Patrick Wensink’s Sex Dungeon For Sale: A Review by P. Jonas Bekker

Patrick Wensink’s story collection Sex Dungeon for Sale came out last year from Eraserhead Press‘s New Bizarro Author Series, or NBAS.

The philosophy of the NBAS is interesting. Normally, the editor’s foreword states, Eraserhead would only have room for one or two books by first-time authors every year. By publishing the NBAS in addition to their normal schedule, they make a little extra room for the all-important fresh blood. There is a catch, however. If not ‘enough’ copies of the book are sold in its first year, Eraserhead will not publish another book by this author. They do not define what is considered ‘enough’.

The title of the book is slightly misleading (the author even apologizes for it – to his mother – in his dedication) since the small amount of smut in this book is entirely functional. The title story concerns a real estate agent   showing a couple around a house. Nothing special. But in Wensink’s world ‘nothing special’ always turns   ‘mucho weirdo’ before the story is over; sometimes with a bizarre, unexpected twist at the end and sometimes, as in this story, line by line. I won’t give away the surprise ending, but it does feature a strange noise just audible behind the soundproof paneling in the basement.

Wensink’s choice of subjects and narrative techniques is eclectic. Some characters are firmly in the bizarro realm: a family man who turns out to be a suicide bomber, a toddler who thinks he’s a Frenchman, pharmaceutical sales personnel spreading diseases to boost their commissions, and murderous dishwashers. Others are more in the realm of general fiction, such as ‘Clean Bill of Health’ where, due to an administrative mess-up at the hospital, the protagonist believes he has only six months to live.

Many of the stories in Sex Dungeon for Sale feature unconvential narrative forms — a riddle, a series of emails, an auction catalog and a self-help book for kidnappers. The stories with a more conventional narrative often contain fast changes of perspective that keep you on your toes as you try to figure out what the hell is going on and brace for a final, ultra-weird twist in the plot.

Of course, some stories I liked better than others. Ironically I thought the title story was one of the weakest stories in the book; this has to do with the ‘one side of the conversation’ technique that Wensink uses here, writing only what the real estate agent says and attempting to suggest the responses of his clients. Sentences like ‘Yes, I suppose those are chains.’ or ‘Puddles of what, you asked?’ take the natural flow out of a story that really doesn’t need these kind of tricks. Unfortunately, this is one of the few tricks Wensink uses twice in this collection, as ‘Johnny Appleseed’s Punchateria’, the final story of the book, is also told in this manner.

The best one by far, I think, is ‘Wash, Rinse, Repeat’, a story about two rivaling murderous-dishwasher-producing families. Wensink’s protagonist is a likable anti-hero, a journalist who looks quite a bit like Wensink himself and can’t choose between being a cynic and doing the right thing. As one of the longer stories, it allows a little more room for plot and character development.

Despite being a bit all over the place stylistically, Sex Dungeon for Sale is a fun read. Wensink is a talented writer who can produce original plots and deliver them, in most cases, in an engaging story. And Eraserhead Press is right: the only way to support new writers is to actually buy their stuff.

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P. Jonas Bekker is a writer and a poet from the Netherlands. He is still wondering whether he should start a blog.