Infinite Jest (216 page)

313.
The bureaucracy of Québecois pensions, which had ruled against buying anything more
than a used Kenbeck pacemaker for Marathe’s father, now deceased.

314.
See Note 304
supra
.

315.
Marathe’s malentendu of
live-in
.

316.
Like e.g. the times C.T. and the Moms would come out to Logan to pick Mario and Himself
up from a filming trip, Mario lugging gear, Himself damp and pasty from the cabin
pressure and not enough leg-room and his sportcoat pockets always clicking with little
plastic bottles with unopenable caps, and in the car up to Enfield Mario’s uncle would
keep up an Opheliac mad monologue of chatter that would get Himself’s poor teeth grinding
so bad that when they pulled over to the breakdown lane and Mario came around to open
the door and let Himself lean out and be ill there’d be grit in the throw-up that
came out, white dental visible grit, from all the grinding.

317.
© B.S. 1981, Routledge & Kegan Paul Plc, London UK, wildly expensive hdcover; not
on disk.

318.
Maine having been lost altogether, recall.

319.
Incandenza family idiom for leftovers.

320.
Main library, M.I.T., East Cambridge.

321.

Q.v. for a confirming example 1930h. Thurs., 12 November Y.D.A.U., Rm. 204 Subdorm
B:

‘No, look, it’s still Rise Over Run. The derivative’s the slope of the tangent at
some point along the function. It doesn’t matter what point until they give you the
point on the test.’

‘Will this even be on the Boards? Do they go past trig?’

‘This
is
fucking trig. They’ll give you word problems that may involve changing quantities—something
accelerating, a voltage, inflation of O.N.A.N. currency over U.S. currency. Differentiation’ll
save you half the time, all those triangles inside triangles to figure change with
trig. Trig’s a Unit-bender on rate-changes. Derivatives’re just trig with some imagination.
You imagine the points moving inexorably toward each other until for all practical
purposes they’re the same point. The slope of a defined line becomes the slope of
a tangent to one point.’

‘One point that’s in fact actually two points?’

‘You use your goddamn
imagination,
Inc, plus a couple prescribed limits. Which they won’t fuck with you on limits on
the general test, trust me. This is a big pink titty compared to an Eschaton calculation.
You move the two points you’re doing Rise-over-Run on infitesimally close together,
you end up with a plug-in formula.’

‘Can I tell you about my dream now and then we’ll use the momentum from that to plow
through this?’

‘Just write this on your wrist or something. Function x, exponent n, the derivative’s
going to be nx + x
^n-1
for any kind of first-order rate-of-increase thing they’re going to ask you. This
assumes a definable limit, of course, which no way they’re going to fuck with you
on limits on the fucking Boards.’

‘It was a DMZ-dream.’

‘Do you see how you’re going to apply this to a rate-of-increase-type little story
they’ll pose?’

‘It involved your experimental soldier, the massive dose.’

‘Let me just close this door, here.’

‘It was the Leavenworth convict. The one you said had left the planet. The one belting
out Ethel Merman. It was horrific, Mikey. In the dream I was the soldier.’

‘So you’re now going to assume a real you-know-what experience will be similar to
the experience of a nightmare.’

‘Aha. Why nightmare? Why do you assume it was a nightmare? Did I use the word
nightmare?
’

‘You used the word
horrific
. I assume it wasn’t a romp through the heather.’

‘In the dream the horror was that I wasn’t really singing “There’s No Business Like
Show Business.” I was really screaming for help. I was screaming like “Help! I’m screaming
for help and everybody’s acting as if I’m singing Ethel Merman covers! It’s me! It’s
me, screaming for help!” ’

‘A Rusk-level dream, Inc. A standard nobody-understands-me dream. The DMZ and Mermanization
were incidental.’

‘There was a quality of
loneliness
to it, though. Unlike anything. To be screaming that I’m screaming for help instead
of singing a show-tune and to have the wardens and doctors gathered around snapping
their fingers and tapping their feet.’

‘Have I mentioned DMZ doesn’t show up on a G.C./M.S.? Struck tracked this down off
an obscure Digestive-Flora footnote. It’s the fitviavi-mold base. If the stuff shows
up at all it shows as a slight case of imbalanced yeast.’

‘I thought only girls got yeast.’

‘Inc, don’t be so fucking naïve. Data number two is Struck is halfway toward nailing
down that this stuff’s original intent was to induce what they called quote transcendent
experiences in get this chronic alcoholics in the like 1960s at Verdun Protestant
Hospital in Montreal.’

‘How come everywhere I turn this fall now everybody’s suddenly mentioning Québec in
all kinds of radically different contexts? Orin’s calling with some protracted obsession
about anti-O.N.A.N. Québecers.’

‘… Tavis up and announces Québec are the lambs in this year’s fundraiser. Your Mum’s
from Québec.’

‘And then this term of all terms I take Poutrincourt’s insurgency class, which is
basically a Québecathon.’

‘Oh I
definitely
I’d suspect some kind of conspiracy or trap. It’s obvious everything’s pointing toward
getting you in a cell belting out Mermanalia. Inc, I think your hinges are starting
to squeak. I think this is what plateaux-hopping up to the top does to somebody. I
think a meaningful transcendent DMZ-type non-uremic-fallout interlude before Tucson
is just what the carpenter ordered, for the old hinges. Keep you from going back to
just smoking that Bob Hope day in day out when the test’s up. Shit’ll kill your lungs.
Shit’ll make you fat, soft, moist and pale, Inc. Seen it happen. You need something
more than a 30-day cleanout. The
tu-sais-qué
could be just the reconfiguration you need to start branching out, leave the Bob
Hope alone, find something you can take to college or the Show and not get paralyzed.
Shit’ll paralyze you over time, Incblob. Saw it happen time and over, back in the
neighborhood. Once-promising stand-up guys spending their lives in front of the TP,
eating Nutter Butters and whacking off into an old sock. The shit-fairy moves in with
luggage for an extended stay, Inc. Plus indecisive? You haven’t seen indecisive til
you’ve seen a guy with little fat-titties slumped in a chair in his tenth year of
nonstop Bob Hope. It’s not pretty. Incster my friend it’s not pretty at all. A transcendent
experience with me and the Axhandle could be just what the hinges are squeaking for.
Be around some other people for a change. Don’t make me sit there with just Axhandle
babbling about Yale. Leave the Visine at home.’

‘Was it
transcendent?
The term in Struck’s literature? Or was it
transcendental?
’

‘ ’s the difference for Christ’s sake?’

‘Mike, what if I said I’ve been moving toward more than just a month off.’

‘Abandon All Hope.
^a
This what I was talking.’

‘I mean maybe make a decision. Forever. What if it was that I was doing it more and
more and it was getting less fun but I was still doing it more and more, and the only
way to moderate would be to like wave a hankie at it altogether.’

‘I applaud. Some low-risk transcendentalism with me and the Human Hatchet could be
just the impotence for this kind of like major re—’

‘But it’d be everything. Blue Flames, the odd ’drine. If I do anything I know I’d
go back to the Bob. I’d drop Madame Psychosis with you guys and all my firmest resolve
would melt and I’d have the one-hitter out and be sniveling at you to spring some
eternal Hope on me.’

‘You’re so naïve, Inc. You’re so sharp in one way and such a little bald little fat-legged
baby in the woods in others. You think you’re just going to go Here I go, deciding,
and reverse total thrust and quit everything?’

‘What I said was what if.’

‘Hal, you are my friend, and I’ve been friends to you in ways you don’t even have
a clue. So brace yourself for a growth-spurt. You want to quit because you’re starting
to see you need it, and—’

‘That’s exactly it. Peems, think how horrible that’d be, if somebody
needed
it. Not just
liked
it a great great great deal. Needing it becomes a whole separate order of…. It seems
horrific. It seems like the difference between really loving something and being—’

‘Say the word, Inc.’

‘…’

‘Because you know why? What if it’s true? The word. What if you are? So the answer’s
just walk away? If you’re addicted you
need
it, Hallie, and if you
need
it what do you imagine happens if you just hoist the white flag and try to go on
without it, without anything?’

‘…’

‘You lose your mind, Inc. You die inside. What happens if you try and go without something
the machine
needs?
Food, moisture, sleep, O
₂
? What happens to the machine? Think about it.’

‘You were just now applauding the idea of Abandoning All Hope. You were just invoking
an image of me with breasts, masturbating into laundry, with cobwebs between my ass
and a chair.’

‘That’s the
Bob
. I didn’t hear me say
everything
. If you need the Bob, Inc, you can only quit the Bob if you move onward and up to
something else.’

‘Harder drugs. Just like those old filmstrips about pot opening the door to larger
drugs, where Jiminy Cricket—’

‘Oh fuck you. It doesn’t have to be harder. It just has to be something. I know guys
quit heroin, coke. How? They make the strategic move to a case a day of Coors. Or
to methadone, whatever. I know hard-drinking guys Inc that got off the booze by switching
to the Bob Hope. Me myself, you’ve seen, I switch all the time. The trick is the right
switch for a man’s wiring. I’m saying a real cobweb-blaster with me and Axford after
the Fundraiser could help you get some serious perspective, cut the babytalk and sweeping
bullshit decisions there’s no way you can do and start getting a real handle on how
you’re going to branch out away from this Bob thing, which I applaud the getting away
from the Bob for you, Inc, it’s not your thing, you were starting to get that look
of a guy that’ll end up with tits.’

‘So you’re in a very subtle way lobbying for a DMZ-drop by saying you don’t believe
I could simply quit everything. Since you sure don’t plan to quit. With your left
eye wobbling all over the place. You haven’t even quit the Tenuate. “Winners don’t
ever have to quit” and all deLint’s little—’

‘I didn’t hear me say none of that. And I think you probably could quit it all. For
a while. You’re not a pussy. You’ve got balls, I know. I bet you could gut it out.’

‘For a while, you’re saying.’

‘And but what do you think would happen after a while, though? Without something you
need?
’

‘What, you’re saying I’d grab my chest and keel over? Clutch my head in the middle
of a Tap & Whack and die of an aneurism like that girl last year at Atwood?’

‘No. But you’d die inside. Maybe outside too. But what I’ve seen, if you’re the real
thing and
need
it and just cut yourself off of it altogether, you die inside. You lose your mind.
I’ve seen it happen. Cold Turkey they call it, the Bird. White-knuckling. Guys that’d
just quit everything because they were in too deep and quit it all and just died.’

‘A Clipperton, you mean? You’re saying Himself killed himself because he got sober?
Because he didn’t get sober. There was a thing of Wild Turkey right there on the counter
by the oven he blew his fucking head up with. So don’t try to kertwang me with
him,
Mike.’

‘Inc, what I know about your Da could be inscribed with a blunt crayon along the rim
of a shot glass. I’m talking guys I
know
. Wolf Spiders. Allston guys, that quit. Some did a Clipperton, yes. Some ended up
in the Mental Marriott. Some got through by they joined NA or a cult or some bug-eyed
church and went around with ties talking about Jesus or Surrendering, but that shit’s
not going to work for you because you’re too sharp to ever buy the God-Squad shit.
Most nothing big happened, that needed it and quit. They got up and went to work and
came home and ate and went to sleep and got up, day after day. But dead. Like machines;
you could almost see the keys in their backs. You looked into their maps and something
was gone. The walking dead. They loved it so much they needed it and gave it up and
now they were waiting to die. Something was all over, inside.’

‘Their
joie de vivre.
The fire in the belly.’

‘Hal, it’s been what, now, for you, two-and-a-half days without? three days? How you
feeling in there already, brother?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Uh-
huh
. Incpuddle, all I know’s I’m your friend. I am. You don’t want to communate with
the Madame, you can hold me and Ax’s purses for us. You do what you want and point
me toward whoever tells you different. I’m just giving you the advice to look a little
further past that second of deciding something I know you won’t let yourself take
back.’

‘Some vital part of my like personhood would die without something to ingest. This
is your view.’

‘Sometimes you don’t listen real well, Hallie. That’s all right. Spend some time figuring
out this
needing
. Like what part of you’s come to
need
it, do you think.’

‘You’re alleging that’s the part that’ll die.’

‘Just whatever part you feel has come to
need
what you’re planning to take away from it.’

‘The part that’s dependent or incomplete, you mean. The
addict
.’