Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

  Crowd-laughter.

  ‘I mean I ain’t exactly coming over there with long-term sobriety, right? And I accept that. But the cunt’s got the hook on the door and she’s going Who the fuck are you to be telling me to go for fucking counselling after the sick fucking little like stunt you and that bimbo pulled on that kid who only just now even got the cast off? Oh, and no sign of the fucking kid anywhere. Just her and Ma through the screen door, all over the place with the attitude. And now they tell me to get the fuck off their porch, No they tell me, as in like Permission Denied, consent to see my own kid fucking refused. And the cunt still in her fucking bathrobe after noon, and Ma behind her half in the bag already and hanging on to the fucking wall. You know what I’m saying? My serenity’s like: See yaa! And I say up boat- ayouse’s asses, I’m here for my goddamn kid. And now my sister says she’s going for the phone, and Ma’s saying The fuck, get the fuck out, Mikey. And plus did I mention no sign of the kid, and I ain’t to even like touch the screen door, not without consent. And I’m wanting to fucking kill somebody here, you know what I’m saying? And my sister’s getting the antenna out on the phone, and so I go OK I’m fucking leaving, but I like grab my balls at the both of them and go Eat me the boatayouse, you know what I’m saying? Cause now it’s the old Mikey back, and now I got with the attitude now, also. I’m wanting to light my cunt of a sister up so bad I can’t hardly see to get the truck off the lawn and leave. But and so and but so I’m driving back home, and I’m so mad I all of a sudden try and pray. And I try and pray, driving along and whatnot, and it comes to me I see irregarding of their fucked-up attitude I still need to go back and apologize irregardless, for grabbing my balls at them, cause that’s old fucking behavior. I see for my own sobriety’s sake I need to go back and try and say I’m sorry. The thought of it just about makes me puke, you know what I’m — but I go back and pull the truck up out front on the street and pray and go back up on the porch, and I fucking apologize, and I go to my sister Please can I at least see the kid to see the cast off, and the cunt goes Fuck you, get the fuck out, we don’t accept your fucking apology. And no sign of Ma, and the fucking kid there’s no sign of him, so I got to accept her word and don’t even know for sure if the cast is even off. But why I needed to share I think is it scared me. I scared me, you know what I’m saying? I was at the counsellor’s after and I told him I go I got to get some kind of hold on this fucking temper or I’m going to end up right back in front of the fucking judge for lighting somebody up again, you know what I’m saying? And God fucking forbid it should be somebody that’s in my family, because I been that route once too many times already. And I go like Am I nuts, Dr., or what? Do I got a like death-wish or what? You know what I’m saying? The cast just only now finally comes off and I’m wanting to light up the fucking cunt that’s got to consent I should get closer than a hundred m.’s to the kid? Is it like I’m trying to set myself up for a drink or what exactly is it with this spring-loaded temper, if I’m sober? The temper and judge is why I fucking got sober in the first place. So what the fuck is this? Well fuck me. I’m just grateful I got some of that out. It’s been up in my head, renting space, you know what I’m saying? I see Vinnie’s getting ready to fucking gong me. I want to hear from Tommy E. back there against the wall. Yo Tommy! What are you, spanking the hog back there or what? But I’m just glad to be here. I just wanted to get some of that shit out.’

  The man’s pants’ crease was gone at the knee and his Cardin topcoat looked slept in.

  ‘It was good of you to grant me an easement.’

  Pat M. tried to recross her legs and shrugged. ‘You said you weren’t here professionally.’

  ‘Good of you to believe me.’ The Assistant District Attorney for Suffolk County’s 4th Circuit up on the near North Shore’s hat was a good dress Stetson with a feather in the band. He held it up in his lap by the brim and slowly rotated it by moving his fingers along the brim. He’d re-crossed his legs twice. ‘We met you and Mars at the Marblehead Regatta for the McDonald’s House thing for children, not this summer but either the sum—’

  ‘I know who you are.’ Pat’s husband wasn’t a celebrity but knew a lot of local celebrities, from the mint-reconditioned-sports-car upscale network around Boston.

  ‘Well it’s good of you. I’m here about one of your residents.’

  ‘But not professionally,’ Pat said. It wasn’t a question or verification. She was cool steel when it came to protecting the residents and House. Then back home in her own home she was a shattered husk of a wreck.

  ‘Frankly I’m not sure why I am here. You’re just down the hill from the hospital. I’ve been up at Saint Elizabeth’s off and on for three days. Perhaps I need to simply air this. The 5th District boys — the P.D.s — speak well of the place. Your House here. Perhaps I need simply to share this, to work up the nerve. My sponsor’s no help. He’s simply said do it if you want to have any hope of things getting better.’

  Anything less than a combination thoroughgoing professional and AA-longtimer would have at least hiked an eyebrow at one of the most powerful and remorseless constables in three counties saying sponsor.

  ‘It’s Phob-Comp-Anon,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘I went through Choices 383 last winter and have been working a program of recovery in Phob-Comp-Anon a day at a time to the best of my ability ever since then.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s Tooty,’ the A.D.A. said. He did a pause with his eyes closed and then smiled, still with his eyes closed. ‘It is, rather, me, and my enmeshment-issues with Tooty’s… condition.’

  Phob-Comp-Anon was a decade-old 12-Step splinter from Al-Anon, for codependency-issues surrounding loved ones who were cripplingly phobic or compulsive, or both.

  ‘It’s a long story and not a particularly interesting one, I’m sure,’ the A.D.A. said. ‘Suffice to say that Tooty’s been in torment over some oral-dental-hygienic-violation issues that have their roots we’re discovering in some issues from a childhood whose dysfunctionality we — well, which she’d been in denial about for quite some time. It doesn’t matter what. My program’s my own. The hiding the car keys, the cutting off her credit with different dentists, the checking the wastebaskets for new brush-wrappers five times an hour — my unmanageability’s my own, and I’m doing what I can, day by day, to let go and detach with love.’

  ‘I think I understand.’

  ‘I’m working Nine, now.’

  Pat said ‘The Ninth Step.’

  The A.D.A. reversed the hat’s rotation by moving his fingers in the opposite direction along the brim.

  ‘I’m trying to make direct amends to whosoever my Fourth- and Eighth-Step work’s revealed I’ve harmed, except in cases where to do so would injure them or others.’

  A tiny spiritual slip from Pat in the form of a patronizing smile. ‘I have a nodding acquaintance with Nine myself.’

  The A.D.A. was barely there, his eyes fixed and dilated. The remorselessly ingathered eyebrow-angle Pat had always seen in his photos was completely reversed. The brows now formed a little peaked roof of pathos.

  ‘One of your residents,’ he said. ‘A Mr. Gately, Court-Remanded out of the 5th Circuit, Peabody I believe. Or Staff counselor, alumni, some status.’

  Pat made a kind of exaggerated innocent trying-to-place-the-name-type face.

  The A.D.A. said ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m aware of your constraints. I want nothing from you on him. It’s him I’ve been up at Saint Elizabeth’s to see.’

  Pat allowed herself one slightly flared nostril at this news.

  The A.D.A. leaned forward, hat rotating between his calves, elbows on knees in the odd defecatory posture men used to try to communicate earnestness in their sharing. ‘I’m told — I owe the — Mr. Gately — an amend. I need to make an amend to Mr. Gately.’ He looked up. ‘You too — this remains within these walls, as if it were my anonymity. All right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what for. I blamed t
he — I’ve harbored a resentment, against this Gately, concerning an incident I’d considered responsible for making Tooty’s phobia reflare. It doesn’t matter. The specifics, or his culpability or exposure to prosecution in the incident — I’ve come to believe these don’t matter. I’ve harbored this resentment. The kid’s picture’s been up on my Priority-board with the pictures of far more objectively important threats to the public weal. I’ve been biding my time, waiting to get him. This latest incident — no, don’t say it, you needn’t say a thing — seemed like just the opening. My last chance went federal and then fizzled.’

  Pat allowed herself a very slightly puzzled forehead.

  The man waved the hat. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve hated, hated this man. You know that Enfield’s Suffolk County. This incident with the Canadian assault, the alleged firearm, the witnesses who can’t depose because of their own exposure…. My sponsor, my entire Group — they say if I act on the resentment I’m doomed. I’ll get no relief. It won’t help Tooty. Tooty’s lips will still be white pulp from the peroxide, her enamel in tatters from the constant irrational brushing and brushing and brushing and —’ he clamped his fine clean hand over his mouth and produced a high-pitched noise that frankly gave Pat the howlers, his right eyelid twitching.

  He took several breaths. ‘I need to let it go. I’ve come to believe that. Not just the prosecution — that’s the easy part. I’ve already tossed the file, though whatever civil liability the — Mr. Gately might face is another matter, not my concern. It’s so damnably ironic. The man’s going to two-step out of at the very least a probation-violation and prosecution on all his old highly convictable charges because I have to pitch the case, for the sake of my own recovery, I, who wanted nothing so much as to see this man locked down in a cell with some psychopathic cellmate for the rest of his natural life, who shook my fist at the ceiling and vowed —’ and again the noise, this time muffled by the fine hat and so less well-muffled, his shoes pounding a little on the carpet in rage so that Pat’s dogs raised their heads and looked quizzically at him, and the epileptic one had a very small loud-noise seizure.

  ‘I hear you saying this is very hard but you’ve decided what you need to do.’

  ‘Worse,’ the A.D.A. said, blotting his brow with an unfolded handkerchief. ‘I have to make an amend, my sponsor’s said. If I want the growth that promises real relief. I have to make direct amends, put out my hand and say that I’m sorry and ask the man’s forgiveness for my own failure to forgive. This is the only way I’ll be able to forgive him. And I can’t detach with love from Tooty’s phobic compulsion until I’ve forgiven the b— the man I’ve blamed in my heart.’

  Pat looked him in the eye. ‘Of course I can’t say I’ve tossed the Canadian case’s file, I needn’t go that far they say. That would expose me to conflict of interest — the irony — and could hurt Tooty, if my position’s threatened. I’ve been told I can simply let him simmer on that until time passes and nothing moves forward.’ He raised his own eyes. ‘Which means you cannot tell anyone either. Declining to prosecute for personal spiritual reasons — the office — it would be hard for others to understand. This is why I’ve come to you in explicit confidence.’

  ‘I hear your request and I’ll honor it.’

  ‘But listen. I can’t do it. Cannot. I’ve sat outside that hospital room saying the Serenity Prayer over and over and praying for willingness and thinking of my own spiritual interests and believing this amend is my Higher Power’s will for my own growth and I haven’t been able to go in. I go and sit paralyzed outside the room for several hours and drive home and pry Tooty away from the sink. It can’t go on. I have to look that rotten — no, evil, I’m convinced in my heart, that son of a bitch is evil and deserves to be removed from the community. I have to walk in there and extend my hand and tell him I’ve wished him ill and blamed him and ask for forgiveness — him —if you knew what sick, twisted, sadistically evil and sick thing he did to us, to her — and ask him for forgiveness. Whether he forgives or not is not the issue. It’s my own side of the street I need to clean.’

  ‘It sounds very, very hard,’ Pat said.

  The fine hat was almost spinning between the man’s calves, the pantcuffs of which had been pulled up in the defecatory forward lean to reveal socks that weren’t, it seemed, both quite the same texture of wool. The mismatched socks spoke to Pat’s heart more than anything else.

  ‘I don’t even know why I came here,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t simply leave again and drive home. Yesterday she’d been at her tongue with one of those old NoCoat LinguaScraper appliances until it bled. I can’t go home and look on that again without having cleaned house.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘And you were just down the hill.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I don’t expect help or counsel. I already believe I have to do it. I’ve accepted the injunction to do it. I believe I have no choice. But I can’t do it. I haven’t been able to do it.’

  ‘Willing, maybe.’

  ‘Haven’t yet been willing. Yet. I wish to emphasize yet.’

  20 NOVEMBER YEAR OF THE DEPEND ADULT UNDERGARMENT IMMEDIATELY PRE-FUNDRAISER-EXHIBITION-FÊTE GAUDEAMUS IGITUR

  Usually, part of the experience of having the place you live in throw a gala is watching different people arrive for the festivities — the Warshavers, the Gartons and Peltasons and Prines, the Chins, the Middlebrooks and Gelbs, an incidental Lowell, the Buckmans in their claret-colored Volvo driven by their silent grown son who you never see except when he’s driving Kirk and Binnie Buckman someplace. Dr. Hickle and his creepy niece. The Chawafs and Heavens. The Reehagens. The palsied and megawealthy Mrs. Warshaver with her pair of designer canes. The Donagan brothers from Svelte Nail. But usually we never get to see them arriving, the friends and patrons of E.T.A., for the Fundraising exhibition and gala. Usually while they’re arriving and getting greeted by Tavis we’re all down in the lockers, dressing and stretching, getting ready to exhibit. Getting shaved and taped by Loach, etc.

  It must usually be an unusual occasion for the guests, too, because for the first few hours they’re there to watch us play — they’re all audience — then at some point with the last couple matches winding down the guys in white jackets with trays start appearing in Comm.-Ad., and the gala starts, and then it’s the guests who become the participants and performers.

  Dressing and stretching, wrapping grips with Gauze-Tex or filling a pouch with fuller’s earth (Coyle, Freer, Stice, Traub) or sawdust (Wagenknecht, Chu), getting taped, those in puberty getting shaved and taped. A ritual. Even the conversation, usually, such as it is, has a timeless ceremonial aspect. John Wayne hunched as always on the bench before his locker with his towel like a hood over his head, running a coin back and forth over the backs of his fingers. Shaw pinching the flesh between his thumb and first finger, acupressure for a headache. Everyone had gone into their like autopilot ritual. Possalthwaite’s sneakers were pigeon-toed under a stall door. Kahn was trying to spin a tennis ball on his finger like a basketball. At the sink, Eliot Kornspan was blowing out his sinuses with hot water; no one else was anywhere near the sink. A certain number of hysterical pre-competition rumors about the Québec Jr. Team and the severity of the weather circulated and were refuted and shifted antigens and returned. You could hear the high-register end of the wind even down here. The Csikszentmihalyi kid was doing a kind of piaffer in place, his knees hitting his chest, stretching his hip-flexors out. Troeltsch sat up against his locker near Wayne, wearing a disconnected headset and broadcasting his own match in advance. There were fart-accusations and -denials. Rader snapped a towel at Wagenknecht, who liked to stand for long periods of time bent at the waist with his head against his knees. Arslanian sat very still in a corner, blindfolded in what was either an ascot or a very fey necktie, his head cocked in the attitude of the blind. It was unclear whether B squads would even get to play; no one was sure how many courts the M.I.T. Union had inside. Rum
ors flew this way and that. Michael Pemulis was nowhere to be seen since early this A.M., at which time Anton Doucette said he’d seen Pemulis quote ‘lurking’ out by the West House dumpsters looking quote ‘anxiously depressed.’