HSSS 11 - Green Babies

'What the heck...?'  Darius looks around at the new decor. 'Am I in the right blog?'

'Oh, hey there, Darius. I've decided to redecorate the place. What do you think?'

'Plants? You redecorated with plants?'

'Well, yeah. You know, Avril and her green babies...' Pox  gazes and sniffs. 'These appear to be hypo-allergenic,' she says.  'although, I was kind of hoping for an authentic HmH look, complete with olfactory effects.'

'...'

'Hmm. I wonder how much light and water these will need.'

'Pox, I hardly think Avril was growing bamboo in the HmH.'

'Bamboo? Are you sure? As in chopsticks and steamer baskets and upscale floorboards? But those are brownish, well, on the tannish side of brown, you know, some have flecks, and yes, there are variations in the striations and those little circlets that look like rubber bands, or possibly knobby knuckles,  but I have noticed, Darius, that brown bamboo things don't much resemble green babies. I kind of thought this might be asparagus... well, anyhow, you can't really cut bamboo objects very easily, I've tried...' He interrupts Pox's digression.  She sometimes goes on, and on.

'You're thinking of commercial bamboo, which is kiln-dried for durability. This stuff in here is the same thing, only before it's harvested. While it's still green.'

'What should I have used?'

'Well, orchids are nice. Maybe some philodendrons, a few ferns, and like that.'

'I meant what should I have used to cut the bamboo?'

'You just got it in here and already you want to cut it down?'

Pox sighs. Sometimes she just can't get through to the man.  'Hey, if you don't like it, I'll change it back the way it was.' (Followed by a pout.)

'What I would really like, and vastly prefer, Pandora, is for you to write another one of your brilliant original fan-fiction pieces. It's been a while.'

'So you did notice.'

'Of course I did, Pox, not much gets past me.'

'I know. Well...give me some ideas and I'll hop right on one of them.'

Darius sympathizes, as he's had writers block his own self once or twice.

' Will do. No worries, partner. In the meantime, maybe you could put some grow-lights in here.'

'Oh yeah, just like Avril had in HmH.'

'Yup. No walls, just plants.'

'Well, I like the new look. Got to keeps things looking fresh, ya know?'

Darius nods. What will she dream up next?

HSSS 9 (or is it 10?) - Pandora's Alternate Reality

'Hey, Darius? Nice job on the JOI diary piece."

' Uh, who's speaking?'

'Very funny, partner.'

'Well, you so rarely give me a compliment,  my mind didn't allow for the possibility it was you.'

'Okay, Mr Man, count that as one of those slivers in which lie infinities you wrote about in Part Deux.'

'Well what do you know. Miracles happen.'

'Umm hmmm. And to reinforce your theory of possible outcomes, well it's not really your original theory per se, but your well-parroted version, by which I mean expressed the way you understand the concept, er, you can take more than mere rudimentary solace in the fact that you grok it so well....'

'Get to the point, please, Pox, you're addling my brain.'

'Oh, all right. Well, when you took on the very daunting task of extracting me from the IJ 8 cartridge I was stuck inside of due to my own relentless curiosity, I admit to that, indeed I do, D..'

'There you go being all alliterate-y again...'

'...so while I was in there I had thought up a different outcome to my dilemma. Wanna hear it?'

'I suppose I have no choice.'

'Be nice, now. This is storytelling, not real life. Just sit back and imagine I'm still in the cartridge....'

----------------------

'We regret to inform you that your application for transubstantiation has been rejected. ' Pox reads the latest in a long litany of inquiries made to escalating hierarchies within the church (this time, on official stationery from the Syracuse NY diocese of the RCC) that Darius has left on his desk, in plain sight of her cartridge-bound soul. She peers at it in dismay from her tiny peephole.

'Oh, isn't that just fucking great, D.'

'...'

'Darius? Darius? Are you even listening to my latest lament?'

'I hear ya , Pox, but it's not like it's new news. What did you expect they would say?' He resumes sipping on a microbrew and studying his next chess move. He is white this time.

' Huh. Easy for you to say, Mr. Man, you're free....well kind of free in an unfree world, er, I mean your mind and soul are like free to frolic within your own body. I'm so... uh, what is the word? ....artsy.....antsy.... what I mean to say is I hate being disincarnate and discorporeal. You know, don't you, my body had its tissues, er, I mean ISSUES....who amongst us could cast the first stone when it comes to fleshly problems? But really, D, this incarceration is really getting out of hand and I am not getting any younger here...'

'Pandora, my duck, actually you're in a much better place than almost anyone else on this godforsaken mudbucket called Earth.'

'Say what?'

'Well, you're kind of ahead of the game, aren't you? No need to bathe, shave, slave, mow the lawn or shovel the snow, no damn boss on your ass, no sleepies or eaties, no bill collectors barking up your butt. It could be worse, you know, is all I'm saying.'

Pandora senses his sayin' with the unerring sense that is intrinsic to all females. He really in the greater scheme of things does not give a rat's ass what happens to her. He kind of thinks she deserves her fate.

'Darius. Listen up. Since being in this...this...microcosmic world I currently inhabit, I have been able to achieve a...shall I say...kind of expertise, something quite unlike anything you have ever experienced in your corporeal form. DMT nothwithstanding, and no disrespect intended.'

'What are you selling, Pandora? Cartridge porn? I am SO not interested.' He says with his fingers crossed.

'Oh no, Mr Man, I have progressed infinitely far beyond the merely carnal. What I have to offer you....is so much more beguiling.....come closer....and I will show you.'

Darius is nobody's fool but on the other hand, tomorrow is Monday. A full work week lies ahead. He invokes his nascent DMT and presses his left eyeball up to the cartridge in which Pox is encapsulated.

'Hit me with your best shot,' he says.

Suddenly, things go all wonky. Darius watches scenery move swiftly past and lands with a thump on the edge of a sombrero somewhere in the desert near O.N.A.N.'s southernmost appended nation. Not Tucson...but it smells like tacos so it must be close.

'OMG, Pandora. What's happening to me?'

She laughs her trademark laugh which everyone could hear, if only they were tuned to that particular channel - WYYY, Boston.

She hands him a virtual Whataburger, medium well. 'Psychosis, anyone?'

'You incorrigible minx!'

--------------

'Not bad, Pox, not bad at all. '

'I hear a voice, I wonder who it could be?'

'Is there an echo in here? But once again, Pox, you've stolen my idea, by enticing me into the cartridge with you...'

Pandora sighs a heavy, deep sigh that resounds all the way to the corners of the room and all the rooms beyond the one that these two are virtually stuck in, together. 'That's your version of the same event, Darius....not mine and not the same one as in Part IV the Extraction, even. Which need I remind you, you yourself wrote.'

'You mean to say, how uncookiecutterish of me?'

'That's one way to put it.'

'Finally! consensus!'

'Let's go celebrate over a Whataburger, whaddaya say?'

'You buying?'

'Oh you...'

HSSS 8 - Apropos Peru

'Jaysus D.'

'What now, Pox?'

'Well, ya know....I had this idea of how our blog was like totally adhering to DFW's storyline and all that, and now you have magically moved us to Peru, of all places. I mean, look at those weird constellations! How am I supposed to navigate to NY from here? Sheesh. Unless my few remaining brain cells have somehow atrophied due to being in that blasted cartridge IJ8 for so long and thus am irrevocably mistaken, there is fucking nothing in IJ even remotely reminicent in there of South America.'

'Jaysus yer own self, Pox. I'm surprised you can even get out of bed in the morning, you're all nascent rigor mortis-ish and I wonder sometimes, is all this palaver helping our situation?'

'I have no idea what you're saying or implying, as usual, you fence-sitter, D. All I know is you always claim both sides of every equation as your own which leaves nothing for me to work with. I'm not stupid ya know. I've read everything from Freud to Jung to the limitless psychobabble crap online.'

'Well, I know you're super smart, Pox, '...Darius reverts to placation mode here but she is getting close to being onto him...so Darius fidgets uncomfortably thinking of how much he needs her support, because, after all, how many other people does he know personally that could hold a candle to his partner in jest? It just would not do to alientate his best female friend and supporter. But wtf, he's not known for his E.Q., so he plunges ahead into foreign territory-- in more ways than one. 'Just don't outsmart yourself again, Poxalicious. Don't underestimate the power of an ayuhuasca initiate...'

'I would never.' Pox senses him dithering but decides to confront just for the hell of it, so unlike her usual self. 'Listen up, senor mano. The world you live in, it only exists in your own head. Me, I live from my heart, if only because I'm older and know that the mind can play wicked tricks on its owner. If somehow the two of us could accept the other as is, and learn from each other's mistakes, we would be unbeatable as a team. I am not getting that sense of concession from you yet.'

Darius is conflicted. In his lofty mind he thinks Pox is sometimes a head case and doesn't want anything more to do with her at those times, and probably could benefit from an ayuhuasca session herself, but still...he does keep looking after her in his own ersatz way. From afar, till now.

'I get it , Pox. You don't like Peru. So okay, we'll go back to the USA and Enfield and Tucson and slog through the rest of this blog. It's not really worth arguing about.'

DFW as wraith looks down at them and smiles enigmatically into the blogosphere. He holds two thumbs up. At who though? Pox thinks he just likes the melodrama. She knows anyone who could dream up crazy shit like IJ in the first place would like to see these two butt heads until one of them gives in. Is this like Avril and James, redux?  DFW hovers near the writers, adjusts his headband so it covers his ears. It's chilly in the Andes.

'Nay', Pox says, kind of archaically, or mythologically. 'You brought us here, Darius, to Peru, and you know, I honestly do appreciate your massive efforts to get me out of those close quarters, but just for laughs, I could maybe get in the spirit of making the trip home a nightmare for you and the woolly warm Sherpas who got us here.'

'Oh come on, Pox, be raisonable. It's what DFW would want. You know, hugs, not ughs, hugs not bugs, and hugs not drugs. well...maybe drugs.'

'Hugs right back at you but....game on, senor'.'

Shit Happens

'Are you shittin' me, Faxman? How the fuck did you get a'hold'a 37,500 Dillies?' Gately stares at Fackelmann, shaking his massively square addict's head when he spies the plump lump in his crim- colleague, Fack's, bulging back pack. The product that pack packs glows kind of blue under its nondescript thin nylon translucence.

'Found 'em in the NA head, you big moron. What, you think I got any kinda dough to buy this amount of awesome shit?'

'Coulda robbed a drugstore,' Gately speculates, 'maybe intercepted a drug bust in progress...'

'That's a goddman lie.'
'...'
'I SAID, it's a goddamn....'

'Whatever,' Gately says in his most conciliatory tone. He does not like to argue. You don't survive the drug scene if you are contentious toward your supplier in any way. Gately is nothing if not contentious. He is way beyond mellow, and on the scale of non-confrontational attributes (if such a scale there even ever was) he would score kind of somewhere between laconically inept loser and Jaysus the Krispy Critter on a Cross. Gately is like Wonder Bread spread with a teensy bit of low cal dollar-store mayo, untoasted, pressed by fingertips until sippy and soft and yet still able to absorb without dripping all over everything in sight without a napkin, basically any old thing anyone puts on him. Or in him. He's a blank slate of an unwritten map still awaiting a visitation from the powerful entities that bestow beings with personality. Whatever. He takes up virtual and sort of abstract real-time space and that is enough for him, for now. Maybe even ever.

The two men glare at each other, then when the brushed-stainless steel elevator doors open and they see nobody inside, they make the short trip upward to their latest, illegally obtained luxury high-rise condo in downtown Boston. It's late but they're not so much tired as wired. Fack has indeed scored some serious shit and they are about to take the trip of their lives. It will not end well for Fackelmann, but that may be his Plan A: a heist of $250,000 blown on illegally obtained Dilaudin will surely land him in the clink, but if he can forestall that a while, well then, what a way to go.

'You got a key?' Gately eyes the door nervously, hoping there are no narcs patrolling or living on the floor.

'Relax, bro, I got the key code in my head.' Fackelmann punches in a few numbers and the door swings open. The living room, whose huge unshaded windows face north, is pretty much empty except for a large teleputer hanging on one wall. Fack has already sold the rental furniture he recently had gotten delivered under false credentials, the immediate illegal resale of which garnered not nearly enough cash to buy this current embarassment of riches -i.e., blues - Dilaudid - Gately knows, but he is not about to question his luck and get himself thrown out before the party begins. Fackelmann tosses the back pack in a corner and flips on the teleputer while Gately takes a look-see around the spacious apartment.

These two very bad bad boys situate themselves in one corner of the large empty room. The teleputer is programmed to display flames of all sorts, none of which can cook the product, but it really doesn't matter. Fack has dumped a mountain of blue Dilaudin capsules on the oak hardwood floor, just beyond the boundary of the tattered blanket he'd wrapped them in, which blanket now serves as their grassy picnic-like spot. Contrary to popular opinion, the Blue Mountain of Dilaudid was not the cookable powdery kind that can be injected, but the kind that must be inserted into the patient's rectum. It was ass-grade Blue. Both Fack and Gately stick it up their assholes as fast and as far up as they can, before the high wears off.  Once in a while they swallow some but you know what, it does not taste all that great. They loll around, high, low, high, low....they fart some capsules out, and sometimes thin warm, thin brown ooze will like ooze out onto the floor and make Rorschach-test patterns that they don't bother to try to interpret. The Dilaudin high is too quick to dissipate (hydromorphone, yes, the same stuff that gets non-addicts in trouble with some people's medicated pain management sanctioned by doctors who apparently do not know or care that Blue is not only as highly addictive as H but has a half-life high that deteriorates exponentially fast). And like that.

At some point maybe 40 some hours later, a small dent shows in the conical Blue Mountain of Dilaudid on the floor. Neither Fack nor Gately can realistically imagine getting through all of that high-quality substance before their respective maps totally pass  out or abscond into wraith-land. Gately is busy reminiscing about Pamela Hoffman-Jeep, his ex-girlfriend, the one who was always so wasted by alcohol that she was perpetually in need of manual transport. The poor girl could not even walk to the potty without assistance. Often she would be found lying in a pool of her own urine and feces, a sweet smile somewhat like a newborn infant's on her cherubic face. A pile of poop of a girlfriend. Shit happens.

And now here is Fax-man, two days later in a state of total deshabille, watching the teleputer reflect images over the oily Hydromorphone by-products emitted from his unaccountably priapic unit and nearby butt hole, all across the oak hardwood flooring in the illicitly obtained luxury condo. Try as Gately might, he can not rouse Fackelmann except to get a limpid cussing out of him...'Thas' a g'damn lie...' but it is more of a whimper than a castigation, as Fackelmann is really not altogether with it any more. In fact Gately thinks he ought to dial 911 except for the fact that he would be arrested for something his own self if he does. Where did Fack get all that shit anyway? Gately does not want to go to jail so he sits and watches as Fackelmann munches on peanut butter M & M's, which once masticated by Fack's nearly toothless jaws dribble down his chin. The brownish drool reminds Gately of diarrhea and before he knows it, Gately too has sympathetically crapped his pants, which substance added to the amber-hued piss that now threatens to permanently warp the wood flooring in the ilicitly obtained condo and makes Gately feel distinctly ill at ease. He tries to rise up to use the condo's bathroom but instead he merely slides in the slick slime slithering over the floorboards.

'Fucking awesome party. Way to go, Faxman.' Gately thinks, as he watches his partner in crime draw what will be his last breath.

Widow's Journal - 50 Shades of Snark - page 4

Word has it that I am a cold fish and paradoxically that I have a preternaturally large libido. It depends upon whom you ask. James, were he alive, would attest to the former. Michael Pemulis, John (N.R.) Wayne or virtually anyone else would contest that (if it did not mean imminent expulsion for them and statutory rape for me) and label me as the slatternly sluttish latter. What is the penultimate erotic reality of one Avril Mondragon Incandenza? I wish I knew. I doubt that I exist in any one particular carnal niche. Fifty Shades of  Grey got nothing on me. I exceed all sanctioned boundaries, but lapse into none. I am my own person, balancing whatever I deem necessary for personal gratification and propriety at any given time.

So what if heel prints in my approximate size are visible on the interior of someone's windshield when the weather turns humid and foggy? Can anyone really pin those heel prints on me, as if tracking some sort of prey? And why would this turn anyone's head, anyway? We all have our dirty little secrets, do we not? (Do you read me, dear Orin?)

It has been said that I was seen wearing a green and white cheerleader's costume and performing a full-on split while a near-naked student was in my office. What utter nonsense! A woman my age could no more perform a full-on split than a mere youngster could titilate me. Obviously the unnamed observer of said incident had consumed some mind-altering substance and confused both of us with some other adventurous, wild and crazy couple. I assure you it was NOT me sporting pompoms and John Wayne in a football helmet, athletic supporter , socks, shoes and nothing else.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that I am involved in incestuous relationships with my very own son and my very own adoptive brother. To that I can only say, You Go Girl! By that, of course, I mean go away, you silly females who would besmirch my prestigious unsullied name. Oh yes, you know who you are. And be advised I know who you are. (Do you read me, Joelle and Millicent?)

Forgodsake. Get over your puritanical morals, already. We live in Subsidized Time now. If what we do in the ETA offices (with or without doors) does not incur the wrath of our corporate sponsors, it should not offend anyone else. And now I must prepare a lovely dinner at HmH for my dear young sons Mario Love-O and Hallie the Genius, neither of whom give a feral rat's ass what their mother does, so long as she affords them the same rights.

(End of Entry)

Widow's Journal- Avril's Infinite Snark - Page 3

16 April YTSDB

I am back on track again, finally, having spent too many days in virtually endless, tedious meetings, game face on, honesty personified, and compliant F.B.O. tax accountants because yesterday the U.S.O.U.S. taxes (1) were due to be filed via telecartridge, apropos of necessity, lest the Incandenzas be found delinquent and subsequently fined (no can do); well, it took a very long while to locate James' tax records for our joint income reports. I cannot believe how disorganized that man was. Some of his financial records were in his disorderly studio on a cartridge labeled IJ-VII- x . They were intermingled amongst explosively gorgeous and mystifying segments from what appeared to be one of his heretofore undisclosed, undocumented, unreleased fabrications of the purported 'ultimate entertainment', purely ex-officio in re: the last widely known version,which was entitled IJ-V. I deduced that James must have recorded over IJ-VII-x by mistake and/or forgot to relabel the cartridge. Once the school term has ended I shall ask Charles to help me get James' affairs (I use the term in its fiscal rather than connubial sense here) in order, so that the accountants and attorneys can settle his Estate and carry out the terms of his Will, all of which is sure to be challenging, given James' prediliction for obfuscation if not outright deception. Lord knows I myself bend over backwards to keep everything out in the open and above board, no boundaries, no secrets, ever. (2) It would not surprise me to learn that James deliberately planned his felo de se so that he would not have to waste time searching for tax documentaries.

That vented, my main reason for writing today is to recount some early memories of family and James.

I was raised on a farm in Quebec, an inauspicious heritage which vexed me greatly, because I was extremely intelligent compared to the locals and everyone else in my family. It would not surprise me much to discover that I was an adoptee, but that is now impossible to prove since my 'parents' died long before my suspicions arose. Nevertheless, I owe Charles' mother a debt of gratitude; because of her allowing my philandering father to impregnate her during one of his massive binges and then moving in with us, I would not ever have had the opportunity to attend University(3).

Ah, James....so tall and thin, taller even than I myself at 197 cm. It is not so easy to find a man taller than myself, even though I am permanently resigned to wearing flat heeled shoes. At full height (always achieved while standing in perfect posture) the top of my head was level with his ear. It would not have been fitting to wed a man shorter than myself, and so when I first laid eyes on him I knew he was a definite maybe.

That said, it is a truism, albeit a cliche, that opposites attract. James was the 'right-brained' creative type, and as is typical of his fellow auteurs he was prone to substance abuse. His substance of choice was Wild Turkey, which is why I preferred to serve salmon at Thansksgiving dinners. There was more than enough 'turkey' in the house all the rest of the year. (Permit me a chuckle here.) On the other hand, I am a perfectionist, and a teetotaler (4) - and I am as 'left-brained' as they come. Why, my undergraduate work was the definitive analysis of the use of hyphens, dashes and colons in the poems of Emily Dickenson. One does not get much more left-brained than that. I am proud to be one of the founders of the Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts. I am always grammatically correct, even when conversing with dear Mario, who on occasion requires of me to restate my sentences so that he may comprehend my meaning from his differently oriented mind.

Speaking of Mario... 'Why, come in, Love-O!'

(End of Entry)
____________________

(1) According to IJ, fn 78, p. 999, The Bureau of Endorsement Revenue, U.S.O.U.S., Vienna, VA. Oddly enough O.N.A.N. chose to keep 15 April as the tax filing deadline, a seamless transition from pre-subsidized year tradition. We can only assume that the M.D.R. (fn 99) has followed suit.

(2) Except, of course, for the biological father's name of one Mario Incandenza.

(3) Avril received her Ed. D and Ph.D. from Brandeis University.

(4) Except, of course, at Thanksgiving, when she drinks champagne.  

When the hugging gets tough, the tough get stoned

After the newbies left their initiation into Boston area's  NA, Ken Erdedy and Kate Gompert * struck up an icy silence in the back seat of Johnette Foltz's battered old sedan on the way back to Ennet House. Erdedy fumed and not from gasper smoke, which there was a plenty. Addicts gotta have at least one allowable vice or they go bats.

'Hugs not drugs,' is touted at Boston area NA meetings, which rhymes with but is not = 'Hugs not Ughs', the UHID motto. They are not at all the same despite sounding similar. Ken has touchophobia, which means he cannot bear to be touched by anyone, not even police, lovers, friends, family, and least of all same sex strangers of a different race altogether. So when at his first NA meeting after Interdependence Day which Kate and he were mandatorily dragged to by Johnette, after which tediousness he was subjected to the horrific spectacle of strangers hugging one another, like any self-respecting touchophobe he removed himself from the throng hoping to avoid the disgusting hugs without offending anyone. Like they were offending him with their amiable sexless grinding of frontal body parts. Poor Ken, he didn't know where to look, offended or offending he so not wanted to be. What Ken wanted was to be at home listening to his silent stereo and staring at the front door and the clock, anxiously awaiting the arrival of his connection, which would be the last time, he knew, before he would finally quit using for good. Instead, here he was, attending a funky NA meeting, clearly which he did not enjoy. Erdedy was no addict, he was a recreational user of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabolinol (marijuana). Ken knew the medicinal names, uses and side effects of every substance to which he subjected his own self. He was here because of suffering from the side effects of pot use: it had begun interfering with his eating, sleep, memory, job, and sex life. Indeed, pretty much his whole life was fucked up because of his fondness for DuBois. But he was getting clean now, and clean he would stay. Yes, indeed.

He studied the coffee stains on the paper tablecloth, and the burn marks on the threadbare carpets. There were no black bugs here, crawling in and out of tiny holes in the walls. He hoped he could sidle out the door with or without Kate and Johnette and avoid the possibility of getting germs all over his topcoat which resembled the cashmere one favored by Randy Lenz. He hated that furtive, sneaky bastard, all pretentious and pretending to be clean, when it was clear to Erdedy that Lenz was not only still using but doing other nasty shit involving Hefty bags, small animals and Bruce Green. He shuddered, and the next thing he knew, a big badass black pot abuser not only enveloped Ken in a smelly bear hug but then reamed his sorry addicted ass out in front of group. How dare Erdedy put himself above everyone else? Did he somehow think big bad blackasses, er, black badasses, actually enjoyed hugging arrogant, skinny white dudes (IJ p 506-7)? Erdedy sucked it up, how could he not, given the man's loud and large in-your-face uncouthness and sincerity? But now, safely en route back to Ennet, he fumed.

Johnette was not terribly bothered by the two stonefaced, stonewalling newbies, driving. She'd been in their shoes herself, once or twice, so she would give them a lot of latitude to work things out as she knew they would, given time. Right now, nearing Ennet House, she needed to find a parking space so she could get her charges safely indoors before curfew. At this time of night, a motley collection of dented, scratched, hubcapless and hapless sets of wheels lined the streets nearby. It was 22:47 and in an hour or so Gately would be found moving all the vehicles to the opposite side of the road, or risk pissing off the highway police, incurring parking tickets, and so on. The nightly auto maneuvers were so much fun to watch when it was big doofus Gately's turn. Sometimes he couldn't fit his large frame into the undersized bucket seats, and his head would make a dent on the interior of the car roofs. Many of the Ennet vehicles had visible roof humps which meant Gately had moved them so many times that he finally made permanent head imprints on them.

Before Johnette can bring the car to a total stop, coasting into a spot downwards of 3 mph, her foot tapping the brakes which pads were due for replacement a like year ago, Kate flings open the passenger-side door and stomps her way down the deserted street and into the busy common room at Ennet, leaving Erdedy to his back-seat fuming and foot jiggling, for which he is famous, Ken. Johnette raises her left eyebrow in the manner of "what up with her, dude?" but says nothing and neither does Ken, who temporarily stops fuming long enough to scuttle across the back seat and nearly tears his pant leg on something sticking up from the rusty floor. He nods curtly to Johnette and stalks off down the street, in the opposite direction of Ennet House, perhaps rethinking his commitments and devising a backup plan, meaning Plan B. Too often addicts don't even plan one step ahead, but Erdedy is an exception to the rule. His steps become brisker than the north wind blowing his hair around and whipping his in need of a haircut hair into his eyes.

Head down and amidst one big squint, Ken almost plows into Lenz, who is hurrying toward Ennet after a night on the town, alone, jaunty after his latest adventure, temporarily emptied of powerless and rage, but Lenz is on Red Alert because he just scored some high quality Bing and had for some reason left his PoP in his room before heading out. Said Bing is in his pocket and when he sidesteps Erdedy, the littlest Hefty bag ever manufactured falls out onto the sidewalk. (Lenz, inexplicably, does not notice and scurries off to scootch into Ennet House by curfew. He always cuts it close, that's part of the thrill of the chase - isn't that right, Randy?)

Erdedy looks down at the sidewalk and sees the tiny bag lying there, picks it up and surreptiously stows it in his breast pocket. He takes his time walking back toward Ennet, realizing that Plan B just quantum-leapt into Plan C.....in Ken's mind, Plan C seems a lot more palatable than Plan B. Which is, let's get so high and give asshole Lenz his comeuppance while we're at it. We, of course, meaning Ken Erdedy all by his lonesome self. No need to let anyone else share this treasure trove. If people still said "woo hoo" in O.N.A.N., Erdedy would be woohoo-ing from the rooftops. He's always wanted to score some high quality Bing, never had the nerve, and now it almost literally falls from the sky at his feet, like manna.

Hours later, Ken Erdedy is stoned out of his friggin' gourd, lying on the dew-covered grass outside Ennet House, very near the spot where Mario had his first and thus far only personal Millenial Fizzie, and happy...happy....so happy. He watches a little black bug sally into and out of the pores in his hand. Cute, he thinks, I really, really, really like bugs. Bugs, not hugs.

His laughter could be heard all the way to Enfield Tennis Academy.

________________
Mini - HSSS:

Darius: Pox, you got your facts mixed up again. Didn't you do your research, doll?
Pox: Whaddya mean, D?
Darius: People do not get stoned on Bing.
Pox: What would you call it, Mr. Man?
Darius: I dunno.....gimme a minute...or some Bing....it's been too long ya know....then I'll let you...
Pox: Let me what?
Darius: Know.
Pox: No?
Darius: No, no no! I'll let you know!
Pox: You continue to mystify me all the time.
Darius: Just tryin' to keep you on your toes, partner!
 __________________

* All characters in PIJ are FICTIONAL, including Darius and Pandora, and are not intended to portray the activities of any living person who happens to share the same name. Except in the case of celebrities for whom any press is good press.
.

Widow's Journal- Avril's Infinite Snark - Page 2

8 April YTSDB

I thoroughly resent the intrusion of financial and funereal business that has for days kept me from my all-important journaling. However, I must faithfully render obeisance to convention and duty until my time here has expired. (I sometimes fear THAT MAN will be the untimely death of me yet.)Imagine, Charles and Mario had to scurry about searching for something James called Infinite Jest, a cartridge so compelling and occasionally lethal that his last wish was to have it interred with him so that nobody else would suffer its ill effects. Why did he not just destroy it? Most likely his enormous ego prevented it.  More importantly, why did he not suffer any ill effects from creating that film? Oh yes, apparently he did! How ironic and strangely fitting that he chose to commend his gray matter to hell on April Fool's Day. Did he know that the French word for April is Avril?  

Today I must address the 'term of endearment' with which I have been saddled. My sons all call me 'The Moms' and I suspect they may even gleefully refer to me with utter disrespect when they interact with their cronies. Why, before you can say 'howling fantods' some of the less circumspect of them will begin to address me in that insulting manner as well! The MOMS !  Hello, is there more than ONE of me? What do they know of which  I myself remain ignorant?

At least in the privacy of my journal, I can set the record straight. I detest having been thrust into the role of 'mom', let alone portraying it in plural.

James and I did not have a satisfactory conjugal life, but our perfunctory mating resulted in what sex education manuals warn us about:  enfants!  I married naive, and he had said "Trust me," and look what happened: Obnoxious Orin. I later trusted someone else and look what THAT got me: M-probable Mario. Never mind that I lived almost nine full months in denial over that pregnancy! And then along came Howling Hal. After that I took care of 'matters' myself - I need not commit those details to paper here. But from their earliest sibling days my precocious, irreverant boys absorbed their father's gender-bias and thus I became The Moms. I cringe each time I hear it. I cringe even just remembering it being said and writing it down. So I did what any feminist elitist non-child liking woman would do: I played their game. I came up with a rejoinder that they inexplicably found hilarious. Whenever they finally made their way out the door, I would always say, almost  sotto voce, 'Do not under any circumstances allow yourself to have fun.' It cheers me no end to know that they have always thought me droll, flip and making jest. But I was just being truthful. Why should they have fun if I couldn't?  I should have shouted it from the HmH rooftop!

Oh, hell...yet another interruption.

(End of entry.)

Widow's Journal: Avril's Infinite Snark - Page 1

5 April,  Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar (1)

My legal O.N.A.N. name is Avril Mondragon Tavis Incandenza and this is the first entry in my widow's journal, which if you are now perusing means that I am deceased and you must now refer to me in the past tense. Past perfect, perhaps. You will soon discover that I am - or was - or always have been- or should have been- the heart and soul of  Québecois perfection in every possible way.

One must harbor hope that the Shadow-realm's welcoming committee will have enough largesse and finesse to keep Himself and Myself infinitely out of each other's purview.   Did we not suffer plentifully as husband and wife all those hellish years In Enfield?  Would that said milieu's Master or Mistresses desire to preserve in perpetuity the esprit de corps that an enforcible common domicile would preclude! Oh, I am so not given to exclamatory proclamations but ohhh, THAT MAN! I wish with all my remaining estrogen that I had had the requisite genitalia to excise his map my own self!   I should prefer to eternally relive the sight of James's microwaved brains strewn across my pristine kitchen walls than to observe him leering and sneering in my direction ever again.

That said, before his death our life together had certain irrefutable perquisites. With my reluctant assistance (noblesse oblige, c'est vrai)  James and Charles founded a tennis-based educational empire  in which we expertly raised three splendid sons, each of whom possess unique talents and which in due course have immensely enriched the world. Our eldest son, Orin, is a star football player ( I believe his correct title is Extra-Point Kicker)  and is currently based in Tucson.  (2)   Hal, our youngest, is not just a Tennis Prodigy but an Intellectual GIANT. My heart, however, belongs to my middle son, small-m Mario, who was admittedly somewhat of an unimmaculate conception, given that his biological father was other than his acknowledged one. 

I will carry that secret to my grave. 

It is tacit that every woman requires privacy and must at all costs maintain an aura of dignified mysteriousness. Once she achieves this formidable facade she can then do whatever she damn well pleases (excusez-moi le francais). Which, of course, is exactly what I originally set out to do within the confines of my marriage vows and will continue to do until I am no longer physically capable.

In this journal I shall henceforth detail my adventures, as time and duty permit.

(End of Entry 1)
____________________
(1) Avril became a widow on 1 April YTSDB (IJ p. 286)
(2) She is confused, perhaps due to bereavement? . Orin plays for the Arizona Cardinals as a punter.
 

He Said,She Said (7) - New Gig

'Hey Darius?' Pox tries to blow a thought-form into Darius' ear from within the IJ-8 cartridge she has been living in. The cartridge is on a shelf near his head.
'...'
'DARIUS! Why do you have your map in that map?'
'Oh, hey, Pox. Just looking for the best route to Arizona.'
' So you're finally coming to rescue me! How long have I been stuck in this stupid cartridge anyway?'
'...'
'Darius!!!'
'Sorry, Pox. I'm not driving out there to rescue you, exactly.'
'Say what?' If Pox could seethe in anger as a disembodied set of waving particles, she would. She can't stand not being in her own body, wherever it may be. She wonders who got that fine piece of female flesh after she vacated it.
'Hang loose, Pox, we're still working on that.'
'Well then, why drive to Arizona at all?' She tries to form a frown out of his billowy e-cig vapor.
'Er, well, actually, I'm being transferred.'
'O.N.A.N. is sending you away? When?'
'As soon as I can pack up, actually.'
'Lucky you, Mr Man.'
'Yeah, I guess...'
'At least it's warm there. Won't you be happy to leave New New York?'
'Sure, but you'll never believe what job I had to take to do it.'
'I only know what you tell me, D.'
He grimaces. 'I'm to be trained as a double agent. I'll be assigned to spy on none other than Remy Marathe himself!'
Pox gasps. 'You mean, you'll be taking Steeply's place in Tucson?'
'No....they want me to masquerade as one of the Wheelchair Assasins.'
'You gotta be kidding. You can't pass for one of them! You don't even speak French!'
'Yeah, well, I guess there is going to be some cosmetic surgery involved...'
'Jaysus, D. I sure hope it's nothing drastic?"
'Me too.'
'Do not under any circumstances allow yourself to have fun.' says Pandora, aping Avril.
'Ha ha ....'
She watches Darius memorize the route (just in case GPS should fail). He doesn't even have to work because he's basically loaded, he just loves to serve his country and President Gentle in every possible way.  Like nobody else can, because Darius is the smartest man she has ever met, even though it irks her sometimes when he forgets to use plain language that she can understand. Nevertheless she hopes he will succeed in his mission.
Pandora studied French eons ago. 'Bonne chance, Darius. Ne m'oubliez pas.'
He surprises her by replying, 'Jamais.'

He Said, She Said (6) - Veiled

'Hey, Darius.'
'...'
'Darius? Don't you recognize me?'
'Uh, is that you, Pandora?'
'How quick they forget. '
'Sorry, you're so well hid under that veil. Why are you wearing a veil anyway? Bad hair day?'
'Nah, they're just all the rage and so fashionable now that 2015 is gonna be the YVASV.'
'YVASV?'
'Yeah, didn't you hear? The Year of the Velcro Adjustable Smoking Veil.'
'I didn't know you were a smoker, Pox.'
'I always liked a good cigar...'
'Say WHAT?'
'Or maybe if I don't take up gaspers, I can always use the larger adjustable opening for eating a Whataburger.'
'Well, aren't you the clever little repurposer...is that the square and squeaky model?'
'Actually, this is the super-cool  Deluxe Veil. I deserve the best!'  *
'...'
'You should get one too.'
'What for, Pox?'
'You know..' she rolls her eyes but of course he doesn't see that...'for when you want to interface with Bob Hope. Like in public.'
'Speaking of which...'
'Sorry, D, I'm all out of Hope right now. '
'Awww. Is there anything I can do to cheer you up, partner?'
'Well, a new blog post from you would be nice.'
'I'm working on something... it's about Marathe, or was it Steeply? I forget.'
'My patience is wearing thin, Mr Man.'
'Infinite patience, Pandora, no more, no less.'
'I never know what you really mean,' she says.
'It's a gift,' smiles Darius, and waves goodbye.
Pandora snaps open the Velcro strip and sticks her tongue out at him. 'There!'

　
* Also available: Basic Smoking Veil
　

R.L. Tine Announces Corporate Sponsor for 2015

In his press conference today, R.L. Tine announced that the calendar year 2015 would be subsidized by Velcro, O.N.A.N.,  Inc., the original and still the best loopy fasteners in the world.

This announcement comes on the heels of the recent re-establishment of diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba, said Tine. 'Citizens all over our nation will once again be able to legally enjoy the pleasures of  Havana cigars.'

Rumor has it that this economic coup was in no small part engineered by the Velcro brain trust, which company holds a 100 year patent on their innovative and attractive adjustable smoking veil.

As of January 1,  the new subsidized year will henceforth be known as YVASV, Year of the Velcro Adjustable Smoking Veil. Citizens are invited to attend the gala reveal to be held at the base of the Statue of Liberty in  New New York harbor.   Televideo cartridges of the event will be available for a nominal fee on or before January 31 on all O.N.A.N. teleputer websites and Amazon.

'It's a square deal,' President Gentle reportedly remarked.

Steeply, Herself - Part 1

Sometime After the Year of Glad

Calcinatio*

It was on all the teleputer channels and social media.  The rumor went like this: a feral hamster which was scavenging for food along the Great Concavity dug up a cartridge labeled 'Infinite Jest 8', which was wrestled from said hamster by one of the AA personnel up there. It turned out to be Himself's heretofore unheard of post-IJ quest for the penultimate entertainment, much darker and more effective even, than the one that has ruined so many lives.  The difference being that this version was capable of extracting the essence of the viewer's personal interior map and inserting it into the matrix of the cartridge itself.  It was so seductive an entertainment that the viewer experienced something akin to  cuda fudra ( actually, coup de foudre - love at first sight) and got so blissed out that he or she could no longer interact with mere mortal beings. Everything that was desirable was not ON, but AN actual cartridge. The rest was moot....the viewer's soul was simply succubused away, never to return, and the cartridge grew more powerful with each new soul it absorbed. A very curious - possibly unintended - side-effect was that  the viewer didn't die or waste away in catatonia. No,  a sort of hybrid creature crept in, maybe a stray wraith looking for a bit of respite from infinite flit, one capable of assuming the viewer's identity at will. Since its effects were cumulative, everyone  from President Gentle, to the Wheelchair Assasins, and even Hal Incandenza scrambled to get their hands on the most recent copy of the thing. In the case of Hal it was a long shot of course, the highly conditioned body still hale and fit, the mind as sharp and beyond-eidetic as ever, but the interface between the brain and the speech mechanism was still mightily kertwanged. Perhaps,  as Hal reasoned, there was a way to modify the cartridge's parameters so as to avoid the loss of soul while reestablishing coherent vocals. If anyone could figure out a way, it  would be Hal and Mario, who were the most familiar with Himself's methods. Hal could almost smell Himself at work on the problem...

But this is where my story arc really begins. I, Pandora Pox, was on assignment in the desert southwest. My plane had landed at Sky Harbor Airport and I was experiencing a bout of nostalgia, but I forced myself to drive south in the rental Jeep toward Tucson,  instead of north where the memories were. This wasn't the much-needed vacation, yet;  I was doing research for the blog, and my goal was to find and interview none other than Hugh/Helen Steeply herself.  I had seen Steeply interview Joelle at ETA  so I knew what 'she' looked like. ('She' would be easy to spot in a crowd, Steeply.)  With luck I might discover how IJ-8 had come to be, where it was now, whether or not Joelle had been involved, and had anyone Steeply known seen it? I had a notebook full of questions. And I, Pox, am always determined to suss out the truth.   But this, dear reader, you already know.

The topography around Tucson is rugged, harsh, mysterious, dangerous.  It was unfamiliar territory. Even the cacti looked different from the squat specimens in the high desert north of Phoenix.  The GPS was unhelpful. Too many mountains all around: upon which summit might I meet up with Steeply? Would luck deign to favor the bold, meaning,  was Steeply still in the area, dressed as Helen sporting the askewy fake boobs, one elbow locked in a gasper's embrace as he/she contemplated the whereabouts of  samizdat, or, dare I hope, IJ-8?

I drove up and down the highways for days, careened off onto every dirt road leading toward the hills, looking for telltale wheelchair tracks, for agents of international stealth. Too many days of hot heavy relentless blazing scorching sun. I hate the heat, it's oppressive. I couldn't breathe too well down there; it irritated my scorched larynx. Unfit air for any living biped! And dry heat, my ass! They should've put the Great Concavity  toxic waste site next to Mexico instead of between Canada and my own verdant hometown. It would've incinerated itself and all of the rattlesnakes, scorpions and other undesirables at the same time,  But I digress -- yet again.

Late one afternoon, the Jeep stalled. Steam poured from under the hood and dissipated instantly  with a shrieking hiss. I jumped out of the cab, looked around in dismay. The cityscape lay far to my north, too far to walk to. I was stranded. No cell service here, of course. I had not thought to rent a sat-phone.  I squatted down in the shady side of the jeep, removed the binoculars from my pack and looked around. There might be crazy tourists nearby, rock hunters, that sort of thing.

Next thing I knew, I was waking up from an unplanned nap - it was almost sunset, the clouds an arsenal of red and copper projectiles deployed across the indigo firmament. A thin crescent sacrificial moon was about to impale itself on an ocotillo cactus to the west of me, the flat largely barren  area that led to unseen mountains beyond the earth's curvature.  Optical illusion, mirage?...Oh God I was so thirsty. Then I spotted a tall humanoid figure sneaking stealthily along what must have been its habitual footpath. Its steps were sure and swift even as its eyes darted to and fro against possible interception. Was this...could this be...the very one I sought?

To be continued..............





---------------------------------
* Note: In ancient alchemy, calcinatio is the process whereby
heat is applied to the prima materia.

Steeply, Herself - Part 2

Sometime After the Year of Glad

Conjunctio*

Pox watched and waited. Her natural curiosity burgeoned and swelled like the jagged shadows of the Rincon mountains -  or were they the Tortolita Foothills?-  which had begun to cast a somewhat cooler dank gloom over the pebblish desert floor. The desert floor around Tucson is not primarily composed of sand but more like actual pebbles and grit  that settled around the carcasses of fully desicated cacti and assorted bones. The figure she had spotted, Steeply perhaps, appeared to be a tall woman,  or a man in drag, although why anyone would wear spike heels to hike up a hill was beyond Pox's comprehension - and yet, DFW had written it plausibly.  She would simply accept it as a fact in some alternate universe. In any case Pox herself was adequately dressed for a hike, had even thought to bring a pack of Belgian gaspers along in the event that she actually encountered the elusive unspecified services operative. She would make the traditional  tobacco offering to Steeply just as the original natives had always done and would always do when supplicating their Great Spirit Wakan-Tanka.

She looked around for the tell-tale green sedan with its aspirin logo that Steeply favored, but dusk had fallen and in any case the glare of lights from the city beyond rendered everything in sight rather murkily not exactly violet but rather purplish and coyote-colored like a fading bruise. She could not even have described the color of the rental jeep, Pox. It looked like a steel tent in this light, tent-or-steel colored. She gathered her pack and set off on foot toward the trail where the person who was no longer in view had who-knew-where gone, but where else was there to go but up, from here? She rounded the bend and started climbing.

The trail upside the rocky rise was well marked. It was not clear at all to Pox, aiming the small flashlight's beam along  the narrow path, how Marathe might wend his wheelchair up there.  Perhaps he took a different, wider path whose origin was on the other side of the mountain, perhaps he was airlifted or carried by Indians.  Pox often pondered and speculated about every little meaningless detail. Would Marathe already be in situ on the outcropping? Was this even the right mountain, did it have an outcropping at all? Pox had only just arrived before dusk, had not seen the back side of the edifice she now ascended. In any case, if Marathe was there Pox would simply hide in the shadows and listen to the pair spar, Marathe with his fractured American colloquialisms and Steeply with his smoky pauses, egging the quad spy on.  But she hoped Steeply would be alone.

After a twenty minute climb, Pox paused to get her bearings. She could still see high heel imprints in the dust along the trail, but now the trail split one section toward the east and another to the north, and neither one had heel marks. She reasoned  that the person she pursued probably had heard her coming,  seen her from a higher vantage point, and somehow obliterated the tracks. One must do this in order to be a successful operative, specified or no. Tricks of the trade, per se, survival mode. Always cover one's personal shagging ass. Pox looked up and saw a brief movement, maybe a puff of smoke or a hiking up of hosiery. She inhaled deeply the unhumid night air and resumed climbing.

Within minutes Pox reached the summit;  it was not such a hard hike, nor such a tall hill, though craggy and desolate.  She peered into the distance, where the lights of Tucson blazed, and rendered her temporarily blind, when all of a sudden a large figure pounced and knocked Pox to the hard ground.  'Who are you and what do you mean by following me like a feral rat?' the person growled. Pox found it difficult to reply given that the man, dressed in a short blue frock, had an exceptionally strong grip, much like a tennis players' grip, on Pox's throat.  Pox hoped this was Steeply. She pointed to her throat and blinked her eyes.  The grip lessened and Pox squeaked, "Agent  Steeply? Is that you, then? Have I....really found... you? Please.....allow me....to introduce....myself....my name is .....Pandora Pox.....and I have been a fan of yours....and DFW's.....for ages....please....I do not intend to .....hurt you....."

The man frowned but did not remove his paw from Pox's throat. Pox noticed the absence of askewy boobs, but who else could it be? Did Tucson have a Steeply-look-alike fan club,  maybe an Infinitejestathon, like comic book fans had Comicon....she supposed so.  Pox wriggled and squirmed and blinked. The man glared and studied Pox's face and with his free hand opened her backpack, which had fallen to the side. He saw the Belgian cigarettes and considered. This feral rat woman had tried to sneak up on him, but for what possible reason? He would let her make her case. He removed his hand from Pox's throat, opened the new pack of gaspers and in a most unexpected and gentlemanly manner, offered Pox one. She declined. 'They're for you....an offering of sorts.'

'What do you want?'
'Are you...Steeply?'
'What if I am?' he shrugged.
'I live in a small town near the Great Concavity and like everyone else in the O.N.A.N. republic, I have heard that a new ultimate cartridge, they are calling it IJ-8, has been found and I need to know if it really exists.....if the rumors are true. I came here....' Pox coughed, as her throat was very sore and dry, 'because I want to view this cartridge myself and I want you to help me do it.' There.  May it hold true: fortune favors the bold.

The man looked at Pox as if she was insane. 'You do not know what it is you ask, Ms. Pox. And what kind of name is Pox? Are you contagious? '

'It's a pen name.....I'm writing a blog with my partner, Darius Blake.  By the way, he's off somewhere, looking for Marathe right now....We are Jest addicts you see, and our goal is to keep the story alive, to honor David Foster Wallace who died too young...we know there was more to the story that his editor made him cut. My god, five hundred pages gone! ....and we are willing to go to great lengths to make up for the editor's stupidity.  We hope to create a fine sequel in the Wallace tradition, knowing full well we can't hope to equal the master's brilliance, that's tacit.... will you help me?'

The man lit a Belgian gasper, inhaled and blew out a series of smoke rings. He seemed lost in thought. At length he looked down at Pox's hope-filled face and spoke. 'I am not what you think. I am not a fictional character. I cannot confirm or deny the rumor. ' He took a deep drag on the cigarette and put his free hand on his elbow. 'I will not admit to being Steeply.' Pox 's face fell. 'But I will help you in your quest.' he said. 'What is your plan?'

To be continued.......

---------------------------------------
* Note: In ancient alchemy, conjunctio is the process of two forces (e.g., male and female) joining together.

Steeply, Herself - Part 3

Sometime After the Year of Glad

Separatio*

 '...But what should I call you?' I was eager to get on with my mission to find a recent copy of IJ-8, which might or might not even exist, and this strange man in drag had agreed to help. He blew twin jets of Flanderfume smoke from his large hairy nostrils and gazed at the Tucson skyline, perhaps considering his reply.

'Ms Pox...
'Just Pox will do....'
'Pox, you may call me Q.'
Then everything went blank.

When I woke up the eastern sky was  a pale platinum sort of gray striped aquamarine. There was no moon, but even in the pre-dawn light I could see a way to get off the mountain where I had lately, I believe, met Steeply himself, who had since disappeared.  The details of our meeting were fading from memory with the same rapidity peculiar to the desert from which the shadows now hastily receded.  I rubbed my sore neck and discovered it itched as if bitten by a not exactly benign but hopefully not lethal crawling creature, perhaps a spider. Only later would I discover the true import of my scratch. My pack was still there, though the cigarettes were missing....so there was someone here with me after all....but why was I here again? I could not remember.

In a strange sort of twi- lit daze I made my way carefully down the jagged trail, stopping now and then to sip from the water bottle. My larynx was still painfully raw from the smoking veil incident, several posts back. When I finally got to the Jeep I looked around for signs of.....what? Why was I even here? Had I taken a wrong turn from Sky Harbor, with its crazy maze of connecting roundabouts and byways, unable to follow the confusing signs and somehow gotten kertwanged on my way to Flagstaff? I was quite sure this was not high desert country.  Wrong vegetation, absence of aspens, no snow on what were clearly not the San Francisco foothills.  I was lost.

Resolutely I followed the tracks the Jeep had left intact on the dirt road and found my way to the I-10 freeway.  I put my foot to the pedal and stepped on it.....oh!  That sounded familiar! An image of a library formed in my mind's eye.  With a sigh of relief I intuitively knew where I was headed.

The next thing I remember was relaxing in a recliner. I looked around with the astonished eyes of someone who has just been revived after being in a coma,  unalarmed but curious. A  large man sat smoking at the far side of the room. He seemed to recognize me but I did not know him. Why was he dressed in women's clothing? I looked down at my own attire and noticed I was dressed more or less like a man: Wranglers, cowboy boots, plaid shirt rolled up at the sleeves.....was that a bolo tie? I raised one hand to my head and discovered the shortest of haircuts. So I must either be a man myself or most likely I was in some sort of disguise, which would explain the strange garb. Perhaps it was Halloween.

'Is this the library?'

'Oh, very good, Pox, you are still able to articulate.  To answer your query, yes and no.  This is not a library like the ones in your very interesting past. It is rather a state of the art library that exists both virtually as a cartridge and simultaneously in your own mind. At least for now.'

Unreassured, I carefully examined the spot on my neck, which had become sore and swollen. 'Why did you call me Pox?  Am I contagious? Is this some sort of quarantine sickroom?'

'Pox is what you call yourself, though Randylicious knows why. You found me via the latest advance in teleputer technology. You were seeking a very dangerous object, don't you remember?'

'...'

'No? Do you not recall receiving your Yushityu motherboard implant? Not the subsidized  2007 model from the book,  but the latest Post-Year of Glad model, which has the ability to interface with InterLace via any mobile device including GPS....' The man was speaking gibberish, which I found annoying. You Shit You?

'I...how does it work?'

'My dear, you do not need to know how it works. You only have to know how to turn it on....and off, if that is your wish. Do you wish to turn it off now?'  As soon as he posed the question a surge of neurotransmitters of the most pleasurable kind infused every p-terminal in my brain, releasing a cocktail brewed from seratonins, endorphins, L-Dopas and even Q- Dopas...Q?...Q?? oh I see now...

'Q!'

'How extraordinary, Pox! You remembered my name! You are the first to do so in this grand experiment of ours.'  Q pondered, blew smoke out of a small aperture in his neck. It opened and closed like a camera lens, a Bolex H-64 Rex 5 high res lens. The khaki colored smoke formed itself into a tennis racket and lobbed a piece of tobacco in my direction, which landed on the spur of my left boot. I casually flicked back the fleck and heard someone call, '15-love!'  before I lost consciousness again.

'...'
'Pox? Pox! Wake up!'

'...... Is that you Darius? Are you here.... in Arizona?'

'I'm not in Arizona, dear, I'm kinda in your head....but don't be alarmed.  Hawking and Faraday are working on a plan to get you out of the cartridge.'

'What on earth do you mean? I was with Q, I mean Steeply, I think.....in Arizona, I went to find him like you said....' But what came out of me sounded more like howling and grunting to Darius, he later reported.  My vocals were going.  Damn that Hal, I could hear Darius thinking....There was no time to waste.  I visualized the p-terminal again and soon drifted off into a blue sky filled with infinite cumulus clouds rearranging themselves into hamsters and fans and the letter X.  I entered one of the clouds and heard the sweet melodic voice of Johnny Gentle, Crooner and President, making me promises only he could keep.
---------------------------------------
* Note: in ancient alchemy, separatio is the process whereby the personal ego has separated  from the body.

Yushityu Award, YSPDD

President Johnny Gentle today announced this year's winner of the coveted Yushityu Award for Outstanding Contribution to the O.N.A.N. Economy, a.k.a. 'How Low Can You Go'.

The award goes to I.S.I.S., (the Islamic terrorist group) for managing to do what no other entity has been able to do: by beheading 3 O.N.A.N. and 2 U.K. citizens *(one of whom even converted to Islam in a futile attempt to save his traitorous ass) the price of crude oil has dropped from over $105 bbl at the beginning of YSPDD to today's closing market price of $67.44 bbl. **

Nationwide joy erupted as Oklahoma City became the first place in the continental O.N.A.N. states to sell petrol to the public for $1.99.9 per gallon, a new 4 year low. Other cities are poised to follow suit.

Reports from the automotive consortia confirm that drivers are once again purchasing gas-guzzling SUV's, and even used HumVees are becoming viable alternatives to energy efficient vehicles.

President Gentle stated in his address, 'While the loss of human life is regrettable, the cost-benefit of 5 lives in exchange for a daily savings of $250 million in gasoline costs is irrefutable."

When asked about the long term effects on oil investors, President Gentle crooned, ' Try to see it my way. We can work it out.' 

You may watch the beheadings anytime on your favorite teleputer channel. Happy holidays to all!

________________________________

* Special thanks to Foley, Sotloff,  Haines, & Henning; re:  Kassig, win some, lose some.
** Pardon the intrusion of reality. Oil on 15 Dec YSPDD $55.36 bbl.....and on 29 Jan YVASV $44.48.....

Mario's Millennial Fizzie

Note: this is the shortened version.- pox

22 October Y.D.A.U.

Is romantic love the ultimate jest, a mere phantasm of feeling that humans insist is utterly real and must be validated? What is it that draws two people into sexual embraces,  a ferocious chemistry no one but they can sense? Odd couples, everywhere you look, no accounting for any of it, when it comes to love. But I do like to speculate, Darius, so when you suggested a coupling of Mario and Joelle, I thought, well, why NOT. It's a common enough theme in literature: beauty and the beast. Problem is, upon reflection, it is unclear to me which role these two will play when they hook up. You will have to read further and make up your own mind.

Mario Incandenza has been listening to an old cartridge of Madame Psychosis' 'Sixty Minutes More or Less' midnight talk show over at HmH. He finds himself restless, unsleepy as is often the case after an evening spent with Hal and the Moms, so instead of hiking over to the dormitory he dons his Bolex H64 Rex 5 tri-lensed digital camera  and goes out in search of...entertainment. He heads downhill  toward Ennett House, where even at this late hour there will be addicts smoking and regaling one another with gruesome tales of addiction and recoveries.  Mario enjoys filming their antics and he will ponder these mysteries and question Hal about it in the morning.

Mario wants above all to meet Madame face to face, one on one, but he's scared. She is a beautiful star and Mario, well, Mario is a seriously damaged map.  As he approaches Ennet House, where Joelle now lives as a recovering addict her own self,  the modulated cultured voice of Mme Psychosis floats out of a window. Mario is immediately transfixed, listening, rapt.

Out of the corner of one eye, Mario spots a veiled woman standing near one of the low-slung windows. Slowly and silently the woman raises the double-hung pane and breathes in some fresh suburban Boston air. It is after curfew, 0130 hours perhaps. She notices the small gnomelike figure on the lawn. He is canted 50 degrees  in her direction, clutching his turgid steel pole to avoid tipping over into the cool, damp grass that surrounds Ennet House.

Joelle has been listening to one of her own cartridges this evening  and is nostalgic beyond all reason.  She has steadily grown lonesome in her veiled sobriety. Like many cast-aside formerly gorgeous women, she devotes herself to lost causes to assuage not only her own pain but to offer solace  to the suffering souls as yet unable to arise from their own mireful angst.  For reasons I can't begin to imagine, Joelle has developed a thing for Don Gately, one of the dullest ever reformed drug addicts to live and work  at Ennet House.  You already know why I find Gately problematic.  But Gately's away, communing with Himself's wraith;  Gately small-h himself is deliriously sober in a local hospital, recovering from a GSW and unavailable for fun or lust.  It may be Joelle's post-ovulatory progesterone hormones kicking in that have catapulted her into seduction mode, it may just be the balmy evening and the balmy breeze blowing ever so balmily across her veil,  all that soft sensual music in the background, something from one of her shows maybe, Madame's, or perhaps it's the symbolism of the  pole, and the young boy swaying behind it. She remembers that night when she preambled her show with these words: 'And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void. And the darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: Look at that fucker Dance.'

She slips out the window and approaches Mario, who by now has realized he is indeed coming face to face and one on one with the Madame herself. She regards him with adoration and affection:  it's the middle Incandenza son,  igniting in her a lust she can almost taste. She wonders whether or not there might be a bit of temporal bliss to be found in those floppy arms just begging to flap themselves around her, Joelle. He is like a god to her. The God of Pole Dancing.

Mario finds himself suddenly and inexplicably kertwanged, watching Joelle approach as she places her small white hand on his steel pole, and as she slowly slithers around it, caressing it like it's her long-desired lover's unit.... Mario is unable to tear himself away and simultaneously is unable to comprehend what any of this means, yet he has the presence of mind to switch on the Bolex . He will watch and learn, later.

Madame Psychosis advances in a sort of  trance. Her eyes are unfocused due to perhaps she may recently have been surreptiously abusing some substance, maybe a little homespun Bing, or at the very least something crystalline, who knows, and really, who cares! She massages the pole with one foot, runs one small white palm  up and down its sleek cool surface and with the other  hand she beckons Mario come closer.  For his part Mario is experiencing  an unusual tingling sensation in his corduroys, not like needing to pee exactly, in the out of bounds ticklish area below his belly button, but for once there is no tickling and no  giggling but more of a tingle and a sigh, and...and ...a stiffening of his virginal unit, which in addition to his big brown eyes is the only other normal part of Mario's anatomy.   He wonders, idly, will he need a second police lock to hold that up? or maybe to hold it in place? He will ask Lyle later.

Joelle has mesmerized him, a cobra engaged in a deadly game with prey.  She can hear his erratic raspy breaths. Mario's completely helpless - he can't run -  she strikes out and unsnaps his fly and his unit springs out, naked and free for the first time ever in his young life.  Oh Darius, it is a sight for sore eyes! No one, not ever, has witnessed this actually first ever phenomenon, Mario Erectus!  For his part he is utterly speechless with both fear and awe. After all here is his most precious idol, the great Madame Psychosis and  she is in full, terrifying control.  His unit throbs, his heart skips many beats. But when his heart remembers to beat it does so in thunderous, velcro-popping beats.

Joelle turns away abruptly and wraps her arms around Mario's steel pole, then  leans back, slides first one slim thigh around  it and languidly strokes the pole with her foot.  Not once does she part the veil or allow it to slip off, revealing her mangled face. She must remain in control, a controlled slow burn of passion,  and lust, and delayed gratification all cool unemotional sociopathic self-control designed to provide for maximum bliss. Poor BooBoo, who knows naught of these matters, is fraught with a new pain and is  frightened beyond imagining.

At last, at last, Madame reaches out to touch Mario, forefinger to foreskin....he is instantly overcome with a million  spasms all  doubled over breathless with shock and excruciating ecstasy mingled with shame and panic.  Eternity opens and explodes  in a reverse kind of big bang  as new universes fecundate before his mind's eye. He collapses, spent,  unconscious at Joelle's feet. He lies in a puddle, not of piss, but of many years' worth of bottled up , unexpelled juices, soda-sweet and heavy-creamy, a khaki greenish tan tinge on the foamy vanilla ooze,  lightly metallic scented, a busted cherry and rather shriveled not so much nuts as scoured out walnut shells,  a  super-millennial fizzie all warm and steamy staining his old corduroys and sliding off into the dewy grass.

Joelle snaps to.  She crawls inside through the still open window.  It is now 0145 hours. Time for her beauty sleep.  Mario also sleeps, perhaps for the first time ever , breathing quite normally, even though he is quite horizontal sans  his requisite 4 pillow props on the lawn outside Ennet House.

If perchance Himself as wraith was en route to visit Gately when he spotted the strange vignette of Joelle and Mario on the lawn below ETA and noticed the blinking light on the Bolex, he was surely convinced at last the true paternity of his second son.

Epilogue:  I know, Darius, that you must be shaking your head in disbelief - like it couldn't have happened that way, both of them acting so out of character. Well, believe me when I tell you I have seen many things in my life -  lust makes a fool out of everyone sooner or later, and anyway I have irrefutable proof. You see,  when Mario finally pulled himself together (without anyone's help)  he downloaded the digital recording of his  first ever and memorable Millennial Fizzie onto a blank cartridge, just like Himself had done and taught him to do ...  and from Joelle, well, Mario learned how to hide.  I wonder:  did Mario consult with Lyle later, and what did Lyle say?

So then,  show me your proof, I can almost hear you thinking it.  Fine.   Recently  I, Pandora,  just happened to be browsing in a Boston area thrift store and found in a dusty bin a used and worn cartridge, which cartridge had a mostly scratched out strange symbol, depicting  a police lock with a veil over it and on impulse I bought the thing for a dollar. I didn't know why.  I just knew I had to have it... when I got home I watched it  over and over again, but never again.  Well,  maybe I will watch it one last time...

...but I still have no idea:  who is the Beast in this crazy love story?

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Click here for deleted scenes Deleted scenes - Mario's Millenial Fizzie

My Problem with Gately

In a big book so full of  larger than life characters, most of whom are on the fast track to hell, what am I, Pandora Pox,  just a normal everyday slog-through-life type, supposed to make of Don Gately, who landed on hell's doorstep, well, maybe it was in a pricey high rise condo wallowing all unaware in like puddles of urine and shit due to od'ing on a massive blue pile of Dilaudid, a like morphine class drug, but then he made his way back, only to fall into a limbo-bardo state in which he was unable to function in either the so-called real world, and  only minimally in the netherworld? I mean, come on, what's all this hoopla about wraiths?  Isn't the road to perdition bought with a one-way ticket?  Well it ought to be and spare us the clean-up, I say!

Seriously, DFW fans, are we really supposed to believe that an accomplished drug addict with a vast resume' of chemical cocktail proficiency to his name (remember, once an addict, always an addict; I'm no great brain trust over here, hell, I'm barely literate for godsake but I do know a bit about addiction my own self), anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Are we really supposed to swallow that Gately's uber-drudgerious 'Resident Staffer on Night Duty' duties , which enumeration of same takes up like 5 whole pages of prose (in teeny tiny print, that must be like what, upwards of 5000 words in IJ pp 601-605, screw the footnotes today) (and no I am not so obsessed with accuracy that I would ever actually conduct a word count)... well, I cannot fathom that anyone, even an old square-head moron wouldn't at least be sorely tempted to use a little bit just to get a little respite....to perhaps raid Lenz's PoP and get a little much-deserved relief for his own underappreciated self,  Gately. I mean, honestly, a martyr complex is the least attractive character trait of any, if I am allowed to opine, isn't that what Great Literature is supposed to make us do anyway? And fully cognizant that nobody will not only not agree with my views here,  especially and including DFW-as-wraith and my partner Darius, but also probably castigate me for it, opine I must, public opinion  and consensus be damned. Oh please, don't hold this lowly one in contempt simply for exercising my First Amendment Rights! It's just an opinion for godsake.  And to top it all off he doesn't even complain but always presents a benign jolly presence as he ministers on behalf of the dregs of the earth, where he himself lately arose out of, Gately.

So,  if Gately is any kind of role model, I mean one as presented to us by DFW himself, what does that mean for the rest of us errant mortals,  those with maybe better judgement and morals but less fortitude or perhaps more bluntly put, stubbornness, how are we to compete with the likes of him, Gately? If he can do it, why not the rest of us? The pressure is on.

 Ack.  I  hate this moron Gately. Damn heroic Gately.

I refer, of course, to what happened to him outside Ennet House on 11 November Y.D.A.U. and then afterward, on that fateful night when he took a hit (from a GSW in the shoulder by one of the Nucks who were chasing Lenz-  IJ. p. 612) that was meant for and should have been perpetrated on Randy Lenz, who rightfully deserved it. (Oh yeah, I'm so over Randylicious, just the thought of that scumbag dirtwad creepo makes me want to vomit.)

Poor Gately. He gets whisked off to the hospital in a bad so bad way, and even though he has excruciating pain he refuses any and all pain meds that he is rightfully entitled to avail himself of. Did no one there show him the Wong-Baker pain scale?  Not that Wong-Baker is in any way accurate, but at least, not being able to articulate his druthers in actual words, Gately  might have just shaken his big square head at the thing or maybe his finger all 'no, nooooooooooooo' or maybe waggled his eyebrows and blinked a bunch of times in displeasure. How would anyone indicate displeasure or non-compliance when all motor functions are on the fritz? I am sure I don't know.

On the other hand why did he decide to suffer?  Why didn't he just nod YES to the hospital meds? I suppose once one has experienced the downside of addiction one becomes reluctant to get hooked again. Those damn pharmaceuticals will get you coming and going, whether from lack of moral turpitude or from bona-fide physical agony, it doesn't matter much in the long run, really.  You can just as easily get hooked either way.

But why, I wonder, are people so willing to damage if not destroy themselves with illegal drugs to the point of permanent demapping yet not willing to spare themselves  a lot of insuperable physical pain with legal ones? I know people  in real life like that. And yes, they DO drive me bats.  And this is why I  hesitated to even attempt to get into the head space of the sinner/saint Gately.   Are we to assume he's the latest incarnation of  Saint Francis of Assisi, hell raiser turned sparrow lover?  No fucking way! Problem is, he's so fucking integral to the IJ journey that I literally have no choice but to at least scribble down some thoughts.  I suppose I will have to learn to wrap my head around the whole addiction/ redemption cycle thing. Maybe the trouble I have is that redemption is a concept so foreign to me as to not be believable. And yet, and yet, Pandora...that damnable moniker so full of nothing but Hope. She will no doubt have her day.  Just not today.

- Pandora Pox

ETA: Lego My Eggo *

So, you ask, what is it like to be a first year tennis hopeful at ETA, namely Enfield Tennis Academy? Listen up and you will soon learn.  I'm in my room and I don't feel so good.  Stomach trouble.  This place is awesome scary but first allow me to intro-do me to thee: I am Francine Zweig, age 12.  My sister is enrolled here too, Felicity Zweig (1). We're not rooming together like some of the other brothers and sisters do, as Felicity is older than I and has breasts already. There is a mystery surrounding this that I though while very well-developed in the mental toolbox and I can lob like no other 12 year old, which they say I could maybe be first string, 'a' team soon, and maybe even dare I hope, the Show -- but I am not so much in the pectoral region, developed. So far nobody will explain to me exactly when this will happen. Oh don't get me wrong I know where babies come from and like that;  sex education is mands (2) in all O.N.A.N. schools but they always leave out the part about the breasts. I wonder why that is but right now I have other more pressing problems on my considerable plate.

I am trying to concentrate on squeezing old tennis balls as per ETA rules to develop my forearm muscles but all I really want to do is lay down in a big human ball on my bed. Better yet in my own home with all my stuffed animals and lego (a) toys strewn over the floor, rather neatly I can proudly say, all arranged by color and size and shape. I'm never quite sure if I have the stacking order exactly right, like when there are 2 pieces exactly the same except for color and two pieces the same color but different sizes, I  don't know what to do in cases like that.  It is not in the lego manual.  But whenever I have a puzzling situation on my hands I arrange and rearrange the lego pieces and before I know it I have figured a way out of the situation. Yay legos. I have arranged and rearranged the legos every which way and cannot imagine any way to arrange them into any reasonable facsimile of breasts. Or how I would attach them to my own self so they wouldn't slip around, one up and one down, especially when it's my serve.  My particular brand of legos is all cubes and squares, so my artistic assays into breast-building end up looking like Picasso all blue in his cubism.

On my wall there are posters of my tennis idols. Serena #14 and Venus #22 as ranked overall at the time of this writing, YSPDD (3).  Steffi Graf #3 and Chris Evert #9, overall, according to the teleputer. I used to have a poster of Billie Jean King but as an idol she was lacking in the breast department, and so I gave it, the poster,  to my younger sister Fiona, who is only 5 and who would not know the difference between a breast and a tennis ball if one of them hit her in the face. Mrs. Avril Incandenza says it is really important to always use proper terminology in all things and that is why you will never hear me say tit or boob or rack or like that. It wouldn't be ladylike and also bad sportsmanship.

Something really awful happened at practice today which made me want to curl up in a ball on my bed. I was practicing serves with Gretchen Holt, when all of a sudden I felt rather faint and had to call for a time out.  I doubled over and Gretchen hopped spryly over the net to see what the problem was. I looked down and saw that I had blood running down my bare legs pooling around my shoelaces.  I have to say it was a fairly strenuous round of serves on top of running laps and up and down the hills around Enfield, which they, Schtitt and the other admins,  make us all do, and I was feeling a little off my game before I ever stripped off my jogging pants and neatly folded and laid them over a low bleacher courtside. Up in the top row of the bleachers sat a funny looking robot with a camera affixed to its head, the little red light on it blinking meaning of course the thing was on record, the camera. Gretchen leaped back over the net and  quickly back again, bringing me a towel. I mopped up my mess as best I could and resumed play, but my heart wasn't in it. She bested me but good.  I hope this doesn't ruin my chances for the 'a' team.

From brickjest.com  -- A Lego Tennis Match

A couple of courts over I saw John (NR) Wayne beating the pants off Ortho Stice. Hal Incster (not his real name, I don't think) and Michael Pemulis were on the bleachers, watching, Hal kept spitting into a rusted coffee can and Pemulis was squeezing his old tennis ball with one hand and  touching his crotch with the other. He would squeeze the ball first for like a minute and then arrange, and then switch hands and arrange his crotch with his tennis hand. That made his face go all funny.  I will have to try to puzzle that little ritual out using my lego blocks over Thanksgiving vacation.  Hal spit again, and then I saw the blinking red light on the robot's head blink off.  My legs were still all wet all bloody and I was thinking Oh Gosh I hope there are some big bandaids in the infirmary.

I see the formidable Millicent walking into the woods followed by the funny little robot. Technology, is like, wow. Forgive me my rare usages of slang, after all I'm only 12. This place has a lot of mysteries, but I am confident that in time I will figure everything out. There is a guru that lives in the boys locker room called Lyle and I am going to find out if girls  can go in there or is it a boys' club only.  I wonder if Lyle would lick  my bloody thigh sweat in exchange for information. Because what I really want to know is when will I get breasts. Something tells me he has the answer, which if at all possible I plan to avail myself of his wisdom until I can get home and consult my legos.

Outside my door I hear the thwack...thwack of towels hitting bare skin and girls giggling and the mental pock pock I'm remembering  from a long tennis volley soothes me as I clutch my stomach . Tomorrow is Eschaton.  I make a mental note to pack bandaids and an extra towel just in case, and then I slowly drift away...  

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(1) IJ pp. 757-8
(a) Check out the creative website - a man and his son have created scenes from IJ using Lego toys. http://www.brickjest.com/
(2) mands- ETA slang term for mandatory
(3) YSPDD - Per Darius Blake,  Subsidized Year of the Swamp People and Duck Dynasty.

 *courtesy: gifstumbler.com

An Audience with the Guru

She sneaks into the boy's gym when by all accounts she should be asleep, Francine. It is 2200 hours on 29 October YSPDD and Francine, ONAN love her, has not only a question but one that really rankles. Rumor has it that the mythical being Lyle, who hovers over a towel dispenser like a 'copter over a helipad in the Interdependence Day weight room with no discernable supports in sight, is able to see into the essence of a soul and Francine, burdened as she is with a 12 year old's menstrual angst, is determined to avail herself of Lyle's secret wisdom. It was necessary to resort to subterfuge as she had already learned that girls were unallowed in that testosterone laden inner sanctum. The rare phenomenon of athletic girl sweat was utterly distracting to the guru, which sweat caused him, Lyle, to topple over onto one side and fondle his own personal unit so rigorously that he was left incapable, until lock and load had been achieved once again, from rendering any sort of guruish wisdom to the boys at ETA.

At this moment Francine, who had successfully dickied the physical door lock to the weight room with a used-up  Barbie/Ken gift card, hid herself behind a pile of smelly mats. She had gotten temporarily sidetracked by the sight of boys in towels, waiting their turn to enter the locked room and petition Lyle for an audience. They didn't notice her. Lyle was enduring the  piddly-assed concerns of the 10 year old LaMont Chu, who confided he was really and shamefully interested in one day going to 'the show', a euphemism for qualifying to play in the top tennis matches. Chu wanted celebrity. Francine figured, listening, that what she wanted would be easier to get than what Chu wanted. Biology was on her side, Francine's, no matter what Lyle or Chu or anybody else at ETA might think. The only snafu was that being a highly trained athlete, Francine's mammary development might be truncated or reapportioned, whatever, to other parts of her anatomy. It was a sad fact that her estrogen had recently kicked in and caught her unprepared. It was humiliating, a girl like Francine Zweig, to be unprepared, but that's life in the big city, she thought in her 12 year old triteness. Nothing to be done about that now...she was in the acursed bloody monthly cycle for the rest of her days, if Avril Incandenza and all the sex ed pamphlets were to be believed. Well, she was not about to let that stop her from getting what she really wanted, so she listened, snooping, to Lyle's breathy lecture, dispensing his sage advice to Chu who paid off Lyle with his personal stinky drippy sweat. When Lyle was done with a guy the guy did not even need a shower. He might land in his bed dry and clean but oddly aroused. Not Lyle's problem, anyhow, who knew beyond all doubt that the world is not only old but radically old and we are all but sweaty objects dwelling here temporarily.

Lyle is sucking on the inside of his left cheek, savoring the salty residue on his tongue, eyes fixed on the ceiling as Chu departs and closes the heavy door behind him.  Lost in blissful reverie, he does not notice Francine who scuttles over to the door and jams a chair under the knob with all the speed and grace only a young nymph can muster. He adjusts the spandex which has ridden up his butt crack as he awaits the next petitioner. They all want the same thing, Lyle knows. To be noticed, famous, appreciated, admired and envied. When they get what they want they no longer want it anymore and most of them would do anything to turn the clock back and return to their innocent pre-fame state of  affairs. He sighs heavily and almost lands with a thump on the surface of the towel dispenser when he is distracted by a blur and a clang, which is Francine locking the two of them in. The world is not all that old that Lyle has had time to comprehend what females are all about.  He draws in a deep breath. What on earth could this little waif want from him? How did she get in without him knowing?

Francine, amazingly not only uncowed but positively brazen in her female pulchritude, turns to Lyle and bows. Then she curtsies because she was brought up rich, and always properly polite. Lyle scowls and starts sucking on the inside of his right cheek, but all of Chu's salt has dissipated and how Lyle tastes only his own bitter bile.

'Excuse me for intruding, Sir Lyle,' she begins. Lyle looks down at her with a half lidded gaze. 'Just Lyle will do,' he replies, mistrustful and like really wary. She smells , well, different than Chu. Is that ...blood?
'May I approach?'
 'If you must.'
'There is something I really want to know.'
'Yes, I get that. You're anxious about your body,' he says, eyes rolled up into the inner space behind his lowered lids.
'Excuse me?'
'It is written all over you, your anxiety. You are so obsessed with the perceived vagaries of your personal anatomy, the imperfections of your general overall map, that you are unable to move on to more advanced anxieties,' he intones. 'Be assured, youn woman,  that the world is incredibly...'
'...old, yes, I know. I'm not a silly twit, Lyle. ' She summons every last drop of chutzpah, a family trait and legacy from pre-subsidized time ancestors. Holocaust survivors and like that.
Lyle peers at her.  'Trust me, the truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you,' he recites  from memory. How often have we heard these words fall from his lips! (1)
'Just tell me this, Lyle, and I will be on my way. Will I ever.....'
'...get breasts? Of course you will, Fr.....'
'No, no....that's a given,' she says, a little exasperated and surprised at his perspicacity. 'I  got an A+ in biology ...' Francine, a nascent female master manipulator,  has on the spot decided why on earth should she admit that Lyle had intuited her one burning question so easily? Was it because the only girl on campus who had actually filled out was the U.S.S. Millicent?
'What then?'
'Well....will I ever make it to the Show?'
Lyle looks at her with not pity but perhaps relief mingled with disappointment. Apparently girl blood and sweat do not make for gender-specific  queries. He does not know if he could stand to lick this one and so his tongue is like really tied. She waits patiently for an answer, but when after a few minutes he offers nothing, she sighs and starts to move off toward the barred door.
'Wait...'
'Lyle, thank you for your time. I never really believed you could help me with my problems but, well, I just had to find out for myself. ' She struts her tight little bloody butt away, and removes the chair from under the knob.
'Girls,' he snorts, as Francine slips out the door and closes it gently behind her.
'What are YOU looking at, you fucking assholes?' she sneers, wresting towels off the slick bodies of the boys waiting in line, one by one.  They watch, mouths gaping.
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(1) IJ, page 389