place at the right
time. I had a pal in New York who was working for a biotech company that had
made this artificial erectile tissue."

"Erectile tissue?"

"Yeah. Synthetic turtle penis. Small and pliable and capable of going large and
rigid very quickly."

"Sounds delightful."

"Oh, it was actually pretty cool. You know the joke about the circumcisionist's
wallet made from foreskins?"

"Sure, I heard it premed -- he rubs it and it becomes a suitcase, right?"

"That's the one. So these guys were thinking about making drawbridges, temporary
shelters, that kind of thing out of it. They even had a cute name for it:
'Ardorite.'"

"Ho ho ho."

"Yeah. So they weren't shipping a whole lot of product, to put it mildly. Then I
spent a couple of weeks in Manhattan housesitting for my friend while he was
visiting his folks in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. He had a ton of this stuff
lying around his apartment, and I would come back after walking the soles off my
shoes and sit in front of the tube playing with it. I took some of it down to
Madison Square Park and played with it there. I liked to hang out there because
it was always full of these very cute Icelandic *au pairs* and their tots, and I
was a respectable enough young man with about 200 words of Icelandic I'd learned
from a friend's mom in high school and they thought I was adorable and I thought
they were blond goddesses. I'd gotten to be friends with one named Marta, oh,
Marta. Bookmark Marta, Szandor, and I'll come back to her once we're better
acquainted.

"Anyway, Marta was in charge of Machinery and Avarice, the spoiled monsterkinder
of a couple of BBD&O senior managers who'd vaulted from art school to VPdom in
one year when most of the gray eminences got power-thraxed. Machinery was three
and liked to bang things against other things arythmically while hollering
atonally. Avarice was five, not toilet trained, and prone to tripping. I'd get
Marta novelty coffee from the Stinkbucks on Twenty-third and we'd drink it
together while Machinery and Avarice engaged in terrible, life-threatening play
with the other kids in the park.

"I showed Marta what I had, though I was tactful enough not to call it
*synthetic turtle penis*, because while Marta was earthy, she wasn't *that*
earthy and, truth be told, it got me kinda hot to watch her long, pale blue
fingers fondling the soft tissue, then triggering the circuit that hardened it.

"Then Machinery comes over and sn