I was walking through Union Square when a man stepped into my path. He had a handful of pamphlets. Following standard procedure, I tried to walk faster and avoid eye contact. But he was persistent. He walked alongside me. He asked me to remove my headphones. He pointed at my camera.
“I see you are a fellow artist,” he said. “I too am a fellow artist.”
“And like you,” I said. “I have absolutely no money.” He held up his pamphlets. Upon closer inspection, they actually appeared to be a bit more than pamphlets. They seemed to be booklets. He held one of these booklets out toward me.
“I am an author,” he said “I’d like to present to you my book called Sausagehead. It is a wonderful book about a Sausagehead who goes around doing sausage-headed things.”
“I’m sorry man, I really—wait, what is this book about?” I took the book from his hand. On the cover was a caricature that only a black man could get away with drawing.
As promised, the title of the book was Sausagehead. The subtitle was: “The Passion of Sir Shizzle Monizzle.” Written at the top of the cover were the words: “#1 National Bestseller.” I started laughing. I love bizarre shit like this. I flipped over the book and read the back cover. And it really would be selfish of me to not reproduce what I saw in full:
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” I said. I was laughing hard now. The man was laughing too.
“I know,” he said. “I just get high and write this shit, it’s awesome.”
“Why did you write ‘#1 National Bestseller” on the top?”
“I don’t know, I got really high and it seemed like the right thing to do.” He started laughing hard, which made me laugh hard. I think it was the hardest I’ve ever laughed at someone on the street. I doubled over. I could barely catch my breath. And every time I was almost finished laughing, I’d look up, and I’d see this:
“I sell this stuff to drunk people for $20,” he said. ”But I like you, so I will give it to you for only $10.”
“Oh man,” I said. “I want to. I really do. But I honestly don’t have any cash right now.”
“Perhaps you’d rather have my sketchbook?” he asked. ”I am a very famous artist.”
I saw the cover and immediately assumed that it was a 9/11 conspiracy book.
“Why is your sketchbook called 9/11: the synopsis?” I asked.
“Because it’s a synopsis of the sketches I made when I smoked marijuana everyday from 9 to 11.” That really got me going again. I was laughing pretty hard. Then he opened the book and showed me his first drawing. ”I call this one Pig Grinch With Balls on Forehead.”
“This next one is very very famous,” he said. ”It’s called PenisTittyBallsHead.”
Who is this guy? He just kept throwing curveballs at me. And he was laughing hysterically the whole time. By his drawings, this man appeared to be a mix of Picasso, Larry Flynt, and a first grader. ”This next one is also very famous,” he said. “It is all over that website. The one with the friends. Which one is that again?”
“Facebook?”
“Yes, Facebook. This one is all over the Facebook. It’s called SplitDickNose.”
“SplitDickNose is a big seller,” he said. ”I sell it to a lot of drunk gays.”
He continued flipping through his book. The drawings were good. This guy clearly had talent. But every single one of them had some sort of genitalia merged with the face of a person. One of them, which I have elected not to show, was entitled: “Penis Smoking Crack Out of Penis Hole While Taking a Dump.” (I had him write that one down so I could be assured of accuracy) Each page he turned was another curveball; he somehow managed to continually surpass the ridiculousness of his previous drawings.
“Why do every single one of these things have a penis in them?” I asked.
“Oh you know,” he said. ”It’s kind of my calling card. I just think of the most bizarre shit I can think of, and I draw it. Most of the time it involves a penis on a face. Then on Friday and Saturday nights I get drunk, and go sell it to drunk people.”
“Alright,” I said. “Wait right here. I’ve got to run to the ATM.”
The Final Curveball:
When I got home, I took Sausagehead out of its wrapper and began to read it. I learned that the man’s name was PMD, which is short for Pimp Macking Daddy. That was not a surprise. What was a surprise: the entire book was about Jesus Christ. According to Sausagehead, one night PMD was visited in his house by an angel of the Lord. This angel had the nose of a pig and the ears of a horse. The angel appeared at the foot of PMD’s bed, and began to dance and laugh hysterically. From this, PMD divined that his purpose was to preach the gospel through a ridiculous book called Sausagehead. (All while selling penis pictures to drunk people). During our conversation on the street, PMD told me that over 7 years, he had sold 30,000 units of Sausagehead. In the book, a Sausagehead is defined as someone who’s head is all mixed up, like the meat in a sausage. Below, I provide some quotes from the book:
“‘Laughter is good for your soul,’ the Bible says. Don’t get it twisted, I already know that there’s most of you who probably think that I am a mad man. I have already had spiritual leaders coming to me telling me to remove my books from the public.”
“I was there Chillin’ as I had my mind set on things of High above. All the doors were locked when all of a sudden a man popped up in my room, and simultaneously he just started dancing and laughing. When I looked at him, I noticed that he had a nose like that of a pig, and the ears like that of a horse.”
A Sample Illustration:
“You cannot drink excess alcohol and don’t get drunk. You cannot sleep around and expect not to get an STD. You cannot fart in church and expect those who are around you to rejoice in your actions. It is OK if a Sausagehead goes to Church — and when he gets there farts like crazy, because that would probably be demons coming out of his behind. Some of you are probably laughing at this, but you know that what I’m telling you is nothing but the truth. I don’t want any of you to think that I have anything against a fart, but I don’t love farts because they smell real bad. When I was growing up in South Africa I came across an old woman who couldn’t go a mile without farting, and she also couldn’t go half an hour without farting. She used to fart all the time, and all the time she used to fart. Her biggest habit was to fart. Her name is Mokgobana, and she lives in a village of Sekakene. If you don’t want to call her by her real name as Mokgobjana, you can call her by the new name I give her called “Farthead.” I am not trying to be funny or anything like that, I’m just trying to keep it real.”
“I know that to some it seems as though I am over here glorifying the book Sausagehead, just because I say: Sausagehead, Sausagehead, Sausagehead, Sausagehead, Sausagehead, Sausagehead’ more than I mention the name GOD. But I am just a vessel of GOD, I’m not doing all these by mistake, just watch and see.”
