Free The Subject Steve: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte

know and all I need to know."
    I served myself from said vat.
    "Steve-o," called Bobby Trubate. "Join the kiddie table!"
    He was sitting with the woman in the wheelchair I'd seen at First Calling.
    "This is Renee," said Trubate.
    There was another man at our table, balding, with bad skin, and jowly, I thought, until I noticed the good-sized goiter under his jaw. He'd outfitted himself as some kind of eighteenth-century European infantryman, down to the britches and boots, the leather cartridge box.
    "That's DaShawn," said Trubate. "He's a Jackson White."
    "I told you," said DaShawn, "I don't approve of that term."
    I leaned in to Renee, pointed to where Dietz sat with Heinrich near the hearth.
    "Your boyfriend banish you?" I said.
    "My boyfriend?" she said. "Fuck you."
    "She bites," said Trubate. "But does she swallow?"
    "Fuck you, too, Bobby. Mr. Hollywood."
    "Fuck Hollywood," said Trubate. "I'm not Hollywood."
    "Let me try again," I said to Renee. "I'm-"
    "Please don't try again. I know who you are, and this isn't some fucking singles retreat."
    "Renee is muy sensitivo," said Trubate. "She knows guys like to hit on her because they think she's easy and they figure they're saints for doing it. And they can't help but wonder what it's like to ball a hot gimp. Hell, I wonder."
    "You've really got me all figured out, Bob," said Renee. "I'm so lucky to have a spokesman like you. Explaining my predicament can be so exhausting."
    "See, she's touchy," said Trubate.
    "She's right," I said.
    "She's about to puke," said Renee, rolled off with her stew bowl in her lap. We watched her bump a nearby table, swivel, swear.
    "They don't want your pity," said DaShawn. "They want ramps."
    "She wants tunnels," said Trubate. "Wet warm ones."
    "What?"
    "Let's just say she's leased some serious property on the Island of Lesbos."
    "Renee's gay," said DaShawn.
    "Go ahead, use the clinical term," said Trubate.
    "What's it to you?" I said.
    "Oh, it's a lot to me," said Trubate. "What, are you some kind of tolerance cop? Look, guys want to fuck each other, that's cool with me. That's the Socratic Method, for God's sake. But chick on chick? I find that exclusionary."
    "Exclusionary of you."
    "Dude, obvo."
    "DaShawn," I said, "where are you from?"
    The lance corporal looked up.
    "The Ramapo Mountains."
    "Is that how they dress up there?"
    "This is a replica of the uniform worn by Hessian mercenaries during your colonial war."
    "My war?"
    "I don't think the Founding Fathers had my kind in mind when they penned their immortal words of liberty. We descend from a mixed breed of runaway slaves, Indians, and Hessian deserters. All enemies of your glorious republic."
    "I don't remember signing anything," I said.
    "He's the only Jackson White that ever went to college," said Trubate. "The rest of them live in little shit shacks with broken antennas on top."
    "I'm not white and my name's not Jackson," said DaShawn. "They're cable-ready up there now."
    "What brought you to the Center?" I said.
    "What brings any of us?" he said.
    "I'm here for a cure."
    "DaShawn's here for that fucking egg on his neck."
    "Grave's disease?" I said.
    "Who doesn't have that?" said Bobby Trubate.
    "We're working on my thyroid," said DaShawn. "Among other things."
    "Good luck, pal," said Trubate.
    "Cease transmission of negative ionic force, please," said DaShawn.
    "He says that sometimes," said Trubate.
    "I'm saying it now," said DaShawn, and stood, made for the bus cart with his plate.
    "Why be such a pussy?" Trubate called after him. "You're already ugly and fucking insane. Why add to your problems?"
    "You have such a way with people," I said to Trubate.
    "I'm a truth-teller. That's how I ended up here."
    "Just that?"
    "Well, the speedballs, too. Don't you read the trades?"
    "Not your trades."
    "Right, I forgot. You're pretending I'm not a celebrity. Well, doesn't matter. I've been in and out of lots of joints. My problem is the enormity of my talent. My manager suggested this place.