1 May, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) - Outcropping in Tortalita Mountains, Tucson, AZ
Back at the outcropping, Steeply asks Marathe if he ever thinks about viewing the samizdat. Marathe says no. They talk about copies of The Entertainment, who has read-only copies and who they know have master copies. Steeply expresses disbelief at Marathe’s not wanting to ever watch the film. We learn that both the AFR and the USOUS are experimenting with viewings of the cartridge. And we learn that the Office of Unspecified Services suspects that it may be Incandenza’s use of holography in the film may that makes it so lethal. Steeply continues, say the the theory is “that with a really sophisticated piece of holography you’d get the neural density of an actual stage play without losing the selective realism of the viewer-screen. That the density plus the realism might be too much to take.”
Winter, B.S. 1963 – Incandenza Home, Sepulveda, CA
This scene is narrated by James O. Incandenza Jr.
Jim’s father and mother call him to their room where they are trying to figure out what is causing a squeaking sound in their bed. Jim Sr. is drinking a Bloody Mary while Jim’s mother smokes a cigarette and watches Sr. as work with the bed and complains about how much the bed squeaks. He describes the squeaking as rodential. The younger Jim asks how he can help. His mother silently folds their sheets. Jim Sr. thinks the frame may be what is squeaking, so they will need to take the mattress and box springs into the hall in order to examine the frame. Jim Jr. thinks that, unlike him, neither of his parents are interested in hard science. James Sr. hopes that the squeaking is coming from the frame because frames are relatively inexpensive, compared to the replacement of the mattress or the box springs. The younger Jim explains that his father is the spokesman for Glad Sandwich Bags and is still in costume. Eventually, the Jims lift the mattress, and Jim Jr. notes that the mattress tag claims that it is against the law to remove the tag from the mattress. From Endnote 24: Valuable Coupon Has Been Removed is about a boy who “helps his alcoholic-delusional father and disassociated mother dismantle their bed to search for rodents, and later he intuits the future feasibility of DT-cycle lithiumized annular fusion.” Returning to the narrative and back inside Jim’s parent’s bedroom, the exoskeletal figure of the frame sits in the room, covered in dust. James Sr. asks his wife when the last time she had cleaned under the mattress. Jim observes that his father’s mood surrounded him like a field and tells his parents that his bead squeaks too. James Sr. says they know, that they hear it often. James then asks Jim’s mom to go get the vacuum, if she can remember where it is. Finally, James points to what might be a squeaking bolt, the phone starts ringing, and his father gets sick, throwing up his Bloody Mary. Jim tries to give his father privacy and James Sr. faints, causing the frame to crack. Jim’s mother returns with the vacuum, which her son helps her with. Jim then leaves the room, goes up to his own room, and jumps onto the bed. The jump knocks his lamp over. It falls to the floor and shears off his door’s knob. The rolling of the knob, spinning on two axes – described as like the movement of someone turning somersaults with a hand nailed to the floor – inspired Jim to see the possibilities of annulation.
9 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – NA Beginner’s Meeting, Boston, MA
We join Johnette Foltz, Ken Erdeddy, and Kate Gompert at an NA meeting focused on marijuana. Everyone sits in a circle and takes turns raising their hand to share their stories. In the stories, they rehearse their cycles through the disease and share their pain of having been addicted to pot, which is considered “the benignest substance around.” Erdedy notices that depression, the true fuel of marijuana addiction, goes unmentioned in the meeting, but hangs “fog-like” over the room. Boston NA only goes for an hour and does not have a break. After the meeting, everyone mills around and hugs each other. Erdedy is afraid of hugging, a fear that is exacerbated by a “tall heavy Afro-American fellow with a gold incisor and perfect vertical cylinder of Afro-American hairstyle peel[ing] away from a sort of group-hug” and approaching Erdedy. Erdedy begs off, instead proffering his hand for a shake. This offends the man, who turns out to be Roy Tony. Erdedy explains to Roy Tony that he doesn’t like to hug. Roy Tony menacingly asks Erdeddy if he thinks that he, Roy Tony, likes to hug. Erdedy offers a handshake again. Roy Tony picks him up and says that he has been charged to hug by NA, he now hugs as he has been asked, and now Erdeddy has embarrassed him in front of his fellow NA members.
1 May, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) - Outcropping in Tortalita Mountains, Tucson, AZ
Returning to Marathe and Steeply, we find Steeply confiding that the Office of Unspecified Services has already lost a couple agents to the samizdat, one of whom was named Hank and was a good friend of Steeply’s. Hank, since viewing the cartridge, has become obsessed with viewing, continually begging for more time with the film. Hank had originally went in to pull someone else out of a room with the film showing. Steeply then asks Marathe if he ever thinks about what the Entertainment would be like to view. Marathe replies that the AFR thinks about how the film might be useful not what it would be like to view it. He then observes that the Quebecois are not tempted by the samizdat as Americans are, but they respect the film’s power.
10 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield, MA
We join Michael Pemulis and Hal Incandenza in the Headmaster’s waiting room, where almost everything in the room is blue. In fact, the narrative proceeds by describing the various blue objects in the room. Hal and Pemulis are waiting for CT who is in his office. Endnote 209 gives us descriptions of various photographs that hang on the waiting room’s walls – mostly action shots of students playing tennis, peppered with other scenes from ETA activities and trips. After the endnote, we learn that Lateral Alice Moore used to be a helicopter pilot who gave weather reports. A crash left her with several chronic conditions, one of which is that she can only move laterally. She entertains students by imitating her old reports. Both Avril and CT have offices that open off the waiting room. Because Avril does not have doors on her office, Hal can hear Avril talking to the younger contingent of the ETA girls, trying to find out if they have been sexually approached, threatened, or abused by anyone at ETA or elsewhere. Endnote 211 informs us that “Pemulis’s deepest dread is of academic or disciplinary expulsion and ejection” because he does not want to have to return to Allston a failure. This is why he has the picture of the king and the caption that reads, “Yes, I’m Paranoid – But Am I Paranoid Enough?” Pemulis hates Dolores Rusk, who is probably in the office with CT. When he was 15, he connected electricity to her door knob hoping to shock her, except it was not Rusk who opened the hot knob. It was a cleaning lady who was sent to the hospital. Comments drift into the waiting room from Avril’s meeting with the younger girls, most of the girls complaining about things that irritate them about adults but are not actually abuse. Everyone in the waiting room is anxious. They contemplate what kind of punishment is in store for the big buddies of the students who were hurt in the Eschaton two days ago. Pemulis and Hal have rehearsed the story and explanation they intend to give Tavis. Hal contemplates the way he does not think about himself as someone who has family at ETA. He then goes into a long memory of the last time he was summoned to the Headmaster’s office. We get an explanation of CT’s previous architectural career, his most famous building being the Toronto Blue Jays stadium with hotel rooms that open onto the outfield. Hal was suffering substance withdrawal while he waited for CT to finish with the newly matriculant Tina Echt. We learn Hal dislikes being around CT. What’s unsettling about him is CT’s openness. Stice had entered the room. He and Hal acknowledged each other, as CT described to Tina Echt how ETA will be breaking her down and putting her back together. This caused Tina to cry. Hal decided he would sneak down to the pump room in order to get high, as soon as his meeting ended. Eventually, Avril had entered the room. Orin calls her the “black hole of human interaction.” She and Hal have a complex way of greeting each other. She held orientation packets. Hal had not eaten, which she intuited and gave him her apple which was to be her meal for the day. She often visibly suffers in order to provide for her children. Avril and Hal discussed Tina Echt, who they say is unbelievably young and small. Starting at seven at ETA, she could potentially be at ETA for a decade. Avril invited Hal to dinner that evening, but Hal had to be at dawns in the morning. This was all three months ago. Returning to November, Hal thinks about the fact that he was at the dentist’s earlier today. As the students continue to wait, they think about Tavis when he loses his temper. He seems to grow and rush in on you in these moments. The meeting between the girls and Avril is starting to break up. Finally, they are buzzed into the office. For some reason, Clenette from Ennet House is in there with CT. Rusk is also in the room, as is Otis P. Lord with the monitor still on his head, now with eye holes cut into the black plastic of the monitor’s side. Lastly, there is a urine expert in the room.
1 May, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) - Outcropping in Tortalita Mountains, Tucson, AZ
We rejoin Marathe and Steeply, with Steeply claiming that the attraction to the samizdat is not an American thing. He tells about an “Oriental” myth that tells of men coming across a hairy woman combing her body and hair and the men being irresistibly attracted to her. The sun begins to rise and life begins moving in the desert. Both the AFR and the Office of Unspecified Services looked forward to the meetings between Steeply and Marathe, besides the fact that they accomplished very little. We are told that Marathe loves his wife more than the AFR, and so he has actually betrayed his comrades of Quebec. They discuss the myth of the Odalisque, “a Medusa in reverse.” Marathe raises the myth of Leda and the swan.
11 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) - Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House
We join Don Gately and Joelle van Dyne discussing their experiences on substances. Don tells a story about going to a bar in a group, when one of his friends, Chuck, hit on a girl with a boyfriend. The boyfriend didn’t like it and Gately’s crew beat the guy up. He left and the Gately’s crew started playing strip darts with the girl. Soon enough, the girl’s guy came back with a gun and shot the guy that took his girl in the back of the head. Gately’s crew grabbed hold of their friend and walked him around the bar while he had a hole in the back of the head. The barkeep used the bar’s gun to keep the other guy behind the bar and called the cops. Gately’s crew did not take the guy to the hospital, they just walked him around because they were too drunk to think clearly. Finally, the barkeep called an ambulance, but the guy was dead by the time it arrived.
Joelle responds with a story from AA about a lady with two legs, both shorter than the other. Gately asks Joelle why she wears the veil. Joelle responds that it is from the UHID. Almost everyone in UHID wears a veil, she says. Joelle explains that when members of the UHID receive the veil, they “recite that the veil they’ve donned is a Type and a Symbol, and that they are choosing freely to be bound to wear it always – a day at a time – both in light and darkness, both in solitude and before others’ gaze, and as with both strangers so with familiar friends, even Daddies. That no mortal eye will see it withdraw. That they hereby declare openly that they wish to hide from all sight.” Gately asks why you would join a fellowship just to hide. He says that what AA offers is a place to “be accepted by people that know just what it’s like, and like in AA they say they’ll love you till you can love yourself and accept yourself, so you don’t care what people see or think anymore, and you can finally step out of the cage and quit hiding.”
Joelle responds that the urge to hide is offset by the shame of wanting to hide. She says that even if one is deformed, they are still human. Joelle cannot help how she looks, yet she is expected to not care how she appears to others. Part of UHID, she says, is supporting others who choose to hide and not to be ashamed of their hiding. She says that she sees that Gately is self-conscious about not being as smart as other people, which UHID would say is totally fine. But she also says that she can see that Gately is actually not not-smart. Gately reveals that he failed English in high school. Joelle says the veil is about hiding openly. Gately asks how she’s deformed. Joelle evades. Gately calls her out on the evasion, saying that if she doesn’t want to answer the question then she should just say so. Joelle counter-accuses Gately of hiding, saying the best offense is a good defense. She finally confesses to Don, “I’m perfect. I’m so beautiful I drive anybody with a nervous system out of their fucking mind. Once they’ve seen me they can’t think of anything else and don’t want to look at anything else and stop carrying out normal responsibilities and believe that if they can only have me right there with them at all times everything will be all right. Everything. Like I’m the solution to their deep slavering need to be jowl to cheek with perfection.” Gately thinks she is messing with him, using sarcasm.
11 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Boston, MA
We learn that people suspect that Randy Lenz “has found his own dark way to deal with the well-known Rage and Powerlessness issues that beset the drug addict in his first few months of abstinence.” Lenz has a car and only leaves Ennet House after dark, even then in a ridiculous disguise. He never drives his own car and always walks home alone. He says he needs the air. One Wednesday, it takes him two hours to get back from a meeting; he gets back at 2329, which is one minute before curfew. As Lenz walks home each night, he moves through neighborhoods with various animals: cats, dogs, rats, and even raccoons. One night, coming back from East Watertown, he had been strolling through a neighborhood and saw a dumpster. Rats were inside. He crept up on them and smashed them with a large object. One particular rat made a crunching sound that Lenz enjoyed. He began killing rats every night and developed an addiction for killing them that became a substitute for his usual substance abuse. Eventually, he began capturing cats inside Hefty garbage bags and sealing the bag so that the cat made various forms with the bag as it slowly suffocated. When he killed these animals, he liked to say, “There,” when they died. His need to kill cats became more and more baroque each evening. He learned cats are more drawn by anchovies more than tuna. He then needs thicker bags to contain more energetic cats. Lenz has also used organic cocaine several times since coming to Ennet House, but his usage now compared to what he used to ingest is so much less than it was that he considers himself basically sober. Eventually, he grew to enjoy taking the captured cat’s bag and swinging it against a nearby immovable object. One night, after lighting a cat on fire and running away, the cats began to chase him through the street. That night, he resorted to his store of organic cocaine. Unfortunately, the coke did not unwind him but tightened him further. He spent the night mute, his mouth twisting and writhing, pretending to be asleep.
Lenz eventually began carrying a large knife and slitting the throats of dogs he passed by. He would remove a square of meatloaf from Don’s leftovers, feeding it to dogs that he walked by, and slitting their throats when they came up on their back paws to eat the meat. The challenge is getting behind the dog because of the amount of blood. He began imagining killing homeless men, but never went through with it. One night, Bruce Green asks Lenz to walk home with him. Though Lenz likes Green, he cannot satisfy his desires to murder animals with Green present. Lenz likes Green because he does not talk, but is a great listener. Lenz, on the other hand, is a great talker. Not only does Green not talk too much, but he pays attention to what Lenz says and inserts “affirmatives” as Lenz soliloquizes. He does not want to insult Green, but he needs to get away from him so he can kill more dogs.
Early November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Connecticut Avenue Northwest, Washington DC
This section joins Rodney Tine. We are told that the only thing Tine could be blackmailed for is his daily routine of measuring his penis and recording its length in a little notebook. We are given a description of what Tine understands about the samizdat, which is that it has popped up in several locations, causing people’s lives to be ruined by their need to view the video again and again. We also learn that Gentle had to be strongly discouraged from watching the video. Attempts to get someone to describe the cartridge’s content have failed, except they know it begins with a shot of a veiled woman going through revolving doors. Monitoring of brain activity has also failed to determine what happens to exposed persons, but they do know that the cartridges are coming from either Boston or the desert Southwest. Canadians may be involved.
9 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment – Enfield Tennis Academy, Enfield, MA
Pemulis walks through the Admin building at ETA and hears Stice talking to Rusk late at night. He doesn’t understand why, but Rusk speaks to Stice about moving objects and explains her understanding of psychoanalysis. She claims Ortho feels abandonment. He has come to her because his bed continues to move around while he is sleeping late at night. Pemulis leaves Rusk’s office and heads into the waiting room outside Mrs. Incandenza’s and CT’s offices. Pemulis sees light coming from Mrs. Incandenza’s office and can hear Tavis running on his Stairmaster in his office. He can also hear odd sounds coming from Mrs. I’s office. He strides into the room and sees her and John Wayne. Mrs. I is performing the splits with pom poms raised in the air and with a whistle in her mouth while John Wayne wears only a jockstrap and helmet. Pemulis says, “I predict this’ll take about two minutes at most.”
11 November, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (2009) – Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House
Rejoining Lenz and Green on one of their now regular walks home from a meeting, Lenz tells Green that he gets calm in tight situations. Lenz thinks about the fact that he likes Green, which Lenz dislikes because it makes him uncomfortable. How can he tell Green to leave him alone for a while without insulting him? It would be easy if Green was a girl; he would just tell Green that he liked him and that would be that. Lenz has tried random acts of cruelty to animals around Ennet House, but he remains unsatisfied. Eventually, he decides to just take some of his cocaine so he can tell Green he likes him but needs some private time. He does the cocaine off the toilet at the Wednesday night meeting they attend together.
After the meeting, Lenz has taken about five lines of the coke and now prefers to have Green with him so that he can share his thoughts with Green. He tells Green about his fear of watches and tells him about the books that he has read. Lenz also claims to have a special life force and a great proficiency for martial arts. He describes to Green a party he attended where someone had brought one of the infamous feral infants, which makes him claim that AA and NA are certainly cults, which goes to show how badly he and Bruce Green have messed up.
Image source is here.