Model Home Read Online Free Page B

Model Home
Book: Model Home Read Online Free
Author: Eric Puchner
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fretboard. “The way he veges on those steps. I’m waiting for him to shotgun one of those Cokes and start moshing around the garage.”
    They warmed up with some covers—“Los Angeles,” “TV Party”—but the image of his father, nodding along to the beat and tapping his foot, kept messing with Dustin’s groove. Who’d ever heard of a punk band whose biggest fan was a forty-three-year-old real estate developer in boat shoes? He was impossible to avoid, because you never knew when he was going to be home anymore. If Dustin turned up the amps to an ear-blistering ten, his dad would just shut his eyes and lean his head back against the wall. The louder they played, the more he seemed to enjoy it.
    Today, sure enough, he wandered into the garage in the middle of “Mandy Rogers,” Dustin’s paean to loss and suffering in a godless universe. (You prayed to Him at night like a good little nun, the one person, you thought, who wouldn’t shun or make fun.) As usual, his dad got a Coke from the fridge and then sat on the steps with that lost look on his face, as though he were waiting for a life-changing message to wash up on the beach. Biesty grabbed the mike from its stand and began prowling the garage while he belted the chorus, as though searching for Mandy or God or both; normally Biesty’s stage antics inspired Dustin, but now they seemed dumb and overwrought. It was his father’s fault. Somehow, just by sitting there, he had a way of making everything seem ridiculous. Why couldn’t Dustin just have a normal dad like Biesty’s, who never took any interest in anything and jerked off in his bedroom all the time to his ten-year stash of Hustler s?
    â€œWould you play that one song you wrote?” Dustin’s dad asked while they took a cigarette break. He didn’t care if they smoked, which—despite Dustin’s griping—gave him a measure of respect with the band. “About the shit hitting the fan?”
    â€œDad, this is practice! We don’t do requests.” Dustin glared at his father’s polo shirt. “Anyway, that’s the Circle Jerks. We didn’t write it.”
    â€œThe Circle Jerks?”
    This had always seemed to Dustin like the perfectly irreverent name—but now he began helplessly to doubt it. Wasn’t it a bit juvenile? Before Dustin could stop him, Biesty turned to his father with a courteous expression.
    â€œIt’s when you stand in a naked circle of men,” he explained, “and masturbate the participant in front of you.”
    â€œAre they homosexuals?”
    â€œ No, Dad. Jesus.”
    â€œDo you have a recording of it?”
    Dustin shook his head.
    â€œI’ve got it at home,” Tarwater said. “I could tape it for you, Mr. Ziller.”
    â€œThank you, Brent. That would be great.”
    â€œYou might like the Ramones, too. They’re more middle-aged.”
    Dustin raised his voice. “Look, Dad, do you have to be in here?”
    â€œIt’s chill,” Starhead said. “He’s only listening to us practice.”
    â€œIt’s not chill. Christ. What are we going to do next? Invite the neighbors over for juice and cookies?”
    The way his dad stared at his Coke, smiling as though he had indigestion, gave Dustin a twinge of guilt. Still smiling, his father hunched up the stairs—the back pocket of his khakis pulled out like a rabbit’s ear—and disappeared inside the house. Dustin remembered the Halloween when he was seven, how some teenagers had run by on his way home from trick-or-treating and stolen all of his candy. He’d come home in tears. Dustin’s father hadtaken him out later in the dark, carrying him on his shoulders under the strange high buzz of the streetlights, through the clumsy swooping of bats, knocking on people’s doors and rousing them out of bed in their pajamas, until Dustin had filled three

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