Infinite Jest (220 page)
Authors: David Foster Wallace
352.
Reference to January-February Y.D.A.U., when person or persons unknown went around
coating selected toothbrushes of the Boys and Girls 16’s with what was finally pinpointed
as betel-nut extract, causing panic and internecine finger-pointing and resulting
in serial oxidation-treatment visits to Dr. E. Zegarelli, D.D.S., by half a dozen
E.T.A.s until the brush-tamperings ceased as suddenly as they’d begun; and now nine
months later no one still has the slightest idea re perpetrator or point.
353.
Which runs not to Enfield-Brighton but to Roxbury and Mattapan, places where it is
very bad nighttime joss indeed to be both white and incapacitated.
354.
Q.v. note a to Note 12.
355.
Anexsia—
®
SmithKline Beecham Laboratories.
356.
Levo-Dromoran—
®
Roche Laboratories.
357.
Numorphan, kind of a watered-down Dilaudid—
®
Du Pont Pharmaceuticals.
358.
Perwin NX—
®
Boswell Medications Ltd., Canada—which accounts for the C-III, because the Canadians
are notoriously insane when it comes to forecasting abuse-potential.
359.
A.k.a. Chlordiazepoxide hydrochloride—
®
Roche, Inc.—a low-grade Valiumish tranq.
360.
A C-III and sort of entry-level oral narcotic, the side-effects and inconsistent
buzz of which often send abusers up the ladder to C-II compounds.
361.
A.k.a. hyoscyamine sulfate—
®
Schwarz Pharma Kremers Urban, Inc.—an anti-spasmodic for anything from colitis to
Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
362.
A.k.a. methaqualone, now manufactured outside O.N.A.N. jurisdiction under the trade
name Parestol.
363.
Later one-third of the rent-and-strip-luxury-apts. crew, and even later Gately’s
trusted colleague on some of his most disastrous and bottom-hastening home-invasions,
including that of one G. DuPlessis, which Kite ended up regretting exponentially more
than Gately did, once the A.F.R. got through with him.
364.
MDA, MDMA (‘X’), MMDA-2 (‘Love Boat’), MMDA–3a (‘Eve’), DMMDA-2 (‘Starry Night’),
etc.
365.
Long-Term Institution.
366.
Sounding rather suspiciously like Professor H. Bloom’s turgid studies of artistic
influenza
—though it’s unclear how either Flood- or dead-ancestor discussions have any connection
to S. Peterson’s low-budget classic
The Cage,
which is mostly about a peripatetic eyeball rolling around, other than the fact that
J. O. Incandenza loved this film and stuck little snippets of it or references to
it just about anywhere he could; maybe the ‘disjunction’ or ‘disconnection’ between
the screen’s film and Ph.D.’s scholastic discussion of art is part of the point.
a
a.
(Which of course assumes there’s a point.)
367.
Though they did, just as in depictions of organized crime in popular entertainment,
often change the cell-phones they used, to avoid potential taps or Pen Registers—Sorkin
buying new units and #s, Gately more often borrowing student R.N.s’ cellulars and
then returning them after a few days. One of Gately’s biggest challenges in this career
was remembering all the different fucking phone numbers and addresses of luxury-apts.-of-the-week
when he was strafed on Bam-Bams just about all the time.
368.
Cimetidine—
®
SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals—800-mg. spansules for generalized cranio-vascular
woe (derived, kind of interestingly, from the same ergot rye-mold as LSD).
369.
For the two maps Sorkin had to have eliminated altogether during this period, it’s
maybe worth observing that he eschewed both Towers and instead used the thuggish ex-Québecer
muscleboys DesMontes and Pointgravè, who had no real loyalties or membership in any
community and hired themselves out as enforcers for books and high-interest lenders
all up and down both Shores. Gately did, as a coercive collector, demap one person,
but it was essentially an accident—the debtor had been blond, and drinking Heinekens,
and then when things got physical he’d squirted Gately in the face with Mace, and
a red curtain of rage had descended over Gately’s sight, and when he’d come back to
himself the debtor’s head was turned 180° around on his neck and had the little Mace
can all the way up one nostril, and it was the most professionally horrified Gately
had ever been up until the thing with the suffocated Canadian
P.I.T.,
which anyway occurred much later and when Gately was way more nonviolence-prone.
370.
Purified pork insulin in a zinc suspension—
®
Lilly Pharmaceuticals.
371.
An elite private high school up near the Methuen salient.
372.
Surely
skeet
and
vig,
meaning debt and bookmaker’s automatic percentage (usually 10% subtracted from winnings
or added to skeet), are not just metro Boston terms.
373.
A.k.a. Acetylcysteine-20—
®
Bristol Laboratories—a nebulizable prophylaxis against the post-traumatic buildup
of abnormal, viscid, or inspissated mucus.
374.
With the hard-
ch
sound distinctive of North Shore pronun. of words like
Chicago
and
champagne
.
375.
Known less sensitively among neuro-urology residents as ‘Dizzy Dick Disorder’ or
sometimes just ‘3-D.’
376.
Knoll Laboratories’ good old Dilaudid—$666.00/g. wholesale and $5/mg. street at Y.W.-Q.M.D.
valuations.
377.
A ‘Phillips Screwdriver,’ vodka and Milk of Magnesia, which Gately finds nauseous
and privately refers to as a ‘lowball.’
378.
(As opposed to self-confronting, presumably.)
379.
See Note 144
supra
.
380.
The 1.3:1-aspect-ratio rectangle scanned by electron beams in video imaging, now
replaced by multi-interlace
a
solid-field HD digital imaging.
a.
Why Noreen Lace-Forché’s seminal corporation’s name was a kind of wry pun: 2:1
interlace
was pre-HD television’s term for breaking the picture frame into two 262.5-line fields
for standard 525-line raster-scanning…. A very in-type joke designed to appeal to
the same Big Four that Noreen L.-F. was then wooing.
381.
More like B.S. 1926, according to the Still Photo Archive at NNY City’s Museum of
Modern Art. Plus n.b. the print—which Hal correctly remembers Avril always loathing
a
—long pre-dated J.O.I.’s ever picking up a camera.
a.
Hence the relative queerness of its still being up on the HmH living room wall four
years after Incandenza’s felo de se—it’s not like anybody asked her to keep the thing
up.
382.
Whether in singles against him or doubles alongside, when Hal is on-court with Wayne
he always gets the creepy feeling that Wayne has control out there not just of his
voluntary CNS but also of his heartrate and blood pressure, the diameter of his pupils,
etc., which feeling is not only creepy but distracting, adding to the tension of playing
with Wayne.
383.
Winter Park FL facility for enmeshment-, codependency-, and compulsivity-related
Issues.
384.
A.k.a. Lorazepam—
®
Wyeth-Aherst Labs—a venerable anti-anxiety tranq, of which 25 mg./day is enough to
anxiolytize a good-sized Clydesdale.
385.
Probably meaning Doryx, Parke-Davis’s doxycycline hyclate, the Cruise missile of
gram-negative antibiotics.
386.
Nalaxone hydrochloride, the Exocet missile of narcotic antagonists—
®
DuPont Pharm.—2 ml./20ml.-saline pre-filled syringes.
387.
Metro Boston’s third-hardest thing to street-cop after raw Vietnamese opium and the
incredibly potent DMZ, Sunshine is pentazocine hydrochloride and mefenamic acid
a
—
®
Sanofi Winthrop, Canada, Inc.—w/ trade-name Talwin-PX—Day-Glo-yellow serum, 7ml./20ml.-saline
pre-filled syringes.
a.
A non-narc analgesic marketed in the U.S. as Ponstel—
®
Parke-Davis—mostly (oddly enough) for dysmenorrhea, sort of like nuclear-grade Midol.
388.
Talwin-NX—
®
Sanofi Winthrop U.S.
*
a proud member of the ACMÉ Family of Gags ’N Notions, Pre-Packaged Emotions, Jokes
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CBC/PATHÉ 1200h.–0000h. Summary Cartridge # 911–24–04, 4 May Y.P.Wc., © Y.P. Wc.,
PATHÉ Nouvelle Toujours, Ltd.
5
in Phelps and Phelps,
The Cults of the Unwavering I: A Field Guide to Cults of Currency Speculation, Melanin,
Fitness, Bioflavinoids, Spectation, Assassination, Stasis, Property, Agoraphobia,
Repute, Celebrity, Acraphobia, Performance, Amway, Fame, Infamy, Deformity, Scopophobia,
Syntax, Consumer Technology, Scopophilia, Presleyism, Hunterism, Inner Children, Eros,
Xenophobia, Surgical Enhancement, Motivational Rhetoric, Chronic Pain, Solipsism,
Survivalism, Preterition, Anti-Abortionism, Kevorkianism, Allergy, Albinism, Sport,
Chiliasm, and Telentertainment in pre-O.N.A.N. North America, ©
Y.P.W.
6
Except in certain very esoteric variations on the game.
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Contents
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
1 APRIL—YEAR OF THE TUCKS MEDICATED PAD
9 MAY—YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
AS OF YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
THE ORGANOPSYCHEDELIC MUSCIMOLE…
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
30 APRIL—YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
LATE OCTOBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
7 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
6 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
7 NOVEMBER—YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
8 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT INTERDEPENDENCE DAY GAUDEAMUS IGITUR
8 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT GAUDEAMUS IGITUR
YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
PRE-DAWN, 1 MAY Y.D.A.U. OUTCROPPING NORTHWEST OF TUCSON AZ U.S.A., STILL
T
HE
B
ROOM OF THE
S
YSTEM
G
IRL WITH
C
URIOUS
H
AIR
I
NFINITE
J
EST
A S
UPPOSEDLY
F
UN
T
HING
I
’LL
N
EVER
D
O
A
GAIN
B
RIEF
I
NTERVIEWS WITH
H
IDEOUS
M
EN
E
VERYTHING AND
M
ORE
O
BLIVION
C
ONSIDER THE
L
OBSTER
M
C
C
AIN’S
P
ROMISE
T
HIS
I
S
W
ATER
T
HE
P
ALE
K
ING
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any apparent similarity to
real persons is not intended by the author and is either a coincidence or the product
of your own troubled imagination.
Where the names of real places, corporations, institutions, and public figures are
projected onto made-up stuff, they are intended to denote only made-up stuff, not
anything presently real.
Besides Closed Meetings for alcoholics only, Alcoholics Anonymous in Boston, Massachusetts
also has Open Meetings, where pretty much anybody who’s interested can come and listen,
take notes, pester people with questions, etc. A lot of people at these Open Meetings
spoke with me and were extremely patient and garrulous and generous and helpful. The
best way I can think of to show my appreciation to these men and women is to decline
to thank them by name.
Copyright © 1996 by David Foster Wallace
Cover design by Keith Hayes, cover photo by Jan Stromme/Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2006 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning,
uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission
of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual
property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes),
prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected].
Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
