Broken Piano for President

“Patrick Wensink reads like Christopher Moore on very strong acid.”

–
Greg Olear
, author of
Fathermucker

“The last time I drank with Hemingway, wait sorry, it was not Hemingway, it was Jackie Collins. Anyway, the last time I drank with Jackie Collins she said to me that writing is not like dating in that when you write you have to commit. Every sentence. Every pause. Every juke, joke and feint has to mean something. This is especially true with absurdist writing, because what’s on the page is not what you know to be right. Which doesn’t make it wrong. Just warped. And different. Which is a good way to describe the endlessly fertile mind of Patrick Wensink.”

–
Ben Tanzer
, author of
You Can Make Him Like You

“Deliciously dark and funny.”

–
Louisville-Courier Journal

“This is Wensink’s special touch: to go as far out as possible with character and concept, but still drive a deeper meaning home. He does so by mixing his Palahniukian style with the kind of twisted humor you can normally only find on Adult Swim.”

–
LEO Weekly

“In Wensink’s world ‘nothing special’ always turns ‘mucho weirdo’ before the story is over.”

–
PANK

“One of those rare gifts we get every now and again.”

–
The Fanzine

“Irreverent, outrageous, and fearless in his choice of material, Patrick Wensink has a true knack for absurdity.”

–
JOEY GOEBEL
, author of
Torture the Artist

“In his collection of stories
Sex Dungeon For Sale!
, Patrick Wensink demonstrates a gift for darkly absurdist humor that (just guessing here) surely derives from watching either too much or not enough television.”

–
JAMES GREER
, author of
The Failure

“Absurd, surreal, and funny.”

–
Lance Carbuncle
, author of
SMASHED, SQUASHED, SPLATTERED, CHEWED, CHUNKED AND SPEWED

“Wensink has a sharp wit on display.”

–
Jordan Krall
, author of
Tentacle Death Trip

A LAZY FASCIST ORIGINAL

LAZY FASCIST PRESS

AN IMPRINT OF ERASERHEAD PRESS

205 NE BRYANT STREET

PORTLAND, OR 97211

WWW.LAZYFASCISTPRESS.COM

ISBN: 978-1-62105-020-9

Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Wensink

Cover art and design copyright © 2012 by Matthew Revert

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Where the names of actual celebrities or corporate entities appear, they are used for fictional purposes and do not constitute assertions of fact. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Champagne for my real friends.

Real pain for my sham friends.

–
Tom Waits

Hi, welcome to
Broken Piano for President
. Turn down the lights and fix yourself a stiff drink. Better yet, pour a couple cocktails and fix yourself a hangover.

Don’t worry. Everything will be here when you wake up. Besides, our hero is sleeping off a bender of his own. Frankly, you’d be doing him a favor. He could use a few more hours of shuteye.

Boy, that was a doozey. How are you feeling this morning? There are some eggs on the stove. That always helps to get rid of a nasty headache.

Thanks, by the way.

Your dedication is appreciated. It’s not every reader who bonds with a story by sharing the old, early morning flu. But now that you’ve put a few drinks in the tank and scratched another notch into the Hall of Fame, you’ll have a deeper appreciation for what Deshler Dean is going through.

What? You don’t have a Hall of Fame?

You really should. It keeps things in perspective. Drinking without curating a Hall of Fame is like raising kids without taking pictures.

Deshler doesn’t have any kids, if you’re curious, but you better believe he has a Hall of Fame. Hustle up and tack this morning down in your new Hall, because somebody special is waking.