The Interrogative Mood

by Padgett Powell

  Do you like estate sales? Do you know what kind of acreage one would have to plant in coffee in order to produce enough coffee just for one’s own consumption, or if such a venture might be feasible? Should a girl be discouraged from bra stuffing? Do you know why or how, and to what extent, trucking has replaced rail shipping? If you saw on a T-shirt the slogan BLOOD IS LIKE A PARACHUTE, what would you think that slogan intends to mean? Are there means of determining how accurate one’s oven thermostat is other than by incorporating an after-market oven thermometer, the accuracy of which itself may need proofing? Am I wasting your time? Are you wasting mine? Can life be viewed as time wasting and time not wasting? Do the not wasters prove better off than the wasters? Are the wasters liabilities or are they assets to the not wasters? If a man is running a ninety-degree grinder and it catches his pants and torques into him and he sees blood coming through his jeans at the crotch and he says “Hmmm,” and puts the grinder down and sits on the bumper of his truck and lights a cigarette before investigating what is wrong in his pants, and before heading to the ER, is he, would you say, wasting time or not? Do you know what culottes are?

  WHAT POWER MAGNIFICATION DO you like in a binocular? Have you ridden those electric buses that connect to cables over the street by means of a rig similar to that used by bumper cars at the fair and that can come untracked and so have to be put back on track by the driver using nonconductive ropes tied to the contact rig? Do you like hanging file folders? If I invited you now to drive around in a bright red car on this bright day, would you like to come? Do you regard a particular day of the week as sinister? Is revolted a word you use without irony? When you envision restoring the world to any of its better former states, do wolves figure into your visions? Do you like it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to you?

  To be an anarchist, properly speaking, does one need to actively undo government or may one just passively not participate? Do you know of or perhaps own any dead trees that you are particularly fond of and wish to see stand for longer yet? Is the charge that manufacturing a Puerto Rican Barbie is racist mitigated or not by the fact that Puerto Rican girls are wild for Puerto Rican Barbie and indifferent to white Barbie? Have you ever had to maintain a swimming pool for your mother, and if so, did this job reduce your fondness for swimming in pools and perhaps for pools themselves?

  May I tell you that I once knew a refrigerator man, who called them simply “boxes,” who would come to my house if I poked a hole in the Freon lines trying to defrost the freezer with an ice pick, and fix the hole with epoxy he mixed right there on the bottom of a Coke bottle, and who once brought his assistant Burgess with him and after the repair had been effected said to me, “Now, we know you smart, you go to college, and we wanting to ax you a question, because you smart, you go to college, and…” and went on like that until I said, “All right, Nevada, I’m not smart but we’ll say I’m smart, what is the question?” and Nevada said, “Well, Burgess’s pennis don’t get hard, and we wondering if you could recommend something for Burgess’s pennis to get hard,” and Burgess offered up as proof of his lost virility a brief testament that before this debilitation had obtained one could hear him bust a nut, as he put it, for blocks on Beaver Street in Jacksonville, Florida, where they knew I was from, and that so moved was I by their appeal to my eminent authority and by the pronunciation pennis and by Burgess’s obvious anguish—he was wringing his hands at the red kitchen table—that I stepped without hesitation to the cabinet and withdrew my Bob Hoffman Protein Powder for weight lifters and mixed some of it with a honey-and-vinegar cocktail over ice and told Burgess to drink it all at once, and he did, and shortly said he thought he felt something, and then said he was sure he felt something, positive he felt something, and his soaring spirits lifted him away from the table and Nevada carried him on to his appointment with virility? Would it matter in your decision to accept it or not whether the large standard poodle brought to your door and offered to you was white or black, and whether it had the fancy haircut or not?

  Would you prefer to expire on a fair day or foul, or do you think you’ll be past appreciating and lamenting the weather by that point? Can you handle honey without getting it on your fingers? Do you know if the Japanese Zero was actually painted chrome yellow or did it for some ahistorical reason appear in that color in the American polystyrene models later made of it? Do you know the names of your great-grandparents? Would you stand a better chance of hitting a long-legged bird with a bolo or with a boomerang? Are you a connoisseur of chocolate, or is your appetite for it unrefined? Can you lay up a basketball? Do you like starch in your clothes? Do you favor any one form of sexual congress over others? Do you prefer hyperactive children or slow children? How far will you walk to procure a daily newspaper? Can you successfully hit the Close Door and Open Door buttons on elevators in time? Do you have any interest in being in a terrorist organization, and if so, which one appeals to you as having the most justified mission? At what point is a gosling a goose?

  Do you go in for the tall tale? Do you own any leotards? Are you familiar with the term “the fancy”? Can you spit well? Are you bothered when a popular local weatherman is dismissed for sexual dalliance in a public restroom? Did you have an aunt or an uncle of whom you were more fond than your other relatives? Do you understand when you can cook on copper and when you cannot? Knowing what you might about construction, if you had to build a bridge or dig a tunnel of equal length, which would you prefer? What do you think was the gentlest, sanest civilization in history? If you could transport to a past civilization, which one would it be? What breed of chickens attracts you most? In sexual attraction, is there a feature or set of features that you find is a deal maker or a deal breaker? Has it occurred to you at some point that you are a whole lot less gifted than you might have once thought yourself, in one or in several aspects of your youness, or have you maintained a more or less steady assessment of your abilities and talents and indeed of your worth? Is your ass inordinately chapped by television chefs who in your view cannot cook, or are you amused by them, or are you as indifferent to them as to other pretenders about you?

  Isn’t the weather nice today? Is there anyone whom you’ve been thinking about calling for some time for no really good reason so that if you do call you’ll have to explain yourself as just assenting to a whim? Do you like it when people to whom you’ve done no wrong arrange themselves to be done with you? Would you rather be a lumberjack, a plumber, or a croupier? Do you like to handle lead? Have you ever pinned butterflies? In tennis, do you favor a lot of topspin or do you like a flat ball? Have you been so thirsty that you’ve drunk questionable untreated water? Have you heard that water buffalo are more dangerous than tigers and lions and elephants? Was prom-going fun or a misery for you? Would you like, right now, some cornbread?

  ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH the economics term “elasticity of demand”? Does the prospect of a vacation tire you out? Do you know a rasp from a file? Have you ever gone out the window or the emergency door of a bus? Have you hunted ducks, and if so, did you use decoys, and if so, did the decoys seem to make the hunting unfair? Would you be more interested in the murder of one chocolatier by another chocolatier than in the murder of one jockey by another jockey? Is there a profession the murder of one member of which by another would interest you more than all other intraprofessional murders? Is there a category of interprofessional murder that would interest you more than others?

  Do you sometimes find some appeal, as opposed to your customary cynical derision of the idea, in the notion of issuing a Cry for Help? If a good friend said to you “I’ve never really been happy,” apparently in earnest, would you laugh? Would you have anticipated that Jack LaLanne would outlive Buddy Ebsen? If you were to be confined in close quarters with it, would you prefer a horse, a mule, or a donkey? Do you have a tattoo? Do you use the terms “alloyed” and “unalloyed”? How do you hold with corporal punishment of children? Would a long view through space and time of human history o
n the earth resemble the compressed photography you may have seen of maggots working a corpse?

  Do you know the difference when they are on the wing between a gull and a tern? What are the factors that influence your selection of automobile tires? How many times can you recall as a child eating a good-sized spoonful of dirt? Do you prefer being colder than you wish to be or hotter than you wish to be? If you were from this moment on to be known by any two-name combination of these names—Alice, Emily, Katherine, Sveta, Bruiser, Frank, Gerard, Tyrone—what would your new name be? Do you know who invented Velcro, and when? Do you know how many human lives there have been, including the present batch, and whether the present number alive exceeds the number alive at any time in the past? Have you ever packed your own wheel bearings? What do you do when you get to feeling really low?

  If you did play marbles as a child, do you know rings, pig’s eye, what is meant by “dates,” and so forth? Have you been responsible for the death of a songbird? Do you shine your shoes? Does the phrase “rampart standard” mean anything to you? Is there a candy bar you like over others? Why do “making hay” and “haymaker” have substantially different meanings? Does “bimbo” refer only to women? How would you, on impulse, fill this in: “We got to get us some [blank] down heah”? How about “crispins and lardons”? If you heard of a “chiropractic boondoggle,” what would you think that might involve?

  What is the right-sized dog for you? Can you hit a golf ball? Do you like lizards? Do you use the word spatial? Have you ever seen or tried the old sport paddleball, which used very heavy plywood paddles? Did you ever or do you now own a set of French curves? Are you aggressive and with it on money, or passive and out of it? Do you like movies? Can you recall eating crayons? If you hired a maid and she came in the first day and said, “I’ll be needing me some Bab-o and Skinner’s Raisin Bran and for you to get out of my way,” would you think you had made a very good hire, or would the bluster worry you? Would such a maid be the kind you need to make pencil marks on the liquor-bottle labels for, or not? Have you ever seen actual police photos of a crime scene with a corpse in it? Do you sometimes just make up your mind and set out to Have a Very Good Day and not let anything deflect you from doing just that? Will you eat birthday-candle wax on the icing of a cake or do you meticulously pick it out?

  Do you think you yourself could make anything out of birch bark? Are you more likely to purchase something calling itself a salve or something calling itself a balm, and are you more drawn to it or less drawn to it if it is in a tin, as opposed to, let’s say, in a tube? If you could be an assassin or an ice-cream manufacturer, which would it be? Are you conversant with wildflowers? When you see public officials, do you see trajectories of menace or do you see public servants doing their best? Does what the Germans did to the Jews, next to what the Americans did to the Indians, differ largely only in the efficiency of the Germans and the inefficiency of the Americans? Have you ever had and really enjoyed cold fountain Pepsi-Cola over shaved ice early in the morning? Would you like something like a little cold Pepsi and a good recreational drug right now? What percentage of people in general would you say are so stupid or misled or just altogether so fucked up in the head that we would be better off if they were not present at all? Do you use throw rugs in your house? Would you ever buy a significant pet, by which I mean something more substantial than a mouse or a fish, from a pet shop as opposed to from a breeder or otherwise less retail purveyor? Do you recall the nice ivory color of a jawbreaker as the red coating wears off, and the nice porcelain knocking sound you can effect with the jawbreaker and your teeth? Do you think there might be a snake equivalent of some sort to the Christmas bird count? Will one hyena stand and fight a dog? Were you any good at Flyback? Is there any circumstance in which you would allow yourself to be addressed as “Skipper”? If someone you knew vaguely called you up and said, “I can do the dirty dog all night long, you want to go out with me?” what would you say?

  Was Luther’s declamation called the Diet of Worms, or did that refer to the convention that drew it up? If it was the proclamation, would you rather issue a Diet of Worms or issue a papal bull? How often do you burn toast? What do you suppose is the ratio in the world of underweight people to overweight people? Do you think that tropical fish and birds are as content as they appear to be in their tanks and cages? Do you know why it is that freedom is not free? Would it be correspondingly true, if freedom is not free, that captivity is not captive? If you were to help a child enter himself into a soapbox derby contest, would you prefer it be the life-size race or the model competition? Do you know why the two forms of this soapbox-derby business exist? Do you have a fondness for operating a small outboard motor on calm water early in the morning, over operating that motor at any other time of day? Have you used the word splendid without irony? Do you think a man named Chocolate could be elected governor of any state other than California? Have you known people who loosen their clothing for the purpose of sitting around? Have you ever witnessed a serious fireworks accident either to persons or to property? Would you rob a bank?

  Are you tardy more than not? Do you picnic, and do you use a basket if you do? Can you say for sure that you have loved? Are you looking forward to retirement? Does the recovery of the alligator, they say nearly extinct in the 1960s, surprise you? How many one-armed men do you know, or women? What are the chances that you could have been an astronaut? Do you like paint? Is there a future? Do you need support clothing of any sort? Do you like to report that you are alarmed? Do you like it when others report they are alarmed? Will you buy from a meat market whose slogan is “Nobody beats our meat”? Is mass a function of weight or weight a function of mass? Can you sharpen your knives and scissors or are you dependent upon others for sharpening? Do you know why the pleated paper cups for cupcakes do not burn? Is a bruise a contusion, or is a bruise a manifestation of a contusion? If you soaked a good-sized rolled-up newspaper and dropped it, say, ten stories onto the street, how large do you think the newsprint would spread out on impact? Are you familiar with the bird species todies? Are you amused when you hear a girl say “This sucks my dick,” meaning she is disgusted by something? Why does a split in a fingernail transmit itself apparently forever? Is it natural that those much taken with themselves young become less so as they age, and those not so taken young become more confident of themselves later?

  Are you familiar with the spring-loaded stinging mechanism of the jellyfish and other things in the ocean you’d better not touch, perhaps called nematocyst? Would you think that your vocabulary shrinks, expands, or holds constant over time? If one man suggested to a second that he resembled Ted Kennedy, and the second in protest said, “I ain’t got no outside gorilla,” what would his remark mean? Are you drawn to bowling and the ambience of bowling? Does it strike you as odd or not odd that shooting enthusiasts commonly shoot discarded bowling pins in timed competitions to see who can shoot them off a table the fastest? Have you ever read Virgil? Do you think in terms of calculus? Can you wade across a stream with some speed and depth to it without falling down, usually?

  Do you like crickets? Are you sane? Does the moon’s rising or the sun’s setting do it for you more? Can you abide horse thievery? Have you purchased the services of a prostitute? What’s it like when you first wake up? Is there an aftertaste to a cigarette, or is it all the immediate taste of the cigarette? When do the stars render themselves most visible? Can we say with certainty that we are free? What’s it like being you? Does Carole Lombard stir you in any way? If good fences make good neighbors, what kind of fence in your view makes the best neighbor? Would you like to have right now any particular kind of candy? Has any part of you ever herniated or prolapsed? Do you doodle much? Do you prefer a cloth to a paper napkin? Can you hold your liquor? Do you think Charles Lindbergh was a good fellow or a cad? If a place is infested with feral cats, is it okay in your book to shoot them? Can you tell me why now at this minute I see in my mind the time I picked up on my paddle
a large gray rat snake as she swam across the Flint River in Georgia and she hissed at me gently? What is the opposite of a “strapping lad”? Will we be struck down in heaven? Can we hope for a better tomorrow? Do we have the look of heroes to anyone? Can we be better or worse than we are? Do you have anything you’d like to say?

  WOULD YOU CHECK IN for a long stay, a short stay, or would you not stay at all at The Hotel Enema? Would you be interested in getting in a car with girls who are chewing gum and excited about going to the beach? Are you more subject to periods of psychological fragility in the morning than in the evening? If Julia says, “Jacques and I are vegetarians,” and Jacques says, “But we eat meat, too,” and Julia then says, “We eat everything,” is this amusing to you or inane? In your family history is there any mention of an aging relative throwing feces at a grandchild? Do you enjoy seeing airplanes write with smoke in the sky? Would you prefer to see the earth flood or burn totally up? Do you favor any particular kind of fountain? Do you get satisfaction from wrapping up a bag of garbage and getting it out of the house? Do you like to make stock? Do you have a rivet gun or a hot-glue gun? Would you say your man is Dickens or Trollope? Have you ever counted tree rings? Would you rather spend time with gangsters, with pornographers, or with professional dancers? Do you wonder why if there is, say, vanilla Coke and cherry Coke, and if the global market is the thing, why there is not, say, nutmeg Coke and cumin Coke and anise Coke and garlic Coke and sauerbraten Coke and horseradish Coke and chili Coke and coconut Coke and lemongrass Coke? Have you lost your mind?