Wherefore Art Thou, Penis?

Jacqueline Novak on her lyrical, epic deconstruction of the blow job in Get On Your Knees.

- E. Alex Jung

THE LADY has lost her head. We don’t know when it happened, but she was found that way by two Egyptologists in a Paris shop in 1957 and has remained the same since, with liquid hips and an ankle-length skirt of sandy limestone. Her name is Tagerem, and she worked in the temple of Sakhebu on the southwestern delta of the Nile in a revered position known as “God’s wife” to the sun god Re. She’s about 2,300 years old—give or take a few years—and 16 and a half inches, roughly the size of a small newborn. She’s the ideal woman of the Ptolemaic period, described as “demure” yet “alluring.” Perhaps because her upper torso has been lopped off.

“I can’t tell what she’s thinking,” Jacqueline Novak tuts dryly in front of the broken figure. “It’s nice that these statues do tend to have a lower belly of some sort. It’s not a complete washboard, which I do find comforting.”