Infinite Jest (87 page)

R
ODNEY
T
INE
, C
HIEF
, U
NITED
S
TATES
O
FFICE OF
U
NSPECIFIED
S
ERVICES
: President Gentle’s asked us all here this morning to put our collective expertise
together on an issue about which we in Unspecified Services believe he’s been hit
with a truly seminal set of creative insights.

G
ENTLE
: Gentlemen, we’re both pleased and concerned to report that our seminal experiment
in the Territorial Reconfiguration of O.N.A.N.
¹⁷⁷
has been a thoroughgoing logistical coup. More or less. Delaware’s looking a bit
crowded, and one or two curvy-horned animals apparently got by the tactical squads,
and there’s rather less overall good sportsmanship in downstate New New York than
we’d like to see, but overall I think ‘thoroughgoing coup’ would not be out of line
as a term to describe this sort of success.

T
INE
: Now it’s time to think about how to pay for it.

A
LL
S
ECS.
[Stiff turns to look at each other, tie- and mustache-straightenings, gulping sounds.]

G
ENTLE
: Rod informs me Marty’s got the preliminary figures on gross costs, while Chet’s
boys have provided us with some projections on gross revenue-losses from the Reconfiguration
of taxable territories and households and businesses and that there.

S
EC.
T
RANSP.
& S
EC.
T
REAS.
[Pass around thick bound folders, each emblazoned with the yawning red skull that
emblazons all bad-news memos in the Gentle administration. Folders opened and scanned
by
ALL SECS.
Sounds of jaws hitting the tabletop. A couple mustaches fall off altogether. One
SEC.
heard to ask whether there’s even a name for a figure with this many zeroes.
GENTLE
’s portabubble on-screen is hit right over his plastic-wrapped corsage by a half-chewed
Raisinette, to half-hearted audience cheers. Another cross-dressed Motown puppet is
throwing a tiny string noose over a beam at the back of the velvet-lined Cabinet Room.]

G
ENTLE
: Boys. Men. Before anybody needs oxygen here [holding a placative hand up against
the bubble’s glass], let Rod here explain that despite a quantitative downer-type
quality to these figures, all we merely have here is just what Rod might call an exaggerated
example of a quadrennial problem any administration with vision is going to have to
face eventually anyway. By the way, the unfamiliar but welcome face on my left here
is Mr. P. Tom Veals, of Veals Associates Advertising, Boston, USA, N.A.

A
LL
S
ECS.
[Not terribly placated-sounding mutterings of salutation to Veals.]

M
R.
P. T
OM
V
EALS
[A tiny little caucasoid Tootsie-Pop-stick-puppet body and enormous face that’s mostly
front teeth and spectacles]: Yo.

T
INE
: And to Tom’s own left may I also present the charming and delightful Ms. Luria P———[indicating
with pointer a puppet simply beyond pulchritudinous belief; the Cabinet Room’s conference
table seems to ascend ever so slightly as Luria P———cocks a well-pencilled eyebrow].

S
TILL
T
INE
: Gentlemen, what the president is articulating is that what we face here is a microsmic
exemplar of the infamous Democratic Triple Bind faced by visionarians from FDR and
JFK on down. The American electorate, as is its every right, on one hand demands the
sort of millennial statesmanship and vision—decisive action, tough choices, lots of
programs and services—see for instance the Territorial Reconfiguration for example—that
will lead a renewed community into a whole new era of interdependent choice and freedom.

G
ENTLE
: The rhetorical chapeau’s off to you, babe.

T
INE
[Rising, eyes now two glittery red points in his round face’s felt, the eyes two
tiny smoke-detector bulbs run off a single AAA cell taped to the back of the puppet’s
surgical gown]: Now, speaking in the very most general terms, if the president’s vision
dictates the tough choice of cutting certain programs and services, our statistical
people predict with reasonable inductive certainty that the American electorate will
whinge.

V
EALS
: Whinge?

L
URIA
P———[T
O
T
INE
]: This is a Canadian idiom, cheri.

V
EALS
: And who is this chick?

T
INE
[Looking momentarily blank]: Sorry Tom. Canadian idiom. Whinge. Complain. Petition
for redress. Assemble. March in those five-abreast demonstrating lines. Shake upraised
fists in unison. Whinge [indicating photos on easels behind him of various historical
pressure- and advocacy groups whingeing].

S
EC.
T
REAS.
: And we already have an all-too-good idea of what will happen if we attempt any sort
of conventional revenue enhancements.

S
EC.
S
TATE
: Tax revolt.

S
EC.
H.E.W.: A whingeathon, Chief.

S
EC.
D
EF.
: Tea-party.

G
ENTLE
: Bullseye. Whingeville. Political whingeocide. A serious drag-caliber lapse in mandate.
We’ve already promised no new enhancements. I told them on Inauguration Day. I said
look into my eyes: no new enhancements. I pointed at my eyes up there and said that
was one tough choice that was not going to rain on anybody’s program. Rod and Tom
and I had that three-planked platform-exhibit. One: waste. Two: no new enhancements.
Three: find somebody outside the borders of our community selves to blame.

T
INE
: So then a double bind, so far, with potential whingeing on both flanks.

S
EC.
T
REAS.
: And yet the financial communities demand a balanced federal budget. The Reserve
Board all but insists on a balanced budget. Our balance of trade with the handful
of nations we’re still trading with requires a stable buck and so a balanced budget.

T
INE
: The third flank, Chet, of the Triple Bind. Outflows required, inflows restricted,
balance demanded.

G
ENTLE
: The classic executive-branch Cerberus-horned dilemma. The thorn in the Achilles’
tendon of democratic process. Does anybody here by the way hear a sort of high pitch?

A
LL
S
ECS.
[Blank glances at one another.]

V
EALS
[Blows nose at high volume.]

G
ENTLE
[Knocking experimentally on interior surfaces of portabubble]: Sometimes I hear a
pitch at a high range beyond most people’s hearing, admittedly, but this seems like
a different type of high pitch.

A
LL
S
ECS.
[Necktie-knot-adjusting, polished-tabletop-studying.]

G
ENTLE
: That would be a no on the pitch, then.

V
EALS
: Could this all be moved along up to at least a canter, guys?

T
INE
: Perhaps it’s the distinctive high pitch that sometimes precedes your getting ready
to announce some seminal, visionary insight you’ve achieved into the previously intractable
Triple Bind, sir.

G
ENTLE
: Babe, Rod, again a direct hit. Gentlemen: have a gander at these restaurant exhibits
of the Sino-epithetic calendrical scheme.

T
INE
: Meaning of course these placemats right here, bearing directly on the president’s
revenue vision.

G
ENTLE
: Gentlemen, as you all know I’ve just returned, at extremely high speeds, burping
up the taste of wieners I’m pretty sure were just crawling with every sort of microbe
that makes publicly vended concessions a scourge and menace that—

T
INE
[Ixnayish hand-signal]

G
ENTLE
: But so gentlemen I’m fresh back from a goodwill appearance at a post-collegiate
bowl game. At which I ingested the pre-mentioned franks. But the real point is: do
any of you guys happen to know the
name
of that collegiate bowl game?

S
EC.
H.U.D.: We thought you’d said it was the Forsythia Bowl, Chief.

G
ENTLE
: That, Mr. Sivnik, is because that’s what I was thinking its name in fact was, en
route, when we’d all interfaced on the old scrambler. That’s what the name was when
I did the anthem there in ’91.

L
URIA
P———[Holding up zodiacalized placemat with a slight grease-corona’d spot of Hot and
Sour Soup in the upper left corner]: Perhaps you would care now to tell your cabinet
what ze contest of football calls itself, M. Président.

G
ENTLE
[With a showmanlike look at VEALS, who’s probing the gap between his mammoth incisors
with the business cards of the CEOs of Pillsbury and Pepsico]: Boys, I heard punts,
burped redhots, smelled beer-foam and recoiled from public urinals at the Ken-L-Ration-Magnavox-Kemper-Insurance-Forsythia
Bowl.

On a White Flag Group Commitment to the Tough Shit But You Still Can’t Drink Group
down in Braintree this past July, Don G., up at the podium, revealed publicly about
how he was ashamed that he still as yet had no real solid understanding of a Higher
Power. It’s suggested in the 3rd of Boston AA’s 12 Steps that you turn your Diseased
will over to the direction and love of ‘God as you understand Him.’ It’s supposed
to be one of AA’s major selling points that you get to choose your own God. You get
to make up your own understanding of God or a Higher Power or Whom-/Whatever. But
Gately, at like ten months clean, at the TSBYSCD podium in Braintree, opines that
at this juncture he’s so totally clueless and lost he’s thinking that he’d maybe rather
have the White Flag Crocodiles just grab him by the lapels and just tell him what
AA God to have an understanding of, and give him totally blunt and dogmatic orders
about how to turn over his Diseased will to whatever this Higher Power is. He notes
how he’s observed already that some Catholics and Fundamentalists now in AA had a
childhood understanding of a Stern and Punishing–type God, and Gately’s heard them
express incredible Gratitude that AA let them at long last let go and change over
to an understanding of a Loving, Forgiving, Nurturing–type God. But at least these
folks started out with
some
idea of Him/Her/It, whether fucked up or no. You might think it’d be easier if you
Came In with 0 in the way of denominational background or preconceptions, you might
think it’d be easier to sort of invent a Higher-Powerish God from scratch and then
like erect an understanding, but Don Gately complains that this has not been his experience
thus far. His sole experience so far is that he takes one of AA’s very rare specific
suggestions and hits the knees in the
A.M.
and asks for Help and then hits the knees again at bedtime and says Thank You, whether
he believes he’s talking to Anything/-body or not, and he somehow gets through that
day clean. This, after ten months of ear-smoking concentration and reflection, is
still all he feels like he ‘understands’ about the ‘God angle.’ Publicly, in front
of a very tough and hard-ass-looking AA crowd, he sort of simultaneously confesses
and complains that he feels like a rat that’s learned one route in the maze to the
cheese and travels that route in a ratty-type fashion and whatnot. W/ the God thing
being the cheese in the metaphor. Gately still feels like he has no access to the
Big spiritual Picture. He feels about the ritualistic daily
Please
and
Thank You
prayers rather like a hitter that’s on a hitting streak and doesn’t change his jock
or socks or pre-game routine for as long as he’s on the streak. W/ sobriety being
the hitting streak and whatnot, he explains. The whole church basement is literally
blue with smoke. Gately says he feels like this is a pretty limp and lame understanding
of a Higher Power: a cheese-easement or unwashed athletic supporter. He says but when
he tries to go beyond the very basic rote automatic get-me-through-this-day-please
stuff, when he kneels at other times and prays or meditates or tries to achieve a
Big-Picture spiritual understanding of a God as he can understand Him, he feels Nothing—not
nothing but
Nothing,
an edgeless blankness that somehow feels worse than the sort of unconsidered atheism
he Came In with. He says he doesn’t know if any of this is coming through or making
any sense or if it’s all just still symptomatic of a thoroughgoingly Diseased will
and quote ‘spirit.’ He finds himself telling the Tough Shit But You Still Can’t Drink
audience dark doubtful thoughts he wouldn’t have fucking ever dared tell Ferocious
Francis man to man. He can’t even look at F.F. in the Crocodile’s row as he says that
at this point the God-understanding stuff kind of makes him want to puke, from fear.
Something you can’t see or hear or touch or smell: OK. All right. But something you
can’t even
feel?
Because that’s what he feels when he tries to understand something to really sincerely
pray to. Nothingness. He says when he tries to pray he gets this like image in his
mind’s eye of the brainwaves or whatever of his prayers going out and out, with nothing
to stop them, going, going, radiating out into like space and outliving him and still
going and never hitting Anything out there, much less Something with an ear. Much
much
less Something with an ear that could possibly give a rat’s ass. He’s both pissed
off and ashamed to be talking about this instead of how just completely good it is
to just be getting through the day without ingesting a Substance, but there it is.
This is what’s going on. He’s no closer to carrying out the suggestion of the 3rd
Step than the day the Probie drove him over to his halfway house from Peabody Holding.
The idea of this whole God thing makes him puke, still. And he is afraid.