – because a best-selling novel was the only way he thought could compensate for the injury-related drop in his SQ. Quite apart from his injury, he concluded that he had no more than ten years with a full head of hair and therefore needed to be rich and/or famous by then to compensate for the additional drop in SQ that would follow. Ten years struck him as very little time to become rich and the Internet certainly wasn’t getting him there.

But because it had taken Evan five years to write fifty-nine pages, he didn’t exactly trust himself to enforce this new resolution to finish his novel over the next few months. Thus, he adopted some drastic practices that he believed would make it easier for him to stay disciplined. He stopped shaving or grooming himself and dressed in the most stylistically inept and unattractive way he could imagine, so as to minimize the odds that any female might cast a favorable glance in his direction. As if this measure weren’t enough, Evan also began eating large quantities of garlic and onions throughout the day, to quickly stave off any woman who miraculously managed to get past his outdated, mismatched, and generally disheveled appearance.

“How’s ‘Operation Repulsive’ coming along?” Heeb would ask, during their daily phone call.

“I’ve been happily hunkered down in my place as if it weren’t, in fact, a tiny, roach-infested, light deprived, slovenly hole in the wall.”

“How have you managed to overlook the many charms of your apartment for such extended periods of time?”

“I don’t know, but it’s amazing. I’m on my third straight week of solid writing. No female distractions whatsoever, and I’ve written one hundred more pages. Can you believe that? Three weeks of writing without thinking about or talking to women gets me twice as far as five years of writing with women in my life. Of course, being unemployed is also big help.”

“Not to take the wind out of your sails, but what if it turns out that you’re just writing a bunch of crap?”

“Now why would you want to take the wind out of my sails like that?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Look, every writer has to contend with the haunting thought that what he’s writing is really just a bunch of crap. That’s what makes this solitary art form so damn painful and why every writer has to convince himself that he’s writing a masterpiece, even if in the end everyone hates it.”

“So you work under a narcissistic fantasy as a way to stay motivated?”

“Exactly. And this whole process has also made me realize a basic writing truth.”

“What’s that?”

“If there’s always the chance that what I’m writing is really just a bunch of crap, I’d rather write it in a few months than in a few years.”

“You got a point there. Better to produce a bunch of crap quickly than slowly.”

By the seventh week of Operation Repulsive, Evan had barely seen the light of day: he had been writing for forty-two consecutive days, spending an average of fifteen hours per day on his novel. He was on page 240, had covered about two-thirds of the story in his novel, and was convinced that he was writing a masterpiece.

But Evan’s unprecedented forward momentum came to an abrupt halt on October 18, 2000, at 11:29 p.m., when he had to leave his apartment and go to the corner store for some toilet paper and toothpaste, both of which he had depleted almost sixteen hours earlier. He was in the most revolting condition ever – far worse than what he had looked like after the all-nighters he had pulled as a college student at Brown, cramming for finals. The last two days he had barely slept, after being possessed by the muse like never before. His scraggly beard, thoroughly tangled hair, tired and bag-ridden eyes all appeared to be part of the same lifestyle choices behind the dirty, wrinkled, and clashing clothes that covered his body. Evan had even exhausted his clean underwear and was down to the last pair in his “reserve” pile (which, thanks to age, had developed some built-in ventilation). Daily sandwiches of canned sardines, raw garlic, and uncooked onion all but ensured that his breath could be weaponized, if produced in highly concentrated form.

In this veritably frightful state, Evan emerged from his writing lair to stock up on some basic supplies at the local twenty-four-hour Duane Reade drugstore. With his head still thoroughly immersed in the alternate reality that was his novel, Evan’s brain was floating far too much to take any notice of the white stretch limousine parked in front of the Duane Reade. In zombie-like fashion, he began strolling the aisles of the store looking for toothpaste and toilet paper. Some late night drugstore patrons noticed Evan walking by them and eyed him with a mixture of disgust, bewilderment, and either fear or pity. Evan was largely oblivious to these people, but after a few minutes of wandering about the store he had become somewhat more conscious of his surroundings, to the point that when he walked past Delilah Nakova, he suddenly realized that there had been a white stretch limousine outside.

A jolt of adrenaline suddenly snapped down Evan’s entire back as a stream of panic-stricken questions seized him: Was it really Delilah? What was she doing in this particular Duane Reade at 11:47 p.m.? Had she recognized him? If so, were his dreams of Delilah forever doomed now? If not, could he quickly clean himself up enough to talk to her? Maybe even in Czech? Could this be a divinely delivered first chance to make a second impression? Or could it even be a second chance to make a first impression, if she miraculously forgot about their prior encounter about seventeen months ago at Float and didn’t recognize him in his current state?

Having had virtually no contact with the outside world for the last few weeks, Evan had temporarily forgotten the social norms governing shopping conduct or approaching celebrities in public. Nor did Evan have the time to reacquaint himself with such trifles. Instead, he became singularly focused on quickly cleaning himself up enough to approach Delilah before she got back into her limousine and disappeared forever. He spotted some toothpaste on the shelf and hastily opened it and squeezed some into his mouth, and put the rest into his shopping basket. As he chewed on the toothpaste, he spotted some mouthwash and quickly took a swig, gargled for a few minutes, and then – not having anywhere to spit out the sharp, powerful alcohol-based liquid – he spat the liquid and the toothpaste back into the bottle of mouthwash, which he then put in his shopping basket. Afraid that Delilah had already been out of sight for too long, he ran to the end of the aisle and across the back of the store, until he spotted her looking up and down the shelves where the chocolate “energy” bars were located.

He ran back to the neighboring aisle, spotted his disastrous-looking hair in a store mirror, and hurried to the next aisle to get a brush and some hair gel. In a mad rush, he squeezed out an enormous gob of gel and began padding it down on his tangled and disheveled hair. He frantically brushed his hair in various directions, trying to achieve something interesting, if not respectable. Realizing that he was running out of time, he finally gave up on the hair, thinking, “Maybe she likes the edgy, scruffy look.” But then he realized that his body odor smelled akin to hazardous waste. He threw the brush and gel into his shopping basket and ran to another aisle, looking for deodorant. He grabbed the first deodorant he found and began liberally spraying his entire body, from head to toe, as well as under his shirt and undershirt. He was far too fixated on the mission at hand to notice the disapproving stares his behavior had elicited from nearby shoppers. He dropped the deodorant in his shopping basket and rushed back to the aisle where he had last seen Delilah, only to discover that she was no longer there. In a panic, he ran across the back of the store, looking up the aisles, until he realized that she was probably already at the checkout counter.

From the end of the last aisle, he spotted her at the front of the store, chatting amiably with the young cashier. Evan dashed in their direction, and as he approached them, he could see from the cashier’s delighted expression that the universally beloved movie star had made her night. As he quickly came closer to Delilah, who hadn’t yet looked in his direction, he suddenly panicked, as he realized that he didn’t have a clue what to say to her. But at that point, it was too late, because the cashier and Delilah had already turned their attention to this scruffy, disheveled man with a strange hairdo who had just finished sprinting over to them for some reason. The twenty-nine-year-old man was slightly out of breath, and wore a red plaid felt shirt with olive green sweatpants, brown loafers and white tube socks pulled over the bottoms of his pants, and seemed to carry with him the odd smell of mouthwash, hair gel, garlic, old spice, body odor, and sweaty gym socks. Evan could feel all the pressure of both women waiting for him to explain his presence and bizarre appearance. But all he could think of as an opener was, “Hi.”

“Hi,” they replied, sharing an amused look with each other before looking back at him. Evan noticed that Delilah’s security guard was standing just outside the exit to Duane Reade, looking at him suspiciously.

“I…I…just came here to say…Well, I wanted to thank you for representing Czechoslovakia so well…”

“Thanks, but it’s actually no longer Czechoslovakia. It’s now the Czech Republic.”

“Oh right, of course. I knew that they split from Slovakia in,” Evan was drawing an excruciating blank.

“In 1993.”

“Right, in 1993…I’m sorry, it’s…it’s…I’m a bit tired.”

Evan felt like a complete idiot at that point, but was now compelled to ride the train wreck to its final destination. There was no hopping off gracefully.

“Oh that’s OK. Lots of people still make that mistake,” Delilah said, good-naturedly.

“Well, I wanted to thank you for representing the Czech Republic so well.”

“I’m also American,” she said warmly.

“Well, I…I think you represent America and the Czech Republic really well.” Evan was praying that someone – the cashier or even Delilah’s security guard – would save him from himself. He was sure that if Delilah was nice enough to continue talking to him, the stupidity of his lines would only get worse.

“Thanks,” Delilah said, with a smile. She was about to walk off when Evan suddenly remembered how to say something in Czech.

“I think the Czech language is very beautiful,” he said in Czech.

“I do too,” she replied in Czech, turning gracefully around a little, with a look of pleasant surprise. “Have a nice night.”

The delusional optimist in Evan saw the last part of their conversation as encouraging. He was tempted to follow her and give her his phone number, but she was already too close to her security guard, and there was no way she’d ever call him anyway, he figured. He breathed a heavy sigh of resignation. He couldn’t fathom what he had done to deserve such a lovely coincidence – particularly when he was so ill-prepared for it. Evan also had no idea what Delilah Nakova was doing in his neighborhood Duane Reade that night. “I guess movie stars need supplies too,” he thought, at which point he realized that he was still missing some essentials.