He figured what the hell. It was time to set fire to the library. The books had taunted him, yes. But the cruel overdue fees had disturbed him more. Those ruthless librarians, which he had found sexy since his first erection, had let him down. There was no way he’d be able to finish all the books. Every branch that had been set up had been designed to completely diminish his hopes for remaining a smart, erudite young thing. At the age of 19, he had hoped that he’d be some majestic galvanizer. Some hot young stallion who could quote Baudelaire while pounding into some blitzed naif and giving her the orgasm of her life. Better yet, maybe his super smarts would be commissioned to ransack some jaded hack working for a lesser New York paper. Starfucking his way to a blurb on the latest Nora Roberts or, at the very least, servicing one of those beautiful fortysomething career women that turned his insides into sweet lime Jello. They were underrated, those super-sharp slightly older ladies. And even if they were facing an unfair race on the gender circuit, particularly in light of the November election and its consequences, he appreciated them.
It was a base existence, and he had managed many rolls in the hay. The time had come to take his convictions to the next level. To indeed invoke an act that was wholly irrational and really had no explanation to anyone outside of his arrogant shell.
So he pulled out his dogeared copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and flipped through for a recipe for a Molotov cocktail. Unfortunately, no one had informed him that The Anarchist’s Cookbook wasn’t nearly as accurate as the black helicopter wags thought it was. But that didn’t matter. Because he was a very clumsy mofo and he often conducted these experiments naked. To say the least, this was a colossal mistake for a clumsy person to make. So while in the process of shaking and stirring the goods, he dropped the lit match upon his crotch. It was an accident. But then so many aspects of his life had been accidents. The big questions was whether he’d learn to adapt to this most recent contretemps.
His pubic hair lit into a glorious conflagration. He yelped and he hollered and he tried to put it out. But the fire spread down his legs. It should be noted that he was a hairy guy. He had so much hair on his body that it was really a matter of a few years before he anonymously went into a laser hair removal clinic and finally calibrated the appropriate hair-to-flesh ratio to an acceptable level for the mighty brains who wished to hump him.
But since there was a major strand of hair (a fey form of kindling, as it were) connecting his pubic regions to his legs, it was (so the pundits remarked in the next day’s newspapers) only a matter of time. Soon his entire nether regions and his legs were being lapped by majestic flames. Unfortunately, he was alone. Which meant, of course, that no one was around to capture this exciting moment on video.
So he decided to run naked in the streets. The excitement got several strangers’ attention. And he was whsked by an ambulance to a hospital. He spent the next six years paying off the bills.
The unfortunate consequence was that the journalists refused to fuck him as frequently as they once did. The scars of second-degree burns, alas, didn’t have quite the same sex appeal as a wonderfully unwrinkled youth revealing his nakedness to a woman of note.
But if there was a positive aspect to this tale, he soon developed the greatest respect for libraries. And he was able to encourage several young twentysomethings hoping to land a lay that books were far sexier than those hot op-ed mommas who weren’t nearly as populist-minded in social surroundings as they claimed to be in their columns.
Rosenbaum hesitated as Ebert’s loving touch eased in, putting him at ease. Yes, he knew indeed how those hands had won a Pulitzer. Gene Siskel must have been a lucky guy. Rosenbaum had to confess.