SOCK

This is an excerpt from my first novel, Sock, which is hitting stores right now. It's a love story and a detective story. The love story concerns a love triangle consisting of a straight man, a gay man and a dead woman. The detective story is about finding an imaginary killer. The whole shebang is told from the point of view of a sock monkey.

Love at first sight is easy. The instant someone starts running for president, he has his highest approval rating. He hasn't alienated anyone. The longer he goes without stands on abortion, cloning, animal rights, and taxes in Alaska, the larger his group of supporters. Shut up. Just shut your mouth. People look good to other people. Smiles are nice; handshakes are nice. Ambition in its gentle form is very attractive. Some people respect opinionated, but very few are attracted to it. See that woman over there? The Little Fool loves her. What's not to love? Get to know her, and it's a whole different thing. The pupils dilate, the mouth waters, the nostrils flare for a whiff. When it's animal, it's easy; when it's human, it's hard. You know it's the way you walk.

Nell had been working at a strip club when the Little Fool met her, but he didn't meet her at work. Strippers at work don't give out information. They are running for the office of lap dancer. The sexual information floods all the various-sized fools' heads and the fools don't even consider it possible that this human being would have policies the fools wouldn't like. I'm speaking now of sane people. There are insane people who need to hate the people the insane people are sexually attracted to. Men and women who go to topless clubs feel the sexuality and believe the people who provide it are evil. We won't be dealing with that level of wrong in this story. We'll be dealing with decomposed dead bodies in raw sewage, huge puncture wounds, rage, pain and murder, but we won't touch upon the kind of hate that's contained in even the slightest anti-sex position. There are certain things a sock monkey can't stomach. In my story, there is no one sick enough to have negative thoughts towards a stripper. We're going to keep it clean and happy. Everything is beautiful.

For sane people at a strip club, every employee is a law student. Every employee is proud and happy about her body and open about her sexuality and loving. Every employee is sober, but loves to have a good time. The Little Fool has known a lot of sex workers and I got to meet many of them in his bedroom. When the Little Fool would go with male friends to strip clubs, he would ask his male friends one question: "If men in this club were physically attracted to you the same way they are to these women, could you do everything these women are doing? The Little Fool's friendship has this litmus test. If what women were doing was disgusting to these men, why were the men encouraging it? The Little Fool passes his own test with flying pink colors. He likes to think about doing the stripper's job. He likes to think about getting "denim burn" on his tight little rear. He likes the idea of being able to "dance" without having to study, or even think about the music. He likes when another human being has a strong physical reaction to him. To his body. A reaction he'd be able to feel. Hear me roar.

All the "dancers" I met had no problem with the sexual parts of their job. But this was not a representative sample. If they were full of self-loathing and hang-ups, well, they never got to meet the monkey. All those women loved the idea of people looking at them in a purely sexual way. They all loved rubbing against jeans (or even gym shorts) and having strangers stare at their most private parts under bad lighting. All of them were fine with the gynecological poses. These are the strippers who get to meet me; they are the best of the best. But even they had trouble. Parents who don't want their daughters to be strippers don't understand why it's a bad job. It's a bad job only when it's not sexual, and that's most of the time. It gets bad when the dancers have to deal with loneliness. We all know that we're in Norman Bate's "little cages." Scratching and crawling. We all know that. We're sewn alone and we die alone. But it hurts to have it thrown in our faces. Alone again, naturally.

The Little Fool's stripper dates talked with joy about the biker who wore a miner's helmet to "get a little better look at the good stuff." They were thrilled and proud about the guys who got "too excited" during the dance and finished early. But the tone changed when they talked about the sad guy who came in every Tuesday and didn't want a "dance," he just wanted to talk. He wanted to know about the women's parents. He wanted to know where she went to school. He wanted to know what foods she liked. He wanted not to be alone. He wanted to talk to her about her hobbies. That'll destroy you. That'll hurt you wherever you see it. It's hard to be paid enough to dance with that loneliness. It's mostly what prostitutes are paid for. You're not safe even if you step away from the sex industry. It's everywhere. Especially in showbiz. Situation comedies are for people who don't have witty friends, or, more likely, never bother finding out if their friends are witty and entertaining. Morning DJs talk with imaginary friendship to real people. I'm the opposite: I'm imaginary, but the love is real. Imaginary friendship is very sad. It's in diners and hardware stores. Loneliness is like meteorite dust: It ends up everywhere. Knocking me out with American thighs.

Many of the dancers see it as an acting job, which it is, but they see acting as lying, which it is. So they make up "law school" and parents in the Midwest and try to hustle another crotch rub out of the john. The dancers don't give away too much. They just sell the sex, and everything else they sell is fake and made up. Silicone breasts are real breasts; strippers' lives are all fake. Nell hadn't done that. She told the truth. She gave too much of herself for the money. There's no way you can afford someone's heart, but Nell had been generous. She argued with customers. Arguing is a gift most strippers won't give. Nell had reminded the lonely customers that there is no god. That truth should be expensive. It should cost part of one's heart. She told them she didn't vote. She told them, in a bar, that she didn't drink. They had got so much more than they paid for. Some of them didn't want to end the loneliness with a real person. Fine. There were plenty of other dancers, and if the customers had wanted to give her a visual pelvic exam, she was available for a reasonable price. If Nell had met the Little Fool at the club, the meeting would have been awkward. They would have fallen right there in the club. The Little Fool falls for truth. He's overwhelmed with the gift of heart to a stranger. Going home with a customer is frowned upon. Exchanging phone numbers has to be sneaky. Told me to come, but I was already there. He met Nell in a bookstore. They had both run checklists: Atheist? Check. Sober? Check. Not obviously crazy? Check. Bob Dylan? Check. But that was just checking their work. All the real work had already been done at that point. They were on their way. They had seen each other. That doesn't give you too much information. They had got close enough to smell each other. This tells you a lot more. And then eye contact. The rest is just making sure you aren't being snowed by a creep. Women always know if they want to have sex with a guy the instant they meet him. The Little Fool had done a lot of debriefing on the subject. The Little Fool loves sex, but he likes the debriefing more. I have nothing to do with the sex, but I'm always there for the debriefing. After sex, before getting dressed, there's a chance to get information. "What did you think when you first saw me?" The information is always the same. Your partner always decides in the first five minutes. After that, the only change can be in the negative direction. After you win, you can only lose. Married. Killer. Kenny G. Smells bad. Kisses badly. Democrat. Bye, bye love.

Women decide in the first five minutes. It seems likely that men would be the same, but the Little Fool didn't do enough debriefing on that. I just don't have the information. It is possible to have sex with a woman who, in the first five minutes, didn't want to have sex with you. You can do that. You can become her friend. You can become her good friend. You can be charming, and loving, and open and caring. She'll get to the point where she'll say to her friends, "What's wrong with me? Am I looking for men to hurt me? Am I insane? I go to bed with all these guys who treat me like shit, and then I go to the movies with Rich. And he's so nice, and polite, and I can talk to him about anything. What's wrong with me?" And then have sex with you one night because you're her nice friend; her friend who didn't get her animal going in the first five minutes. And it'll be mercy sex, pity sex. And that sex can ruin the friendship. It's sad to have sex with someone who doesn't treat you well, but it's sadder to have sex with someone because he treats you well. I'm just waiting on a friend.

Sex brings the Little Fool so much of what he wants. Sex is a backstage pass. Loud, sweaty, aggressive, nasty sex is a laminate. Once he has had his penis everywhere on and in her, he gets to run around inside her head. He gets to see things he can't see with her clothes on. Before sex, the Little Fool can't stare at his date. Oh, he can glance down at her cleavage, at her hard nipples poking through the girly fabric. He can watch when she walks away from the restaurant table. The women you want walking toward you are the ones that look best walking away. You want to get caught a little. She has to know that you want to look, but if you're caught staring, well, you don't respect her, or maybe you're a perv. If she's busty, don't look at her breasts very much. If she's flat-chested, you can get caught staring a little more, but you have to do it right. You can't let her watch you look. But after sex, you have the backstage pass. After sex if you don't stare you're a creep. Being able to stare, being able to own her body with his eyes, is better for the Little Fool than sex itself. The sex isn't the end, but the sex is the permission slip. But the sex is really just the gate. It's the ticket. Breakfast with a new sex partner is the greatest time. Even better if it's in public. At dinner, the eyes have to lock in eye contact; at breakfast, the eyes can wander; they can land right on the money. The Little Fool often tries to make that deal with a woman he hasn't gone to bed with: "May I look at you like we've had sex?' I'm not here for that. It's too much for a monkey. My eyes adored you.

Most of the time the Little Fool was with Nell they'd been living in the city: cabs, subways, buses. That's how the Little Fool and Nell got around. But—once—they had rented a car. It was in FLA. I hadn't been there. It was kind of a work trip for her, and kind of a vacation for both of them. Nell had had to stop in a pharmacy. Witch hazel? Who knows? Something. And the Little Fool had waited in the car. Waited in the car, playing the radio. Waited in the car like waiting for Mom. Waited in the car with a breeze blowing through the rented windows. Waited in the car really taking the time to smell the air and watch the FLA old couples help each other silently to their caddies. He saw an older Mom with a Down syndrome kid. They were holding hands and looking in the window of the pharmacy. Mom had dressed him in a striped shirt that was too bright; it called attention to him. They were holding hands and looking in the window. The Little Fool's mother had been too old when the Little Fool had been born. He had had a high risk for that 47th chromosome. The Little Fool doesn't like to look away when he sees kids like that. He likes to force himself to look at what he could have been. He doesn't like to look, but looking is the right thing to do. He wants to see that kind of love. That's the kind of love his mother had for him. It had been the love that had been holding that 29-year-old child's hand and pointing to the treats in the window. The love that had cleaned the ice cream stain out of that bright striped shirt he had been wearing. Where do you buy shirts like that? Is there a retard store? No one else wears shirts like that. Maybe you have to be loved more than anything else in the world to wear a shirt like that. The old mom had been tired. She had been so tired from caring for her baby who would have been a man if his chromosomes had lined up right. It had been a pure love. And when the Little Fool sees pure love, he always cries. Just a little. He can cry. He's a real tough guy. He swims in sewage; he can cry. And he wants to be loved like that. All he wants is to love like that Nature Boy.

The Mom and her burden of love disappeared from the Little Fool's view. The Mom's car must have been parked around the corner. The Little Fool had turned the radio up: "It's the time of the season." Zombies were singing. The air was heavy with the smell of some flower mystery writers can identify. The Little Fool's eyes still moist from Mom and her not-right kid. It had been a perfect moment. And in his rearview mirror, he saw the figure of a woman. Her face was reflected, he could see it, but he hadn't processed it. He'd gone right to her body. Perv. Lech. He looked at the woman's gently bouncing breasts, the most beautiful standing wave he'd ever seen. The breeze was pushing her summer dress against her breasts. He wanted her so badly. He wanted her so much. He wanted to get out of the car and leave his car for her. He wanted to rape her like a pig and love her like a Down syndrome child. The Little Fool wanted all of her. Give it to me easy and let me try with pleasured hands.

It was his chance at love. It was his chance to do the right thing. He knew that she would get into her car, with her little bag from the pharmacy, maybe a bottle of water, some nail-care products, and some sort of good smelling cream, and she'd be gone forever. Carpe diem, Little Fool, make your move. And she became bigger in the mirror. She came toward his car. She was going to talk to him. She was going to ask to save his life. Wait, she was going to the passenger side of the car. It was Nell. He'd fallen instantly in love with Nell without knowing it was Nell. There's no better feeling in the world than not recognizing your date and wanting her more than you've ever wanted anyone. But the Little Fool had wanted her too much. And when she got in the car, he hadn't been able to put it all together. It had been too perfect, too intense. How could he realize that quickly that she had been his pure sexual fantasy, and his best friend, and his lead shield against red kryptonite, and his Down syndrome son? She was everything. If she had just been the woman in his rear view, he could have left with her for Mexico and never looked back, but she was more than that, and he had smiled and kissed her, and the world had started up again. Time started passing again, and then it was too late. Things had been too good to be dramatic. He'd been too happy with the woman he was with to leave everything behind to run off with her. It was a tragedy that he loved her too much in too many ways to end his life as he had known it. When I say she was cool, she was red hot. I mean she was steaming.

From SOCK by Penn Gillette, available wherever books are sold. Copyright © by the author and reprinted with permission from St. Martin's Press.