Free Damned by Chuck Palahniuk Page B

nation of Brobdingnag, where looming giants capture
and make of him a household pet. No, it's far safer to present children, those
powerless, diminutive children, with a narrative in which a giant is taken
prisoner and manipulated under the control of tiny beings whose sole reason for
not murdering him is their fear that his gargantuan corpse might decompose and
threaten the overall public health.
    It remains unknown to the majority of children that in the kingdom of
Brobdingnag, in the second volume, Swift's picaresque travelogue does get a tad
bit tawdry and dicey.
    These are the salacious tidbits one learns when bothering to do the
supplemental reading for extra credit. Especially while spending Christmas
vacation naked, alone in an otherwise empty residence hall. In the second
volume of Swift's masterpiece, once the giant residents of Brobdingnag capture
Gulliver, he's presented at their royal court and is made a kind of mascot,
forced to live in the queen's apartments, in very intimate proximity among the
very gigantic ladies-in-waiting. It's these ladies who pleasure themselves by
removing their clothing and lying together, sharing a bed while our hero is
compelled to journey the peaks and valleys of their way-naked bodies. Writing
in the guise of his narrator, Swift describes these women—the most-lovely
female aristocrats of their society, who would appear so charming and appealing
from a distance—as in fact constituting a swampy, reeking Gehenna in actual
up-close physical contact. Our minuscule hero stumbles about their spongy, damp
flesh, encountering monstrous pubic thickets of hairs, inflamed blemishes, vast
cavernous scars, pits, knee-deep wrinkles, stretches of dead flaking skin, and
shallow puddles of fetid perspiration.
    And yes, it's duly noted that such a landscape depicted by Swift bears
a marked resemblance to the actual terrain of Hell. This spreading landscape of
noblewomen recline in their afternoon languor, expecting, really demanding that
this teeny shrunken man bring them to pleasure. All the while, he stumbles and
reels in disbelief and utter disgust of them. Overwhelmed with sickness and
horror, exhausted, our enslaved Gulliver is forced to labor until the giant
women are satisfied. In all of English literature, few passages can match this
one of Swift's for its descriptive bluntness and unwelcome, masculine crudity.
    My mother would tell you that men—boys, men, males in general—are too
stupid, too easily found out, and too lazy to ever succeed as truly gifted
liars.
    Yes, I might be dead and rather imperious and steadfastly opinionated,
but I know the blunt stink of misogyny when I smell it. And that it's very
likely Jonathan Swift found himself the victim of childhood sexual abuse, and
was now venting his rage in the passive-aggressive avenue of fantasy fiction.
    In his own unhelpful way, my father would tell you, "A women eats
to feed her pussy" Meaning: Anything we do to excess is in compensation for
not getting a minimum amount of sexual gratification.
    My mother would say that men overimbibe alcohol because their penises
are thirsty.
    Really, being the offspring of former-hippie, former-Rasta,
former-punk, former-anarchist parents means that I'm bombarded by no end of
earthy truisms.
    And no, I've never enjoyed an orgasm of my own, but I have read The Bridges of Madison County and The Color Purple, and if I learned nothing else from Alice
Walker I learned that if you can help a woman discover the curative power of
manipulating her own clitoris she'll serve as your loyal devotee and best
friend forever.
    That said, I stand before the Serbian demon, the towering nude tornado
woman known as Psezpolnica.
    First, I shuck off my remaining penny loafer and place it at a safe
distance from the giant. I pull off my school cardigan, fold it, and settle it
neatly on top of the shoe. Unbuttoning the cuffs of my blouse, I roll the
sleeves back to each elbow, all the while gazing up the length of