Life is a Strange Place: A Novel - Tapa dura

Barry Munday is a thirty-three-year-old man of singular purpose--and that purpose is trying to bed women. One day, a too-good-to-be-true sexual encounter at a matinee with a beautiful teenage girl ends when her angry father catches them in flagrante delicto and attacks Barry with a trumpet. Barry wakes up in a hospital and discovers his much-beloved gonads had to be surgically removed. Taking stock of his life, Barry realizes that his hair is thinning, he doesn't understand his own job, he doesn't like his only friend, and he will never be a father. Then a miracle happens, a walking, breathing, modern-day miracle. Barry is saved from a life of emptiness by a bizarre twist of testicular fate: He is sued for paternity by an unattractive woman he can't remember sleeping with. Barry is elated at the second chance at fatherhood. Now if he can just avoid his crazy ex-girlfriend, her rabid dog, a mob of angry gay midgets, and his mother until the baby is born.... Editor's Comments What can I say? Frank Hollon has clearly lost his mind. No sane man could conceive of Barry Munday and his trials and tribulations. This book made me wince, blush, and gape. But mostly, it made me laugh. It made me laugh, as Frank says, like an idiot.--P.W. From the Author The title came to me like a mantra. I literally woke myself repeating the words. Life really is like a place of its own, you know. It's got a circus-like quality. My wife told me not to write this book. She said it would offend too many people and make me look like a freak. How can anybody be offended by midgets, Great Danes, Eskimos, ugly people, a stripper, a priest, a lawyer with an eye patch, shoes in the refrigerator, the American Associationof Genital Abnormalities, a runaway toilet, or a Chinese guy named Moe. If we can't offend everybody, how can we have any fun? I used to take myself seriously. I used to spend lots of time wondering what people think of me. There's just not enough time for all that. It's OK, Allison, they would've figured out I'm a freak sooner or later anyway. Barry Munday is a combination of people. He was lost, like most of us have been, and he found himself, like most of us hope to do. I had more fun writing this book than anything I have ever written in my life. I picked it up after it was in the bottom drawer for six months and laughed like an idiot at stuff I forgot I wrote. I wonder if anyone else will think it's funny.