Free Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk Page B

book.
You Are Here
. One hand inside her, he’d use the other to smooth the creased paper and trace one finger along some route while muttering to himself, “The
nervi pelvici splanchnici
branches
here
near your
nervi erigentes
.…” Discovering his destination, he’d wiggle something deep within her, exclaiming triumphantly, “Penny? Did you know your coccygeal plexus is displaced two centimeters to the anterior?” Feeling along blindly, he’d add, “Don’t worry. It seems to be within normal variable parameters.”
    Every so often he’d withdraw whatever pleasure instrument he was testing. He’d lay its length against a corner of the night table and bend the metal or plastic slightly. Or he might use a pair of pliers or vise grips he kept in the bedside drawer. Worse was when he’d just swing the instrument a mighty whack against the table, whack after whack, marring the elegant furniture until he’d achieved the desired curve.
    When that happened the bedroom seemed like those sepia-toned photographs Penny had seen of Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. Or Henry Ford’s workshop. For her part, Penny felt less like a girlfriend than a lab assistant. Like Dr. Watson or Igor. Or Pavlov’s dog. As Max tinkered away, bringing her to new convulsions and seizures of pleasure, despite her moods, despite her growing detachment and resentment, Penny half expected him to shout, “Eureka!”
    Maxwell would hover over his task, as focused as a Swiss watchmaker or brain surgeon. Often he’d request his valet or butler to wheel a tray of sterile instruments up bedside so Max need not look away from the procedure at hand. “Calipers!” he’d bark, extending one hand, and the attendant servant would slap the tool into his open palm. “Blot me!” Max would command,and the underling would use a fold of paper towel to swab the beads of perspiration from Max’s forehead.
    At times Max crouched between her knees, a penlight clenched between his teeth, a jeweler’s loupe squeezed in one eye, tinkering. His face slack with concentration. “I chose you,” Max explained, “because you have never experienced an orgasm. A man can tell. You remain asleep, and no one has yet to awaken you. You are so typical of the women I am trying to help.”
    “ ‘For too many years,’ ” Max recited, “ ‘women have been excluded from the full pleasure available to them in their bodies.’ ” He was reading from a printed sheet of paper. A press release. “ ‘I believe, as do many medical professionals, that a large proportion of chronic mental and physical ailments beset women because they accumulate stress that might otherwise be easily and quickly released with the right tools.…’ ”
    Even to Penny’s unsophisticated ear, the speech sounded like a string of euphemisms. According to Maxwell, it had to. It was selling sex. Even more controversially, it was selling women the means to better sex than they had ever enjoyed with any man. To some listeners, this announcement would sound like gobbledygook, like an outdated advertisement for a feminine hygiene spray. But to other listeners, namely men who valued only their own greedy sexual needs, this speech would sound like the end of the world.
    The two of them were sitting in bed. Lately, they were always in bed. Penny never donned more than a bathrobe, and that was only to accept a gourmet meal brought by the majordomo.
    “ ‘That’s the reason,’ ” Maxwell continued, “ ‘we’re proud to introduce the Beautiful You line of personal care products.…’ ”
    C. Linus Maxwell was preparing to expand his vast corporationand enter the field of empty vaginas in a big way. All of the jewel-toned gels and liquids on his bedside table. The magic pink champagne douche. The fluids engineered to modulate the coefficient of friction. He would be bringing them all to the lonely female consumer.
    The packaging would be pink, but not obnoxiously. The whole line would