The Interrogative Mood

by Padgett Powell

  Do you know the location of Albemarle Sound? Is “Philosophy by Kant, Bag by Vuitton” funny? Have you ever registered a dog or other animal or otherwise dealt in animal registry? Are any of your teeth loose, or are perhaps all of them loose? Do you use the word befitting? I keep trying to formulate a correct question involving a man molesting a candy striper beside his hospital bed, some notion of its being acceptable to molest a girl under these and only these conditions, his possible dying or at least reasonable heightened awareness of mortality and her freshness in the red seersucker dress—can you help me with this question, help me see where we want to go with it? Would you think me peculiar if I said that if we ran down the ice-cream man and one of us ordered a Fudgsicle and the other a banana Popsicle, it would be perfect, a perfect order, and the only alternative would be if one of us ordered also a Nutty Buddy to be shared?

  If you were given a fully restored cherry vintage automobile and a paid-for apartment in a foreign city and could have one other thing to go with these gifts, what would it be? Did your mother teach you anything in particular, and did your father? Do you know what “palisades” means exactly? Could you trap animals for fur? Do you have any gold coins? Are your knives sharp or dull? Do you trust or mistrust people who make a big deal about health? Would you wear chaps and nothing else underneath to a risqué costume party like Carnival? Do you have a favorite candy bar? Do you do a good job when you wash windows or does something always seem to be left undone, perhaps putting you in that inside-outside debate? If you had a little booklet of Post-its printed up to say “Repair in order,” how many of these would you properly have to apply to things around your house or apartment or life in general? Can you stand Pat Boone? Are you daft? Are you going to Funkytown? Can you excuse me for that impertinence? That is to say, can you simply without prejudice not answer the ante-penultimate question?

  WOULD YOU LIKE TO live a life that allows for frequent use of acronym, as in “Let’s proceed according to SOP?” Would you rather have a swimming pool or a small private gymnasium? Do you have any experience that suggests there was a higher water table when you were a child than there is now? Do you recall that once chinchilla farming was advertised in the back of a lot of magazines, with perhaps the same frequency and in the position that the Chia Pet was advertised later? Would you agree with me if I said that the shotgun, when configured for sport and not for bank robbing, etc., is a friendlier weapon than a rifle or a pistol? Has the importance of “being a gentleman,” if not also what is meant by being a gentleman, and why one should be one, and who can or should be one, changed over time? Have you heard the expression “Pats on the back in high school become kicks in the ass in life”?

  The terrible twining calipers lifted the boy’s brain from its pan—does this frighten you, amuse you, or leave you indifferent? Is it a sound observation that a bird soars in direct relation to its proclivity to eat carrion, and flies in direct relation to its proclivity to hunt live prey? If you were in a besieged medieval castle or garrison or town, can you imagine something worse than the enemy’s lobbing over your walls a putrid cow that exploded on impact and got on you? I guess a load of flaming canisters that burned you or a thousand plague-carrying live rats lofted over and bursting from their confines might in the end exceed a cow in terms of projected damage, but doesn’t that putrid cow somehow still take the cake? Are you very appreciative of Yeats? Are you more fond of maple syrup or honey? Do you go to church? Do you believe?

  Do you enjoy taking narcotics? Have you ever had a biopsy performed on a sensitive area, such as the tongue? Does it bother you, or thrill you, to spend holidays intended for conviviality alone? How late in life do you think it is reasonable to anticipate the excitement of meeting a new lover? Would you like to live for a good period of time in India? What would you think an Uzi machine gun might cost? If you had to sleep overnight confined with a polar bear or an anaconda, which would you pick? If you could be reeducated from the ground up by world-class teachers in either literature or mathematics, which field would you take? Do you like shoes or are they just necessary baggage? Do you know anything about cement?

  If a woman were to tell you “I’m a pretty darn good cook if I must say so myself” and then offer you meat loaf or spaghetti, which would you take? Would you prefer to go fishing beside the rich on a pristine mountain stream or beside the poor on a polluted canal? Have you ever spent time with European youth who regard themselves revolutionaries? Have you ever spent time with European youth who regard themselves revolutionaries who did not smoke? Did they not smoke to the extent that it wasn’t the cloying annoying asphyxiating politics that got you, but the smoke? If you decide to have, and set out to execute, “a really good day” for yourself, does it work or often not work? Have you ever seen an unfriendly Dalmatian?

  Would you rather be beaten with a board or a chain? Does any particular person strike you as the most intelligent you have seen or known? Have you ever participated in a cakewalk? What do you take on popcorn? Do you know what is meant by high explosive? What term would most accurately oppose the term “rigorous argument”? Would you rather spend an hour driving a hot rod or talking to a whore? If you could elect to find yourself in a mahogany Chris-Craft powerboat on Lake Michigan in 1930 and then live out the life of that person in that time without returning to your life in this time, would you? Have you ever bred mice? Do you like tar? Do you know much about plate tectonics? Do you regard yourself as redeemed, redeemable, or irretrievably lost? Do you find that the flavor butter pecan, as in butter-pecan ice cream, sounds better than it tastes? What is the loudest noise you have ever heard? Have you done any mountain climbing? Would you eat a monkey? What broke your heart?

  When the going gets tough, are you one of the tough that gets going? Have you ever dreamed you had apartments you were only sometimes aware you had? Do you have any ballet training, and if not, would you like some? Have you ever seen Newton’s Optiks? I have a vision of Debbie Marsden in a light blue dress saying somewhat proudly as we did the dishes that we would not do the flatware because “Mommie scalds these” have you ever heard of someone boiling the silverware in her own household? Do you think Debbie Marsden might have become maladjusted somehow? Do you think there is any statistical merit to the possibility that quiet shy girls stand a chance higher in proportion to that of more robust girls of turning nymphomaniac?

  What is it called when a color has a white chalkiness in it? Are you troubled by the fact that tweezers are generally so poorly made that they do not grip anything well? Are you comforted by having a good tool in your hand whether you are to do anything with it or not, or even if you do not know how to use the tool? If we were to scramble for change because we heard the ice-cream man coming, on our knees digging into the recesses of the sofa with the cushions on top of our arms, and we sensed the ice-cream man was passing by and we had found no change so we just relaxed there with our arms outstretched and our faces on the knobby sofa cushions, how long could we hold the position, what could we talk about, and do you think we could be relatively content there or would we be impatient to get up and brush ourselves off and put our adult selves back together and be on about the important business of our lives?

  DO YOU TAKE PLEASURE in wiping a surface clean? If you lived in a little bunk on a big boat or barge and anything you had onboard had to be in the aggregate about the size of a toaster, what would you have onboard? Would you prefer for company a goat or a sheep? What kind of person have you heard use the term “upchuck”? When someone upchucks near you, do you ever also upchuck? When was the last time you went to church? Do you recall the last conversation you had with your parents? If you could choose between sanding something valuable until there was a good surface on it and then painting it correctly with a good paint or varnish and having it look wonderful, or setting something worthless on fire and having it burn until there was absolutely nothing left of it but a handsome pile of ash, which endeavor would you take?

  Wha
t is the largest zone of neglect in your life? Do you enjoy the study of physics? Have your own forays into plumbing been successful? Do you wonder more what has become of the normal people you have known or the weird people you have known? If you were the victim of a violent crime or a close member of your family was the victim and the perp alleged a junk-food defense, would you be more upset or less upset than if he did not allege a junk-food defense? Do you have a shorter temper than usual with a person who is snapping chewing gum? For New Year’s Eve, do you prefer a big loud drunk party at which say someone pogos nude across the room, or would you like to stand beside a tree alone and see if there is any wind in it?

  What is your favorite fabric? Have you ever raised a wild baby bird? Which of your parents would you say was the more selfish? Do you have the patience for pickup sticks? Do you like high-tech gadgetry? Are there any significant personal betrayals in your past, to you or by you? Do you know what is meant exactly by synthetic motor oil? Do you know what famous person complained famously that many men produce only excrement? If a man completed building a model airplane and ordered a subscription to a newspaper on a given day, would he have been more productive than if he had only produced excrement? Would he be better than they if he wrote a beautiful piece of music that was listened to by hundreds of men or even thousands as they produced only excrement? What if a couple of them or even hundreds annoyed by the music turn it off as they produce only excrement? What if the excrement producers regard as holy more or less that production and admit no distraction from their mission? What if they yell from the chamber where they ply their industry “Turn that crap off!” speaking of the music that someone has thoughtlessly left playing at too high a volume for their comfort? What if they have one of those German shelf toilets that allows the inspection of the feces and as they inspect the feces it is established that no one is so inspecting the music to ascertain its quality? Things are a little different now that we have some quality control going down on the excrement end and no quality control going down on the productive-geniuses-live-better-lives end, aren’t they?

  Will you forgive me my impertinence? Would you be persuaded to do so by the news that perhaps I was overindulging my pain pills against the impending medical adjudication as to whether or not my recent biopsy is malignant? Do you traffic much in facial creams and lotions and such? Do you breathe correctly, as, say, you are wont to be taught in yoga environs, or do you just breathe any which old way? When did you last have a piece of Melba toast? Are you familiar with the particular dead quality of the Suwannee River with respect to fish? Do you listen to the music of the spheres or do you dance a dull sublunary ditty?

  What percentage of men or women have the capacity, or historically have had the capacity, to declare war? Do you keep a balanced checkbook? Would you take a red-colored dog or a white-colored dog? Do your shoes fit well? Do you know that in some countries men do all the public cooking and women do all the private cooking? Do you know that for some time I have wanted to ask you a question relating to bolos and boomerangs but that I cannot figure out the question? Do you know which is the stouter snake, Russell’s or Gaboon’s viper? Do you prefer a home brew for cleaning windows or a commercial formula like Windex? What is it called when a product begins to serve as the generic term for that class of things the product is a member of, as in Scotch tape, make a Xerox of that, get me a Kleenex, and so on? Would you include “Magic Marker” in this category of eponymous generics?

  Have you seen a person recently so delicious-looking that, were you and this person to be scrambling for ice-cream change with your arms in the sofa and your faces laid on the cushions looking at each other as you felt for coins and the ice-cream truck dinged on by and your hands in there felt only the lint of the sofa scrofula and your faces were fairly close across a distance of that knobby nylon terrain, you might feel compelled to slide your face toward this delicious-looking person’s and kiss him or her—have you seen anyone like this recently? Would you like to see a person so delicious-looking that you might feel compelled to try to kiss the person without, as it were, propriety? Do you know what conservative bone-fracture management might mean as opposed to nonconservative bone-fracture management? Would you take a ballet class now?

  When you go to a football game, will you wave a towel for your team? Do you have any mounted animals or pelts? Do you ever have a notion such as “Today would be a good day for me to use a lever on something”? Are you very happy with your hands or could they be other hands and suit you better? Can you quickly name a good thing and a bad thing? Do you understand really how a radio works? Do you eat cake for the icing or icing for the cake? What is the best narcotic in your experience? Am I the only one who thinks CBS should be prosecuted for getting rid of Jill Arrington over the nipple erection during the Florida-Tennessee game? Of course they covered their tracks and will not be found accountable, but the fact remains that someone owes Jill an apology, don’t you think? Would that apology of course not be tantamount to the entire United States’ apologizing for its Puritan hysteria and hypocrisies—to apologizing for its very existence? Can someone explain successfully why commercials for erectile dysfunction are allowed to frame the verboten erect-nipple episode? Is it because the impotence-pill commercial is the revenue-generating vehicle that just happens to televise the nipple? Is the impotence-pill commercial a medical issue while the nipple is in obvious good health—that is, is nonworking sex okay but working sex not okay? Is there any end to the inane ways one can phrase this stupid question about a stupid country?

  CAN YOU COOK? Can you fight? Can you lie? Can you do anything well? Have you acquired a sufficient stock of clothes from a mail-order seller that you can, if you want to, flip through the catalog to decide what to wear that day? Do you know a peony from a petunia? What exactly does “Standard & Poor” mean to you? Can you hang ten? Do you dance? Do you view extreme sports as legitimate enterprises or are they just imprudent fucking around until you get hurt? Can the same question not be asked of sexual consort? Has it been a while since you cracked a can of readymade biscuits over the counter and felt that gratifying modest explosion of clammy dough in your hand?

  Are you given to the canary or the parakeet? Does the prospect of a pet’s outliving you give you pause? Can we relax and trust that our wishes in these regards, our posthumous affairs as it were, will really be administered as we have stipulated, or will we be frustrated and yelling through the glass walls of heaven or the hot opaque obsidian walls of hell at the corrupt disregard for our eternal wishes? What if you saw, from heaven, your macaw starve in its cage? What if you saw your horse led to the glue factory?

  How many people per hundred would you say are asses? Should non-asses have to put up with asses? Should asses have to put up with non-asses? Who deserves less having to endure the other? Does it seem that by definition an ass is not so bothered by things as a non-ass? Is it fair to say, in fact, that asses are the unbothered and non-asses are the bothered? Do you think the bothered were really meant to inherit the earth?

  Do you know that since I last asked you about the disappearance of the blue jay—I meant to, if I did not—that I have found one blue jay feather under my house? Would a complete familiarization with the military campaigns of Napoleon provide the modern-day general with much of value, or little of value, or a medium quantity of value in terms of what is called the necessary skill set for a general today? Are you innocent of The Nutcracker ballet or are you of the surprising number of people who see The Nutcracker ballet every year? If a dog needs to be shaved because it is overheating but the haircut embarrasses the dog, should it be shaved anyway? Do you sometimes ice a part of your body gratuitously? When was the last time you gapped a spark plug yourself? Would you rather be bitten by an alligator or a large cat? How many diapers would you say you have changed in your life?

  “Why must it all suck so bad?”—is this a question asked by a suicide candidate or a comedian? Does turmeric lift the spirits or just dy
e everything? Do you loosen your pants after eating? Do you realize that on Sunday-morning network television in the United States of America one can hear a voice-over in a commercial for erectile dysfunction informing the target audience, presumably families headed for church, returning from church, or not going to church, that an erection lasting more than four hours should be regarded a medical emergency? Would you rather be kicked in the head by a horse or a bull? Do bulls in fact kick as horses do? Would you be unsettled a bit if someone said to you, “Hey, I’m going down to the Brain Tumor Treatment Center for just a bit and I’ll stop by later tonight”?

  What does “It just goes to show you” mean? Have you ever built or operated a trebuchet? If you could get ahold of some dynamite for recreational purposes, would you be hesitant, indifferent, or eager? Do you have a specific length shorts must be or are you flexible in this regard? Is Santa Claus in your view essentially a pedophile? How long would it take you to get over a house fire that destroyed everything you owned and thought dear to you? At what age does a fawn stop sitting in your lap and acting like a house cat or a dog and become a deer, and why does this change necessarily obtain? If you heard someone say “In America, one word says it all,” what would you expect the word to be?