House of Holes

  Also by Nicholson Baker

  Fiction

  * * *

  The Anthologist

  Checkpoint

  A Box of Matches

  The Everlasting Story of Nory

  The Fermata

  Vox

  Room Temperature

  The Mezzanine

  Nonfiction

  * * *

  Human Smoke

  Double Fold

  The Size of Thoughts

  U and I

  Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or

  are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events

  or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Nicholson Baker

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

  portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address

  Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department,

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2011

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  Designed by Joy O’Meara

  Baker, Nicholson.

  House of holes : a book of raunch / Nicholson Baker.

  p. cm.

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A4325H68 2011

  813'.54—dc22 2010047433

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8951-1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8953-5 (ebook)

  Contents

  Shandee Finds Dave’s Arm

  Ned Gets Sniffed

  Luna Goes to a Concert

  Pendle Interviews for a Job

  Shandee Learns How to Wash a Penis

  Cardell Has a Sherry Cobbler

  Marcela Admires Koizumi’s Sculpture

  Shandee Wears the Sponge Gloves

  Rhumpa Unbuttons Her Shirt

  Cardell Goes to the Laundromat

  The Story of Prince Bohuslav’s Beard

  Rhumpa Makes Her Come Video

  Wade Learns about the Cloth of Ka-Chiang

  Cardell Buys a Gel Pen

  Jessica Has Some Tattoos Removed

  Wade Presses the Sex Now Button and Koizumi Visits

  Henriette Surfs the Lake

  Dennis Explores Mindy’s Purse

  Polly Visits the Hall of the Penises

  Pendle Buys a Bathing Suit

  Henriette Chooses the Cheekpump

  Dave Trespasses

  Dune Visits the Midway

  Chilli Goes to the Porndecahedron with Dave

  Ned Undergoes a Voluntary Head Detachment

  Reese Visits a Headless Bedroom

  Cardell Meets Betsy on the Beach

  Luna Fucks a Penis Tree

  Henriette Goes for a Walk

  Dune Tells Mindy How He Lost His Penis

  Rhumpa Visits the Pornmonster

  The Pearloiner Says She’s Sorry

  Shandee Goes to the Festival

  Dave Gets His Old Cock Back

  Lila Says It’s Almost Time to Go

  The Silver Egg Hatches

  Shandee Finds Dave’s Arm

  Shandee’s sister gave her all her makeup because she was going off to Guatemala. That night Shandee spent about two hours trying on lipstick. Then, the next morning, she went to a quarry with her Geology 101 class. The quarry was called the “Rock of Ages.” It was vast and they dug granite there, mostly for tombstones. The tour guide was kind of cute although his hair wasn’t good—he was maybe twenty-seven. Pretty drastically cute, though, she thought. They were standing on the brink of a space that looked like something from another planet, and he said, “There’s enough granite here to last us four thousand five hundred years.” My gracious goodness, thought Shandee, that’s a lot of tombstones. She turned away from the edge, and that’s when she saw a hand poking out from behind a rock.

  While the others listened to the tour guide, she went over to the hand. The hand was attached to its forearm, and there was a clean torn cloth wrapped around the end that would have been attached to the rest of his arm. There was no blood on the cloth. Shandee picked it up and felt it. It was warm; the fingers moved a little. The hand pointed urgently at her bag, so she stuffed it inside and went back to the group and listened to the rest of the tour.

  When she got home she pulled the forearm out and laid it on her bed. It was strong, with sensitive fingers and a blue vein traveling up along the muscle on the underside. She lifted it and whispered, “Arm, can you hear me?”

  In answer the arm caressed her cheek with two fingers. It had a gentle touch.

  Shandee said, “Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?” The arm made a handwriting gesture. Shandee found a pen and handed it over. The hand wrote, “Please unwrap the rag and feed me some mashed-up fish food in an electrolyte solution.”

  “Where?” Shandee asked.

  “Funnel it into the little hole with the green rim,” the arm wrote. And then: “I’m glad you found me.”

  She unwrapped the towel and saw that the arm was capped with a sort of power pack made of black rubber. There looked to be a place for a battery and a place for waste to be discharged, and a place for nutrients to enter.

  She had an intuition. “Are you Italian?”

  “Half Italian, half Welsh,” the arm wrote. “I’m known as Dave’s arm.”

  “Well, Dave’s arm, I’m very pleased to meet you.” They shook. Then she noticed the clock. “Oh dear. Can you sit tight here for an hour?” she said. “I promised someone I’d go to his party and I can’t bear to hurt his feelings.”

  Dave’s arm scribbled something rapidly. “Sure, but—let me put on the lipstick for you,” he wrote.

  “Okay, you can try.” Shandee grasped the arm firmly and held him so that his hand was in front of her mouth. He touched all the way around her lips, feeling the exact shape, and then, with very fine almost vibrating movements, he applied the lipstick. It was extremely red, a color called Terranova.

  “Good job,” said Shandee. “You’re good. And this color is great.” Her lips looked really luscious. “Thank you, Dave’s arm.”

  He made a little nod with his hand and then, lifting the pen, reminded her that he needed to have some of the fish-food mash and to be relieved of his chemical wastes. She took him to the toilet and popped open a little vent on his cap. A tiny trickle of gray water dripped out. Then she fed him some fish-food gruel, and he seemed quite revived. He asked her to place him on the windowsill, because he had a solar panel for energy. She did, and then she went to the party and danced and had a wonderful time, but she came home early because she felt she had a new friend that she had to take care of.

  When she got back her roommate Rianne was there. Rianne’s lips were very red—she’d been sampling the new lipsticks, probably—and she was holding on to Dave’s arm. The hand end was in her shirt, obviously doing something tender with one of her breasts. Rianne hurriedly drew him out. There was a pad of paper with lots of hasty writing scrawled on it next to where she was lounging on her bed
.

  “So, you’ve discovered my arm,” Shandee said, with an edge.

  Rianne nodded. “He has a lovely touch.”

  “That he does,” Shandee agreed.

  Rianne said that she’d found out quite a bit about the arm and where it came from. “It belongs to someone named Dave,” she said.

  “I knew that,” Shandee snapped.

  “He went to a place called the House of Holes. There Dave had requested a larger thicker penis. Apparently you can do that. But at a price. The director, this woman named Lila, said to him: ‘Would you be willing to give your right arm for a larger penis?’ Dave said no at first, because his right arm was necessary for his work. But Lila said that it was only temporary—only till someone found the arm and took it back and stuck it on him. Dave said, ‘Oh, if it’s temporary, sure.’ So he underwent a voluntary amputation right near the elbow, and his arm had the self-contained life-support pack grafted on.”

  “You sure did find out a lot,” said Shandee.

  “I must say his touch is extremely sensitive,” Rianne went on. She threw herself back on the bed and laid the arm on her chest.

  Shandee watched the hand push aside the sides of Rianne’s shirt and find her breast again.

  “Hmm,” Shandee said. “I don’t know about this. I found him, not you.” She felt finger-snappings of jealousy.

  Rianne’s lips parted. “Oh my gosh, his fingers know what to do,” she said, flushing. The hand was gently rolling her nipple like a tender round pea. And then it surrounded her whole breast and shook it once. After that it turned and began crawling over her belly toward her pajama pants.

  “Are you just going to let that happen?” Shandee said, riveted.

  “Um, yes,” she said. “Could you dim the light?”

  Shandee turned off the overhead light and watched the arm undo the knot of Rianne’s pajama bottoms. It disappeared. Rianne went “Shooooo.”

  Shandee turned away. “He’s found it,” Rianne said, “and, boy, he’s got the touch of a master.” Then her voice changed and she said, “Oh my god, two fingers. Haw. Haw.” Shandee glanced at her. Rianne’s knees had fallen apart and her eyes were slitted closed. “He seems to want to make me come, oh god, oh shit.” Then: “Ham, ham, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, oo, ham, ham, HAW!”

  She lay still and held up the arm. He made an O with his fingers, which glittered with her sex juices.

  “You want me to go with you?” Rianne said. “Okay, I’ll go. Bye, Shandee, I’m going!” With that, her face and body began to blur, and she swooshed into a long thin shape that went through the finger-O of Dave’s hand.

  She was gone. The hand lay on the bed. It began crawling toward Shandee. It reached her thigh.

  Shandee handed it a pen and folded back the yellow pad to give it a fresh page. “Where did my roommate go off to?” she asked.

  “The House of Holes,” the arm wrote. “Would you like to come, too?”

  “Maybe,” said Shandee. “How?”

  “If you let me touch you,” he wrote.

  “Touch where?” said Shandee.

  “Where it aches.”

  “It aches in my head,” she said. “Never enough sleep.”

  “Let me help,” the arm scrawled.

  She held it, and the hand surged through her hair, and when she steered it around to the back of her neck it massaged the stiffness away.

  His fingers were mobile and trembly now. She gave him back the pen. “Isn’t there another place that aches?” he wrote.

  “Yes,” she said, “there is.”

  He wrote: “TWAT?”

  “Mhm,” Shandee said. “But I really don’t think I can let you do that until I know you better. You need to be more than an arm to me.”

  “Take me to class tomorrow,” he wrote.

  The next morning she fed him some fish paste and drained his waste and wrapped the cloth around his life-support addendum and put him in her bag. In the middle of her nineteenth-century novel class she felt his fingers very gently brushing her calf. She reached down and held his hand and loved how it felt.

  When she got home that afternoon, she washed the hand carefully in the sink and then took him back to her room and dimmed the lights and put on Appleseed’s “When Are We Going (to Do It).” She said, “I’m ready for you to hold me now, any way you want.”

  His hand brushed over her lips—she was wearing Terranova again—and she opened her mouth and tasted his fingers, and he circled her tongue and tweaked it, and then as she steadied him he crawled down. She put her feet together and let her knees fall open. His hand found her stash and she looked down and saw his fingers half buried in her folds, and then she felt a warm filling feeling as first one, then two of Dave’s fingers slid inside.

  She held his arm and helped him angle his fingers in and then pull them out. Then she pulled him up to her clitty and he circled it. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said. Just before she came, he stopped and held his hand up to her mouth.

  “What is it, baby?” she asked.

  His fingers made the O and then he pushed the O shape to her mouth. She put her tongue through it, and her mind and neck and body stretched until they were very long and flowed through his fingers, and then his fingers flowed with her. She was pulled in a whoosh of wispiness, and she landed and condensed. Before her was a sign in the grass: “Welcome to the House of Holes.”

  She looked down at her hands. They were still holding Dave’s arm.

  Ned Gets Sniffed

  Ned tapped the ball on the seventh green, using his new teryllium putter. It made an odd tight circle around the hole and then dropped in. “Did you see that weirdness?” said Ned, looking around for his golfer friends. But they were talking and hadn’t seen it. No matter. Ned leaned to pull out the ball and heard strange sounds coming from the hole. He got down on his stomach to listen better. A woman’s voice said, “Hi, Ned, my name is Tendresse. Come talk to me at the House of Holes.”

  “All right,” said Ned. Immediately his head was jerked and stretched and twisted and atomized, and he was sucked powerfully down into the seventh hole. And then, a minute later, he rematerialized on a hillside full of clover and Queen Anne’s lace, still wearing his golf hat, still holding his teryllium putter, but now without any pants on, just his black Eddie Bauer sports briefs. A small discreet sign in the grass said “All Bets Are Off.” In the distance was a yellow Cape house with a wraparound porch, surrounded by softly swaying pale-green trees. Other bulky, oddly shaped buildings were visible behind it—in fact there seemed to be a whole complex of structures, including some sort of amusement park. A ridge of mountains hung smokily in the distance.

  Ned, standing in the fragrant vetch, heard steps nearby. “Hi, welcome to the House of Holes, I’m Tendresse,” said a pleasant woman with a strong aquiline nose. She had short brown hair pinned with a plain clip, and she wore a white linen skirt tied at her waist with a scarf. She was holding hands with a small, confused-looking bodybuilder carrying a squash racket. She was topless with interesting pointy nipples. “How was your trip?” she asked.

  “Quick,” said Ned. “I was in the middle of a round of golf and here I am.”

  “I gather your Bermuda shorts didn’t make it through the First Conundrum. That can happen. Is that your putter, sweet attractive man?”

  “Yes, it’s new.”

  “Is it lively?” said Tendresse.

  “Yes, it’s very lively,” said Ned.

  “Good. This is Woo Ha—he’s a new arrival, too. He plays squash.”

  Ned nodded at Woo, and Woo nodded warily back. Woo was also in his underwear.

  “What do we do here?” asked Ned.

  “I’m going to sniff your crotches, and then we’re going to go on down the path to the house, where you’ll meet Lila. Lila’s the director. She’ll talk to you, and you can describe your desires to her in detail if you want.” She took Ned’s hand, and they began walking down the stone path. “But I warn you both—this place i
s very, very costly.”

  “I own a tire company,” said Woo.

  Ned gave a short laugh. “I doubt it’s worse than golf—the fees are bleeding me dry.”

  “Oh, yes it is, darling, much worse. We do have scholarships and work-study programs, though. For instance, if your sperm has magical healing powers, then you get a full scholarship. Does it?”

  Ned thought. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Let me check for you. I’ll have to sniff and juggle your balls. It’s just a formality. Takes half a second.”

  “Okay.”

  “Woo, I’ll do you first. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Woo.

  “Good.” Tendresse knelt and tied her scarf around her eyes. Woo scooted his waistband down and clenched his fists in readiness. “Just hold your penis up out of the way, Woo, please.”

  Ned watched Woo flip his cock up. Tendresse pulled his slouchy hairless satchel toward her face and jostled its contents. “Nice size, nice movement,” she said. She closed her eyes and sniffed. “Mmmmm, yes. Rainy ruins. Frogs. Cement statuary. Gongs. Tractor tires. Mushrooms.”

  Pleased, Woo said, “So do I have magic sperm?”

  “No, sorry, no,” said Tendresse. “But your balls are well shaped. Very nice pair. Thank you so much. You can pull your boxers up now.”

  Woo seemed disappointed. “Sometimes I do kinky things,” he said defensively. “Once I let a girlfriend place a cucumber in my back end. It was a long British cucumber. They have the plastic sheath, and we thought that was safer.”

  “And how was it for you?” asked Tendresse.

  “Good, but I had to go to the bathroom afterward.”

  “Please,” said Ned.

  “Now it’s your turn,” said Tendresse, turning to Ned. Ned held his cock up against his abdomen and stood with his legs a little apart so that Tendresse, still blindfolded, could smell his balls. She made several long sniffing sounds. “Mmmm, warm granite, campfires, catcher’s mitts, Play-Doh, padded mailers. Very subtle. I think I know a good woman for you. I’ve sniffed hundreds of crotches, men’s and women’s. One couple I sniffed and matched got married. May I taste?”