Infinite Jest (77 page)

The thunder’s died down to a mutter, and the window’s spatter’s gone random and post-storm
sad.

An E.T.A. female (female students wear two different towels, coming in), a breastless
senior who can barely perspire at all, is troubled, whenever she has lunch with her
fiancé, by the persistent whine of a mosquito that she can’t see and no one else can
hear. Summer and winter, indoors or alfresco. But only at lunch, and only with her
fiancé. Remarks or advice are not always the point. Sometimes suffering’s point is
almost crying out in a high-pitched whine to be heard. As fitness gurus go, Lyle is
results-oriented and can-do.
¹⁵³
Ten-year-old Kent Blott, whose parents are Seventh-Day Adventists, isn’t yet old
enough to masturbate, but he hears quite a lot about it, not surprisingly, from his
adolescent peers, in rather lush detail, masturbation, and is worried about what sorts
of homemade-type potentially wicked and soul-sapping pornographic cartridges will
run through his psychic projector as he masturbates, when he eventually can masturbate,
and worries about whether different sorts of fantasy scenes and combinations herald
different sorts of psychic dysfunction or turpitude, and wants to get a good jump
on worrying about it. The sounds of the dining hall’s gala are more frequent and convulsive
without the sound of rain. Lyle tells Blott not to let the weight he would pull to
himself exceed his own personal weight. Up to the left the storm’s clouds’ stragglers
run like ink in water between the window and the risen moon. Mario Incandenza’s presidential
puppet is just about to inaugurate Subsidized Time. 16-B’s Anton Doucette’s been driven
to Lyle he says by an increasing self-consciousness about the big round dark raised
mole on his upper-upper lip, just under his left nostril. It’s only a mole but looks
pretty dire, nasally. People who first meet him are always pulling him off to the
side and handing him a Kleenex. Doucette lately wishes either the mole were gone or
he were gone. Even if people don’t stare at the mole it’s like they’re
intentionally
not staring at it. Doucette pounds himself in the chest and thigh, supposedly in
frustration. He just cannot come to terms with how it must look. It’s getting worse
as puberty intensifies, the anxiety. Then in a vicious cycle the anxiety prompts the
nervous tic on his face’s right side. He’s starting to suspect that some upperclassmen
are referring to him behind his back as Anton (‘Booger’) Doucette. It’s like he’s
frozen on this anxiety, unable to move on to more advanced anxieties. He can’t see
any way past this. The pounding is more a sign of intense unconscious self-hatred,
though, Lyle knows. Doucette grimaces and says he’s starting to want to play tennis
with his hand over his nose and upper lip. But he has a two-handed backhand and it’s
too late to switch and there’s no way they’re going to let him switch to one hand
just for aesthetic reasons. Lyle sends Anton Doucette packing off with directions
to come on back with Mario Incandenza the minute the I.-Day gala lets out. Mario gets
a fair number of aesthetic-self-consciousness referrals from Lyle. No type or rank
of guru is above delegating. It’s like a law. Doucette says it’s like he’s stuck.
It’s becoming all he thinks about. This is on his way out. His back’s additional moles
form no outline or shape. Lyle pops the tab to a C.F.D.C. Mario tends to bring down
most evenings around suppertime. In between door-dickyings and visits Lyle does little
isometric neck-stretches, for the tension.

Between Gerhardt Schtitt’s pipe and Avril Incandenza’s Benson & Hedges and certain
cheeks full of chewing tobacco—plus the maddening cooking-smells of honey and chocolate
and real high-lipid walnuts from the kitchen vents, plus over 150 very fit bodies
only some of which have been showered on this day off—the dining hall is warm and
close and multi-odored. Mario as
auteur
opts for his late father’s parodic device of mixing real and fake news-summary cartridges,
magazine articles, and historical headers from the last few great daily papers, all
for a sort of time-lapse exposition of certain developments leading up to Interdependence
and Subsidized Time and cartographic Reconfiguration and the renewal of a tight and
considerably tidier Experialist U.S. of A., under Gentle:

UKRAINE, TWO MORE BALTIC STATES APPLY FOR NATO INCLUSION—16-point bold Header;

SO THEN WHY A NATO?—Editorial Header;

E.E.C. SIDES WITH PACIFIC RIM, UPS TARIFFS IN RESPONSE TO U.S. QUOTAS—Header;

GENTLE ON WASTE STORAGE FROM DISMANTLED NATO THERMS: ‘NOT IN MY NATION, BABE’—12-point
Subheader;

‘Amid smiles and two-handed handshakes that belied the high tensions here, the leaders
of twelve out of fifteen NATO nations today signed an accord effectively dismantling
the Western Bloc’s fifty-five-year-old defensive alliance.’—News-Summary Cartridge
Voiceover;

U.S., CANADIAN SUPPORT CUTS DOOMED NATO SUMMIT FROM START, ICELANDIC POL DECLARES—Header;

SO THEN WHY NOT A CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE, NOW, MAYBE?—Editorial Header;

MEXICO SIGNS ON FOR ‘ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICAN NATIONS’ CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE;
BUT QUÉBEC SEPARATISTS RALLY AGAINST ‘FINLANDIZATION’ OF ‘O.N.A.N.’ ALLIANCE; BUT
GENTLE TO CANADA: UNLESS ‘O.N.A.N.’ TREATY SIGNED, NAFTA NULL, MANITOBAN THERMS STAY
PUT, INTRACONTINENTAL POLLUTION AND WASTE DISPOSAL EACH NATION’S ‘INTERESTS TO PURSUE
TO THE BEST THEY SEE FIT’—Header from Veteran but Methamphetamine-Dependent Headliner
Finally Demoted after Repeated Warnings about Taking up Too Much Space;

FED WORKERS PROTEST RANDOM FINGERNAIL-HYGIENE SCREENS—12-point Header;

GENTLE PROPOSES NATIONALIZATION OF INTERLACE TELENT—Header; SAYS GOVT IN LINE FOR
‘PIECE OF THE ACTION’ ON VIDEO, CARTRIDGE, DISK RENTALS—8-point subheader;

BURGER KING’S PILLSBURY AWARDED RIGHTS TO NEW YEAR—Header; PIZZA HUT’S PEPSICO FILES
BID-RIGGING COMPLAINT WITH IRS—12-point Subheader; CALENDAR AND PRE-PRINTED CHECK
INDUSTRIES STOCKS SOAR—8-point subheader;

Three blue-jawed convicts in antiquated stripes dicky their cell’s lock and run, backed
by sirens and searchlights’ crisscrossed play, not for the wall but straight to the
Warden’s empty nighttime office, where they sit rapt before his old dual-modem MacIntosh,
slapping their knees and pointing to the monitor and elbowing each other in the ribs,
nibbling at inexplicably-appeared boxes of popcorn, with a Voiceover: ‘Cartridges
by Modem! Just Insert a Blank Diskette! Break Free of the Confinement of Your Channel
Selector!’—Some more of Ms. Heath’s classes’ puppets in a B-film parody of the InterLace
TelEntertainment ads that the cable networks seemed so mysteriously suicidally to
run all the time that last year of Unsubsidized Time;

O.N.A.N. PACT PENNED—24-point Superheader;

CANADA ‘NUCK’LES UNDER—Tabloidish NY Daily’s 24-point Superheader;

ACID RAIN, LANDFILLS, BARGES, FUSION-TECH, MANITOBAN THERMS WERE ‘BIG STICKS,’ CHRÉTIEN
ADMITS—16-point Header;

SHORT-HAIRED MEN IN SHINY TRUCKS ARE NOT DISMANTLING MANITOBAN THERMS BUT INSTEAD
MOVING THEM JUST OVER BORDER INTO TURTLE MTN. INDIAN RESERVATION, HORRIFIED N.D. GOV
CHARGES—12-point Subheader from Demoted Headliner Already in Dutch Down in the Subheader
Dept., Now, Too;

EXCLUSIVE COLOR PHOTOS SHOW BRAVE DOCS FUTILELY FIGHTING TIME TO REMOVE RAILROAD SPIKE
FROM CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER’S RIGHT EYE—Tabloidish NY Daily’s 16-point Header;

PRESIDENT’S OFFICE IS ‘A ANALLY RETENTIVE HORROR SHOW’ SAYS THIS JUST RETIRED WHITE
HOUSE CUSTODIAN—Tabloid Header with Photo of Old Guy with Basically One Eyebrow Running
All the Way across His Forehead Holding up a Mammoth Plastic Barrel He Claims Held
Just One Day’s Haul of Dental Stimulators, Alcohol-Soaked Cotton Puffs, GI-X-Ray-Grade
Colonic Purgative Bottles, Epidermal Ash, Surgical Masks and Gloves, Q-Tips, Kleenex,
and Homeopathic Pruritis-Cream Containers;

U.S.O.U.S. CHIEF TINE: CHARGES OF AN OVAL OFFICE LITTERED WITH KLEENEX AND FLOSS A
‘CLEAR CASE OF DIRTY TRICKS’—Respectable Daily Header;

OVERLOADED WASTE BARGES COLLIDE, CAPSIZE OFF GLOUCESTER—Boston Daily Header;

HUGE PUTRID SLICK EMPTIES BEACHES OFF BOTH SHORES, CAPE—Equally Large Subheader;

GENTLE SPEAKS OUT ON A U.S. ‘CONSTIPATEDLY IMPACTED ON CONTINENTAL WASTE’ AT U.N.L.V.
COMMENCEMENT—Header;

AD COUNCIL REPORT: BOSTON’S VINEY & VEALS AGENCY’S LIPOSUCTION AND TONGUE-STICK CAMPAIGNS
NOT TO BLAME FOR ABC HQ BOMB THREATS—
Advertising Age
Header;

‘The Governors of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire today reacted strongly to President
Gentle’s establishment of a blue-ribbon panel of waste experts to investigate the
feasibility of mass landfill and conversion sites in northern New England’—Respectable
NY Daily’s Lead ’Graph;

‘WE ARE NOT THIS CONTINENT’S SIGMOID COLON,’ GENTLE WARNS O.N.A.N. JOINT SESSION—Header;

BETHESDA MD’S: STRICKEN PRESIDENT CONFINED FOR ‘HYGIENIC STRESS’ FOLLOWING INCOHERENT
O.N.A.N. ADDRESS—Header;

HOLOGRAPHY MAKES ULTRA-TOXIC FUSION GAMBIT SAFE FOR WORKERS, COMMUNITY, D.O.E. REP
ASSURES METHUEN P.T.A.—Boston Daily Header;

GENTLE OUT OF BETHESDA NAVAL HOSP CONFINEMENT, TO ADDRESS U.S. CONGRESS ON ‘RECONFIGURATIVE
OPTIONS’ FOR ‘TIGHT, TIDIER NATIONAL ERA’—Header,

all these twirling journalistically out from a black-acetate (one of O. Stice’s old
Fila warm-up tops) background in vintagely allusive old-b&w-film style, with a sonic
background of that sad sappy Italianate stuff Scorcese had loved for his own montages,
with the headlines lap-dissolving into transverse-angled shots of a modest, green-masked
Gentle accepting tight-lipped handshakes from Mexican and Canadian officials in an
agreement to make the U.S. President the first Chair of the Organization of North
American Nations, with Mexican Presidente and new heavily guarded Canadian
P.M.
to be co-Vice Chairs. Gentle’s first State of the O.N.A.N. Address, delivered before
a triple-size Congress on the very last day of ‘B.S.’ solar time, holds out the promise
of a whole bright spanking new millennium of sacrifices and rewards and Interdependence’s
‘not impossibly radically altered new look,’ continent-wide.

Do not underestimate objects! Lyle says he finds it impossible to overstress this:
do
not
underestimate objects. Partridge KS’s serve-and-volley prodigy Ortho (‘The Darkness’)
Stice, 16-A’s very top man, whose sauna-fresh torso gleams the same color as the moonlight
off the idle weights’ metal, is being driven right to the edge by the fact that he
goes to sleep with his bed against one wall and then but wakes up with his bed against
a whole nother wall. Stice’d already had a whole series of beefs with roommate Kyle
D. Coyle because he’d figured clearly Coyle was moving Stice’s bed around in Stice’s
sleep. But then Coyle got put in the infirmary with a suspicious discharge, and he’s
been out of the room for the last two nights, Coyle, and here Stice is still waking
up with his bed against a different wall. So then he thought like Axford or Struck
was dickying his door with a meal-card and sneaking in really late and messing with
Stice’s bed out of obscure motives. So but last night Stice jammed a chair up against
his door and piled empty tennis-ball cans on the chair to make a racket if there was
any dickying, and lined up still more cans on the sills of all three windows, just
to cover all bases; and but so the reason he’s here is this
A.M.
he wakes up with his bed moved over against the chair by the door at an angle he
didn’t care for one bit and with all the ball-cans arranged in a neat pyramid in the
dusty rectangle where his bed was supposed to normally be. Ortho Stice can think of
only three possible explanations for what’s going on, and he presents them to an attentive
cheek-sucking Lyle in ascending order of grimness. One is that Stice is telekinetic,
but only in his sleep. Two is that somebody else at E.T.A. is telekinetic and has
it in for Stice and wants to drive him batsoid for some reason. Three is that Stice
is like getting up in his sleep and rearranging the room without knowing it or remembering
it, which means he’s a severe fucking somnambulist, which means Lord only knows what
all else he could get up and wander around and do in his sleep. He’s got promise,
the Staff say; he’s got a quite legit shot at the Show when he graduates. Which he
does not want to mess up with any sort of telekinetic or somnambulistical shenanigans.
Stice offers up the planes of his torso and forehead. He wears one of his own personal
towels, a black one. He is slim but wiry and beautifully muscled, and sweats freely
and well. He says he knows too well he’d neglected Lyle’s advice about the pull-down
station two years back, and regrets it. He wholeheartedly apologizes for the time
last spring he got Struck and Axford to distract Lyle and then Krazy-Glued Lyle’s
left buttock’s Spandex to the wooden top of the towel dispenser. Stice says he realizes
he’s the last guy with any right to come to Lyle cap in hand after all the cracks
about the diet and hairstyle and all. But here he is, cap in hand, or rather calotte
in hand, offering up his sauna’d planes, asking for Lyle’s input.

Lyle waves bygones away like a gnat you barely look at. He is completely engaged.
The lightning now far off out over the Atlantic treats him like a weak strobe.
Do not underestimate objects,
he advises Stice. Do not leave objects out of account. The world, after all, which
is radically old, is made up mostly of objects. Lyle leans in, waves Stice up even
closer, and consents to tell Stice the story of this one man he once knew of. This
man earned his living by going to various public sites where people congregated and
were bored and impatient and cynical, he’d go in and bet people that he could stand
on any chair in the place and then lift that chair up off the ground while standing
on it. A bootstrap-type scenario. His M.O. is he climbs up on a chair and stands there
and says publicly Hey, I can lift this chair I stand on. A bystander holds the bets.
The idle bus-depot or DMV-waiting-area or hospital-lobby crowd is dumbstruck. They
gaze up at a man who is standing 100% on top of a chair he has grabbed the back of
and raised several m. off the ground. There is vigorous speculation about how the
trick’s done, which gives rise to side-bet action. A devoutly religious experimental
oncologist dying of his own inoperable colorectal neoplastis moans Why oh why Lord
do You give this man this idiotic picayune power and I no power over my own ravening
colorectal cells. There are numerous silent variations on this sort of meditation
in the crowd. The bet won, the $ finally forked over and handed up to him, the man
Lyle says he once knew of now jumps back down to the floor, incidental change spraying
from his pockets on impact, straightens his tie, and walks off, leaving behind a dumbfounded
crowd still staring up at an object he had not underestimated.