‘Yin-yang,’ Mario offered, nodding. The U.S.S. Millicent’s hand was large and hot and at the level of sogginess of a bathmat that’s been used several times in a row in quick succession.
Her second-oldest sister, many years later, had informed the U.S.S.M.K. that the first time anybody’d had any inklings about the Old Man was an episode when the older sister was very small and Mrs. K. had sewed her a special costume complete with gold-lamé bow & arrow for playing Cupid in the school Valentine’s Day pageant, and the sister’s school had got out early one day after an asbestos scare and she’d come unexpectedly home and found the Old Man in the basement rumpus room in tiny wings and hideously distended diaper striking a pose from a rather well-known Titian oil in the Met’s High Renaissance Wing, and had struggled with denial and own-perceptions-doubting for quite some time thereafter, until a hysterical episode during rehearsals for an Ice Capades Valentine’s Day number brought all the feelings surging up and broke the denial, and the Ice Capades’ Employee Assistance Office counselling staff helped her start to work it all through.
At which point U.S.S. Millicent stopped them in an unprickly thicket of what later turned out to be poison sumac and turned with a strange glint in the one eye that wasn’t in pine-shadow and crushed Mario’s large head to the area just below her breasts and said she needed to confess that Mario’s eyelashes and vest with extendable police lock he used for staying upright in one place had for quite some time now driven her right around the bend with sensual feeling. What Mario perceived as a sudden radical drop in the prevailing temperature was in fact the U.S.S. Millicent Kent’s sexual stimulation sucking tremendous quantities of ambient energy out of the air surrounding them. Mario’s face was so squashed against the U.S.S. Millicent’s thorax that he had to contort his mouth way out to the left to breathe. U.S.S.M.K.’s hairbow became detached and fluttered down through Mario’s sightline like a giant crazed violet moth. U.S.S.M.K. was trying to undo Mario’s corduroys but was frustrated by the complex system of snaps and fasteners at the bottom of his police lock’s Velcro vest, which overlapped his trouser’s own fasteners, and Mario tried to reconfigure his mouth somehow to both breathe and warn the U.S.S.M.K. that he was incredibly ticklish in the area of the bellybutton and directly below. He could now start to hear his brother Hal somewhere to the above and east, calling Mario’s name at a moderate volume. The U.S.S. Millicent Kent was saying there was no way Mario could be any more nervous than she was about what was happening between them. It’s true that the sounds of Mario sucking air out of a severely leftward-contorted mouth could have been interpretable as the heavy breathing of sexual stimulation. It was when the U.S.S. Millicent wrapped one arm around his shoulder for leverage and forced her other hand up under the hem of the tight vest and then down inside the trousers and briefs, rooting for a penis, that Mario became so ticklish that he began to double up, clearing his face of U.S.S. Millicent’s front and laughing out loud in such a distinctive high-pitched way that Hal had no trouble beelining right upon them, compromised though his navigational systems were after fifteen or so secret minutes alone in the fragrant pines.
Mario later said it was just like when there was a word on the tip of your tongue that try as you might you can’t remember until the exact second you stop trying, and in it pops, right into your head: it was when the three of them were walking together back up the hillside toward the tree-line’s lip, not trying to do anything but get back to Comm.-Ad. by the most direct route in the dark, that they stumbled upon the cinematic tripod, a dully glinting TL waffle-tipped Husky, in the middle of what wasn’t such a very tall or thick thicket at all.
30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
Steeply said ‘Choosing Boston as your Ops center, after all, which to us signifies: the place of the supposed Entertainment’s origin.’
Marathe made a gesture of being willing to take time and play along, if Steeply wished it. ‘But also the city Boston U.S.A. has logic. Your closest city to the Convexity. Closest therefore to Québec. Within as you say the distance of spit.’ His wheelchair squeaked very slightly whenever he moved. An automobile horn somewhere between the city and themselves blew a sustained blast. It grew always colder down on the desert floor; they could feel this. He felt gratitude for his windbreaker.
Steeply flicked some ashes from his cigarette with a coarse thumb-gesture that was not yet feminine. ‘But we’re not any more sure that they actually do have copies. Also, does this quote “anti”-Entertainment the film’s director supposedly made to counter the lethality: does it really also exist; this really could be some sort of game for you and the F.L.Q., 47 to hold out the promise of the anti-Entertainment as a chip for concessions. As some kind of remedy or antidote.’
‘Of this anti-film that antidotes the seduction of the Entertainment we have no evidence except craziness of rumors.’
Steeply used a technical interviewer’s device of pretending to occupy himself with small physical chores of preening and hygiene, delaying, to have Marathe elaborate himself more fully. The lights of the city Tucson with their movements and twinkling made a globe of light such as on ceilings at les salles de danser in Val d’Or, Québec. Marathe’s wife was dying slowly of ventricular restenosis. 48 He thought: die twice.
Marathe said: ‘And also why do they never send you into the field as yourself, Steeply? This is to say in appearance. The last time you were — what is it I hope to say — a Negro, for almost one year, no?’
U.S.A. persons’ shrugs are always as if trying to lift a heavy thing. ‘Haitian,’ Steeply said. ‘I was Haitian. Some negroid tendencies in the persona, maybe.’ Marathe listened to Steeply be silent. A U.S.A. coyote sounds more like a high-strung dog. The automobile’s horn continued, sounding to the men forlorn and somehow nautical out below in the dark. The feminine manner to examine the fingernails was to raise the whole hand’s back into view instead of malely curling the nails in over the upturned palm; Marathe recalled knowing this from a very young age. Steeply would pick at the corners of his lip, then for an interval change to examining the fingernails. His silences seemed always comfortable and contained. He was a competent operative. More cold air came, odd eddied breezes up in over the shelf from the desert’s floor, puffs of sudden air as if from the turning of a volume’s pages. His bare arms had the plucked-chicken look of chilled and bare skin in his grotesque sleeveless dress. Marathe had not been aware of when during the falling of night Steeply had removed the absurd sunglasses, but decided the exact moment of this did not matter for reporting every word and gesture back to M. Fortier. Again the coyote, and also another farther off, perhaps to answer. The sounds were like that of a domestic dog being given low voltage. Les Assassins’ M. Fortier and M. Broullîme and some others of his comrades-on-wheels believed Rémy Marathe to be eidetic, near-perfect in recall and detail. Marathe, who could remember several incidents of crucial observations he had failed to later recall, knew this was not true.
30 APRIL — YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT
Several times also Marathe called U.S.A. to Steeply ‘Your walled nation’ or ‘Your murated nation.’
An oiled guru sits in yogic full lotus in Spandex and tank top. He’s maybe forty. He’s in full lotus on top of the towel dispenser just above the shoulder-pull station in the weight room of the Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield MA. Saucers of muscle protrude from him and run together so that he looks almost crustacean. His head gleams, his hair jet-black and extravagantly feathered. His smile could sell things. Nobody knows where he comes from or why’s he’s allowed to stay, but he’s always in there, sitting yogic about a meter off the rubberized floor of the weight room. His tank top says TRANSCEND in silkscreen; on the back it’s got DEUS PROVIDEBIT in Day-Glo orange. It’s always the same tank top. Sometimes the color of the Spandex leggings changes.
This guru lives off the sweat of others. Literally. The fluids and salts and fatty acids. He’s like a beloved nut. He’s an E.T.A. instit
ution. You do like maybe some sets of benches, some leg-curls, inclined abs, crunches, work up a good hot shellac of sweat; then, if you let him lick your arms and forehead, he’ll pass on to you some little nugget of fitness-guru wisdom. His big one for a long time was: ‘And the Lord said: Let not the weight thou wouldst pull to thyself exceed thine own weight.’ His advice on conditioning and injury-prevention tends to be pretty solid, is the consensus. His tongue is little and rough but feels good, like a kitty’s. It isn’t like a faggy or sexual thing. Some of the girls let him, too. He’s harmless as they come. He supposedly went way back with Dr. Incandenza, the Academy’s founder, in the past.
Some of the newer kids think he’s a creep and want him out of there. What kind of guru wears Spandex and lives off others’ perspiration? they complain. God only knows what he does in there when the weight room’s closed at night, they say.
Sometimes the newer kids who won’t even let him near them come in and set the resistance on the shoulder-pull at a weight greater than their own weight. The guru on the towel dispenser just sits there and smiles and doesn’t say anything. They hunker, then, and grimace, and try to pull the bar down, but, like, lo: the overweighted shoulder-pull becomes a chin-up. Up they go, their own bodies, toward the bar they’re trying to pull down. Everyone should get at least one good look at the eyes of a man who finds himself rising toward what he wants to pull down to himself. And I like how the guru on the towel dispenser doesn’t laugh at them, or even shake his head sagely on its big brown neck. He just smiles, hiding his tongue. He’s like a baby. Everything he sees hits him and sinks without bubbles. He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me, one forehead at a time. His name is supposedly Lyle.
It was yrstruly and C and Poor Tony that crewed that day and everything like that. The AM were wicked bright and us a bit sick however we scored our wake ups boosting some items at a sidewalk sale in the Harvard Squar where it were warm upping and the snow coming off onnings and then later Poor Tony ran across an old Patty citizen type of his old aquaintance from like the Cape and Poor Tony got over and pretended like he would give a blow job On The House and we got the citizen to get in his ride with us and crewed on him good and we got enough $ off the Patty type to get straightened out for true all day and crewed on him hard and C wanted we should elemonade the Patty’s map for keeps and everything like that and take his ride to this understanding slope strip shop he knows in Chinatown but Poor Tony turns white as a shit and said by no means and put up an arguement and everything like that and we just left the type there in his vehicle off Mem Dr we broke the jaw for insentive not to eat no cheese and C insisted and was not 2Bdenied and took off one ear which there was a mess and everything like that and then C throws the ear away after in a dumster so yrstrulys’ like so what was the exact pernt to that like. The dumster was with the dumsters out by Steves’ donuts in the Enfield Squar. We go back to the Brighton Projects to cop and Roy Tony was always there on his bench in the Playground in late AM but now all the Project Nigers was awake and out in the Playground and it was tense but it was day time and everything like that and we cop half a bundle from Roy Tony and we go down to the library at Copley where we stash our personnel works when we crewed and went into the mensroom where there was severel works on the floor allready that early and got straight in the stall and C and yrstruly had a beef about who shot three and who got two and we made Poor Tony give us up his third bag and then but we had to cop for that nite and tomorrow AM still which was XMas and had to cop in advance, its’ a never ending strugle its’ a full time job to stay straight and there is no vacation for XMas at anytime. Its’ a fucking bitch of a life dont’ let any body get over on you diffrent. And back we go to the Harvard Squar however on arrival Poor Tony wanted he should hang for lunch time with his red leather fags in the Bow&Arrow and pretty much I can tolerate fags when alone but together yrstruly I cant’ fucking stand fags and yrstruly and C said fuck this shit and we screwed out and go up to the Central Squar where it was cool offing and the onnings re freezing and everything like that and snowing and boosted NyQuil at the CVS Drug where we go to the mop aile and employ a mophandle in tilting the mirror over the NyQuil aile and boosted NyQuil in Cs’ coat and got messed up on NyQuil and scored a bookbag off a foran slope studn type kid on the Redline platform but it only had books and disks and the diskcase was fucking plastic and into a dumster with it it goes but also at this time we come up and run into Kely Vinoy that was working her corner by the dumster by Cheap-O records in the Squar by the email place and shes’ dopesick having a conversession with Eckwus and an other man and Eckwus said he said Stokely Darkstar just got freetested again at the Fenway and confirmed a big Boot 8.8 hes’ got the Virus for sure and Purpleboy said he said Dark-star said how if he was going down he didnt’ give a shit and wasnt’ going to give a shit if he gave some others the Virus thru trancemission and the Word was out&about dont’ share Stokely Darkstars’ works dont’ use works off Stokely Darkstar no matter how sick you are even if your’ dyng for it get other works. Like C said any thing would count in your mind when your’ sick and had copped and was minus works and Darkstar had works. We all every crew with heads left have personnel works for only ourselves that we use except blownout old hose like Kely and Purpleboy there Man takes there $ and there works and Hes’ the only one can give them there shots and keep Kely just this side of dopesick 24-7 for insentive for her to make him more $ and everything like that, theres’ nothing wurse than a Pimp and Boston Pimps are the wurst there’ 10X wurse than NYC Pimps that are supperst to be so hartless in NYC where yrstruly petaled ass in the Columbus Squar for a time of my youth like Stokely Darkstar before departing for green pastures, and we had a conversession but were’ coming down and it was getting dark and snowing for a White XMas and if we didnt’ crew before like 2200 Roy Tonys’ Nigers would be too drunk to keep them from beefing with us and thered’ be a beef and everything like that if we go to cop after 2200 and who needs a grief so back we Redline to the Harvard Squar and all the foran studns are in the bars and we locate Poor Tony smoking hash with fags back of Au Bon Pain and say lets roll a foran studn stuck here for XMas in the bars and cop before 2200 and so we all go on the ice from the frozen melted snow to the Bow&Arrow in the Squar with Poor Tony and Lolasister and Susan T. Cheese who I fucking cant’ stand and got in there and made Susan T. Cheese buy beers and we wait and no studns are leaving alone to roll but a older type individual who any body could see is no studn but is legless on shots alone at the bar fucking shatered slumped over is getting ready to depart for green pastures and Poor Tony tells Lolasister to screw she crews with Poor Tony some times but not if its’ wet work and with Cs’ involvement its’ always wet work, and yrstruly I inform Susan T. Cheese she new better than not to screw as well and the older individual de parts shatered and holding onto walls in a hiclass and promising coat for the possibility of $ and pernts his old nose this way and that and everything like that thru the Bow&Arrow window C wipes the steam off, and has a conversession with a Santaclaus ringing a big bell for the kettle and were’ like Jesus its’ a never ending strugle to wait and cop but after awhile finally after stifing the Santaclaus we watch he picks a direction finally at last up Mass Ave toward the Central Squar on foot, and Poor Tony beats it around the block to get up in front of him around the block on the ice in his fucking heels and feather snake around his neck and gets him some how Poor Tony always knows how over to the dumsters’ alley by Bay Bank off Sherman St, and yrstruly and C crew on the individual and roll him and C messes up his older map to a large degree and we leave him in no condition to eat cheese in a snow drift of materil under the dumster, and C again wants to siphon out a vehicle on Mass Av and set him on fire but he has 400 $ on his person and then some and a coat with a fury collar and a watch we realy scored and C even gosofar to take the non studns’ shoes which they dont’ fit, and in the dumster they go.
And but so but back we go to the
Brighton Projects but its’ post 2200 its’ too late Roy Tony hasnt’ got his pissboys out hes’ not open for comerce and yet it is like a Niger Convenssion in the Playground of the Brighton Projects with there glass pipes and there Crown Royal in purple bags and everything like that in the Playground of the Projects and if they smell were’ holding this kindof $ amounts they will crew on us in numbers there’ animals at nite with there purple velvet bags and p-dope and Redi Rok crack, one large Niger in a Patriots hat has a hart incident and downhegoes on the black top by the swing set right in front of us and none of his brothers unquot gosofar to do any thing he lays there there’ animals at nite and we screw out with rickytick speed from the Brighton Projects, and we converse. And Poor Tony wants to just go over the line to the Enfield Squar and try and just cop p-dope from Delphina down by the Empire hangers or else what else hang with the fags at Steves’ donuts and hear who else is holding weight in Enfield or Allston and everything like that, but Delphinas’ p is from bunk the Word is out&about that its’ all Manitol and kwai9 you might as well fucking cop XLax or Schweppes and C dopeslaps Poor Tony and C wants to Redline down to Chinatown but Poor Tony turns white as a shit and says Chinatowns’ too dear in $ and everything like that, even for like bundles, Dr. Wo is 200 $ but atleast its’ always good and but we have 400 $ and then some and C pernts out we can fucking well afford Wos’ well known exellent skeet for once at XMas and Poor Tony stamps a hiheel and says but how weve’ got enough $ to stay straight and get Lolasister straight for XMas and all lay up and not have to never ending strugle at XMas and two or more days after that if we dont’ blow it on XMas Eve in Chinatown instead of waiting which is a good pernt but when has any body known C to ever wait he gets dopesick faster than us and everything like that and is all piss and vinegar for Wo and starting with the Shivers and with the noses’ mucis all ready and everything like that and C is not 2Bdenied and we say we are screwing down to Chinatown and if Poor Tony dont’ want to come he can take a like a giant breath and hold it in the Squar until we get back and well’ cop for him, and Poor Tony says he might be a dicksucking fag but hes’ not a starry eyed’ moroon.
Infinite Jest Page 20