David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘You are merely drunk. This will happened quickly if unused to alcohol. Nausea often accompanies this. Do not be alarmed if there is visual doubling, losing balance, and nausea of the stomach.’

‘The price of a like complete normal human digestive tract. I used to throw up every morning without drinking. Rain and shine both.’

‘You think there is no love without the pleasure, the no-choice compelling of passion.’

‘I appreciate the drinks and all, but I don’t think I’m going to like memorize a lecture on love from somebody who marries somebody with cerebro-fluid spewing out of their mouth, no offense intended.’

‘As you say. My opinions are only that the love you of this country speak of yields none of the pleasure you seek in love. This whole idea of the pleasure and good feelings being what to choose. To give yourself away to. That all choice for you leads there — this pleasure of not choosing.’

‘Don’t grudge me a little feeling good, of all people, Ray, asshole, shit-puddle, Swisshead.’

‘…’

‘Is it better to throw up right away or try to wait before you throw up, Mr. Drinking Expert?’

‘I am thinking: what if I were to claim we might leave and I could lead you only three streets from here and show you something with this promise: you would feel more good feeling and pleasure than ever before for you: you would never again feel sorrow or pity or the pain of the chains and cage of never choosing. I am thinking of this offer: you would reply to me what?’

‘ I voot make ze hreply zat I’ve heard that one before, asshole, and from … from guys with a little more to them south of the waist, if you follow.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘What I’d reply is I’m a shitty lay. As in sex-partner. I’ve only ever been sexual twice, and both times it was awful, and Brad Anderson when I called and said why didn’t you call again Brad Anderson you know what he said? He said I was a lousy lay and my snatch was sure awful big for somebody with such a little flat ass, Brad Anderson said.’

‘No. No. You are not understanding.’

‘That’s just what I said.’

‘You would say No Thank You, you are saying, but this is because you would not believe my claim.’

‘…’

‘If my claim, it was true, you would say yes, Katherine, no?’

‘…’

‘Yes?’

‘Now you’re not on your side anymore, Hal, I can see. When you’re on your back you don’t have a shadow.’

‘…’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Yes, Mario.’

‘I’m sorry if you’re sad, Hal. You seem sad.’

‘I smoke high-resin Bob Hope in secret by myself down in the Pump Room off the secondary maintenance tunnel. I use Visine and mint toothpaste and shower with Irish Spring to hide it from almost everyone. Only Pemulis knows the true extent.’

‘…’

‘I’m not the one C.T. and the Moms want gone. I’m not the one they suspect. Pemulis publicly dosed his opponent at Port Washington. It was impossible to miss. The kid was a devout Mormon. The dose was impossible to miss. Sales of Visine bottles of pre-adolescent urine during quarterly tests have been noted, it turns out, and classed as a Pemulis production.’

‘Selling Visine bottles?’

‘I’d be immune to expulsion anyway, obviously, as the Moms’s relative. But I’m suspected of nothing other than ill-considered moral paralysis out there on I. Day. My urine and Axhandle’s urine are just to establish a context of objectivity for Pemulis’s urine. It’s Pemulis they want. I’m almost positive they’re going to give Pemulis the Shoe by the end of the term. I don’t know whether Pemulis knows this or not.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Normally they’re after steroids, endocrine synthetics, mild ‘drines, when they test. The O.N.A.N.T.A. guy gave indications this one’ll be a full-spectrum scan. Gas chromatography followed by electron-bombardment, with spectrometer readings on the resultant mass-fragments. The real McCoy. The kind the Show uses.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Mike stands there and says what if hypothetically somebody was downwind from substances and got exposed and so on. Claimed vague memories of a poppy-seed bagel. Not at all Pemulis’s normal rococo type of lie. This one had a kind of weary earnestness. The guy in the blazer said he’d go ahead and give us thirty days before a full-spectrum scan. Mike had pointed out that there was an enormous lady from Moment due to arrive and snuffle around, making it a really unfortunate time for any outside-chance inadvertent scandals for anybody. It was like the guy needed hardly any prodding to give us time to clean out the system. O.N.A.N.T.A. doesn’t want to catch anybody, really. Good clean fun and so on and so forth.’

‘…’

‘The ingenious layer to the lie was that the guy thought the thirty days’ grace was for Pemulis. That it was what Pemulis needed. Pemulis could pass a urine test hanging upside down in a high wind. Guy watching or not. He has a whole unpleasant catheterization technique you don’t want to hear about. He’s checked it. And Tenuates are apparently the Indy-type car of ‘drines, he says; his own urine can be all innocent and pale with two days’

warning, as long as he stays off the Bob.’

‘…’

‘Booboo, the thirty days was actually for me, and Mike let me stand there with my Unit out and not say anything while he sold the urologist land and magazine subscriptions and Ginsu knives. He did it for me, and I’m not even the one they want.’

‘You can tell me whatever you said.’

‘What I do in secret, Boo, Mike says no more than thirty days to get it all out for sure. Cranberry juice, Calli tea, vinegar in water. Plus or minus a couple days. The Bob Hope I smoke and hide, Boo, it’s fat-soluble. It stays in there, in the body’s fat.’

‘Mrs. Clarke told Bridget the human brain is high in fat, Bridget said.’

‘Mario, if I get caught. If I come up dirty-urined in front of O.N.A.N.T.A., what could C.T. do? It’s not just that I’d lose my even year in 18’s. He’d have to give me the Shoe if he’d brought O.N.A.N.T.A. into it. And what about Himself’s memory? I’m directly related to Himself. Not to mention Orin. And meanwhile here’s this Moment lady lumbering around looking for family linen.’

‘Troeltsch says she all she wants to do is soften Orin’s profile.’

‘The hideous thing is how brightly it’d come out, if I flunk a urine.

E.T.A.’ll be publicly hurt. Hence Himself’s memory, hence Himself.’

‘…’

‘And it’d kill the Moms, Mario. It’d be a terrible kertwang on the Moms. Not so much the Hope. The secrecy of it. That I hid it from her. That she’ll feel I had to hide it from her.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Something terrible will happen if she finds out I hid it from her.’

‘Thirty days is one calendar month of Calli tea and juice, you’re saying.’

‘Of tea and vinegar and total abstinence. Of no substances whatsoever. Of abrupt and total withdrawal while I try to justify my seed at the WhataBurger and maybe get offered up to Wayne at the Fundraiser. And then your birthday in two weeks.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘Jesus and then the SAT’s in December, I’ll have to finish prepping for the Boards and then take the Boards while still in abrupt withdrawal.’

‘You’ll get a perfect score. Everybody’s betting you get a perfect score. I’ve heard them.’

‘Marvelous. That’s just exactly what I need to hear.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘And of course you’re hurt, Boo, that I’ve tried to hide all of it from you.’

‘I’m zero percent hurt, Hal.’

‘And of course you’re wondering why I didn’t just tell you when of course you knew anyway, knew something, the times hanging upside-down in the weight room with a forehead Lyle didn’t even want to get near. You sitting there letting me say I was just really really tired and nightmare-ridden.’

‘I feel like you always tell me the truth. You tell me when it’s right to.’

‘Marvelous.’

‘I feel like you’re the only one who knows when it’s right to tell. I can’t know for you, so why should I be hurt.’

‘Be a fucking human being for once, Boo. I room with you and I hid it from you and let you worry and be hurt that I was trying to hide it.’

‘I wasn’t hurt. I don’t want you to be sad.’

‘You can get hurt and mad at people, Boo. News-flash at almost fucking nineteen, kid. It’s called being a person. You can get mad at somebody and it doesn’t mean they’ll go away. You don’t have to put on a Moms-act of total trust and forgiveness. One liar’s enough.’

‘You’re scared your pee might still flunk after one calendar month.’

‘Jesus it’s like talking to a big poster of some smily-faced guy. Are you in there?’

‘And you can’t use a Visine bottle of pee because the man will be right there looking at your penis, and Trevor and Pemulis’s penises.’

‘The sun’s thinking about coming up in the window. You can see it.’

‘It’s been like forty hours without Bob Hope and already I’m bats inside and I can’t sleep without more of the horror-show dreams. I feel like I’m stuck halfway down a chimney.’

‘You beat Ortho, and your toothache’s gone.’

Temulis and Axhandle say a month’ll be tit. Pemulis’s only concern is is this DMZ he got for the WhataBurger detectable. He goes to the library and pores. He’s fully alert and functional. [321]It seems different with me, Boo. I feel a hole. It’s going to be a huge hole, in a month. A way more than Hal-sized hole.’

‘So what do you think you should do?’

‘And the hole’s going to get a little bigger every day until I fly apart in different directions. I’ll fly apart in midair. I’ll fly apart in the Lung, or at Tucson at 200 degrees in front of all these people who knew Himself and think I’m different. Whom I’ve lied to, and liked it. It’ll all come out anyway, clean pee or no.’

‘Hey Hal?’

‘And it’ll kill her. I know it will. It will kill her dead, Booboo, I’m afraid.’

‘Hey Hal? What are you going to do?’

‘…’

‘Hal?’

‘Booboo, I’m up on my elbow again. Tell me what you think I should do.’ ‘Me tell you?’

‘I’m just two big aprick ears right here, Boo. Listening. Because I do not know what to do.’

‘Hal, if I tell you the truth, will you get mad and tell me be a fucking?’

‘I trust you. You’re smart, Boo.’

Then Hal?’

‘Tell me what I should do.’

‘I think you just did it. What you should do. I think you just did.’

‘…’

‘Do you see what I mean?’

In Don Gately’s medical absence, Johnette F. had worked five straight night shifts on Dream Duty and was in the front office just after 0830 writing up the previous night in the Log, trying to think of synonyms for boredom and periodically dipping a finger in her scalding coffee to stay awake, plus listening to distant toilets flush and showers hiss and residents clunking sleepily around in the kitchen and dining room and everything like that, when somebody all of a sudden starts knocking at the House’s front door, which meant that the person was like a newcomer or stranger, since people in the Ennet House recovery community know that the front door’s unlocked at 0800 and always completely open to all but the Law as of 0801.