# Guts: The story of St Gut-free



## somnambulist (Jun 2, 2008)

Για τον Ντάισμαν που είχε το κουράγιο να το μεταφράσει. Μινιμαλισμός, μαύρο χιούμορ και κοινωνική κριτική με άντερα που τυλίγουν ασφυκτικά τον αναγνώστη. Για πολλά θα μπορούσε να κατηγορηθεί ο Παλάνιουκ, όχι όμως για απάθεια. Ιντζόι. 

Guts
by Chuck Palahniuk

Inhale.

Take in as much air as you can. This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was 13 years old he heard about "pegging." This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkout counter, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyer belt toward the grocery store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

So my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. And Vaseline.

Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt.

At home, he whittles the carrot into a blunt tool. He slathers it with grease and grinds his ass down on it. Then, nothing. No orgasm. Nothing happens except it hurts.

Then, this kid, his mom yells it's supper time. She says to come down, right now.

He works the carrot out and stashes the slippery, filthy thing in the dirty clothes under his bed.

After dinner, he goes to find the carrot, and it's gone. All his dirty clothes, while he ate dinner, his mom grabbed them all to do laundry. No way could she not find the carrot, carefully shaped with a paring knife from her kitchen, still shiny with lube and stinky.

This friend of mine, he waits months under a black cloud, waiting for his folks to confront him. And they never do. Ever. Even now that he's grown up, that invisible carrot hangs over every Christmas dinner, every birthday party. Every Easter egg hunt with his kids, his parents' grandkids, that ghost carrot is hovering over all of them. That something too awful to name.

People in France have a phrase: "staircase wit." In French: esprit de l'escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer, but it's too late. Say you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party....

As you start down the stairway, then-magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put-down.

That's the spirit of the stairway.

The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.

Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Too low to even get talked about.

Looking back, kid-psych experts, school counselors now say that most of the last peak in teen suicide was kids trying to choke while they beat off. Their folks would find them, a towel twisted around their kid's neck, the towel tied to the rod in their bedroom closet, the kid dead. Dead sperm everywhere. Of course the folks cleaned up. They put some pants on their kid. They made it look ... better. Intentional at least. The regular kind of sad teen suicide.

Another friend of mine, a kid from school, his older brother in the Navy said how guys in the Middle East jack off different than we do here. This brother was stationed in some camel country where the public market sells what could be fancy letter openers. Each fancy tool is just a thin rod of polished brass or silver, maybe as long as your hand, with a big tip at one end, either a big metal ball or the kind of fancy carved handle you'd see on a sword. This Navy brother says how Arab guys get their dick hard and then insert this metal rod inside the whole length of their boner. They jack off with the rod inside, and it makes getting off so much better. More intense.

Η συνέχεια εδώ


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## cythere (Jun 2, 2008)

You made of my heart a garden...


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## stathis (Jun 3, 2008)

Όλα καλά, ρε Κωστάκη (συγγνώμη, somnambulist ήθελα να πω), η κοινωνική κριτική πού είναι; Εκτός κι αν θεωρήσουμε ότι σαρκάζει το νεοπλουτίστικο κλισέ της πισίνας...


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## somnambulist (Jun 3, 2008)

Το αόρατο καρότο που κρέμεται πάνω από τη μεγαλοαστική οικογένεια και η αφόρητη ανία της αμερικάνικης σαμπέρμπια. Οι μεγάλες προσδοκίες που συντρίβονται από την τρέλα της στιγμής. Η διαστροφική σχέση με το σώμα που δημιουργεί ο καπιταλισμός και οι απαγορεύσεις (ο τύπος χάνει τα άντερα του, αλλά προσπαθεί να βάλει το μαγιό του για να μην τον δει κανένας γυμνό!). Το οιδιπόδειο. Η ηδονή που διαπλέκεται με τους χειρότερους φόβους. Μην αφήσω έγκυο την παρθένα αδερφή μου, αλλά κυρίως: τη μαμά.


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## somnambulist (Jun 3, 2008)

Δεν λέω να υποστηρίξεις το κείμενο, ούτε καν να το αποδεχτείς. Είναι πάντως κριτικό και κλινικό. Ένα υπέροχο σύμπτωμα με εσωγενή στοχεία για τη θεραπεία μιας παθογενούς κοινωνίας.


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## Gutbucket (Jun 3, 2008)

Delirious imagery, riveting ideas, transgressive to the hilt, shockingly corporeal, superbly uninhibited, a pithy and brutal fabulation about the pleasure drives gone awry. Gut wrenchingly powerful! Thanks!


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