Read Online The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder - Free Book Online

women’s happiness, and their privacy. You’re longing to know them, and they are concealed. Your curiosity is not fundamentally erotic. There’s nothing wrong with you, except the normal stuff.”
    â€œBut I look at their breasts,” Nate said.
    â€œYour mind,” Charles said, “strives to put these images and feelings in a familiar context.”
    Nate suddenly seemed despondent. He would rather, it occurred to Charles, have been diagnosed as an untreatable pervert than as someone who was just lonesome. Apparently, he had forgotten that he had sought out Charles for reassurance or explanation. Nate had finished talking, and it also appeared that he had finished listening. He seemed miserable.
    Charles rested his hand on top of Nate’s head. He watched as Gary, Vince, and Fat Michael tried to carry the lottery drum across the room. Fat Michael just happened to be wearing short sleeves (in November), and the cephalic vein in his bicep bulged tyrannically. Go to sleep, all you pussies, Fat Michael’s cephalic vein said to the men who had gathered in Room 324. Sweet dreams.
    â€œWhere?” Gary shouted to Trent. “Bathtub or hallway?”
    Then the keg came through the door. It advanced into the entryway, but stopped when it saw the lottery drum directly in its path. The lottery drum halted but did not give way. The keg and the lottery drum squared off in the narrow strait of the entryway, beneath the looming form of the ironing board. Myron looked startled, but he always did. The quiet standoff lasted perhaps a minute. This was not to be decided by feints or clever maneuvers. The men cheered as the keg lurched forward.
    THE RULES AND RESTRICTIONS of the lottery, formulated by Steven at its inception, were simple, clean, and egalitarian: Each man writes his initials on a ball, and places the ball into the approved container. When all balls are mixed in the container, the commissioner draws each of the twenty-two balls, one ball at a time. The man whose ball has been selected then has three minutes to choose any available player from either team.The following restrictions apply: (1) you may not select a player who has already been selected; (2) you may not select the same player twice in any five-year period; (3) you may select a player from the same team for no more than three consecutive years; (4) you must serve on the Redskins offensive line (which includes tight end Donnie Warren, but does not include tight end Clint Didier) at least once every fiveyears; (5) you must serve in the Giants defensive backfield at least once every seven years; (6) you may not select a player whose physical dimensions are so radically different from yours as to inhibit your performance or to introduce basic issues of credibility (this restriction is enforced by the commissioner); (7) you may not choose Lawrence Taylor more than once in any eight-year period; (8) you must make your selection in a timely way, or it will be made for you by the commissioner; (9) you may not select a “toucher” (Donnalley, Riggins) in consecutive years, or the year after being Theismann; (10) you may not, of course, select Theismann. The man whose initials are on the final ball remaining in the container will be Theismann. None of the rules for selection (above) apply to the player who is selected as Theismann.
    The lottery drum had been damaged in its encounter with the keg, and it lay on its side in the hallway outside 324. An IT associate and two graphic designers from Prestige Vista Solutions examined the drum warily, as beachgoers inspect a washed-up animal. The IT associate, Josh, asked the other two if they remembered when Lawrence Taylor snapped Theismann’s leg in the Super Bowl. The graphic designers nodded, though they were too young to remember. Their grisly cultural touchstones were much more recent, and high-def. “I had mono,” Josh said. The two young men nodded. “Well, wait, so I