From Warning...

A scene from Aubrey Tannhauser's new transgressive novel, WARNING: Sexually Explicit Content, which can be found here.



...When I walk back into the basement, everybody is staring at me.  I look at Tony and Eph, and I think “so what's your excuse?”  They're here, at the same party, and clearly just as slutty as I am, but perhaps not so successful because they couldn't get in the right hole (unless you prefer BJs, which I’ve never understood as it relies so heavily on the talent (and jaws) of person whose primary job qualifications are diminished motor skills and judgment).  Tony and Eph are just as smelly, nerdy, and insecure as I am, but it seems to me that they're much worse, possibly only because they aren't me.  Tony's story is easy to figure out: the wealthy father, now on his third wife.  All kinds of family weirdness over the decades, affairs, betrayals, and ultimately a red brick basement with neon Budweiser signs and Saturday nights alone in West Nyack while dad drinks champagne with the vice presidents of various consulting firms.  If there's nothing nihilistic about that, I'll be damned.

     Eph, on the other hand, has two parents on their first marriage.  They buy him all sorts of presents for his birthday, and he has a family credit card he can use to buy gas and pizza for us whenever he wants.  What could be screwed up about this kid, so screwed up, in fact, that he comes to a party like this and just watches, instead of taking the free pussy when it comes?  (He also does things like hold pornography parties with open masturbation, which is completely abhorrent to me.  And the kid will spend forty minutes peeling an apple because he's terrified of the 'toxins' in apple skins, but that's not the root of the problem.)  Two things: his sister and Yale.  His sister: beauty queen.  Goes to pageants around the country.  Two weekends a month his father is off driving her to some county or state pageant or some underage beauty shoot on a beach somewhere.  It's disgusting, and you wonder how he keeps his job as a Wall Street lobbyist, but then you recall that Ephraim is Ephraim Littlestone IV, and numbers I and II were fairly well connected, so III must be secure.  Then you recall that numbers I, II, and III went to Yale and your friend Ephraim IV, though he has an IQ of 156, good grades, and always raced circles around you in math and science classes, was recently rejected by Yale, and therefore by his paternal lineage.  You've been to their house, and you can see in Ephraim III's eyes that there is no despair like that of the parent of the 99.4th percentile child who can't buy his way into the palace of the 99.9th.  And where is Ephraim's mother in all of this?  She's a doctor.  She's working.  She's busy being a success.  She’s writing a book about Parenting for Professionals.

So the marketing folk told us that people weren't reading the blog entry on transgressive fiction and that we had to have a separate entry on each new book.

Okay...

Here's on one Aubrey Tannhauser's new novel.




WARNING: Sexually Explicit Content by Aubrey Tannhauser is a new and subtly transgressive work. In it, Tannhauser presents us with the life and loves of Jacob Lamdan, a young man who wants nothing more than to be a famed author of well-crafted erotica.

And this should be a snap for Lamdan. He's a decent stylist and he's got scads of personal experience from which to take his material. He is, you see, one of those young men that women perceive as beautiful, no matter how they really appear. Where the rest of us poor heterosexual males (particularly those who are, as they delicately say, of a certain age) must struggle and sweat to gain even the passing attention of women, Lamdan gets it whether he likes it or not. They fall into his arms at the least excuse. They offer him sexual escapades that would embarrass Caligula. Indeed, they demand his attentions with a single-minded fury.

But, Jacob discovers something distressing. To wit, his easily obtained sexual experiences provide no inspiration. They have required no effort, so they are not genuinely rewarding. They satisfy the animal, but they do not nourish the human part of him. He has no muses, only fuck-buddies and "friends with benefits."

In time, he finds that only by withdrawing from the sex may he save himself. In the process, he must confront both great unhappiness and real tragedy, but it is his route to salvation.

Which is, of course, how Mr. Tannhauser commits his own transgression. He takes the climax of every porn film, every romantic comedy, and every advertisement for underarm deodorant…i.e., the moment when boy-gets-girl and vice versa…and says, "It doesn't matter."

Doesn't matter. And maybe should be avoided.

 *

Check out this remarkable new novel on Amazon:

WARNING: Sexually Explicit Content by Aubrey Tannhauser