The David Foster Wallace Reader

by David Foster Wallace

  The Browning X444, combined with blocks of Don Gately’s highly portable cornflake-garnish meatloaf, were for canines, which your urban canines tended to be nonferal and could be found within the confinement of their pet-owners’ fenced yards on a regularer basis than the urban-cat species, and who are less suspicious of food and, though more of a personal-injury risk to approach, do not scratch the hand that feeds them.

  For when the dense square of meatloaf is taken out and unwrapped from the Zip-loc and proffered from the edgelet of yard out past the fence by the sidewalk, the dog at issue invariably stops with the barking and/or lunging and its nose flares and it becomes totally uncynical and friendly and comes to the end of its chain or the fence Lenz stands behind and makes interested noises and if Lenz holds the meat-item just up out of reach the dog if its rope or chain will permit it it’ll go up on the hind legs and sort of play the fence with its front paws, jumping eagerly, as Lenz dangles the meat.

  Day had had some Recovery-Issue paperback he was reading that Lenz had a look at one P.M. in their room when Day was downstairs with Ewell and Erdedy telling each other their windbagathon stories, lying on Day’s mattress with his shoes on and trying to fart into the mattress as much as possible: some line in the book had arrested Lenz’s attention: something about the more basically Powerless an individual feels, the more the likelihood for the propensity for violent acting-out—and Lenz found the observation to be sound.

  The only serious challenge to using the Browning X444 is that Lenz has to make sure to get around behind the dog before he cuts the dog’s throat, because the bleeding is far-reaching in its intensity, and Lenz is now on his second R. Lauren topcoat and third pair of dark wool slacks.

  Then once near Halloween in an alley behind Blanchard’s Liquors off Allston’s Union Square Lenz comes across a street drunk in a chewed-looking old topcoat in the deserted alley taking a public leak against the side of a dumpster, and Lenz envisualizes the old guy both cut and on fire and dancing jaggedly around hitting at himself while Lenz goes ‘There,’ but that’s as close as Lenz comes to that kind of level of resolution; and it’s maybe to his credit that he’s a little off his psychic feed for a few days after that close call, and inactive with pets circa 2216h.

  Lenz has nothing much against his newer fellow resident Bruce Green, and when one Sunday night after the White Flag Green asks can he walk along with Lenz on the walk back after the Our Father Lenz says Whatever and lets Green walk with him, and is inactive during this night’s 2216 interval as well. Except after a couple nights of Green strolling home along with him, first from the White Flag and then from St. Columbkill’s on Tuesday and a double 1900–2200 shot of St. E.’s Sharing and Caring NA and then BYP on Wed., Green following him around like a terrier from mtg. to mtg. and then home, it begins to like emerge on Lenz that Bruce G. is starting to treat this walking-through-the-urban-P.M.-with-Randy-Lenz thing as like a regular fucking thing, and Lenz starts to jones about it, the unresolved Powerless Rage issues that the thing is now he’s gotten so he’s used to resolving them on a more or less nightly basis, so that being unable to be freely alone to be active with the Browning X444 or even a SteelSak during the 2216–2226h. interval causes this pressure to build up like almost a Withdrawal-grade pressure. But on the other side of the hand, walking with Green has its positive aspects as well. Like that Green doesn’t complain about lengthy detours to keep a mainly north/northeastern orientation to the walks when possible. And Lenz enjoys a sympathetic and listening ear to have around; he has numerous aspects and experiences to mull over and issues to organize and mull, and (like many people hardwired for organic stimulants) talking is sort of Lenz’s way of thinking. And but most of the ears of the other residents at Ennet House are not only unsympathetic but are attached to great gaping flapping oral mouths which keep horning into the conversation with the mouths’ own opinions and issues and aspects—most of the residents are the worst listeners Lenz has ever seen. Bruce Green, on the hand’s positive side, hardly says anything. Bruce Green is quiet the way certain stand-up type guys you want to have there with you beside you if a beef starts going down are quiet, like self-contained. Yet Green is not so quiet and unresponding that it’s like with some silent people where you start to wonder if he’s listening with a sympathizing ear or if he’s really drifting around in his own self-oriented thoughts and not even listening to Lenz, etc., treating Lenz like a radio you can tune in or out. Lenz has a keen antenna for people like this and their stock is low on his personal exchange. Bruce Green inserts low affirmatives and ‘No shit’s and ‘Fucking-A’s, etc., at just the right places to communicate his attentions to Lenz. Which Lenz admires.

  So it’s not like Lenz just wants to blow Green off and tell him to go peddle his papers and let him the fuck alone after Meetings so he can solo. It would have to be handled in a more diplomatic fashion. Plus Lenz finds himself nervous at the prospect of offending Green. It’s not like he’s scared of Green in terms of physically. And it’s not like he’s concerned Green would be the Ewell- or Day-type you have to stressfully worry about maybe going and ratting out on Lenz’s place of whereabouts to the Finest and everything like that. Green has a strong air of non-rat about him which Lenz admires. So it’s not like he’s frightened to blow Green off; it’s more like very tense and tightly wound.

  Plus it agitates Lenz that he has the feeling that it really wouldn’t be any big deal to Green that much one way or the other, and that Lenz feels like he’s spending all this stress tensely worrying about his side of something that Green would barely think about for more than a couple seconds, and it enrages Lenz that he can know in his head that the tense worry about how to diplomatize Green into leaving him alone is unnecessary and a waste of time and tension and yet still not be able to stop worrying about it, which all only increases the sense of Powerlessness that Lenz is impotent to resolve with his Browning and meatloaf as long as Green continues to walk home with him.

  And the schizoid cats with clotted fur that lurk around Ennet House cringing and neurotic and afraid of their own shadow are too risky, for the female residents are always formulating attachments to them. And Pat M.’s Golden Retrievers would be tattlemount to legal suicide. On a Saturday c. 2221h., Lenz found a miniature bird that had fallen out of some nest and was sitting bald and pencil-necked on the lawn of Unit #3 flapping ineffectually, and went in with Green and ducked Green and went back outside to #3’s lawn and put the thing in a pocket and went in and put it down the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink of the kitchen, but still felt largely impotent and unresolved.

  —pages 538–547

  AS AT ALL D.S.A.S.-certified halfway facilities, Ennet House’s resident curfew is 2330h. From 2300 to 2330, the Staffer on night-duty has to do head-counts and sit around like somebody’s mom waiting for different residents to come in. There’s always ones that always like to cut it close and play with the idea of getting Discharged for something picayune so it won’t be their fault. Tonight Clenette H. and the deeply whacked-out Yolanda W. come back in from Footprints246 around 2315 in purple skirts and purple lipstick and ironed hair, tottering on heels and telling each other what a wicked time they just had. Hester Thrale undulates in in a false fox jacket at 2320 as usual even though she has to be up at like 0430 for the breakfast-shift at the Provident Nursing Home and sometimes eats breakfast with Gately, both of their faces nodding down perilously close to their Frosted Flakes. Chandler Foss and the spectrally thin April Cortelyu come in from someplace with postures and expressions that arouse comments and force Gately to Log a possible issue about an in-House relationship. Gately has to bid goodnight to two craggy-faced brunette ex-residents who’ve been planted on the couch all night talking cults. Emil Minty and Nell Gunther and sometimes Gavin Diehl (who Gately did three weeks of a municipal bit with, once, at Concord Farm) make a nightly point of going to smoke outside on the front porch and coming in only after Gately says twice he’s got to lock the door, just as some limp reb
ellious gesture. Tonight they’re closely followed by a mustacheless Lenz, who sort of oozes through the door just as Gately’s going through his keys to get the key to lock it, and kind of brushes by and goes up to the 3-Man without a word, which he’s been doing a lot lately, which Gately has to Log, plus the fact that it’s now after 2330 and he can’t account for either the semi-new girl Amy J. or—more upsetting—Bruce Green. Then Green knocks at the front door at 2336—Gately has to Log the exact time and then it’s his call whether to unlock the door. After curfew Staff doesn’t have to unlock the door. Many a bad-news resident gets effectively bounced this way. Gately lets him in. Green’s never come close to missing curfew before and looks godawful, skin potato-white and eyes vacant. And a big quiet kid is one thing, but Green looks at the floor of Pat’s office like it’s a loved one while Gately gives him the required ass-chewing; and Green takes the standard dreaded week’s Full House Restriction247 in such a vacantly hangdog way, and is so lamely vague when Gately asks does he want to tell him where he’s been at and why he couldn’t make 2330 and whether there’s anything that’s an issue that he might want to share with Staff, so unresponsive that Gately feels like he has no choice but to pull an immediate spot-urine on Green, which Gately hates doing not only because he plays cribbage with Green and feels like he’s taken Green under the old Gately wing and is probably the closest thing to a sponsor the kid’s got but also because urine samples taken after Unit #2’s clinic’s closed248 have to be stored overnight in the little Staff miniature fridgelette in Don Gately’s basement room—the only fridge in the House that no resident could conceivably dicky into—and Gately hates to have a warm blue-lidded cup of somebody’s goddamn urine in his fridgelette with his pears and Polar seltzer, etc. Green submits to Gately’s cross-armed presence in the men’s head as Green produces a urine so efficiently and with so little bullshit that Gately is able to take the lidded cup between gloved thumb and finger and get it downstairs and tagged and Logged and down in the fridgelette in time to not be late for getting the residents’ cars moved, the night-shift’s biggest pain in the ass; but then his final head-count at 2345 reminds Gately that Amy J. isn’t back, and she hasn’t called, and Pat has told him the decision to Discharge after a missed curfew is his call, and at 2350 Gately makes the decision, and has to get Treat and Belbin to go up into the 5-Woman room and pack the girl’s stuff up in the same Irish Luggage she’d brought it in Monday, and Gately has to put the trashbags on the front porch with a quick note explaining the Discharge and wishing the girl good luck, and has to call Pat’s answering device down in Milton and leave word of a mandatory Curfew-Discharge at 2350h., so Pat can hear about it first thing in the A.M. and schedule interviews to fill the available bed ASAP, and then with a hissed curse Gately remembers the anti-big-hanging-gut situps he’s sworn to himself to do every night before 0000, and it’s 2356, and he has time to do only 20 with his huge discolored sneakers wedged under the frame of the office’s black vinyl couch before it’s unavoidably time to supervise moving the residents’ cars around.

  Gately’s predecessor as male live-in Staff, a designer-narcotics man who’s now (via Mass Rehab) learning to repair jet engines at East Coast AeroTech, once described residents’ vehicles to Gately as a continuing boil on the ass of night Staff. Ennet House lets any resident with a legally registered vehicle and insurance keep their car at the House, if they want, during residency, to use for work and nightly meetings, etc., and the Enfield Marine Public Health Hospital goes along, except they put authorized parking for all the Units’ clients out in the little street right outside the House. And since metro Boston’s serious fiscal troubles in the third year of Subsidized Time there’s been this hellish municipal deal where only one side of any street is legal for parking, and the legal side switches abruptly at 0000h., and cruisers and municipal tow trucks prowl the streets from 0001h. on, writing $95.00 tickets and/or towing suddenly-illegally-parked vehicles to a region of the South End so blasted and dangerous no cabbie with anything to live for will even go there. So the interval 2355h.–0005h. in Boston is a time of total but not very spiritual community, with guys in skivvies and ladies in mud-masks staggering out yawning into the crowded midnight streets and disabling their alarms and revving and all trying to pull out and do a U and find a parallel-parking place facing the other way. There’s nothing very mysterious about the fact that metro Boston’s battery- and homicide-rates during this ten-minute interval are the highest per diem, so that ambulances and paddy wagons are especially aprowl at this hour, too, adding to the general clot and snarl.

  Since the E.M.P.H.H. Units’ catatonics and enfeebled people rarely own registered vehicles, it’s generally pretty easy to find places along the little road to switch to, but it’s a constant sore point between Pat Montesian and the E.M.P.H.H. Board of Regents that Ennet House residents don’t get to park overnight in the big off-street lot by the condemned hospital building—the lot’s spaces are reserved for all the different Units’ professional staff starting at 0600h., and E.M. Security got sick of staffs’ complaints about drug addicts’ poorly maintained autos still sitting there taking up their spots in the A.M.—and that Security won’t consider changing the little E.M. streetlet’s nightly side-switch to 2300h., before Ennet Houses’ D.S.A.S.-required curfew; E.M.’s Board claims it’s a municipal ordinance that they can’t be expected to mess with just to accommodate one tenant, while Pat’s memos keep pointing out that the Enfield Marine Hospital complex is state-not city-owned, and that Ennet House residents are the only tenants who face the nightly car-moving problem, since just about everyone else is catatonic or enfeebled. And so on.

  But so every P.M. at like 2359 Gately has to lock up the lockers and Pat’s cabinets and desk drawers and the door to the front office and put the phone console’s answering machine on and personally escort all residents who own cars out post-curfew outside into the little nameless streetlet, and for somebody with Gately’s real limited managerial skills the headaches involved are daunting: he has to herd the vehicular residents together just inside the locked front door; he has to threaten the residents he’s herded together into staying together by the door while he clomps upstairs to get the one or two drivers who always forget and fall asleep before 0000—and this straggler-collecting is a particular pain in the ass if the straggler’s a female, because he has to unlock and press the Male Coming Up button by the kitchen, and the ‘buzzer’ sounds more like a klaxon, and wakes the edgiest female residents up with an ugly surge of adrenaline, and Gately as he clomps up the stairs gets roundly bitched out by all the mud-masked heads sticking out into the female hall, and he by regulation can’t go into the sleeper’s bedroom but has to pound on the door and keep shouting out his gender and get one of the straggler’s roommates to wake her up and get her dressed and to the bedroom door; so he has to retrieve the stragglers and chew them out and threaten them with both a Restriction and a possible tow while herding them quick-walking down the staircase to join the main car-owner herd as quickly as possible before the main herd can like disperse. They’ll always disperse if he takes too long getting stragglers; they’ll get distracted or hungry or need an ashtray or just get impatient and start looking at the whole car-moving-after-curfew thing as an imposition on their time. Their early-recovery Denial makes it impossible for them to imagine their own car getting towed instead of, say, somebody else’s car. It’s the same Denial Gately can see at work in the younger B.U. or -C. students when he’s driving Pat’s Aventura to the Food Bank or Purity Supreme when they’ll fucking walk right out in the street against the light in front of the car, whose brakes are fortunately in top shape. Gately’s snapped to the fact that people of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they’re immortal: college students and alcoholics/addicts are the worst: they deep-down believe they’re exempt from the laws of physics and statistics that ironly govern everybody else. They’ll piss and moan your ear off if somebody else fucks with the rules, but they
don’t deep down see themselves subject to them, the same rules. And they’re constitutionally unable to learn from anybody else’s experience: if some jaywalking B.U. student does get splattered on Comm. or some House resident does get his car towed at 0005, your other student’s or addict’s response to this will be to ponder just what imponderable difference makes it possible for that other guy to get splattered or towed and not him, the ponderer. They never doubt the difference—they just ponder it. It’s like a kind of idolatry of uniqueness. It’s unvarying and kind of spirit-killing for a Staffer to watch, that the only way your addict ever learns anything is the hard way. It has to happen to them to like upset the idolatry. Eugenio M. and Annie Parrot always recommend letting everybody get towed at least once, early on in their residency, to help make believers out of them in terms of laws and rules; but Gately for some reason on his night-shifts can’t do it, cannot fucking stand to have one of his people get towed as long as there’s something he can do to prevent it, and then plus if they do get towed there’s the nail-chewing hassle of arranging their transport to the South End’s municipal lot the next day, fielding calls from bosses and supplying verification of residents’ carlessness in terms of getting to work without letting the boss know that the carless employee is a resident of a halfway house, which is totally sacred private residents’ private information to give out or not—Gately breaks a full-body sweat just thinking about the managerial headaches involved in a fucking tow, so he’ll spend time herding and regathering and chewing the absentminded asses of residents who Gene M. says have such calloused asses still it’s a waste of Gately’s time and spirit: you have to let them learn for themselves.249