Infinite Jest Part 58

'Be there with me, Helen. Feel the sort of Wagnerish clouds gather. Hallie always said there was always this sense as a kid with the Moms that the whole cosmos was just this side of fulminating into boiling clouds of elemental gas and was being held materially together only through heroic exercise of will and ingenuity on the part of the Moms.

'Everything slows waaay down. She's coming around with the machine at the end of a row and sees Hallie wearing his happy-slippers outside in the cold, which just in itself is enough to gut-shot the cosmos as far as she's concerned, usually. Now we're seeing the Rototiller get shut down as she bends way down to where I'd showed her the choke. The machine diesels a little and farts some blue smoke. The machine sucks the nub of its starter-rope into itself. I can feel the voltage like I'm still there. Post-racket tingling quiet descends. There's the tentative chirp of a bird. The Moms comes toward Hal standing there in his little red coat. She's tucking a wisp of hair back under the special plastic cap's elastic. Her hair at that time was dark brown, she's addressing him, she has an unbelievably humiliating little family pet name for the kid that I'll show him the mercy of never telling anybody.

'But so she's coming over. Hal is standing there. Holds the horrific patch of fungus out. The Moms sees at first only her child holding something out, and like all moms hardwired for motherhood she reaches to take whatever her baby holds out. The one sort of case where she wouldn't check before reaching out toward something held out.'

'Q.'

'The Moms though now stops just inside the border of string and she squints, her gla.s.ses have dust, she starts to see and process just what it is the kid's holding out to her. Her hand's outstretched in the air over the garden's string and she stops.

'Hallie takes one step forward, arm up and out in a kind of like n.a.z.i salute. He goes "I ate this."

'The Moms says she begs his pardon.

'Helen, you decide. But consider the fragility of the obsesso-compulsive's control. The terrible life-ruling phobias. Her four hors.e.m.e.n: enclosure, communicational imprecision, and untidiness, which you can't get much untidier than bas.e.m.e.nt-mold.'

'Q.'

'The fourth horseman stays hidden, of course, like in all quality eschatologies, the unturned card, under wraps till actual game-time.

' "I ate this" Hal goes, he's still holding the thing out, not crying, a kind of clinical grimness to him about it, like the mold's some audit it's his job to show her. And do you want to know if she touched it?'

'Q.'

'It suddenly occurs to me that if you want stuff on the Moms and The Mad Stork you could contact Bain. He practically lived with us in Weston. As like a secondary source. I'm sure he'd discuss the Moms's foibles all you want. The man still practically holds up a crucifix at any mention. His little greeting-card company has just been bought up by a huge novelty concern, so I'm sure he's in his big room lying there having palm-fronds waved and his forehead wiped, feeling flush and voluble. I guess I'd rather you didn't ask him about my foibles, but he's inexhaustible on the subject of the Moms and O.C.D. He never leaves home, which home is one room, the converted Children's Reading Room of what used to be the Waltham Public Library, which is the whole third floor. He learned from the Moms how to minimize doorways to traverse. I'm afraid he's not InterNetted and has an O.C.D.-phobic thing about e-mail. His snail-mail address is Marlon K. Bain, Saprogenic Greetings Inc., BPL-Waltham Bldg., 1214 Totten Pond Road, Waltham MA 021549872/4. It'd also be good if you could avoid mentioning the number 2 to him. He has problems with the number 2. I don't know if his not leaving home is similar to the Moms's not leaving home. This is the most I've thought about the Moms in a dog's age, to be honest with you. You have this way of getting stuff out of me. It's like you do nothing but sit there with that cigarette and you're all I can see and all I want is to please you. It's like I can't help it. Is this just good journalism, Helen?'

'Or is there something more going on here, some kind of strange bond I feel between us that sort of like tears down all my normal personal-life boundaries and makes me open totally to you? I guess I have to hope you won't take advantage. Does this all sound like some kind of line? Maybe if it was a line it'd sound less lame. I guess I do wish I could come off more suave. I don't know what else to do except just tell what's going on inside me, even if it sounds lame. I never have any clue what you're thinking about it.'

' "Help! My son ate this!" She screamed the same thing over and over, holding the mold-rhombus up like a torch, running around just inside the string border while I and Hallie staggered back, literally like staggered back, gaping at our first taste of apocalypse, a corner of the universe suddenly peeled back to reveal what seethed out there just beyond tidiness. What lay just north of order.

' "Help! My son ate this! My son has eaten this! Help!" she kept screaming, running in tight little right-faces just inside this perfect box of string, and I'm seeing The Mad Stork's face at the gla.s.s door over the deck, palms out and thumbs together to make a frame, and Mario my other brother next to him as usual down around his knee, with Mario's face all squished against the gla.s.s from supporting his weight, their breath on the window spreading, Hal inside the string finally and trying to follow her, crying, and not impossibly I also crying a little, just from the infectious stress, and those two through the back door's gla.s.s just watching, and f.u.c.king b.o.o.boo also trying to make that frame with his hands, so finally it was Mr. Reehagen next door, who was so-called "friends" with her, who had to come out and over and finally had to hook up the hose.' (back to text) (back to text) 235. She'd arrayed the photos herself, from her purse, on the dresser; he hadn't had to ask her to; it added to the sense of synchronous mercy, a cosmic kindness balancing out the jacuzzi's dead bird and the frigidly invasive reporter. (back to text) (back to text) 236. E.T.A. shorthand: Vector/Angle/Pace/Spin. (back to text) (back to text) 237. The NW-to-NE angle at the former Monteplier VT isn't quite 90, but it is very close. By the way, the Syracuse-Ticonderoga-Salem triangle is one of those endless-based 25-130-25 triangles that looks so hideous when projected onto one of Corbett Thorp's distorting globes in the Trivium's Cubular Trigonometry. (back to text) (back to text) 238. Quod vide here Ch. 7, 'It All Started with a Colorectal Neoplastis, an Openness to Communicative Manifestations of Divine Grace, and a Seedy-Looking Fellow That Publicly Lifted a Chair He Was Standing On, That Was Clearly Just Such a Manifestation,' in The Chill of Inspiration: Spontaneous Reminiscences by Seventeen Pioneers of DT-Cycle Lithiumized Annular Fusion, The Chill of Inspiration: Spontaneous Reminiscences by Seventeen Pioneers of DT-Cycle Lithiumized Annular Fusion, ed. Prof. Dr. Gunther Sperber, Inst.i.tut fur Neutronenphysik und Reaktortechnik, Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe, U.R.G., available in English in ferociously expensive hardcover only, Y.T.M.P. from Springer-Verlag Wien NNY. (N.b. that while the annular meta-disease treatment is highly effective on metastatic cancers, it proved a disappointment on the HIV-spectrum viri, since AIDS is itself a meta-disease.) ed. Prof. Dr. Gunther Sperber, Inst.i.tut fur Neutronenphysik und Reaktortechnik, Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe, U.R.G., available in English in ferociously expensive hardcover only, Y.T.M.P. from Springer-Verlag Wien NNY. (N.b. that while the annular meta-disease treatment is highly effective on metastatic cancers, it proved a disappointment on the HIV-spectrum viri, since AIDS is itself a meta-disease.) (back to text) (back to text) 239. Because he'd been sworn to secrecy, Green doesn't tell Lenz that Charlotte Treat had shared with Green that her adoptive father had been one-time Chair of the Northeast Regional Board of Dental Anesthesiologists, and had been pretty liberal with the use of the old N2O and thiopental sodium around the Treats' Revere MA household, for personal and extremely unsavory reasons. (back to text) (back to text) 240. The Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corp., Hilo HI - 'A LOW SODIUM FOOD.' (back to text) (back to text) 241. Popular corporate-hard-rock bands, though it shows where Bruce Green's psychic decline really started that, except for TBA5, these bands were all truly big two or three years past, and are now slightly pa.s.se, with Choosy Mothers having split up entirely by now to explore individual creative directions. (back to text) (back to text) 242. This is one reason why he consents to be hung way out into s.p.a.ce from Scht.i.tt's transom for filming all-court play, held only by some prorector with a firm grip on the back of his lock's vest, which the players looking up at Mario's forward ski-jump posture off the crow's nest find incredibly terrifying and audacious and b.a.l.l.sy, and Avril won't even leave HmH during all-court filmings. (back to text) (back to text) 243. This though Avril's never come right out and articulated her worry about his P.M. safety to Mario, not wanting to seem as though she's making a special issue of his deficits and vulnerability or to seem inconsistent when she lets Hal go off nightly wherever he likes or just basically in any way to inhibit Mario's sense of autonomy and freedom by causing him to worry about her worrying - which he does, rather a lot, worry about Avril's worrying about him. If that makes sense. (back to text) (back to text) 244. Mario, like his maternal uncle Charles Tavis, has a dislike of fluorescent lighting. (back to text) (back to text) 245. Viz.: 'You feeling better?' (back to text) (back to text) 'Will be soon.'

'Is that supposed to mean something? What's that supposed to mean?'

'Nothing. Literally nothing.'

246. A depressing new Sober Club in Somerville's Davis Square where AAs and NAs - mostly new and young - get heartbreakingly dolled up and dance stiffly and tremble with sober s.e.xual anxiety and they stand around with c.o.kes and M.F.s telling each other how great it is to be in an intensely social venue with all your self-conscious inhibitions unmedicated and screaming in your head. The smiles alone in these places are excruciating to see. (back to text) (back to text) 247. A Restriction means just no Overnight that week and an extra Ch.o.r.e; a House Restriction means you have to be back an hour after work and nightly meetings; Full House is no leaving the House except for work and meetings, and 15 minutes to get back, and no even leaving to buy smokes or a paper, or even to go out in the lawn for oxygen, and one violation means a Discharge: F.H.R. is Ennet's version of the Hole, and it's dreaded. (back to text) (back to text) 248. Ennet House takes its urines over to the methadone clinic, which has all manner of clients who have to submit weekly urines to courts and programs, and the clinic lets Ennet put its urines gratis in the weekly batch the clinic sends out to an E.M.I.T.-mill clinic all the way out in Natick, and in return every once in a while Pat gets a call from the trollish little social worker who runs #2 about some client down there who's decided he wants off the methadone, as well, and Pat will shoot the client way up on the Interview list and give him an interview and usually let the client in - Calvin T. and Danielle S. had both originally gotten into Ennet House this way, i.e. via #2. (back to text) (back to text) 249. It's maybe significant that Don Gately never once failed to clean up any vomit or incontinence his mother'd just drunkenly left there or pa.s.sed out in, no matter how p.i.s.sed off or disgusted he was or how sick he himself was: not once. (back to text) (back to text) 250. (who owns a Lincoln, Henderson does, origins unknown and suspicious) (back to text) (back to text) 251. This is all for Insurance Reasons, the Staff sheet on which Gately doesn't understand all the language of, and fears. (back to text) (back to text) 252. It's against House rules to smoke upstairs in the bedrooms - more Insurance Reasons - and a week's Restriction is supposed to be mandatory, and Pat's personally a fanatic about the rule, but Gately, much as he fears the grim boilerplate on the Insurance Sheet, always pretends he doesn't see anything when he sees somebody smoking up here, since when he was a resident he actually used to sometimes smoke in his sleep in his sleep he was so tense, and every once in a while will wake up and find that he has again, i.e. lit a gasper and apparently smoked it and put it out all in his sleep, down in bed in his Staff oubliette in the bas.e.m.e.nt. he was so tense, and every once in a while will wake up and find that he has again, i.e. lit a gasper and apparently smoked it and put it out all in his sleep, down in bed in his Staff oubliette in the bas.e.m.e.nt. (back to text) (back to text) 253. (the items from the House's donated-clothes baskets that fit Gately being few and far) (back to text) (back to text) 254. Gately's made it an iron point never again ever to run, once he got straight. (back to text) (back to text) 255. NNE street argot for any kind of handgun. (back to text) (back to text) 256. (Erdedy's hands still up, w/ keys) (back to text) (back to text) 257. (NNE Region, trying hard not to irritate Tine Sr. by fidgeting) (back to text) (back to text) 258. (Desert-SW Region, understated in a ma.s.sive peasant skirt and sensible flats) (back to text) (back to text) 259. These, a number of fine companies, are like enormous versions of the little winds.h.i.+eld-washer implements at service stations - an industrial mop-handle w/ a canted rubber blade at the end, used for spreading puddle-water out so it dries faster, at some academies replaced with the EZ-DRI hinged-roller-of-dense-sponge-at-the-end court-dryer, which E.T.A. eschews because of how fast the rolling sponge at the end mildews and smells bad. (back to text) (back to text) 260. Mrs. Incandenza always grades everything in blue ink. (back to text) (back to text) 261. A phenomenon not unknown, viz. menial employees and s.h.i.+ft-workers mining E.T.A.'s collected waste for cast-off value, and permitted by the administration and Mr. Harde, or rather just not actively discouraged, since 'One man's trash...' and so on, with the only requirement being a certain visual discretion when carrying off E.T.A.'s offal, simply because the whole thing's kind of embarra.s.sing for everybody. (back to text) (back to text) 262. I.e. the Women's Tennis a.s.sociation, the distaff equivalent of the A.T.P. (back to text) (back to text) 263. Sic, Sic, presumably for Betamax (Sony). presumably for Betamax (Sony). (back to text) (back to text) 264. Sic, Sic, but it's pretty obvious what Marathe means here. but it's pretty obvious what Marathe means here. (back to text) (back to text) 265. Reinforced Aluminum Spectation Unit. (back to text) (back to text) 266. The occasional upscale parent could be seen exiting Comm.-Ad. and crossing behind the West Courts' south fence to the asphalt lot and what were unmistakably parental autos, all remarkable for their textbook tire-pressure and bristles of cellular antennae and the absence of any little dust-smiles on their rear or side windows. Charles Tavis had spent the morning interfacing with parents of those E.T.A. kids injured in I.-Day's Eschaton free-for-all. Lateral Alice Moore, for a treat, had been listening to Tavis and parents on her headphones, while typing, instead of her collection of aerobic favorites. Struck and Pemulis had cruised by before lunch and blarneyed her into putting the exchanges on her intercom's speaker for a couple minutes. You should hear C.T. enclosed with parents sometime. It was only some of the parents - Todd Possalthwaite's dad was on honeymoon in the Azores, and Otis P. Lord's mother had some inner-ear thing and the Lords couldn't fly. But Pemulis and Struck concurred that everyone with any kind of administration in his blood should hear E.T.A.'s Headmaster with parents and a placative mission, a master charmer past all social gauge, a Houdini with the manacles of fact, the interfaces like fluidless seductions - Pemulis said the man's missed a genuine calling in sales - everyone practically wanting to smoke a cigarette afterward, the parents leave weeping, pumping Tavis's hands - one parent per hand - practically begging him to accept both their thanks and their apologies for daring to even possibly think, think, even for a even for a moment moment. Then, supporting each other, making their way over Lateral Alice's third rail and past the beaming extremely polite polite lads by her desk and out through the pressurized gla.s.s lobby doors and down off the white-pillared neo-Georgian porch and past courts and bleachers and into their well-maintained autos and out the portcullis and very slowly down the hill's brick drive before they even recall they'd forgotten to pop in on their injured kid, sign his cast, feel his forehead, say Hey. lads by her desk and out through the pressurized gla.s.s lobby doors and down off the white-pillared neo-Georgian porch and past courts and bleachers and into their well-maintained autos and out the portcullis and very slowly down the hill's brick drive before they even recall they'd forgotten to pop in on their injured kid, sign his cast, feel his forehead, say Hey. (back to text) (back to text) 267. I.e. ace/double fault, rather like the ratio of strikeouts to walks for a pitcher. (back to text) (back to text) 268. It was like Steeply'd never seen so many left-handed people: both Hal Incandenza and the boy in black were left-handed, one of the two little girls four courts down was left-handed, deLint was marking the chart with his left hand. Both A.F.R. turncoat Remy Marathe and Quebecer triple-operative Luria P--- were southpaws, though Steeply realized that this could hardly be called significant. (back to text) (back to text) 269.

Saprogenic Greetings * *

WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO LET A PROFESSIONAL SAY IT FOR YOU.

Ms. Helen SteepleyAnd So OnNovember Y.D.A.U.

... (1) Orin Incandenza and I played, practiced, and generally hung out through most of what seemed at the time to be our formative years. We met because I kept encountering him across the net in the local tennis tournaments we played around metro Boston, Boys' 10's. We were the two best 10-year-old males in Boston. We soon became practice partners, our mothers driving us every weekday afternoon to a junior development program at the Auburndale Tennis Club in West Newton. After my own parents were horribly killed on the Jamaica Way commuter road one morning in the freak crash of a radio traffic-report helicopter, I became a sort of hanger-on at the Incandenza house out in Weston. When J.O.I. founded the Academy, I was one of the first matriculants. Orin and I were inseparable until around age 15, when I reached my own zenith in terms of early p.u.b.erty and athletic promise and began to be able to beat him. He took it hard. We were never inseparable again. We spent quant.i.ty time together again briefly for a few months the next year, during a period when we both experimented heavily with recreational substances. We both ended up losing enthusiasm for substances after only a couple years, Orin because he had finally entered p.u.b.erty and had discovered the weaker s.e.x and found he needed all his faculties and guile, myself because a couple of really negative methoxy-psychedelic experiences left me with certain Disabilities that to this day make normal life an exceptional challenge, and which I tend to blame on having done deadly-serious hallucinogens at a sort of larval psychological stage during which no N. American adolescent should be allowed to do hallucinogens. These Disabilities led to my departure from the Enfield Tennis Academy at 17, prior to graduation, and my withdrawal from compet.i.tive junior tennis and contemporary life as we know it. Orin was largely burned out on tennis too by 17, though no one in his right mind could have foreseen a defection to organized U.S. football in his future.

A grunting, crunching ballet of repressed h.o.m.oeroticism, football, Ms. Steepley, on my view. The exaggerated breadth of the shoulders, the masked eradication of facial personality, the emphasis on contact-vs.-avoidance-of-contact. The gains in terms of penetration and resistance. The tight pants that accentuate the gluteals and hamstrings and what look for all the world like codpieces. The gradual slow s.h.i.+ft of venue to "artificial surface," "artificial turf." Don't the pants' fronts look fitted with codpieces? And have a look at these men whacking each other's a.s.ses after a play. It is like Swinburne sat down on his soul's darkest night and designed an organized sport. And pay no attention to Orin's defense of football as a ritualized subst.i.tute for armed conflict. Armed conflict is plenty ritualized on its own, and since we have real armed conflict (take a spin through Boston's Roxbury and Mattapan districts some evening) there is no need or purpose for a subst.i.tute. Football is pure h.o.m.ophobically repressed nancy-ism, and do not let O. tell you different.

... (3c) I cannot help you too much with the facts surrounding Dr. Incandenza's suicide. I know that he erased his own cartography in a grisly way. I was told that in the year leading up to his death Dr. Incandenza was abusing ethyl alcohol on a daily basis and was working on a whole new genre of film-cartridge that Orin at the time claimed was driving Dr. Inc insane.

... (3e) The supposed cause of their separation is that Dr. Incandenza began using her in his work more and more extensively and eventually asked her to perform in the prenominate completely radical new type of filmed entertainment that supposedly was driving him to a breakdown. They supposedly became close, James and Jo-Ellen, though Orin in my judgment is not a reliable source of information about their relations.h.i.+p.

The only other apposite fact I have - and I have this not from Orin but from an innocent female relative of mine who was (briefly) in a position to interface with our punter in an intimate and unguarded way impossible between hetero males - is that some incident occurred in the Incandenzas' Volvo involving one of the windows and a word - all I am given is that O. reports that in the days prior to Dr. Incandenza's felo de se, a so-called "word" appeared on a "fogged" "window" of Mrs. Inc's pale yellow Volvo, and the word cast a conjugal pall in all sorts of directions. This is it.

... (5) The "vailed warning" (typo?) you refer to in my postal response to you is simply that you have to take what Orin says in a fairly high-sodium way. I am not sure I would stand and point at Orin as an example of a cla.s.sic pathological liar, but you have only to watch him in certain kinds of action to see that there can be such a thing as sincerity with a motive sincerity with a motive. I have no idea what your relations.h.i.+p with Orin is or what your feelings are - and if Orin wishes it I am afraid I can predict your feelings for him will be strong - so I shall just tell you that for instance at E.T.A. I saw Orin in bars or at post-tournament dances go up to a young lady he would like to pick up and use this fail-safe cross-sectional pick-up Strategy that involved an opening like "Tell me what sort of man you prefer, and then I'll affect the demeanor of that man." Which in a way of course is being almost pathologically open and sincere about the whole picking-up enterprise, but also has this quality of Look-At-Me-Being-So-Totally-Open-And-Sincere-I - Rise - Above - The - Whole - Disingenuous - Posing - Process - Of - Attracting - Someone -, - And - I - Transcend - The - Common - Disingenuity - In - A - Bar - Herd - In - A - Particularly - Hip - And -Witty - Self - Aware - Way -, - And - If - You - Will - Let - Me - Pick - You - Up - I - Will - Not - Only -Keep - Being - This - Wittily, - Transcendently - Open -, - But - Will - Bring-You - Into - This -World-Of-Social-Falsehood-Transcendence, which of course he cannot do because the whole openness-demeanor thing is itself itself a purposive social falsehood; it is a pose of poselessness; Orin Incandenza is the a purposive social falsehood; it is a pose of poselessness; Orin Incandenza is the least open man least open man I know. Spend a little time with Orin's Uncle Charles a.k.a. "Gretel the Cross-Sectioned Dairy Cow" Tavis if you want to see real openness in motion, and you will see that genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's syndrome. I know. Spend a little time with Orin's Uncle Charles a.k.a. "Gretel the Cross-Sectioned Dairy Cow" Tavis if you want to see real openness in motion, and you will see that genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's syndrome.

It is not that Orin Incandenza is a liar, but that I think he has come to regard the truth as constructed constructed instead of instead of reported. reported. He came by this idea educationally, is all I will add. He studied for almost eighteen years at the feet of the most consummate mind-f.u.c.ker I have ever met, and even now he remains so flummoxed he thinks the way to escape that person's influence is through renunciation and hatred of that person. Defining yourself in opposition to something is still being anac.l.i.tic on that thing, isn't it? I certainly think so. And men who believe they hate what they really He came by this idea educationally, is all I will add. He studied for almost eighteen years at the feet of the most consummate mind-f.u.c.ker I have ever met, and even now he remains so flummoxed he thinks the way to escape that person's influence is through renunciation and hatred of that person. Defining yourself in opposition to something is still being anac.l.i.tic on that thing, isn't it? I certainly think so. And men who believe they hate what they really fear fear they they need need are of limited interest, I find. are of limited interest, I find.

... Again I will remind you that Orin and I are on the outs a bit at the moment, so some of my judgments may be temporarily short on charity.

One reason Orin is not a straight-out liar is that Orin is not a particularly skillful liar. The few times I saw him try consciously to lie were pathetic. This is one reason why his juvenile recreational-chemical phase pa.s.sed so quickly compared to some of our colleagues at E.T.A. If you are going to do serious drugs while you are still a minor and under your parents' roof, you are going to have to lie often and lie well. Orin was a strangely stupid liar. I am recalling there was one afternoon on Mrs. Clarke's day off when Mrs. Inc had to go off and overfunction somewhere and Orin was supposed to baby-sit Mario and Hal, who were at the kind of crazed-toddler age where they would hurt themselves if they were not closely supervised, and I was over, and Orin and I decided to dart up to the loft over the Weston house's garage to smoke a bit of Bob Hope, which is to say high-resin marijuana, and in the loft, high, wandered disastrously into the sort of pseudophilosophical mental labyrinth that Bob Hopesmokers are always wandering into and getting trapped in and wasting huge amounts of time a a inside an intellectual room they cannot negotiate their way out of, and by the time we hadn't resolved the abstract problem that had put us into the labyrinth but just as always had gotten so hungry we abandoned it and stumbled out and down the loft's wooden ladder, the sun was all the way on the other side of the sky over Wayland and Sudbury, and the whole afternoon had pa.s.sed without Hal and Mario having received any protective supervision; and Hal and Mario somehow survived the afternoon, but when Mrs. Incandenza returned that night she asked Orin what we and the supervised toddlers had done all afternoon and Orin lied that we had all been right here, respectively playing and supervising, and Mrs. Incandenza expressed puzzlement to Orin because she said she had tried to call the house several times that afternoon but was unable to get through, and Orin replied that while supervising he had herded the toddlers carefully into rooms with phone-jacks and made calls and had been on the phone several times for long periods of time for this that or the other thing, was why she had been unable to get through, at which Mrs. Incandenza (who is extremely tall) had blinked several times and looked very confused and said that but the phone had not been busy, it had just rung and rung and rung. At a juncture like this, men and boys get separated in terms of prevarication, I submit. And all Orin could come up with was a steady gaze as he said, as if from the Rose Garden: "I have no response to that." Which incredibly stupid response he and I found very funny for weeks afterward, especially since Mrs. Incandenza inside an intellectual room they cannot negotiate their way out of, and by the time we hadn't resolved the abstract problem that had put us into the labyrinth but just as always had gotten so hungry we abandoned it and stumbled out and down the loft's wooden ladder, the sun was all the way on the other side of the sky over Wayland and Sudbury, and the whole afternoon had pa.s.sed without Hal and Mario having received any protective supervision; and Hal and Mario somehow survived the afternoon, but when Mrs. Incandenza returned that night she asked Orin what we and the supervised toddlers had done all afternoon and Orin lied that we had all been right here, respectively playing and supervising, and Mrs. Incandenza expressed puzzlement to Orin because she said she had tried to call the house several times that afternoon but was unable to get through, and Orin replied that while supervising he had herded the toddlers carefully into rooms with phone-jacks and made calls and had been on the phone several times for long periods of time for this that or the other thing, was why she had been unable to get through, at which Mrs. Incandenza (who is extremely tall) had blinked several times and looked very confused and said that but the phone had not been busy, it had just rung and rung and rung. At a juncture like this, men and boys get separated in terms of prevarication, I submit. And all Orin could come up with was a steady gaze as he said, as if from the Rose Garden: "I have no response to that." Which incredibly stupid response he and I found very funny for weeks afterward, especially since Mrs. Incandenza never punished never punished and refused to act as if she believed lying was even a possibility as far as her children were concerned, and treated an exploded lie as an insoluble cosmic mystery instead of an exploded lie. and refused to act as if she believed lying was even a possibility as far as her children were concerned, and treated an exploded lie as an insoluble cosmic mystery instead of an exploded lie.

The worst instance of both Orin's mendacious idiocy and Mrs. Incandenza's unwillingness to countenance an idiotic lie came one grisly day soon after Orin had finally gotten his vehicle operator's license. O. and I found ourselves with an idle weekday afternoon off in August after losing early at a synthetic-gra.s.s tournament down at Long-wood, and Hal was still alive in what was then Boys' 10's and thus a good bit of the E.T.A. summer community was still down at Longwood, including Mario and Mrs. Incandenza, who'd been driven down I remember by a sort of swarthily foreign-looking monilial-internist medical resident Mrs. Inc had introduced as a so-called "dear and cherished friend" but hadn't explained how they'd met, and Dr. Incandenza was indisposed and not in a position to bother anyone that day, I remember, and Orin and I had most of E.T.A. to ourselves, even the gate's portcullis unmanned and up, and this being at the acme of our interest in such things we wasted little time in ingesting some sort of recreational substance, I cannot recall what kind but I remember them as particularly impairing, and we decided however that we weren't yet impaired enough, and decided to drive down the hill to one of the disreputable liquor stores along Commonwealth Avenue that accepted your word of honor as proof of age, and we hopped into the Volvo and blasted down the hill and down Commonwealth Avenue, severely impaired, and wondered in a speculative way why people on the sidewalks all along Commonwealth seemed to be waving at us and holding their heads and pointing and jumping wildly up and down, and Orin waving cheerfully back and holding his own head in a sort of friendly imitation, but it was not until we got all the way down to the CommonwealthBrighton Ave. split that the horrible realization hit us: Mrs. Incandenza often during summer days kept the Incandenzas' beloved dog S. Johnson leashed to the back of her Volvo within reach of his water and Science Diet bowls, and Orin and I had peeled out in the car without even thinking to check for whether S. Johnson was attached to it. I will not try to describe what we found when we pulled into a parking lot and slunk to the rear of the car. Let's call it a nubbin. Let's say what we found was a leash and collar, and a nubbin. According to the couple of witnesses who were able to speak, S. Johnson had made a valiant go of trying to keep up back there for at least a couple blocks down Commonwealth, but at some point he either lost his footing or got his canine affairs in order and figured it was his day to shuffle off, and gave up, and hit the pavement, after which the scene the witnesses described was unspeakable. There was fur and let's call it material down the middle of the inside east-bound lane for five or six blocks. What we had left to take slowly back up the Academy's hill was a leash, a collar with tags describing medication-allergies and food-sensitivities, and a nubbin of let's call it attached material.

The point is that I defy you to imagine how it felt later that day to stand there with Orin in the HmH living room before the p.r.o.ne and piteously weeping Mrs. Incandenza and listen to Orin try to construct a version of events in which he and I had sensed somehow that S. Johnson was dying for a good brisk August walk and were walking him down Commonwealth, b b saying there we were walking good old S. Johnson demurely down the sidewalk when a hit-and-run driver not only swerved up onto the sidewalk to run the dog down but then backed up and ran him over again and backed up and ran him over again, and on and on, so more like a saying there we were walking good old S. Johnson demurely down the sidewalk when a hit-and-run driver not only swerved up onto the sidewalk to run the dog down but then backed up and ran him over again and backed up and ran him over again, and on and on, so more like a pulverize pulverize -and-run driver, while Orin and I had stood there too paralyzed with horror and grief even to think of noticing the make and color of the car, much less the fiend's license plate. Mrs. Incandenza on her knees (there's something surreal about a very tall woman on her knees), weeping and pressing her hand to her collarbone but nodding in confirmation at every syllable of Orin spinning this pathetic lie, O. holding up the leash and collar (and nubbin) like Exhibit A, with me next to him wiping my forehead and wis.h.i.+ng the immaculately polished and sterilized hardwood floor would swallow up the whole scene in toto. -and-run driver, while Orin and I had stood there too paralyzed with horror and grief even to think of noticing the make and color of the car, much less the fiend's license plate. Mrs. Incandenza on her knees (there's something surreal about a very tall woman on her knees), weeping and pressing her hand to her collarbone but nodding in confirmation at every syllable of Orin spinning this pathetic lie, O. holding up the leash and collar (and nubbin) like Exhibit A, with me next to him wiping my forehead and wis.h.i.+ng the immaculately polished and sterilized hardwood floor would swallow up the whole scene in toto.

... (7) Ms. Steeples, to my way of thinking, the word "abuse" is vacuous. Who can define "abuse"? The difficulty with really interesting cases of abuse is that the ambiguity of the abuse becomes part of the abuse. Thanks over the decades to the energetic exercise of your own profession, Ms. Steeley, we have all heard ACOAs and AlaTeens and ACONAs and ACOGs and WHINERS relate clear cases of different kinds of abuse: beatings, diddlings, rapes, deprivations, domineerment, humiliation, captivity, torture, excessive criticism or even just utter disinterest. But at least the victims of this sort of abuse can, when they have dredged it back up after childhood, confidently call it "abuse." There are, however, more ambiguous cases. Harder to profile, one might say. What would you call a parent who is so neurasthenic and depressive that any opposition to his parental will plunges him into the sort of psychotic depression where he does not leave his bed for days and just sits there in bed cleaning his revolver, so that the child would be terrified of opposing his will and plunging him into a depression and maybe causing him to suicide? Would that child qualify as "abused"? Or a father who is so engrossed by mathematics that he gets engrossed helping his child with his algebra homework and ends up forgetting the child and doing it all himself so that the child gets an A in Fractions but never in fact learns fractions? Or even say a father who is extremely handy around the house and can fix anything, and has the son help him, but gets so engrossed in his projects (the father) that he never thinks to explain to the son how the projects actually get done, so that the son's "help" never advances past simply handing the father a specified wrench or getting him lemonade or Phillips-head screws until the day the father is crushed into aspic in a freak accident on the Jamaica Way and all opportunities for transgenerational instruction are forever lost, and the son never learns how to be a handy homeowner himself, and when things malfunction around his own one-room home he has to hire contemptuous filthy-nailed men to come fix them, and feels terribly inadequate (the son), not only because he is not handy but because this handiness seemed to him to have represented to his father everything that was independent and manly and non-Disabled in an American male. Would you cry "Abuse!" if you were the unhandy son, looking back? Worse, could could you call it abuse without feeling that you were a pathetic self-indulgent p.i.s.s-puddle, what with all the genuine cases of hair-raising physical and emotional abuse diligently reported and a.n.a.lyzed daily by conscientious journalists (and profiled?)? you call it abuse without feeling that you were a pathetic self-indulgent p.i.s.s-puddle, what with all the genuine cases of hair-raising physical and emotional abuse diligently reported and a.n.a.lyzed daily by conscientious journalists (and profiled?)?

I am not sure whether you could call this abuse, but when I was (long ago) abroad in the world of dry men, I saw parents, usually upscale and educated and talented and functional and white, patient and loving and supportive and concerned and involved in their children's lives, profligate with compliments and diplomatic with constructive criticism, loquacious in their p.r.o.nouncements of unconditional love for and approval of their children, conforming to every last jot/t.i.ttle in any conceivable definition of a good parent, I saw parent after unimpeachable parent who raised kids who were (a) emotionally r.e.t.a.r.ded or (b) lethally self-indulgent or (c) chronically depressed or (d) borderline psychotic or (e) consumed with narcissistic self-loathing or (f) neurotically driven/addicted or (g) variously psychosomatically Disabled or (h) some conjunctive permutation of (a)... (g).

Why is this. Why do many parents who seem relentlessly bent on producing children who feel they are good persons deserving of love produce children who grow to feel they are hideous persons not deserving of love who just happen to have lucked into having parents so marvelous that the parents love them even though they are hideous?

Is it a sign of abuse if a mother produces a child who believes not that he is innately beautiful and lovable and deserving of magnificent maternal treatment but somehow that he is a hideous unlovable child who has somehow lucked in to having a really magnificent mother? Probably not.

But could such a mother then really really be all that magnificent, if that's the child's view of himself? be all that magnificent, if that's the child's view of himself?

I am not speaking about my own mother, who was decapitated by a plummeting rotorblade long before she could have much effect one way or the other on my older brother and innocent younger sister and me.

I think, Mrs. Starkly, that I am speaking of Mrs. Avril M.-T. Incandenza, although the woman is so multileveled and indictment-proof that it is difficult to feel comfortable with any sort of univocal accusation of anything. Something just was not right, right, is the only way to put it. Something is the only way to put it. Something creepy, creepy, even on the culturally stellar surface. For instance, after Orin had pretty clearly killed her beloved dog S. Johnson in a truly awful if accidental way, and then had tried to evade responsibility for it with a lie that a parent far less intelligent than Avril could have seen right through, Mrs. Inc's response was not only not conventionally abusive, but seemed almost too unconditionally loving and compa.s.sionate and selfless to possibly be true. Her response to Orin's pathetic pulverizeand-run-driver lie was not to act credulous so much as to act as if the entire grotesque fiction had never reached her ears. And her response to the dog's death itself was bizarrely furcated. On the one hand, she mourned S. Johnson's death very deeply, took the leash and collar and canine nubbin tenderly and arranged lavish memorial and funeral arrangements, including a heartbreakingly small cherrywood coffin, cried in audible private for weeks, etc. But the other half of her emotional energies went into being overly solicitous and polite toward Orin, upping the daily compliment-and-reinforcement-dose, arranging for favorite foods at E.T.A. meals, having his favorite little tennis appurtenances appear magically in his bed and locker with loving notes attached, basically making the thousands of little gestures by which the technically stellar parent can make her child feel particularly valued even on the culturally stellar surface. For instance, after Orin had pretty clearly killed her beloved dog S. Johnson in a truly awful if accidental way, and then had tried to evade responsibility for it with a lie that a parent far less intelligent than Avril could have seen right through, Mrs. Inc's response was not only not conventionally abusive, but seemed almost too unconditionally loving and compa.s.sionate and selfless to possibly be true. Her response to Orin's pathetic pulverizeand-run-driver lie was not to act credulous so much as to act as if the entire grotesque fiction had never reached her ears. And her response to the dog's death itself was bizarrely furcated. On the one hand, she mourned S. Johnson's death very deeply, took the leash and collar and canine nubbin tenderly and arranged lavish memorial and funeral arrangements, including a heartbreakingly small cherrywood coffin, cried in audible private for weeks, etc. But the other half of her emotional energies went into being overly solicitous and polite toward Orin, upping the daily compliment-and-reinforcement-dose, arranging for favorite foods at E.T.A. meals, having his favorite little tennis appurtenances appear magically in his bed and locker with loving notes attached, basically making the thousands of little gestures by which the technically stellar parent can make her child feel particularly valued c c - all out of concern that Orin - all out of concern that Orin in no way in no way think she resented him for S. Johnson's death or blamed him or loved him less in any way because of the whole incident. Not only was there no punishment or even visible pique, but the love-and-support-bombardment think she resented him for S. Johnson's death or blamed him or loved him less in any way because of the whole incident. Not only was there no punishment or even visible pique, but the love-and-support-bombardment increased increased. And all this was coupled with elaborate machinations to keep the mourning and funeral arrangements and moments of wistful dog-remembrance hidden from Orin, for fear that he might see that the Moms was hurt and so feel bad or guilty, so that in his presence Mrs. Inc became even more cheerful and loquacious and witty and intimate and benign, even suggesting in oblique ways that life was now somehow suddenly better better without the dog, that some kind of unrecognized albatross had been somehow removed from her neck, and so on and so forth. without the dog, that some kind of unrecognized albatross had been somehow removed from her neck, and so on and so forth.

What does a trained a.n.a.lyst of our cultural profile's soft contours like yourself make of this, Mrs. Starksaddle? Is it mind-bogglingly considerate and loving and supportive, or is there something... creepy creepy about it? Maybe a more perspicuous question: Was the almost pathological generosity with which Mrs. Inc responded to her son taking her car in an intoxicated condition and dragging her beloved dog to its grotesque death and then trying to lie his way out of it, was this generosity for Orin's sake, or for Avril's own? Was it Orin's "self-esteem" she was safeguarding, or her own vision of herself as a more stellar Moms than any human son could ever hope to feel he merits? about it? Maybe a more perspicuous question: Was the almost pathological generosity with which Mrs. Inc responded to her son taking her car in an intoxicated condition and dragging her beloved dog to its grotesque death and then trying to lie his way out of it, was this generosity for Orin's sake, or for Avril's own? Was it Orin's "self-esteem" she was safeguarding, or her own vision of herself as a more stellar Moms than any human son could ever hope to feel he merits?

When Orin does his impression of Avril - which I doubt you or anyone else can get him to do anymore, though it was a party-stopper back in our days at the Academy - what he will do is a.s.sume an enormous warm and loving smile and move steadily toward you until he is in so close that his face is spread up flat against your own face and your breaths mingle. If you can get to experience it - the impression - which will seem worse to you: the smothering proximity, or the unimpeachable warmth and love with which it's effected?

For some reason now I am thinking of the sort of philanthropist who seems humanly repellent not in spite of his charity but because because of it: on some level you can tell that he views the recipients of his charity not as persons so much as pieces of exercise equipment on which he can develop and demonstrate his own virtue. What's creepy and repellent is that this sort of philanthropist clearly of it: on some level you can tell that he views the recipients of his charity not as persons so much as pieces of exercise equipment on which he can develop and demonstrate his own virtue. What's creepy and repellent is that this sort of philanthropist clearly needs needs privation and suffering to continue, since it is his own virtue he prizes, instead of the ends to which the virtue is ostensibly directed. privation and suffering to continue, since it is his own virtue he prizes, instead of the ends to which the virtue is ostensibly directed.

Everything Orin's mother is about is always terribly well-ordered and multivalent. I suspect she was badly abused as a child. I have nothing concrete to back this up.

But if, Ms. Bainbridge, you have yielded your own charms to Orin, and if Orin strikes you as a wonderfully gifted and giving lover - which by various accounts he is - not just skilled and sensuous but magnificently generous, empathic, attentive, loving - if it seems to you that he does, truly, derive his own best pleasure from giving you pleasure, you might wish to reflect soberly on this vision of Orin imitating his dear Moms as philanthropist: a person closing in, arms open wide, smiling. (back to text) (back to text) 270. The Glad Flaccid Receptacle Corporation, Zanesville OH. (back to text) (back to text) 271. (including K. McKenna, who claims to have a bruised skull but does not in fact have a bruised skull) (back to text) (back to text) 272. This is why Ann Kittenplan, way more culpable for Eschaton-damage than any of the other kids, isn't down here on the punitive cleanup crew, is that it's become a defacto Tunnel Club operation. LaMont Chu was nominated to tell her she could blow it off and they'd mark her down as present, which was just fine with Ann Kittenplan, since even the butchest little girls don't seem to have this proto-masculine fetish for enclosure underneath things. (back to text) (back to text) 273. = Stars, shooting stars, falling stars. (back to text) (back to text) 274. Poutrincourt uses the Nuck idiom reflechis reflechis instead of the more textbook instead of the more textbook reflexes, reflexes, and does indeed sound like the real Canadian McCoy, though her accent is without the long moany suffixes of Marathe, and but anyway it is for certain that a certain 'journalist' will be e-mailing Falls Church VA on the U.S.O.'s Clipper-proof line for the unexpurgated files on one 'Poutrincourt, Thierry T.' and does indeed sound like the real Canadian McCoy, though her accent is without the long moany suffixes of Marathe, and but anyway it is for certain that a certain 'journalist' will be e-mailing Falls Church VA on the U.S.O.'s Clipper-proof line for the unexpurgated files on one 'Poutrincourt, Thierry T.' (back to text) (back to text) 275. Using s'annuler s'annuler instead of the more Quebecois instead of the more Quebecois se detruire se detruire. (back to text) (back to text) 276. Using the vulgate Quebecois transpercant, transpercant, whose idiomatic connotation of doom Poutrincourt shouldn't have had any reason to think the Parisian-speaking Steeply would know, which is the slip that indicates that Poutrincourt's figured out that Steeply is neither a civilian soft-profiler nor even a female, which Poutrincourt's probably known ever since Steeply'd lit his Flanderfume with the elbow of his lighter-arm whose idiomatic connotation of doom Poutrincourt shouldn't have had any reason to think the Parisian-speaking Steeply would know, which is the slip that indicates that Poutrincourt's figured out that Steeply is neither a civilian soft-profiler nor even a female, which Poutrincourt's probably known ever since Steeply'd lit his Flanderfume with the elbow of his lighter-arm out out instead of instead of in, in, which only males and radically butch lesbians ever do, and which together with the electrolysis-rash comprises the only real c.h.i.n.k in the operative's distaff persona, and would require an almost professionally hypervigilant and suspicious person to notice the significance of. which only males and radically butch lesbians ever do, and which together with the electrolysis-rash comprises the only real c.h.i.n.k in the operative's distaff persona, and would require an almost professionally hypervigilant and suspicious person to notice the significance of. (back to text) (back to text) 277. Trois-Rivieres-region idiom, meaning basically 'reason to get out of bed in the morning.' (back to text) (back to text) 278. Where was Mrs Mrs. Pemulis all this time, late at night, with dear old Da P. shaking Matty 'awake' until his teeth rattled and little Micky curled up against the far wall, sh.e.l.l-breathing, silent as death, is what I'd want to know. (back to text) (back to text) 279. The kid's the former E.T.A. whose name keeps eluding and torturing Hal, who hasn't gone over twenty-four hours without getting high in secret for well over a year, and doesn't feel very good at all, and finds the kid's name's elusiveness infuriating. (back to text) (back to text) 280. Anhedonia Anhedonia was apparently coined by Ribot, a Continental Frenchman, who in his 19th-century was apparently coined by Ribot, a Continental Frenchman, who in his 19th-century Psychologie des Sentiments Psychologie des Sentiments says he means it to denote the psychoequivalent of says he means it to denote the psychoequivalent of a.n.a.lgesia, a.n.a.lgesia, which is the neurologic suppression of pain. which is the neurologic suppression of pain. (back to text) (back to text) 281. This had been one of Hal's deepest and most pregnant abstractions, one he'd come up with once while getting secretly high in the Pump Room. That we're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that he goes around feeling like he misses somebody he's never even met? Without the universalizing abstraction, the feeling would make no sense. (back to text) (back to text) 282. (the big reason why people in pain are so self-absorbed and unpleasant to be around) (back to text) (back to text) 283. S.S.R.I.s, of which Zoloft and the ill-fated Prozac were the ancestors. (back to text) (back to text) 284. A crude and cheap form of combustible methedrine, favored by the same sort of addictive cla.s.s that sniffs gasoline fumes or coats the inside of a paper bag with airplane glue and puts the bag over their face and breathes until they fall down and start to convulse. (back to text) (back to text) 285. This has got to be a misp.r.o.nunciation or catachresis on R.v.C.'s part, since Clonidine - 2-(2,6-Dichloroanilino)-2-imidazoline - is a decidedly adult-strength anti-hypertensive; the infant'd have to be N.F.L.-sized to tolerate it. (back to text) (back to text) 286. Kate G.'s never done Ice, or crack/'base/crank, nor even cocaine or low-impact 'drines. Drug addicts tend to fall into different cla.s.ses: those who like downs and Mr. Hope rarely enjoy stimulants, while c.o.ke- and 'drine-fiends as a rule abhor marijuana. This is an area of potentially fruitful study in addictionology. Note that pretty much every cla.s.s of addicts drinks, though. (back to text) (back to text) 287. Since last winter, when a stale smell, litter of dental stimulators, and single slender spit-wet b.u.t.t signified that a certain uppercla.s.sman had been smoking panatelas late at night in V.R.3. (back to text) (back to text) 288. The Continent's Best Yogurt. (back to text) (back to text) 289. In point of a fact wholly unknown to Hal, BS:OTN BS:OTN was in fact a very sad self-hate-festival on Himself's part, a veiled allegory of sponsors.h.i.+p and Himself's own miserable distaste for the vacant grins and reductive plat.i.tudes of the Boston AA that M.D.s and counselors kept referring him to. was in fact a very sad self-hate-festival on Himself's part, a veiled allegory of sponsors.h.i.+p and Himself's own miserable distaste for the vacant grins and reductive plat.i.tudes of the Boston AA that M.D.s and counselors kept referring him to. (back to text) (back to text) 290. Whether the girl's hideous facial burn-scars are the result of a freebase accident is never made explicit in the film. Bernadette Longley says she kind of hopes that's the case, because otherwise the scars would function as symbols of some deeper and more spiritual wound/hideousness, and the symbolic equation of facial with moral deformity strikes everybody over thirteen in the room as terribly gooey and heavy and stock. (back to text) (back to text) 291. After a heyday during the pre-millennial self-help craze, CA's receded back to being a splinter of the still-enormous Narcotics Anonymous; and Pat Montesian and the Ennet House Staff, while they have nothing against a resident with cocaine-issues. .h.i.tting the occasional CA venue, strongly suggest that residents stick with AA or NA and not make splinters like CA or Designer Drug Addicts Anonymous or Prescription Tranquilizers Anonymous their primary fellows.h.i.+p for recovery, mostly because the splinters tend to have way fewer Groups and meetings - and some none at all in certain parts of the U.S. - and because their extremely specific Substance-focus tends to narrow the aperture of recovery and focus too much on abstinence from just one Substance instead of complete sobriety and a new spiritual way of life in toto. (back to text) (back to text) 292. Fearful partly because the Ennet House Staff strongly discourages residents forming any kind of sentimental attachment to members of the opposite s.e.x during their nine-month stay, a a to say nothing of attachments to Staffers. to say nothing of attachments to Staffers. (back to text) (back to text) 293. Apparently the current colored word for other coloreds. Joelle van Dyne, by the way, was aculturated in a part of the U.S.A. where verbal att.i.tudes toward black people are dated and unconsciously derisive, and is doing pretty much the best she can - colored colored and so on - and anyway is a paragon of racial sensitivity compared to the sort of culture Don Gately was conditioned in. and so on - and anyway is a paragon of racial sensitivity compared to the sort of culture Don Gately was conditioned in. (back to text) (back to text) 294. It's a Boston-colored thing on Commitments to make all speech a protracted apostrophe to some absent 'Jim,' Joelle's observed in a neutral sociologic way. (back to text) (back to text) 295. Boston Housing Authority. (back to text) (back to text) 296. Mixes 5/1 with ferric chloride to produce 'A + B Blood,' an F/X staple of low-budget splatter-films. (back to text) (back to text) 297. The cartridge's repet.i.tive emphasis on the Mother Superior's desire to silence silence the novitiate leads B. Boone - a lazy student but very bright girl - to opine that the silent brown-cowled Trappists who've been hanging superfluously around the film's edges like some mute Greek chorus have been serving a symbolic rather than a narrative function, which strikes Hal as perceptive. the novitiate leads B. Boone - a lazy student but very bright girl - to opine that the silent brown-cowled Trappists who've been hanging superfluously around the film's edges like some mute Greek chorus have been serving a symbolic rather than a narrative function, which strikes Hal as perceptive. (back to text) (back to text) 298. It's also a sly Scht.i.tt-directed a-clef, of course, amounting to something like We Are What We Revile or We Are What We Scurry Around As Fast As Possible With Our Eyes Averted, though when Scht.i.tt mentions the motto he never attaches any moral connotation to it, or for that matter ever translates it, allowing prorectors and Big Buddies to adjust their translations to suit the needs of the pedagogical moment. (back to text) (back to text) 299. the Commonwealth of MA's Lottery Authority. (back to text) (back to text) 300. Easily found when p.a.w.ning a cordless M. Cafe Cafe-au-Lait Maker at a Brookline shop of p.a.w.ning, for Fortier and Marathe and the A.F.R. knew well M. DuPlessis's pa.s.sion of breakfast cafe au lait. (back to text) (back to text) 301. Having in her M.B.A. program absorbed the litigatory lessons of music producers v. ca.s.sette-tape manufacturers and film-production companies v. videotape-rental chains, Noreen Lace-Forche protected InterLace's golden goose's copyrights by specifying that all consumer-TP-compatible laser cartridges be engineered as Read-Only - copyable Master cartridges require special OS-codes and special hardware to run, a a and you need licenses for both the codes and the hardware, which keeps most consumers out of the bootleg-cartridge business but is not a hard hurdle to clear if you've got financial resources and political incentive (i.e., to dupe off a Master). and you need licenses for both the codes and the hardware, which keeps most consumers out of the bootleg-cartridge business but is not a hard hurdle to clear if you've got financial resources and political incentive (i.e., to dupe off a Master). (back to text) (back to text) 302. Thanks to the betrayal of Marathe, this pure-malice agenda is known to the Office of Unspecified Services, though it is not impossible that Fortier deliberately allowed Marathe to pa.s.s along this datum, Marathe knows, for the hope of instilling even deeper chills of fear in Sans-Christe Sans-Christe Gentle and his O.N.A.N. Gentle and his O.N.A.N. chiens-courants. chiens-courants. Suspected but unknown by Marathe, Fortier plans to have Marathe view the Entertainment by force before plans for the dissemination of copies from a Master are firm in execution. This not because Fortier for a moment suspects Marathe's love of his wife's health of prompting his betrayal of Suspected but unknown by Marathe, Fortier plans to have Marathe view the Entertainment by force before plans for the dissemination of copies from a Master are firm in execution. This not because Fortier for a moment suspects Marathe's love of his wife's health of prompting his betrayal of Leur Rai Pays Leur Rai Pays - Fortier had overseen both - Fortier had overseen both jeux du prochain train jeux du prochain traina at which Marathe's elder brothers had been struck and killed, and Fortier has long nursed a suspicion that Marathe nurses dreams of redress for this. at which Marathe's elder brothers had been struck and killed, and Fortier has long nursed a suspicion that Marathe nurses dreams of redress for this. (back to text) (back to text) 303. Though hope springs eternal in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, this news had been expected by Broullime and Fortier the moment they witnessed the shop's brothers active and alert. For they believed no Master cartridge would have lain unshelved in a bag or damp box: even the dim brothers Ant.i.toi, seeing the unique case and slightly larger size of a Master, would have put this to the special side, and arranged for the special 585-r.p.m. hardware to view it to check for special value, and been already lost. (back to text) (back to text) 304.

Q.v. @ 2030h. on 11 November Year of the D.A.U., 308 Subdorm B, Enfield Tennis Academy, where James Albrecht Lockley Struck Jr. sits slumped, chin in hands, forehead slathered in (C2H5CO)2O2a , elbows on tiny cleared spots on desktop, TP compactly humming, word-processing converter plugged into its green-lit dock, HD screen set atop the cartridge-viewer cha.s.sis on its fold-out support like a loved one's photo, keyboard hauled out of McGee-like chaos of closet and set on Heavy Touch, cursor throbbing softly at screen's upper left before Struck, hunched blearily over what's starting to emerge as like unabsorbable amounts of research material for his post-Midterm termpaper for Ms. Poutrincourt's History of Canadian Unpleasantness course thing. Struck always refers mentally to his cla.s.ses as 'things.' Original hopes for at least originality of topic have long since gone over the side of the boat, emotionally. It turns out the more luridly absorbing the angle of topic you choose, the more people have already been there before you with their footprints to fill and their obscurely academic-type-journal articles to try and absorb and, like, synthesize. Struck's been at this over an hour, and his original sights have lowered considerably. He's been feeling a bit punk all day, sinuses with that infallible storm's-on-the-way feeling of weight and clot and a goalie-mask headache that throbs with his heart, and he's now trying to find some new resource in the piles that's obscure and amateurish enough for him to transpose and semi-plagiarize without worrying about Poutrincourt having read it or smelling a rat in the woodpile. , elbows on tiny cleared spots on desktop, TP compactly humming, word-processing converter plugged into its green-lit dock, HD screen set atop the cartridge-viewer cha.s.sis on its fold-out support like a loved one's photo, keyboard hauled out of McGee-like chaos of closet and set on Heavy Touch, cursor throbbing softly at screen's upper left before Struck, hunched blearily over what's starting to emerge as like unabsorbable amounts of research material for his post-Midterm termpaper for Ms. Poutrincourt's History of Canadian Unpleasantness course thing. Struck always refers mentally to his cla.s.ses as 'things.' Original hopes for at least originality of topic have long since gone over the side of the boat, emotionally. It turns out the more luridly absorbing the angle of topic you choose, the more people have already been there before you with their footprints to fill and their obscurely academic-type-journal articles to try and absorb and, like, synthesize. Struck's b