Infinite Jest (5 page)

It will start in the E.R., at the intake desk if C.T.’s late in following the ambulance,
or in the green-tiled room after the room with the invasive-digital machines; or,
given this special M.D.-supplied ambulance, maybe on the ride itself: some blue-jawed
M.D. scrubbed to an antiseptic glow with his name sewn in cursive on his white coat’s
breast pocket and a quality desk-set pen, wanting gurneyside Q&A, etiology and diagnosis
by Socratic method, ordered and point-by-point. There are, by the
O.E.D. VI
’s count, nineteen nonarchaic synonyms for
unresponsive,
of which nine are Latinate and four Saxonic. I will play either Stice or Polep in
Sunday’s final. Maybe in front of Venus Williams. It will be someone blue-collar and
unlicensed, though, inevitably—a nurse’s aide with quick-bit nails, a hospital security
guy, a tired Cuban orderly who addresses me as
jou
—who will, looking down in the middle of some kind of bustled task, catch what he
sees as my eye and ask So yo then man what’s
your
story?

Where was the woman who said she’d come. She said she would come. Erdedy thought she’d
have come by now. He sat and thought. He was in the living room. When he started waiting
one window was full of yellow light and cast a shadow of light across the floor and
he was still sitting waiting as that shadow began to fade and was intersected by a
brightening shadow from a different wall’s window. There was an insect on one of the
steel shelves that held his audio equipment. The insect kept going in and out of one
of the holes on the girders that the shelves fit into. The insect was dark and had
a shiny case. He kept looking over at it. Once or twice he started to get up to go
over closer to look at it, but he was afraid that if he came closer and saw it closer
he would kill it, and he was afraid to kill it. He did not use the phone to call the
woman who’d promised to come because if he tied up the line and if it happened to
be the time when maybe she was trying to call him he was afraid she would hear the
busy signal and think him disinterested and get angry and maybe take what she’d promised
him somewhere else.

She had promised to get him a fifth of a kilogram of marijuana, 200 grams of unusually
good marijuana, for $1250 U.S. He had tried to stop smoking marijuana maybe 70 or
80 times before. Before this woman knew him. She did not know he had tried to stop.
He always lasted a week, or two weeks, or maybe two days, and then he’d think and
decide to have some in his home one more last time. One last final time he’d search
out someone new, someone he hadn’t already told that he had to stop smoking dope and
please under no circumstances should they procure him any dope. It had to be a third
party, because he’d told every dealer he knew to cut him off. And the third party
had to be someone all-new, because each time he got some he knew this time had to
be the last time, and so told them, asked them, as a favor, never to get him any more,
ever. And he never asked a person again once he’d told them this, because he was proud,
and also kind, and wouldn’t put anyone in that kind of contradictory position. Also
he considered himself creepy when it came to dope, and he was afraid that others would
see that he was creepy about it as well. He sat and thought and waited in an uneven
X of light through two different windows. Once or twice he looked at the phone. The
insect had disappeared back into the hole in the steel girder a shelf fit into.

She’d promised to come at one certain time, and it was past that time. Finally he
gave in and called her number, using just audio, and it rang several times, and he
was afraid of how much time he was taking tying up the line and he got her audio answering
device, the message had a snatch of ironic pop music and her voice and a male voice
together saying we’ll call you back, and the ‘we’ made them sound like a couple, the
man was a handsome black man who was in law school, she designed sets, and he didn’t
leave a message because he didn’t want her to know how much now he felt like he needed
it. He had been very casual about the whole thing. She said she knew a guy just over
the river in Allston who sold high-resin dope in moderate bulk, and he’d yawned and
said well, maybe, well, hey, why not, sure, special occasion, I haven’t bought any
in I don’t know how long. She said he lived in a trailer and had a harelip and kept
snakes and had no phone, and was basically just not what you’d call a pleasant or
attractive person at all, but the guy in Allston frequently sold dope to theater people
in Cambridge, and had a devoted following. He said he was trying to even remember
when was the last time he’d bought any, it had been so long. He said he guessed he’d
have her get a decent amount, he said he’d had some friends call him in the recent
past and ask if he could get them some. He had this thing where he’d frequently say
he was getting dope mostly for friends. Then if the woman didn’t have it when she
said she’d have it for him and he became anxious about it he could tell the woman
that it was his friends who were becoming anxious, and he was sorry to bother the
woman about something so casual but his friends were anxious and bothering him about
it and he just wanted to know what he could maybe tell them. He was caught in the
middle, is how he would represent it. He could say his friends had given him their
money and were now anxious and exerting pressure, calling and bothering him. This
tactic was not possible with this woman who’d said she’d come with it because he hadn’t
yet given her the $1250. She would not let him. She was well off. Her family was well
off, she’d said to explain how her condominium was as nice as it was when she worked
designing sets for a Cambridge theater company that seemed to do only German plays,
dark smeary sets. She didn’t care much about the money, she said she’d cover the cost
herself when she got out to the Allston Spur to see whether the guy was at home in
the trailer as she was certain he would be this particular afternoon, and he could
just reimburse her when she brought it to him. This arrangement, very casual, made
him anxious, so he’d been even more casual and said sure, fine, whatever. Thinking
back, he was sure he’d said
whatever,
which in retrospect worried him because it might have sounded as if he didn’t care
at all, not at all, so little that it wouldn’t matter if she forgot to get it or call,
and once he’d made the decision to have marijuana in his home one more time it mattered
a lot. It mattered a lot. He’d been too casual with the woman, he should have made
her take $1250 from him up front, claiming politeness, claiming he didn’t want to
inconvenience her financially over something so trivial and casual. Money created
a sense of obligation, and he should have wanted the woman to feel obliged to do what
she’d said, once what she’d said she’d do had set him off inside. Once he’d been set
off inside, it mattered so much that he was somehow afraid to show how much it mattered.
Once he had asked her to get it, he was committed to several courses of action. The
insect on the shelf was back. It didn’t seem to do anything. It just came out of the
hole in the girder onto the edge of the steel shelf and sat there. After a while it
would disappear back into the hole in the girder, and he was pretty sure it didn’t
do anything in there either. He felt similar to the insect inside the girder his shelf
was connected to, but was not sure just how he was similar. Once he’d decided to own
marijuana one more last time, he was committed to several courses of action. He had
to modem in to the agency and say that there was an emergency and that he was posting
an e-note on a colleague’s TP asking her to cover his calls for the rest of the week
because he’d be out of contact for several days due to this emergency. He had to put
an audio message on his answering device saying that starting that afternoon he was
going to be unreachable for several days. He had to clean his bedroom, because once
he had dope he would not leave his bedroom except to go to the refrigerator and the
bathroom, and even then the trips would be very quick. He had to throw out all his
beer and liquor, because if he drank alcohol and smoked dope at the same time he would
get dizzy and ill, and if he had alcohol in the house he could not be relied on not
to drink it once he started smoking dope. He’d had to do some shopping. He’d had to
lay in supplies. Now just one of the insect’s antennae was protruding from the hole
in the girder. It protruded, but it did not move. He had had to buy soda, Oreos, bread,
sandwich meat, mayonnaise, tomatoes, M&M’s, Almost Home cookies, ice cream, a Pepperidge
Farm frozen chocolate cake, and four cans of canned chocolate frosting to be eaten
with a large spoon. He’d had to log an order to rent film cartridges from the InterLace
entertainment outlet. He’d had to buy antacids for the discomfort that eating all
he would eat would cause him late at night. He’d had to buy a new bong, because each
time he finished what simply had to be his last bulk-quantity of marijuana he decided
that that was it, he was through, he didn’t even like it anymore, this was it, no
more hiding, no more imposing on his colleagues and putting different messages on
his answering device and moving his car away from his condominium and closing his
windows and curtains and blinds and living in quick vectors between his bedroom’s
InterLace teleputer’s films and his refrigerator and his toilet, and he would take
the bong he’d used and throw it away wrapped in several plastic shopping bags. His
refrigerator made its own ice in little cloudy crescent blocks and he loved it, when
he had dope in his home he always drank a great deal of cold soda and ice water. His
tongue almost swelled at just the thought. He looked at the phone and the clock. He
looked at the windows but not at the foliage and blacktop driveway beyond the windows.
He had already vacuumed his venetian blinds and curtains, everything was ready to
be shut down. Once the woman who said she’d come had come, he would shut the whole
system down. It occurred to him that he would disappear into a hole in a girder inside
him that supported something else inside him. He was unsure what the thing inside
him was and was unprepared to commit himself to the course of action that would be
required to explore the question. It was now almost three hours past the time when
the woman had said she would come. A counselor, Randi, with an
i,
with a mustache like a Mountie, had told him in the outpatient treatment program
he’d gone through two years ago that he seemed insufficiently committed to the course
of action that would be required to remove substances from his lifestyle. He’d had
to buy a new bong at Bogart’s in Porter Square, Cambridge because whenever he finished
the last of the substances on hand he always threw out all his bongs and pipes, screens
and tubes and rolling papers and roach clips, lighters and Visine and Pepto-Bismol
and cookies and frosting, to eliminate all future temptation. He always felt a sense
of optimism and firm resolve after he’d discarded the materials. He’d bought the new
bong and laid in fresh supplies this morning, getting back home with everything well
before the woman had said she would come. He thought of the new bong and new little
packet of round brass screens in the Bogart’s bag on his kitchen table in the sunlit
kitchen and could not remember what color this new bong was. The last one had been
orange, the one before that a dusky rose color that had turned muddy at the bottom
from resin in just four days. He could not remember the color of this new last and
final bong. He considered getting up to check the color of the bong he’d be using
but decided that obsessive checking and convulsive movements could compromise the
atmosphere of casual calm he needed to maintain while he waited, protruding but not
moving, for the woman he’d met at a design session for his agency’s small campaign
for her small theater company’s new Wedekind festival, while he waited for this woman,
with whom he’d had intercourse twice, to honor her casual promise. He tried to decide
whether the woman was pretty. Another thing he laid in when he’d committed himself
to one last marijuana vacation was petroleum jelly. When he smoked marijuana he tended
to masturbate a great deal, whether or not there were opportunities for intercourse,
opting when he smoked for masturbation over intercourse, and the petroleum jelly kept
him from returning to normal function all tender and sore. He was also hesitant to
get up and check the color of his bong because he would have to pass right by the
telephone console to get to the kitchen, and he didn’t want to be tempted to call
the woman who’d said she would come again because he felt creepy about bothering her
about something he’d represented as so casual, and was afraid that several audio hang-ups
on her answering device would look even creepier, and also he felt anxious about maybe
tying up the line at just the moment when she called, as she certainly would. He decided
to get Call Waiting added to his audio phone service for a nominal extra charge, then
remembered that since this was positively the last time he would or even could indulge
what Randi, with an
i,
had called an addiction every bit as rapacious as pure alcoholism, there would be
no real need for Call Waiting, since a situation like the present one could never
arise again. This line of thinking almost caused him to become angry. To ensure the
composure with which he sat waiting in light in his chair he focused his senses on
his surroundings. No part of the insect he’d seen was now visible. The clicks of his
portable clock were really composed of three smaller clicks, signifying he supposed
preparation, movement, and readjustment. He began to grow disgusted with himself for
waiting so anxiously for the promised arrival of something that had stopped being
fun anyway. He didn’t even know why he liked it anymore. It made his mouth dry and
his eyes dry and red and his face sag, and he hated it when his face sagged, it was
as if all the integrity of all the muscles in his face was eroded by marijuana, and
he got terribly self-conscious about the fact that his face was sagging, and had long
ago forbidden himself to smoke dope around anyone else. He didn’t even know what its
draw was anymore. He couldn’t even be around anyone else if he’d smoked marijuana
that same day, it made him so self-conscious. And the dope often gave him a painful
case of pleurisy if he smoked it for more than two straight days of heavy continuous
smoking in front of the InterLace viewer in his bedroom. It made his thoughts jut
out crazily in jagged directions and made him stare raptly like an unbright child
at entertainment cartridges—when he laid in film cartridges for a vacation with marijuana,
he favored cartridges in which a lot of things blew up and crashed into each other,
which he was sure an unpleasant-fact specialist like Randi would point out had implications
that were not good. He pulled his necktie down smooth while he gathered his intellect,
will, self-knowledge, and conviction and determined that when this latest woman came
as she surely would this would simply be his very last marijuana debauch. He’d simply
smoke so much so fast that it would be so unpleasant and the memory of it so repulsive
that once he’d consumed it and gotten it out of his home and his life as quickly as
possible he would never want to do it again. He would make it his business to create
a really bad set of debauched associations with the stuff in his memory. The dope
scared him. It made him afraid. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dope, it was that
smoking it made him afraid of everything else. It had long since stopped being a release
or relief or fun. This last time, he would smoke the whole 200 grams—120 grams cleaned,
destemmed—in four days, over an ounce a day, all in tight heavy economical one-hitters
off a quality virgin bong, an incredible, insane amount per day, he’d make it a mission,
treating it like a penance and behavior-modification regimen all at once, he’d smoke
his way through thirty high-grade grams a day, starting the moment he woke up and
used ice water to detach his tongue from the roof of his mouth and took an antacid—averaging
out to 200 or 300 heavy bong-hits per day, an insane and deliberately unpleasant amount,
and he’d make it a mission to smoke it continuously, even though if the marijuana
was as good as the woman claimed he’d do five hits and then not want to take the trouble
to load and one-hit any more for at least an hour. But he would force himself to do
it anyway. He would smoke it all even if he didn’t want it. Even if it started to
make him dizzy and ill. He would use discipline and persistence and will and make
the whole experience so unpleasant, so debased and debauched and unpleasant, that
his behavior would be henceforward modified, he’d never even want to do it again because
the memory of the insane four days to come would be so firmly, terribly emblazoned
in his memory. He’d cure himself by excess. He predicted that the woman, when she
came, might want to smoke some of the 200 grams with him, hang out, hole up, listen
to some of his impressive collection of Tito Puente recordings, and probably have
intercourse. He had never once had actual intercourse on marijuana. Frankly, the idea
repelled him. Two dry mouths bumping at each other, trying to kiss, his self-conscious
thoughts twisting around on themselves like a snake on a stick while he bucked and
snorted dryly above her, his swollen eyes red and his face sagging so that its slack
folds maybe touched, limply, the folds of her own loose sagging face as it sloshed
back and forth on his pillow, its mouth working dryly. The thought was repellent.
He decided he’d have her toss him what she’d promised to bring, and then would from
a distance toss back to her the $1250 U.S. in large bills and tell her not to let
the door hit her on the butt on the way out. He’d say