Sam Lipsyte - Venus Drive

“Fuck here,” said Gary. “We were from a town. A little town. Do you remember?”

“What a question,” I said.

“There were people there,” said Gary, “There were cars. Carports. You knew where to park.”

“Dog hatches in the doors,” I said. “Dog doors. Nearmont Avenue. The trestles on Main.”

“Spartakill Road,” said Gary. “Venus Drive. The Hobby Shop, the Pitch-n-Putt, Big Vin’s Pizza, the Plaza.”

“Behind the Plaza,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Gary. “Behind it.”

We were quiet for a while.

“Evil’s not one thing,” said Gary. “They didn’t teach us the gradients. We could have stayed.”

“Blown our brains out in our cars,” I said.

“Not me,” said Gary. “What did he mean, Geneva?”

I got up, took the man from Scarsdale’s seat, pressed Gary’s dead thumb in my hand.

“Are you sorry you did it?” I said.

“Get the hell off me.”

I stroked his thumb, brushed it, tenderly, the way you would a blind, tiny thing fresh-pulled from a hole.

“Just tell me if you’re sorry,” I said. “Because here we are. Because, me, I’ve been following you. Do you understand that? I’ve been following you all along. So, just tell me, are you sorry?”

“Hell, no,” said Gary. “I wanted to watch TV. Anyway, what’s done is done.”

“Done and gone,” I said.

“Don’t fucking wallow,” said Gary, and pulled his thumb away. “Never fucking wallow. You wallow, you’re pretending you were something else in the first place. I know who I am. I’m Gary. I go down into the street, I’m Gary. I’ve never stopped being Gary. There’s no cure for it. There’s no race. It’s not a race, okay? It’s a contest. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m with you.”

He walked over to the window, a vista of sky, brick.

“Don’t be with me,” said Gary.

I can’t remember the name of the camp. It was somewhere near a lake near Canada. I learned a good deal there that I would later rely upon when I threw away my youth. What I learned when I threw away my youth was crucial in my development as a misdirected man, so maybe it’s all connected. What they say about character is true, though I can’t quite remember what they say about it.

That summer we used to get stroke books for us to stroke ourselves with at bedtime. We used to get them from this trunk our counselor dragged between our cots.

“Dig in, faggots,” he’d say.

We were all of us vicious getting to the good ones. We’d never seen stuff like this in our towns.

Some of us used to go smoke cigarettes behind the Port-O-Sans. Mr. Marv caught us one time, wanted to make a point. He was going to send us packing, which I guess is not a big deal looking back, but at the time it was seen as a stain. Plus to have your dad drive up in that sad kind of station wagon. What I did was give Mr. Marv some of the names he needed. I gave him the names of boys you’ve never heard of but who were known saboteurs of good camp citizenship. I’m not sorry I did it, either. If I saw those boys today, I’d say, “You brought it on yourselves.”

I did see one of them in a coffee shop once. It’s doubtful he made me. His eyes had the ebb of his liver in them and he bore the air of a man who looks right at you and only sees the last of himself.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “You didn’t miss anything that year. Except maybe Van Wort.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“I’m the ghost of Van Wort,” I said, and got out of there. There’s no gain in having a fellow goner watch you order all-night eggs.

Van Wort was the fat kid who put our camp all over the local news that summer, and if you were localized near Canada and watching TV back then, you might have caught my debut. I was the one standing in the dining hall saying, “He brought it on himself.”

I don’t think I believed that, even then, but I guess I wanted to say something memorable, something beyond my years. I could have said what a terrible tragedy it all was, but Mr. Marv seemed to be in charge of that part.

Mr. Marv was probably of a type but I only ever knew him. He wore swim togs and parted his hair like a magician. They said he was a teacher of history in the winter somewhere. That summer, though, he was just Mr. Marv, blitzed at the bonfire, babbling on about the time he was a kid and sneaked into a ball game. He had come to see this DiMaggio take the field on bad feet. Bone spurs, Mr. Marv told us, ankle damage, the last of the brave.

What was he talking about, bone spurs?

What’s so brave about that?

I slept next to Van Wort. I listened to the air whistle in and out of his fat chest. He said he had a chronic bronchial. He said it like a lie he made up a long time ago.

I watched them come to him night after night, boys with their mosquito sprays, their shampoos, tennis rackets and combs, warm water in toothbrush cups. Van Wort was fat and his name was Van Wort. With that combination, why would you pack your kid off to camp? Let him play with ladybugs in the safety of his own lawn.

The counselor with the stroke books tortured Van Wort, too. He was just a mean kid with more years on him, more muscles, a denser perm. He wore a spoon medallion. His name was Steve, or maybe Ivan, and his stroke trunk was deep. When we got through the first batch he hauled out some more. These were magazines that didn’t even have real magazine names. They just said what was in them, the way creamed corn at the market just said creamed corn on the can.

Steve-Ivan called Van Wort Van Wort Hog. Or Fat Fucking Shit, for short. He was the one who told us to piss in Van Wort’s canteen. It was the best canteen in the bunk, brand new, fuzzy wool, a cavalry sleeve. We took turns pissing in it and dipping it down in the Port-O-San hole. We left it under his short-sheeted bed.

When he found it his eyes went dark, his great arms started wibbling, wobbling on his knees. The canteen, he told us, was a gift from his dead father.

“It’s just a joke you fat fucking shit,” said Steve-Ivan. “We’re your friends.”

“Really?” said Van Wort. He looked as though he was ready to believe this, or wanted to be ready.

“Sure,” said Steve-Ivan. “Just don’t be a Van Wort Hog and run crying to Mr. Marv.”

Van Wort stopped crying and he didn’t run but he went to see Mr. Marv. Steve-Ivan was somebody’s cousin near Canada, though. The whole thing blew, as they say, over.

I got damn good at boxball during this period. I was, if you will, the boxball king. Maybe it’s not crucial to the story of Van Wort, but I think people should know.

We did a camp-wide Capture-the-Flag. I wasn’t in Van Wort’s unit, but I can tell you things got pretty hairy out there. What happened to this one girl in the beet field was a shame. We never did know what the rules were, or which kids were still living or dead. My unit just marauded around. We laid waste to Mr. Marv’s azaleas and tied a boy to the tetherball pole. Then we lucked into view of the flag, this dinky fluorescent thing like the kind for a sissy bar, planted on a hill. Mr. Marv was up there with some other campers.

“Don’t let the heathens flank us, you curs!” we heard him shout.

We flanked them hard. We flew up along a ridge near the tennis courts. Van Wort appeared out of nowhere with a croquet mallet in his hands. Some of us batted the mallet away and beat Van Wort to the dirt. I led the rest of the unit on the resumed flanking maneuver. I didn’t want to know what they were doing to Van Wort.

Mr. Marv noticed our wild charge a little too late.

I lowered my head, took flight.