The lovebirds are sleeping, exhausted from their failed attempts to make love. Erosphere: "The Definitive Adult Magazine"—"private lingerie modeling," "golden showers," "switchblade domination." You should be watching Home Run Derby, reading biographies of Richard the Lion-Hearted, doing one-arm pushups. "According to the Marquis," you say, "'nothing that causes an erection is villainous.'" Tell that to Justine. Little Known Fact About the Marquis de Sade: at Charenton Asylum everyone called him Dr. Sphincter. I tell thee, nocky boy, he was no more than a fat whiner. And where was the poetry? Not "her bannocks were like wheaten cakes"; not even, "unworthy to loosen the leather thongs of her studded bra." Just a guy with a zero and an exclamation point humping in his head, his penis dangling like an artificial leg. Old Sade Sack sulking in a cell, writing a play for an inmate who's carrying the child of John the Baptist. He doesn't even have a title. "How about 'Fetish Fair Fleamarket'?" you suggest, bowing from the waist. "How about 'Bi-Curious, Anal Housewives Want It Now'?"

Charles Darwin

Charles, we collect beetles too, red ants, horseflies, even tomato worms. But I like my bees in a bottle, my bulbs basketed… And why are we here, my beamish boy? "The sight of a naked savage in his native land is an event which can never be forgotten." Charles wrote that by lamplight as he watched fireflies jitterbug on the horizon. He saw God in a sea hedgehog, in an orchid, then a theory appeared, sudden and frightening as a new planet. It must have been difficult to kill God, like hugging a porcupine, like being bitten on the tongue by a dung beetle. "I am not an animal, I'm a plant," you laugh—a remark dumb enough to renew my interest in self-fertilization… We're docked off the cliffs of Patagonia, fighting over the name of our new lovebird. You want to call him "Tupac." I like "Dasein." Charles has no idea what we're talking about. Later, he's climbing a chaos of rocks, extracting bits of sea shells from a cliff. Sea creatures in the mountains? How did it all start? "Perhaps a great egg came forth," you offer, peeling off your "Gotta Sweat!" T-shirt. I say to picture God as a tone-deaf, handsome accordion player clinging hopelessly to his failed lounge act. And your cruel response? "Another useless metaphor from the Incredible Shrinking Penis." Which makes Charles laugh, no doubt thinking he'd like to see such a phenomenon, perhaps probe it with a sharp needle.

Sigmund Freud

     "If it wasn't for pickpockets, Sigmund wouldn't have any sex life at all."
     That's not funny, that's not original. "Unsatisfactory Citizenship." A No. 12 on your report card. That's not funny, either. Or smoking pot. Or bookmarking G-spots on the Internet. I swear, if you snuck outside to fart, the wind would blow it back in. Sigmund, You the Man. A little help, please. Cure this Oedipal itch, marinade this meathead… Freud, old and quiet, sipping from a whitebone coffee mug adorned with the image of the Sphinx. He's mourning a lost dream, picking a piece of lint from his beard. Nearby, the famous couch covered with an oriental rug; I can smell its horsehair stuffing, I can smell his cigar. "Humbaba, Humbaba," you mumble, attracting his attention with a Gilgameshic mantra. You plan to manufacture a key ring in the shape of a brooch bearing the face of this bearded old man. "Humbaba, Humbaba." "That's not funny, either," I say, then get distracted by a flamboyant entrance. It's Wilhelm Fliess, alias Chard deNose, commissioned to explore your corpora cavernosa, a phrase you'd understand if you ever flashed your flash cards. "Ain't got no biorhythms," you laugh, "ain't got no self-control. Can't even dance." But Fliess will have none of it. He has you strapped to the couch, giving you a fascist facial, poking at a mound of nasal flesh with a sharp scalpel. "I'll give you Humbaba," he says, as Freud looks on, toying with a thick piece of gauze.

Albert Einstein

Albert said: "Our situation on this earth seems strange," and I certainly second that emotion. You say, "I want to be like…Albert." And who wouldn't. To have a head naturally swollen with B-12. So nice to say, "That woman is a violin," and watch people perk up, listen. Yet did you know his grandmother vomited when she first saw him? It was that same head, as big as a watermelon. No wonder he didn't speak for three years. He was fixed on the face of a compass, entombed in an imaginary spacecraft exiting our galaxy's backside. None of his pegs fit… Contrasts between you and Albert: Albert was saddened at the regimented motions of soldiers; you're aroused by twelve one-arm pushups; Albert blushed at the marriage of a curved line and falling apple, at a star without compassion; you're starstruck by a little girl in pink hot pants; Albert compared fame to "feeding time at the zoo"; you want to broadcast your pimple picking on the Internet; Albert… "Would you please please please stop talking?" Nocky boy, all he wanted was to see God, to spend his life straightening out one enormous paper clip. Which is where we find him in his old straw hat and rumpled white suit. He looks up, and we await other grave statements from another Great Man. "I'm with the boy," is all he says.

 Peter

 Johnson