The Loneliness of Sex

Male Socio-Sexual Psychosis in Nicholson Baker's The Fermata and David Foster Wallace's from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #6

I stand here naked before you. Judge me, you chilly cunt -- from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #6

I never had much of an affinity for Updike, but I'm more than willing to contend that if I were to sit down and write out my top 50 books, no doubt Nick Baker's bizarre tribute to John Updike, U&I would be in there somewhere. But while I didn't hate Vox, the book-long transcript of a phone-sex call, I don't think it would make the list. The female character seemed a little too much of a fantasy of what an intellectual would wish to find on the other end of a phone-sex partyline, you know? So, when The Fermata came out in 1994, and I read the reviews describing in glowing terms the faux-autobio of Arno Strine, a man who can stop time and when he stops time he spends that un-time undressing and re-dressing unsuspecting women, I decided I wasn't going to go out of my way to read it. Not what I'm into, you know what I'm saying?

But, there it was at the local library, so what the hey, I picked it up and all my worst fears were confimed. Arno Strine can stop time, does undress women, leaves them dildoes and vibrators, writes them personal "erotica," and he thinks this is all ok. Fine and dandy. At various points in The Fermata Arno postulates to friends and strangers alike what they would do with this rare ability, and somehow most of their fantasies do involve sex (I don't know about you, but mine would involve cash and fixing my credit), but Arno is appalled to discover that some of the men he speaks with would "rape" women. Now, this is one of my problems with the book and the character: Arno does NOT think that undressing a woman against her will is a violation. My other problem with the book is the "erotica" that Arno writes is not erotica that women would be all that interested in. I know, because I'm a woman. Arno's "erotica" involves a lot of dildoes up asses and urinating and defecating. I don't dispute that there are women who would be aroused by this, but I think the audience is small. What's the chance that Arno's audience of one would be into body fluids? Arno's "erotica" is much more along the lines of porn that one finds in Penthouse Forum, and in some cases, nowhere near as imaginative. So my summary of the book is thus: Arno is a rapist and a pornographer and Baker's essentially living in a fantasy world if he thinks otherwise. To be fair, there are some "romantic" elements, and I think that's the real sadness in the book: Arno's sexual experiences with women are by nature singular and lonely, just like in Vox. I don't hold much hope for Arno ever being able to related to women in any way but sexually.

Paris Review, Fall 1997, carried David Foster Wallace's from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, #6, a short story that takes the form of an interview with a young man (two years into post-grad studies) who hooked with a woman for a one-night stand and ended up hooked himself. The reader does not see the questions posited by the interviewer. The hideous man sees the girl, who is described as a granola-cruncher, at an outdoor music festival. He sizes her up and pushes the right buttons and gets this girl back to his apartment. After sex, they engage in post-coital conversation, in which she tells him the engrossing and horrible story about hitchhiking and being picked up in a cutlass by a murderer/rapist, and her subsequent escap by forming a semi-religious "soul connection" with him.

I suppose Arno Strine auto-bio is meant as an allegory, concocted to explore the moral boundaries and the loneliness of sex in post-modern times. It's clear that Arno would rather drop and undress a woman than form an actual relationship. The hideous man also would rather not form a relationship. When he's talking about the rapist/murderer, he says, "In his cosmology, it's either feed or be food -- God, how lonely." But later he compares himself to the rapist (the meta-fiction portion of our short story; the subject is aware of the literary parallels between him and the rapist): And please know that I'm quite familiar with the morphology behind these bland little expressions of yours and the affectless questions. I know what an excursus is and I know what a dry wit is. Do not think you are getting out of me things or admissions I'm unaware of. Just consider the possibility that I understand more than you think. Very telling statement, both from the hideous man and from the author. Consider the possibility that the reader sees the hideous man as the rapist in this further sense: the "girl" has deliberately formed a "soul connection" with him through the telling of her story, and this is why he has fallen in love with her. In essence, this is what the best storytellers do with a reader. I know how this sounds, trust me. He has all my attention. I've fallen in love with him... I'm the damn hideous man!

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