Read Online Venus Drive by Sam Lipsyte - Free Book Online

the people who has lost himself to rogue notions. We need a man, he will tell me, a man who can get in close, a man who is maybe a bit soft in the head but with a terrible hardness to him from all his short-term memory loss.
    This order will come down and I will slip my hook in a grip for the road. I will take a slow bus up to the hills. We’ll sit there up on the prayer rock, Martin and me, talk of our victory, recall old struggles, laugh about the sandy sons. It will be a meeting of dearest friends and I will fill his bong for him from my private government stock. We will weep for Lucy, slain at the Battle of the Malls. We will mourn Floyd, him of huge heart and member, executed live via satellite, purged by fiends. We will rue those dark forces of counter-revolution and counter-counter-revolution that maneuver as we speak. We will sigh, admire the layers of light in the sky from the sunset behind us, build a fire for the cold coming night. I will hoist my hook from the grip, kept all these years, a memento of exile, of sacrifice.
    â€œHey,” Martin will say, “I’ve been looking all over for that fucking thing.”
    â€œForgive me, Bronsteins!” I will shout, hook my hook in my hero’s eye, drag him by the brow bone to his pyre.

Beautiful Game

    Gary gets to pick a park. A nice gesture on the part of the state. Or is it the city? Gary studies the list, picks one far from home. Last thing he needs is a neighbor, a friend, family even, seeing him in some kind of get-up, coveralls, a neoprene vest, poking around with one of those trash-poke sticks.
    The kids from the school, say, with their frisbees, their dogs.
    It would get around.
    It’s hard enough this woman at the desk knows what he’s done. Maybe she’s from a bootstrap family, foreign. Here’s Gary, lucky to be born a citizen, wasting his good fortune. All he can do now is try to set things straight.
    He’ll start with the park.
    Â 
    He has some days before he’s supposed to report. He stays home, drinks O’Doul’s, shoots cocaine, watches the tube. It’s non-alcoholic, the O’Doul’s. Gary bought a case of it by mistake. They don’t mark things properly anymore. Still, it’d be wrong to pour it down the sink.
    They have a tournament on TV, football, the other kind, countries, flags. He finds a team to follow, a side, Cameroon. So far, a Cinderella story, the color man says. But how does Cinderella end? Does she win? Gary hopes so. Something will happen to him if Cameroon loses. Maybe it’s stupid, reminds him of all the stupid people he always thought himself positioned against, but here he is: a rooter. It is not a good epoch for position-taking. How long is an epoch? Maybe he can wait it out.
    Â 
    He goes out at sundown, after the games, buys some bagels, cigarettes. This morning’s bagels marked down. A man stands near the bagel store. His legs are in leggings. Blanket strips? He’s bleeding from the mouth.
    â€œThey took my teeth!” the man says.
    â€œThey’re just getting started,” says Gary, gives the man a buck.
    At the bank machine, Gary doesn’t check his balance. Better to leave it to the gods. Someday the machine will shun him. Why know when?
    Â 
    Gary had a band back when that was a good idea, toured the basements of Europe in a bus. The Dutch dug it best. The Dutch got the put-on underneath the hurt, the howl. Gary’s not sure he would get it himself anymore. This was years ago, before the whole thing got big, and small again. Now it’s gone. The tradition is gone. The kids at the school, they hardly even know that really famous group, the one with the singer who killed himself. The singer in Gary’s band killed himself, too.
    The drummer quit, went to divinity school.
    Now Gary likes to tell people at parties how he works with kids. It explains him, his shoes, his age. The only parties he goes to are those his mother