Infinite Jest (112 page)

They have shifted into a sexual mode. Her lids flutter; his close. There’s a concentrated
tactile languor. She is left-handed. It is not about consolation. They start the thing
with each other’s buttons. It is not about conquest or forced capture. It is not about
glands or instincts or the split-second shiver and clench of leaving yourself; nor
about love or about whose love you deep-down desire, by whom you feel betrayed. Not
and never love, which kills what needs it. It feels to the punter rather to be about
hope, an immense, wide-as-the-sky hope of finding a something in each Subject’s fluttering
face, a something the same that will propitiate hope, somehow, pay its tribute, the
need to be assured that for a moment he
has
her, now has
won
her as if from someone or something else, something other than he, but that he
has
her and is what she sees and all she sees, that it is not conquest but surrender,
that he is both offense and defense and she neither, nothing but this one second’s
love of her,
of
-her, spinning as it arcs his way, not his but
her
love, that he has
it,
this love (his shirt off now, in the mirror), that for one second she loves him too
much to stand it, that she
must
(she feels) have him,
must
take him inside or else dissolve into worse than nothing; that all else is gone:
that her sense of humor is gone, her petty griefs, triumphs, memories, hands, career,
betrayals, the deaths of pets—that there is now inside her a vividness vacuumed of
all but his name: O.,
O
. That he is the One.

(This is why, maybe, one Subject is never enough, why hand after hand must descend
to pull him back from the endless fall. For were there for him just one, now, special
and only, the One would be not he or she but what was between them, the obliterating
trinity of You and I into We. Orin felt that once and has never recovered, and will
never again.)

And about contempt, it is about a kind of hatred, too, along with the hope and need.
Because he needs them, needs her, because he needs her he fears her and so hates her
a little, hates all of them, a hatred that comes out disguised as a contempt he disguises
in the tender attention with which he does the thing with her buttons, touches the
blouse as if it too were part of her, and him. As if it could feel. They have stripped
each other neatly. Her mouth is glued to his mouth; she is his breath, his eyes shut
against the sight of hers. They are stripped in the mirror and she, in a kind of virtuoso
jitterbug that is 100% New World, uses O.’s uneven shoulders as support to leap and
circle his neck with her legs, and she arches her back and is supported, her weight,
by just one hand at the small of her back as he bears her to bed as would a waiter
a tray.

‘
Hoompf
.’

‘
Herrmmp
.’

‘Well in excess of a thousand pardons for my collision.’

‘Arslanian? Is that you?’

‘It is I, Idris Arslanian. Who is this other?’

‘It’s Ted Schacht, Id. Why the blindfold?’

‘Where have I come, please. I became disoriented upon a set of stairs. I became panicked.
I nearly removed my blindfold. Where are we? I detect many odors.’

‘You’re just off the weight room, in the little hall off the tunnel that isn’t the
little hall that goes to the sauna. Why the blindfold, though?’

‘And the origin of this sound of hysterical weeping and moans, this is—?’

‘It’s Anton Doucette in there. He’s in there clinically depressed. Lyle’s trying to
buck him up. Some of the crueler guys are in there watching like it’s entertainment.
I got disgusted. Somebody in pain isn’t entertainment. I did my sets, now I’m a vapor-trail.’

‘You exude vapor?’

‘Always nice running into you, Id.’

‘Await. Please conduct me upstairs or into the locker for a lavatory visit. The blindfold
I am wearing is experimental on the part of Thorp. You are told of the visually challenged
player who will matriculate?’

‘The blind kid? From like Nowheresburg, Iowa? Dempster?’

‘Dymphna.’

‘He’s not coming in til next term. He delayed, Inc said they said. Dural edema or
something.’

‘Though age only nine, he is in his Midwest region’s ranking of Twelve and Belows
highly ranked. Coach Thorp tells this.’

‘Well, I’d say for a blind, soft-skulled kid he’s real high-ranked, Id, yeah.’

‘But Dymphna. I hear Thorp tell that the highness of the ranking may be due to the
blindness itself. Thorp and Texas Watson were who scouted this player.’

‘I wouldn’t mention the name
Watson
near that weight room in there if I were you.’

‘Thorp tells that his excellence of play is scouted by them to be his anticipation.
As in the player Dymphna arrives at the necessary location well before the opponent
player’s ball, through anticipation.’

‘I know what anticipation is, Id.’

‘Thorp tells to me that this excellence in anticipation in the blind is because of
hearing and sounds, because sounds are merely… here. Please read the comment I have
carefully notated upon this folded piece of paper.’

‘ “Sound Merely ‘Variations In Intensity’—Throp.” Throp?’

‘It was meaning
Thorp,
in excitement. He tells that one may, perforce, judge the opponent player’s VAPS
²³⁶
in more detail by the ear than the eye. This is experimental theory of Thorp. This
is explaining why the highly ranked Dymphna appears to always have floated by magic
to the necessary spot where a ball is soon to land. Thorp tells this in a convincing
manner.’

‘Perforce?’

‘That this blind person is able to judge the necessary spot of landing by the intensity
of the sound of the ball against the opponent player’s string.’

‘Instead of watching the contact and then imaginatively extending the beginning of
its flight, like those of us hobbled by sight.’

‘I, Idris Arslanian, am compelled with Thorp’s telling.’

‘Which helps explain the blindfold.’

‘I therefore experiment with volunteer blindness. Training the ear in degrees of intensity
in play. Today versus Whale I was wearing the blindfold to play.’

‘How’d it go?’

‘Not as well as hoped. I frequently faced the wrong direction for play. I frequently
judged by the intensity of balls struck on adjacent courts and ran onto adjacent courts,
intruding on play.’

‘We sort of wondered what all the ruckus was down there at the 14’s end.’

‘Thorp tells that training the ear is a process of time, in encouragement.’

‘Well, later, Id.’

‘Stop. Wait before leaving. Please conduct me to a lavatory. Ted Schacht? Are you
as yet there?’

‘…’

‘Are you as yet there? I very—’

‘
Whuffff
watch where you’re going kid for Christ’s sake.’

‘Who is this please.’

‘Troeltsch, James L., slightly doubled over.’

‘It is I, Idris Arslanian, wearing a rayon handkerchief as a blindfold over my features.
I am disoriented and wishing badly for a lavatory. Wondering also what is ensuing
inside the weight room, where Schacht alleges you are all watching Doucette weep in
clinical depression.’

‘Kert
wannnggg!
Just kidding, Ars. It’s really Mike Pemulis.’

‘Then you, Mike Pemulis, may even now be questioning why is this blindfold upon Idris
Arslanian.’

‘What blindfold? Ars, no, you’re wearing a fucking blindfold too?’

‘You, Mike Pemulis, are also wearing a blindfold?’

‘Just kertwanging on you, brother.’

‘I became disoriented on a stairway, then conversed with Ted Schacht. I am suspecting
I do not trust your sense of laughter enough to conduct me back upstairs.’

‘You should feel your way in and just for one second see the amount of high-stress
sweat Lyle’s taking off Anton (‘‘The Booger’’) Doucette in there, Ars.’

‘Doucette is the two-hand player whose mole appears to be material from a nostril,
clinically depressing Doucette at its appearance.’

‘Rog on the mole. Except that’s not what’s depressing the Booger this time. This one
we decided we’d describe him as more like anxiously depressed than depressed.’

‘One can be depressed of different types?’

‘Boy are you young, Ars. The Booger’s got himself convinced he’s going to get the
academic Boot. He’s been on proby this whole year, since apparently some trouble last
year with Thorp’s cubular trig—’

‘I am sympathizing with this in toto.’

‘—and but except now he claims he’s close to flunking in Watson’s laughable Energy
survey class, which would obviously mean the old Boot at term’s end, if he really
does flunk. He’s thought himself into a brainlock of anxiety. He’s in there clutching
his skull with Lyle and Mario, and some of the like less kind guys in there have a
pool going on whether Lyle can pull him back from the brink.’

‘Texas Watson the prorector, teaching of energy in models of resource-scarcity and
resource-plenty.’

‘Ars, I’m nodding in confirmation. Fossil fuels all the way up to annular fusion/fission
cycles, DT-lithiumization, so on and so forth. All on a real superficial-type level,
since Watson’s basically got like a little liquid-filled nubbin at the top of his
spine where his brain ought to be.’

‘Texas Watson does not overwhelm with brightness, it is true.’

‘But Doucette’s got himself convinced he’s got this insurmagulate conceptual block
that keeps him from grasping annulation, even superficially.’

‘After we converse you will conduct me to micturate, please.’

‘It’s the same sort of block some people get with the Mean-Value Theorem. Or in Optics
when we get to color fields. At a certain level of abstraction it’s like the brain
recoils.’

‘Causing pain of impact within the skull, resulting in clutching the head.’

‘Watson’s gone the extra click with him. Watson’s good-hearted if nothing else. He’s
tried flash-cards, mnemonic rhymes, even claymation filmstrips from over at Rindge-Latin
Remedial.’

‘You are saying without avail.’

‘I’m saying apparently the Boogster just sits there in class, eyes bugging out, stomach
in fucking knots, dope-slapped by anxiety. I’m saying frozen.’

‘You are saying recoiling.’

‘The right side of his face frozen in this anxiety-tic. Envisioning any possible tennis
career as with these little wings on it, flying off. Talking all kinds of crazy self-injuring
anxious-depression talk. It all started with him and Mario and me in the sauna, him
breaking down, me and Mario trying to talk him out of the crazy washed-up-at-fifteen-type
depressed talk, Mario exploiting a previous like therapeutic bond with the kid from
about the mole, then with me putting DT-annulation in broad-stroke terms a freaking
invertebrate
could have understood for Christ’s sake. Just about passing out from the sauna all
through this. Finally taking him in to Lyle even with the 18’s still doing circuits
in there. Lyle’s working with the Booger now. Between the anxiety and the marathon
sauna-time it’s a real feeding frenzy for old Lyle let me tell you.’

‘I too confess experiences of anxiety for annulation with Tex Watson, though I am
Trivially thirteen and not yet required to grapple in hard science.’

‘Mario in the sauna kept telling Doucette to just imagine somebody doing somersaults
with one hand nailed to the ground, which what the fuck is that, and lo and surprise
didn’t help the Booger a whole lot.’

‘Did not part the veil of Maya.’

‘Didn’t do jack.’

‘Annular energy cycles are intensively abstract, my home nation believes.’

‘But my whole message to Boog was that DT-cycles aren’t all that fucking hard if you
don’t paralyze your brain with career-with-wings brain-cartoons. The extra-hot breedering
and lithiumization stuff gets hairy, but the whole fusion/fission waste-annulation
thing in toto you can imagine as nothing but a huge right triangle.’

‘You are presaging to give the thumbnail lecture.’

‘Commit this one simple model to your little Pakistani RAM-cells, and you’ll tapdance
right through Watson’s kiddie-physics and up into Optics, which is where the abstracto-conceptual
fur really flies, kid, let me tell you.’

‘I am one of the seldom of my home nation whose talents are weak in science, unhappily.’

‘This is why God also gave you quick hands and a wicked lob off the backhand, though.
Just picture a kind of massive pseudocartographic right triangle.
²³⁷
You’ve got your central, impregnately-guarded O.N.A.N.- Sunstrand waste-intensive
fusion facility up in what used to be Montpelier in what used to be Vermont, in the
Concavity. From Montpelier the process’s waste’s piped to two sites, one of which
is that blue glow at night up by the Methuen Fan-Complex, just south of the Concavity,
right flush up against the Wall and Checkpoint Pongo—’

‘Which our tall and sleep-depriving fans in our area point at to blow away from the
south.’

‘—Roger that, where the toxo-fusion’s waste’s plutonium fluoride’s refined into plutonium-239
and uranium-238 and fissioned in a standard if somewhat hot and risky breeder-system,
much of the output of which is waste U-239, which gets piped or catapulted or long-shiny-trucked
way up to what used to be Loring A.F.B.—Air Force Base near what used to be Presque
Isle Maine—where it’s allowed to decay naturally into neptunium-239 and then plutonium-239
and then added to the UF
₄
fractional waste also piped up from Montpelier, then fissioned in a purposely ugly
way in such a way as to create like hellacious amounts of highly poisonous radioactive
wastes, which are mixed with heavy water and specially heated-zirconium-piped through
special heavily guarded heated zirconium pipes back down to Montpelier as raw matériel
for the massive poisons needed for toxic lithiumization and waste-intenseness and
annular fusion.’

‘My head is spinning on its axis.’