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By Dave Eggers
Editor's note: Episode 6 of Dave Eggers' novel in progress. To read previous episodes, click here.
Feb. 19, 2004 | "You OK?" Giacomo asked.
"I'm fine," Rebecca said.
They made their way to a corner of the room, where they both downed gin and tonics and caught their breath.
"You doing well?" Rebecca asked, about Giacomo's fundraising efforts, about which she wanted to know nothing.
"Not so good yet. But I don't generally close deals so soon. Most of these guys want to write checks in the coat room before they leave, so I have some time."
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
Now Giacomo was staring at something behind Rebecca. She turned to see a mirror behind her, and Giacomo's eyes trained on his own reflection. More specifically, on his own ass.
"Nothing," he said.
"You're looking at your own ass."
"I am not."
"Of course you are."
He was. But how could she blame him? Giacomo had an amazing ass. He spent a great deal of time looking at this ass, because he could and because he'd paid enough for it to justify its constant appreciation.
After years of deliberation, Giacomo had done it. He'd done what so many of his friends had threatened to do; but only Giacomo had the cojones -- that's a really puerile and anyway unintentional pun -- had the guts to do. He'd gotten ass implants. The divorce made him do it, really, with an assist from a cable dramedy about women dating in Manhattan or Los Angeles -- he couldn't remember which and didn't care.
It was four years ago that his wife Cynthia divorced him, and though his daughter made him very happy -- he and his wife had a very fair and amicable custody arrangement -- he hadn't bounced back romantically as quickly as he'd expected, and thus was given to desperate thoughts late in the evening, and questionable, even craven plans in the wee hours. He'd starting reading too many things on the Web -- the home DSL connection being the last severing of ties to the world of sane, air-breathing humanity -- and had stumbled upon a support group for men who had procured artificial pectorals, calves, and buttocks. It provided many good laughs at first, ho ho. Shortly after that he caught an episode of the always-overdressed-women-dating-in-Manhattan show, in which one of the women, a gold-digging seeming-nymphomaniac, began seeing a much older man, he being wealthy but sagging everywhere, who had seemed to her tolerable from the front, even naked. But in the middle of intercourse, or just before it, the older wealthy man left the room, still nude, and when she glimpsed his bare and downtrodden ass, looking like two sorry bags of cottage cheese, she knew it was over.
Was Giacomo's ass that pitiful? He wasn't sure, and knew that his judgment couldn't be trusted. He was tempted many times to call his ex-wife, Cynthia, but every time so far had saved himself at the last moment. Cynthia could be unkind: She'd pretend to take him seriously, asking questions, seeming to sympathize, appearing to be on his side, and then, once she'd extracted all the necessary ammunition, she'd hang up and laugh herself hoarse.
But finally he did it, and like all implants, their effect on his appearance in clothes was quick and dramatic. Even while his buttocks were still healing, were blue and bleeding internally, in almost any pants he looked fantastic. His ass stuck out the perfect amount and was round just so, perky and confident, as hard as two small beachballs, if they were attached to each other and in his pants. When he went out in his oldest, almost threadbare jeans, women gasped, and some men, as he passed an outdoor cafe in Boystown, which he did just for his own amusement, would pretend to grab the cheeks of his bottom with two clawing hands.
And about all this he had no regrets. Not regrets, no, but he had two prevailing reservations. First, though he hadn't yet had a woman touch the new buttocks, he was deathly afraid that once she did, she would know and would think him abnormal for undergoing such an operation. His second and most inconvenient reservation concerned the trade he'd made with his plastic surgeon, Dr. Morris Day. The arrangement stipulated that Giacomo could have the operation done at cost if Giacomo would allow the occasional prospective ass-implant patient to check out Dr. Day's work, up close.
What this meant was once every few weeks, Dr. Day would call Giacomo in, and soon he'd be standing in the examining room, with a mask over his face for privacy -- the mask was handmade, and bore the face of Dr. Day's wife Doris -- while men would come in, squat down or pull up a chair behind Giacomo, and squeeze.
Some men just wanted to look. Others cupped. Some caressed. One pinched, many times, with great force. Another man, who sounded elderly, punched Giacomo's cheeks, as if he were testing the durability of a tire. One man, with a high voice and a Boston accent -- he sounded exactly like Giacomo's junior high gym teacher -- commented on a pimple and the hair emitting from Giacomo's left cheek.
"That's not a function of the new buttocks," Dr. Day said. "There's only, you know, so much we can do."
"Good, good," the man said. He was sure this man was his former gym teacher, for this was his trademark saying, "good, good," uttered in a chilling henchman sort of way that unsettled all those who heard it. "Because I want my ass to be better than this one. This, Dr. Day, is a weak ass."
The prospective patients forgot, every time and completely, that there was a man, with ears and synapses connecting to a working brain, standing a few feet above them.
"This is a lame ass," one said.
"This is bad ass," another complained.
The fact was, though, that Giacomo had, at least while wearing pants of a certain snugness, a premium ass. Dr. Day's clients were only trying to bargain down the price by insulting his work, much as a garage-sale shopper would, say, point out a flaw in a Hungry Hungry Hippos set to save 30 cents. It all made Giacomo queasy, and at this point, after his fifth such session, Giacomo could feel the hands of every man who had stroked, patted, poked, palmed, twiddled, pawed or kneaded his awesome ass, and thus he walked through the world feeling a bit raw, not a little bit cheap.
And his present task, extracting money from these representatives of the mortuary business, did little to improve his sense of esteem.
-- By Dave Eggers
