Read Brief Interviews With Hideous Men Online
Authors: David Foster Wallace
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (13 page)
Q.
‘What if I told you she said it wasn’t the violation or the terror or the pain or any of that, that it—that the biggest part, afterwards, of trying to like structure her mind around it, to fit what happened into the world of her, that the worst part the hardest part of it was now knowing she could think of
herself
that way too if she wanted? As a thing. That it’s totally possible to think of yourself not as you or even a person but just a thing, just like it was for the four guys. And how easy and powerful that was to do that, to think that, even while the violation’s going on, to just split yourself off and like float up to the ceiling and there you are looking down at this thing getting worse and worse things done to it and the thing is you and it doesn’t mean anything, there’s nothing that it just automatically
means,
and it’s a very intensive freedom and power in many ways, that now all bets are off and everything’s taken away and you can do anything to anybody or even to yourself if you want because who cares because what does it really matter because what are you anyway just this thing to shove a Jack Daniel’s bottle into, and who cares if it’s a bottle what difference does it make if it’s a dick or a fist or a plumber’s helper or this cane right here—what would it be like to be able to be like this? You think you can imagine it? You think you can but you can’t. But what if I said now she could? What if I told you she could because she’s had this happen and she totally knows it’s possible to be just a thing but just like Victor Frankl that every minute from then on minute by minute if you want you can
choose
to be more if you want, you can
choose
to be a human being and have it
mean
something? Then what would you say?’
Q.
‘I’m calm, don’t worry about me. It’s like Frankl’s thing of learning it’s not automatic, how it’s a matter of choice to be a human being with sacred rights instead of a thing or a rat and most people are so smug and knee-jerk and walking around asleep they don’t even know it’s something you have to actually choose for yourself that only has meaning when all the like props and stage-settings that let you just go around smugly assuming you’re not a thing are ripped away and broken because all of a sudden now the world understands you as a thing, everybody else thinks you’re a rat or a thing and now it’s up to you, you’re the only one that can decide if you’re more. What if I said I wasn’t even married? Then what? Then it’s showtime, believe you me baby, which believe me everybody that’s never had that kind of total attack and violation happen where everything they thought they were just automatically born with that smugly lets them walk around assuming they’re automatically more than a thing gets skinned off and folded up and put in a Jack Daniel’s bottle and shoved up your ass by four drunk guys who your suffering and violation was just their idea of fun, a way to kill a couple hours, no big deal, none of them probably even remember it, that nobody that hasn’t had that kind of thing really happen to them ever gets to be this
broad
afterwards, to always deep-down know it’s always a choice, that it’s you that is making yourself up second by second every second from now on, that the only one that thinks you’re even a person every second is you and you could stop anytime you wanted and whenever you want go back to just being a thing that eats fucks shits tries to sleep goes for dialysis and gets square bottles shoved so far up their ass it breaks by four guys that knee-jerked you in the balls to make you bend over that you didn’t even know or ever saw before and never did anything to to make it make any sense for them to want to knee you or rape you or ever ask for that kind of total degradation. That don’t even know your name, that do this to you and don’t even know your name, you don’t even have a name. You don’t automatically have a name, it’s not something you just have, you know. To get to find out you even have to choose to even have a name or to be more than just a machine programmed with different reactions when they do different things to you when they think of them to pass the time until they get bored and that it’s all up to you every second afterwards and what if I said it happened to me? Would that make a difference? You that are all full of knee-jerk politics about your ideas about victims? Does it have to be a woman? You think, maybe you think you can imagine it better if it was a woman because her external props look more like yours so it’s easier to see her as a human being that’s being violated so if it was somebody with a dick and no tits it wouldn’t be as real to you? Like if it wasn’t Jewish people in the Holocaust if it was just me in the Holocaust? Who do you think would care then? Do you think anybody cared about Victor Frankl or admired his humanity until he gave them
Man’s Search for Meaning?
I’m not saying it happened to me or him or my wife or even if it happened but what if it did? What if I did it to you? Right here? Raped you with a bottle? Do you think it’d make any difference? Why? What are you? How do you know? You don’t know shit.’
From
Leckie & Webster’s Connotationally Gender-Specific Lexicon of Contemporary Usage,
a 600gb DVD
3
Product with 1.6gb of Hyperavailable Hot Text Keyed to 11.2gb of Contextual, Etymological, Historical, Usage, and Gender-Specific Connotational Notes, Available Also with Lavish Illustrative Support in All 5 Major Sense-Media*, ©2096 by R. Leckie DataFest Unltd. (NYPHDC/US/4Grid).
* (compatible hardware required)
date
3
(
d
t
)
n.
[20C English, from Middle English, from Old French, from Medieval Latin
data,
feminine past participle of
dare,
to give.]
1
Informal.
(see also
soft date
)
a.
Consequent to the successful application for a License to Parent (KEY at
PROCREATIVITY
; at
BREED
/
(v.)
; at
PARENT
/
(v.)
; at
OFFSPRING, SOFT
), the process of voluntarily submitting one’s nucleotide configurations and other Procreativity Designators to an agency empowered by law to identify an optimal female neurogenetic complement for the purposes of Procreative Genital Interface (KEY at
PROCREATIVITY
; at
COMPLEMENTARITY, OPTIMAL NEUROGENETIC
; at
P.G.I.
; at
NEUROGENETICS, STATISTICAL).
b.
A living female P.G.I.-complement identified via the procedures denoted by
date
3
1.a.
____________
date
3
1.a
USAGE
/
CONTEXTUAL NOTE:
“You are too old by far to be the type of man who checks his replicase levels before breakfast and has high-baud macros for places like Fruitful Union P.G.I. Coding or SoftSci Deoxyribonucleic Intercode Systems in his Mo.SyS deck, and yet here you are, parking the heads on your V.F.S.A. telediddler and checking your replicase levels and padding your gen-résumé like a randy freshman, preparing for what appears for all the world to be an attempt at a soft date” (
McInerney et seq. [via OmniLit TRF Matrix],
2068).
____________
2.
Vulgar.
‡
(see also
hard date
)
a.
The creation and/or use of a Virtual Female Sensory Array (KEY at
V.F.S.A.
; at Historical Note for
REALITY, VIRTUAL
; at
TELEDIDDLER
; at
COITUS, DIGITAL
; at
POLIOEROTIC
; at
OBJECTIFICATION, LITERAL
) for the purposes of Simulated Genital Interface (KEY at
S.G.I.
).
b.
A drive-captured and reusable V.F.S.A., to which proper names and various sexual and/or personality characteristics are sometimes applied by overwrought male users (KEY at
MESH, DFX
; at
BABE, CYBER-
; at
FEMALE, HARD
; at
SYNDROME, V.F.S.A.- PERSONALIZATION
).
____________
date
3
2.
USAGE/HISTORICAL NOTE:
R. and F. Leckie, eds.,
DFX Lattice of the Monochromosomatic Psyche,
and other authorities hold standard definition
2
of
date
3
to be connotationally descended from the
(n.)/(v.)
use of
date
by 20C prostitutes to solicit genital-financial interface without exposing themselves to statutory prosecution. The same authorities hold the euphemym
hard date
to be derived from the c. 2020 idiomatic/vulgar
hardware-dating
(arch.),
a compound gerund denoting (with the 20s’ characteristic lack of subtlety) “
sex with a machine
”
/
“
machine-assisted sex
” (
Webster’s IX,
2027, DVD/ROM/print).
Soft date
is held to have evolved as a natural antonym by at least 2030. Some authorities argue that
soft date
’s idiomatic longevity is also due to its apparently coincidental ability to connote the tender sentiments often associated with P.G.I. and soft offspring (see below; KEY at
SENTIMENTS, TENDER
).
____________
____________
date
3
USAGE/HISTORICAL NOTE
:
Definitions
1
and
2
supra
are both the connotational descendants of the univocal 20C definition of
date
3
: “(
a) social engagement(s) with (a) member(s) of the opposite sex
”
(Webster’s V,
1999, ROM/print).
Nash & Leckie’s Condensed DVD
2
History of Male Sexuality
notes that for 20C males,
date
as intergender “social engagement” could connote either of two highly distinct endeavors: (A) the mutual exploration of possibilities for long-term neurogenetic compatibility (KEY at Historical Note (5) for
RELATIONSHIP
), leading to legally codified intergender union and P.G.I. and soft offspring; or (B) the unilateral pursuit of an immediate, vigorous, and uncodified episode of genital interface without regard to neurogenetic compatibility or soft offspring or even a telephone call the next day. Because—according to R. and F. Leckie, eds.,
DFX Lattice of the Monochromosomatic Psyche
—the connotational range of
date
3
as “social engagement” for 20C females was almost exclusively (A), whereas an implicit but often unspoken and just as often fraudulent interest in connotation (A) was often employed by 20C males for purposes related exclusively to connotation (B) (KEY at
LOTHARIONISM
; at
SPORTFUCKING
‡
; at
MISOGAMY
; at
LIZARDRY, LOUNGE-
‡
; at
OEDIPAL, PRE-
), the result of an estimated 86.5% of 20C
dates
was a state of severe emotional dissonance between the
date
’s participants, a dissonance attributed by most sources to basic psychosemantic miscodings (KEY at
MISCODINGS, INTERGENDER
; Secondary KEYS at Historical Notes for
MISOGYNY, OSTENSIBLE PROJECTED FORMS OF
; for
VICTIMIZATION, CULTURE OF
; for
FEMINISM, MALEVOLENT SEPARATIST OF EARLY U.S. 21C
; for
SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF LATE 20C, PATHETIC DELUSIONS OF
).
The A.D. 2006 patent and 2008 commercial introduction of Digitally Manipulable Video (KEY at D.M.V.
2
; at MICROSOFT-VCA D.M.V. VENTURES CORP.), in which video pornography could be home-edited to allow the simulated introduction of the viewer into filmed images of explicit genital interface, were upheld in U.S.S.C. Civil Action #1819049,
Schumpkin et al. v. Microsoft-VCA D.M.V. Ventures Corp.
(2009), partly on the grounds that the availability to U.S. male consumers of wholly depersonalized simulacra of genital interface could reasonably be expected to palliate the 86.5% semioemotional conflict that attended genuine interpersonal
dating
; and this reasoning was subsequently (2012) extended to the legal introduction of Virtual Reality Sensory Arrays, whose costly full-body Joysuit with four extensions for human appendages rapidly gave way (2014) to the now familiar five-extension “Polioerotic Joysuit” and the first generation of three-dimensional Virtual Female DXF Meshes (KEY at
JOYSUIT, POLIOEROTIC
; at
TELEDIDDLER
†
; at
MESH, DXF
; at
MODELING, NAUGHTY
‡
; Secondary KEY at Historical Notes for
DESIGN, COMPUTER-ASSISTED
; for
FEMALE, VIRTUAL
), home-entertainment innovations which, despite initial bugs and glitches (KEY at
ELECTROCUTION, GENITAL
), evolved rapidly into the current technology of V.F.S.A.’s and S.-R.J.A.’s (KEY at
ARRAY, VIRTUAL FEMALE SENSORY
; at
APPENDAGE, SHOCK-RESISTANT JOYSUIT
-), a technology which has all but forced today’s modificatory split into the bivocal “hard” and “soft” denotations for
date
3
.
____________
date
3
GENDER-SPECIFIC CONNOTATIONAL NOTE:
Most contemporary-usage authorities observe a marked shift, for 21C males, in the “romantic” or “emotional” connotations of
date
3
(KEY at
SENTIMENTS, TENDER
), affective connotations which, for most males, have now been removed altogether from “hard” or S.G.I.-
dating
(KEY at
DYSPHORIA, HYPERORGASMIC
; at
N.G.O.S.
; at
SYNDROME, NARCISSISTIC GRATIFICATION OVERLOAD
; at
SOLIPSISM, TECHNOSEXUAL
) and, in “soft” or P.G.I.-
dating
, have now been transferred almost entirely to the procreative function and the gratification associated with having one’s Procreativity Designators affirmed by both culture and complement as neurogenetically desirable (KEY at
PARADOXES, TECHNOSEXUAL
; at
DOGMA, PERVERSE VINDICATION OF CATHOLIC
).
____________
