Infinite Jest (80 page)

S
EC.
H.E.W.: Why cede vitally needed waste-disposal resources to a recalcitrant ally?

T
INE
: Billingsley, Trent, and yet who as I stated says we can’t utilize these territories
for just this purpose no matter whose nation’s name they’re in? Interdependence is
as Interdependence does, after all.

P
RES. MEX./SEC. MEX./V-C O.N.A.N.
:
¿Qué?

G
ENTLE
: Hhhaaahh?

T
INE
: Yet Billingsley’s right that this kind of sprawling, depopulated, newly Canadian
territory can accommodate the tidiness-needs of this whole great continental alliance
for decades to come. After that, look out Yukon!

P
RES.
M
EX.
/S
EC.
M
EX.
/V-C O.N.A.N. [Face green and mask wetly dark over upper lip]: May I respectfully
ask President Gentle how you are proposing to ask my newly succeeded Co-Vice Chair
of our continental Organization to possibly be able to accept vast arenas of egregiously
poisoned terrain on behalf of his peoples?

T
INE
: Valid question. Simple answer. Three answers. Statesmanship. Gamesmanship [counting,
now, on fine strong white clean fingers]. Brinksmanship.

W/ now more—and rather more jejune—journalistic f/x spinning out of the black at high-camp
speeds to a 45-rpm playing of custodian Dave (‘F.D.V.’) Harde’s
-rpm disc of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’:

GENTLE TO CANADIAN PM: HAVE SOME TERRITORY—Header;

CANADIAN P.M. TO GENTLE: NO, REALLY, THANKS ANYWAY—Header;

GENTLE TO CANADIAN P.M.: BUT I INSIST—Header;

BLOC QUEBECOIS TO CANADIAN P.M.: ACCEPT TOXICLY CONVEX ADDITION TO OUR PROVINCE AND
WE ARE OUT OF HERE SO FAST YOUR HEAD WILL SPIN ALL THE WAY AROUND—Header from That
Guy Again;

CANADIAN P.M. TO GENTLE: LOOK, WE’RE SWIMMING IN TERRITORY ALREADY, HAVE A LOOK AT
AN ATLAS WHY DON’T YOU, WE HAVE WAY MORE TERRITORY THAN WE KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALREADY,
PLUS I DON’T MEAN TO BE RUDE EITHER BUT WE’RE ESPECIALLY UNKEEN ON ACCEPTING HOPELESSLY
BEFOULED
TERRITORY FROM YOU GUYS, INTERDEPENDENCE RHETORIC OR NO, THERE’S REALLY JUST NO WAY—And
Again;

abon26-MEMBER EEC ACCUSES U.S. OF ‘EXPERIALIST DOMINATION’—Header; THIRD-WORLD VEGETABLES
HURLED IN U.N. IMBROGLIO—10-point Subheader;

GENTLE TO P.M.: LOOK, BABE, TAKE THE TERRITORY OR YOU’RE GOING TO BE REALLY REALLY
SORRY—Header;

SIN CITY SHRINK: NATION’S VELVETIEST VOCALIST WAS HOSPITALIZED TWICE FOR MENTAL ILLNESS—Tabloid
Header;

PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY OF ‘EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY’ ALLEGED BY LAS VEGAS M.D.—Respectable
Header;

MY GARDEN NOW’S GOT TOMATOES I COULDN’T LIFT EVEN IF I COULD HACK THROUGH THEIR VINES
WITH A MACHETE TO EVEN REACH THEM—Tabloid Header, Dateline Montpelier VT, with Photo
That Simply Has Got to Have Been Doctored;

F.E.C. CALLED TO INVESTIGATE C.U.S.P.s—Header; ‘STRATEGIC MISREPRESENTATION’ OF CANDIDATE’S
PSYCH HISTORY HAS PUT NATION, CONTINENT AT RISK, DEMS CHARGE—12-point Supersubheader;

TOP AIDES HUDDLE AS WORRIES OVER GENTLE’S ‘PATHOLOGICAL INABILITY TO DEAL PROACTIVELY
WITH ANY SORT OF REAL OR IMAGINED REJECTION’ MOUNT IN FACE OF CANADIAN SHOWDOWN—Meth-Dependent
Headliner, Now at Third Daily in 17 Months;

‘Both financial and diplomatic communities have reacted with increasing concern to
reports that President Gentle has isolated himself in a small private suite at Bethesda
Naval Hospital with several thousand dollars’ worth of sound and sterilization equipment
and is spending all day every day singing morose show-tunes in inappropriate keys
to the U.S.M.C. Colonel who stands near the Dermalatix Hypospectral sterilization
appliance handcuffed to the Black Box of United States nuclear codes. Unspecified
Services Office spokespersons have declined to comment on reports of such erratic
Executive directives as: ordering the Defense Department to commandeer department
store giant Searsco’s entire inventory of Winnie-the-Pooh toddler wear under National
Security Emergency Proviso 414; requiring Armed Forces personnel to take target practice
at cardboard silhouettes of what appear to be oxen, water buffalo, or Texas longhorn
cattle; preparing the release of a Presidential Address to the Nation cartridge that
purportedly consists entirely of the president seated at his desk with his head in
his gloves intoning “What’s the point of going on?” over and over; instructing silo
personnel at all S.A.C. installations north of 44° to remove their missiles from the
silos and then reinsert them upside-down; and ordering the installation of massive
“air displacement effectuators” 28 km. south of each such silo, facing north.’—Anchor’s
Lead for Kind of Semi-Cheesy Weekly Lurid-News-Intensive Summary Cartridge;

‘UNPRECEDENTED’ WHOPPER REVENUES IN THIRD QUARTER CREDITED BY PILLSBURY/BK TO GENTLE’S
‘CREATIVELY PRO-ACTIVE’ RESUSCITATION OF POST-NETWORK ADVERTISING—
Ad Week
14-point Full-Color Header;

GENTLE HAS COMPLETELY LOST MIND, CLAIMS CONFIDANT, O.U.S. CHIEF TINE AT PRESS CONFERENCE:
THREATENS TO DETONATE UPSIDE-DOWN MISSILES IN U.S. SILOS, IRRADIATE CANADA W/ AID
OF ATHSCME HELL-FANS—Header; ‘WILLING TO ELIMINATE OWN MAP OUT OF SHEER PIQUE’ IF
CANADA NIXES RECONFIGURATIVE TRANSFER OF ‘AESTHETICALLY UNACCEPTABLE’ TERRAIN—Pretty
Obviously Homemade Subheader.

This catastatic feature of the puppet-film’s plot—that Johnny Gentle, Famous Crooner
threatens to bomb his own nation and toxify neighbors in an insane pout over Canada’s
reluctance to take redemised title over O.N.A.N.’s very own vast dump—resonates powerfully
with those members of the movie’s E.T.A. audience who know that this whole parodic
pseudo-
ONANtiad
scenario is actually a puppet-à-clef-type allusion to the dark legend of one Eric
Clipperton and the Clipperton Brigade. In the very last couple years of solar, Unsubsidized
Time, this kid Eric Clipperton appeared for the first time as an unseeded sixteen-year-old
in East Coast regional tournament play. The little Town-or-Academy-Hailed-From slot
after Clipperton’s name on tournament draw-sheets just said ‘Ind.,’ presumably for
‘Independent.’ Nobody’d heard of him before or knew where he came from. He’d just
sort of seepily risen, some sort of human radon, from someplace low and unknown, whence
he lent the cliché ‘Win or Die in the Attempt’ grotesquely literal new levels of sense.

For the Clipperton legend derived from the fact that this Clipperton kid owned a hideous
and immaculately maintained Glock 17 semiautomatic sidearm that came in a classy little
leather-handled blond-wood case with German High-Gothic script on it and a velvet
gun-shaped concavity inside where the Glock 17 lay nestled in plush velvet, gleaming,
with another little rectangular divot for the 17-shot clip; and that he brought the
gun-case and Glock 17 out on the court with him along with his towels and water-jug
and sticks and gear bag, and from his very first appearance on the East Coast jr.
tour made clear his intention to blow his own brains out publicly, right there on
court, if he should lose, ever, even once.

Thus there came to be, in most every tournament with an initial draw of 64, a group
of three boys, then four, and by the semifinals five, then finally six boys who for
that tournament formed the Clipperton Brigade, players who’d had the misfortune to
draw and meet Eric Clipperton and Clipperton’s well-oiled Glock 17, and who understandably
declined to be the player to cause Clipperton to eliminate his own map for keeps in
public for something as comparatively cheesy as a tournament win over Clipperton.
A win over Clipperton had no meaning because a
loss
to Clipperton had no meaning and didn’t hurt anybody’s regional and U.S.T.A. ranking,
not once the guys in the U.S.T.A. computer center caught on to the Clipperton strategic
M.O. Thus an early exit from a tournament because of a loss to Clipperton came to
be regarded as sort of like a walk in baseball, stats-wise; and a boy who found himself
in the Clipperton Brigade and defaulted his round tended to view that tournament as
a kind of unexpected vacation, a chance to rest and heal, to finally get some sun
on the chest and ankles, to work on chinks in his game’s armor, to reflect a little
on what it all might mean.

Clipperton’s first meaningless victory ever came at sixteen, unseeded, at the Hartford
Jr. Open, first round, against one Ross Reat, of Maddox OH and the just-opened Enfield
Tennis Academy. For some reason it’s Struck who sort of specializes in this story
and never misses a chance to tell new E.T.A.s the tale of Clipperton v. Reat. Clipperton’s
an OK player, nothing spectacular but also not like absurdly out of place at a regional-grade
tourney; but Reat is at fifteen seasoned and high-ranked, and the third seed at Hartford;
and Reat is, for a while—as would be S.O.P. for a high seed in the first round—basically
cleaning under his nails with this unseeded unknown Eric Clipperton. At 1–4 in the
second set, Clipperton sits down at the side-change and, instead of toweling off,
reaches into his gear bag and extracts his classy little blond-wood case and gets
out the Glock 17. Fondles it. Takes out the clip and hefts it and rams it home in
its slot at the base of the grip with a chillingly solid-sounding click. Caresses
his left temple with the thing’s blunt shiny barrel. Everybody watching the match
agrees it is one ugly and all-business-looking piece of personal-defense hardware.
Clipperton climbs up the rungs of the lifeguardish chair the umpire in his blue blazer
¹⁵⁸
sits in and uses the umpire’s mike to make public his intention of blowing his personal
brains out all over the court with the hideous Glock, should he lose. The small first-round
gallery stiffens and inhales and doesn’t exhale for a long time. Reat audibly gulps.
Reat is tall, densely freckled, a good kid, one of Incandenza’s fair-haired boys,
not too bright, with the Satellite Tour so clearly in his future that at only fifteen
he’s already starting cholera shots and mastering Third World exchange rates. And
but for the remainder of the match (which lasts exactly eleven more games) Clipperton
plays tennis with the Glock 17 held steadily to his left temple. The gun makes tossing
kind of a hassle, on Clipperton’s serve, but Reat is letting the serves go by untouched
anyway. None of the E.T.A. staff has bothered to show up and coach Reat through what
was supposed to be a standard first-round fingernail-cleaning, and so Reat is strategically
and emotionally all alone out there, and he’s opted for not even pretending to make
an effort, given what the unseeded Clipperton seems willing to sacrifice for a win.
Ross Reat was the first and last junior player ever to shake Clipperton’s free hand
at the end of a match, and the moment’s captured in a
Hartford Courant
staff photo that some E.T.A. wiseacre’d later glued to the door of Struck’s room
with so much Elmer’s all over the back that taking it off would gut the varnish, so
the thing stays up for all in the hall to see, Reat here up at net on one knee, one
arm over his eyes, the other hand extended upward to a Clipperton who’d simply obliterated
him psychologically. And Ross Reat was never quite exactly the same ever again after
that, both Schtitt and deLint have assured all future potentially mercy-minded E.T.A.
males.

And, the legend’s story goes, Eric Clipperton never henceforth loses. No one is willing
to beat him and risk going through life with the sight of the Glock going off on his
conscience. Nobody ever knows where Clipperton comes from, to play. Never seen at
airports or Interstate exit ramps or ever even spotted carb-loading at any Denny’s
between matches. He just starts materializing, always alone, at increasingly high-level
junior tournaments, appears on draw-sheets with ‘Ind.’ by his name, plays competitive
tennis with a Glock at his left temple;
¹⁵⁹
and his opponents, unwilling to sacrifice Clipperton’s hostage (Clipperton
même
), barely even try, or else they go for impossible angles and spins, or else talk
on mobile phones while they play or try to hit every ball between their legs or behind
their backs; and the matches’ galleries tend to boo Clipperton just as much as they
dare; and Clipperton sits and hefts his 17-shot clip and takes the brass-jacketed
9-mm. cartridges out sometimes and clicks a few together ruminatively in his hand
in the sideline chair at all the odd-game breaks, and sometimes he tries little Western-gunslinger
triggerguard-spins during the breaks; but when play resumes Clipperton’s deadly serious
once more and has the Glock 17 at his temple, playing, and mows through the lackadaisical
Clipperton Brigade round by round, and wins the whole tournament by what is essentially
psychic default, and then right after collecting his trophy vanishes like the ground
itself inhaled him. His only even remote friend on the jr. tour is eight-year-old
Mario Incandenza, whom Clipperton meets because, even though Disney Leith and an early
prorector named Cantrell are shepherding the male tournament contingent (including
a solid but sort of plateau-stuck and no longer much improving seventeen-year-old
Orin Incandenza) that summer, E.T.A. Headmaster Dr. J. O. Incandenza shows up at quite
a few of the events on the domestic circuit, doing under ostensible U.S.T.A. auspices
a two-part documentary on jr. competitive tennis, stress, and light, and so Mario’s
tottering around with lens-cases and Tuffy tripods etc. at most of that late summer’s
meaningful events, and meets Clipperton, and finds Clipperton intriguing and in ways
he can’t be very articulate about hilarious, and is kind to him and seeks out his
company, Clipperton’s, or at any rate at least treats Clipperton like he
exists
, whereas by late July everybody else’s attitude toward Clipperton resembled that
kind of stiffly conspicuous nonrecognition that e.g. accompanies farts at formal functions.
One of Himself’s short test-cartridges—shot to check out transverse aberration at
various sun-angles, the case’s little adhesive sticker says—contains the only available
footage of the late Eric Clipperton
¹⁶⁰
—from the preponderance of salt-tablet dispensers and littered Pledge husks and Dade
County ambulances it was pretty likely shot at the hideous Sunkist Jr. Inv. cramp-fest
in August in Miami—just a couple overexposed meters of Clipperton, head down and hunched
on a low orange bleacher, bony-shouldered, in no shirt and untied Nikes, his Gothic-scripted
case in his lap, his elbows on his knees and his hands spidered across both cheeks,
staring down between his feet and trying not to smile as a withered-toddler-sized
and forward-listing Mario stands beside him, supported by his portable police lock,
holding a light-meter and something else too halated to make out on the tape, open
very wide for a homodontic laugh at something funny Clipperton has apparently just
let slip.