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Venus Drive

Page 12

by Sam Lipsyte


  She liked reality shows the best, and then the shows that purported to be about reality.

  So, yes, I should have just surrendered, cinched the entitled scion her little pouch of entitlements, put in my calls to the name shufflers, done my duty.

  I thought about that moment later on. Maybe I got extra-tuned to the concept of bitchhood once I became Purdy’s, though I must confess I’ve always found such usage of the term for female dogs distasteful. My mother was a second-wave feminist. I wasn’t comfortable saying “cunt” until I was twenty-three, at which point, admittedly, I couldn’t hold back for a time.

  Or maybe it’s just that I’ve always despised phrases like “that fateful day,” but as time went on I found it hard to deny that the afternoon Horace launched his E Pluribus Pimpus oratory and McKenzie tried to reify my servility and I pictured titboning Vargina in a rare books room, was pretty damn fateful. Or was it, in fact, just another random day, and it was I who did the fool thing, forced my hand?

  What I said to McKenzie, there is no point repeating. It’s enough to report my words contained nothing an arrogant, talentless, daddy-damaged waif wants to hear about herself. When I was finished she did not speak. A thickish vein in her pale head fluttered. The blue thing seemed to veer and switch direction. Then she took a few steps back and, still staring at me, phoned her damager. What was done to me was done in hours. My outburst was deemed hate speech, which called for immediate dismissal. I could hardly argue with them. I think it probably was hate speech. I really fucking hated that girl.

 

 

 


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