Et Tu, Babe

Preface

June 6, 1993

Hoboken

Dear Marty Asher,

As you know, I am not your average author. I dress like an off-duty cop: leather blazer, silk turtleneck, tight sharply creased slacks, Italian loafers, pinky-ring. I drive a candy-apple red Jaguar with a loaded 9-mm semiautomatic pistol in the glove compartment. When I walk into a party I’m like this: my head is bobbing to music that only exists in my mind. For our seventh anniversary, I gave my wife, Arleen Portada, a rotating diamond-impregnated drill bit — the kind that German and Russian geologists use in their deep drilling programs — programs that produce ultradeep holes with depths of up to 15 kilometers. But that’s just the kind of guy I am. Dynamic. Robust. No nonsense. A steak and chops man. Double scotch rocks. A man who makes things happen. Big hairy hands. A powerful fist that comes down on a conference table with peremptory authority. Then there’s stunning Arleen Portada. Mystic. Sensualist. Why is she covered with centipede stings?

If you spent all day on a sun-baked prairie wearing a sizzling orange minidress supervising a platoon of beefy workmen as they paint immense grain silos vibrant yellow and fuchsia, you’d be covered with centipede stings, too.

My whole life has been one long ultraviolent hyperkinetic nightmare. But yes, I am an author. (And a dog trainer — Marty, I taught my puppy Carmella to drink scalding hot black coffee out of her bowl on the floor!) The other day, I imagined that it was the year 2187—a dozen people were gathered at the grave site of porn star John Holmes to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death. Well, Marty, I want to be remembered by more people than that. I don’t know … perhaps that’s why I write.

The unwashed armpits of the most beautiful women in the world … a urinal with chunks of fresh watermelon in it … a retarded guy whining “Eddie, Eddie, get me an Ovaltine”—almost anything inspires me. Immediately after finishing MY COUSIN, MY GASTROENTEROLOGIST, I outlined a new book about people with trichotillomania — people who compulsively pull out their hair. There are 2 million to 4 million Americans who have trichotillomania. That’s a lot of books! (That’s a lot of hair, too!) I abandoned that idea though — that’s not the kind of book that Vintage wants from a Mark Leyner, right? Well, I’m confident that, after perusing the following excerpts, you’ll agree that the novel I hereby propose is indeed the kind of book that Vintage wants from a Mark Leyner.

ET TU, BABE—a master jam of relentless humor and indeterminate trajectories — teeming with creatures and the burlesque of their virulent lives — will undoubtedly be, page by page and line by line, the most entertaining book that Vintage has ever published.