The Interrogative Mood

by Padgett Powell

  Are you familiar with a certain sort of hard-drinking woman who insists on driving nothing but the largest and heaviest car that can be had at the time? Have you seen a fox run gingerly by on its pencil-thin legs so elegantly that you love the fox and want him to stop so you could say something to him? Have you had very many forms of venereal disease? Do you know that the bark around the base of the limbs of a tree is substantially different from the bark on the trunk of the tree—one of its chief differences, if not the only difference, being that the base-of-limb bark will produce more of itself to cover the wound created should the limb break off or be sawn off at the trunk of the tree? Would the base-of-limb bark be called caudal bark?

  Have you ever maintained a swimming pool? Have you ever been bitten by a rabbit? Have you ever studied the green shredded-wheat-like biscuits that come out of tortoises? Can you waltz? Is there in your opinion life after death? Is there death then before life? Wouldn’t it be possible to get life and death mixed up and not be exactly clear what is what and when when? Will you use enamel paint even though latex is so much easier to handle? What is your favorite material in cookware? Would you rather deal with a man or a woman wearing overalls, and with which is it more disturbing to discover he or she is wearing nothing under them? If you could attend an execution, would you? If you could slate a class or sect of people because of its behavior alone for execution, who would it be?

  ARE YOU GOING TO be happier in the future? Do you understand what is meant by cavitation? Are there dogs in your dreams? Do you have politochnaceous impulses? Do you have a polemical bone in your body? Can you tell which of the two preceding questions is fraudulent? Will you be exercising today? Can you recall the last time you saw, if you ever have seen, a woman in a girdle? Wouldn’t you feel pretty smart if you were the one who worked out the equation for gravity? If a skirt were said to be hemmed with “tertiary hemlock balls,” would you have a visual image of it? Do you know what mahjong is? Are you familiar with the apes that are very much like chimpanzees but either less or more violent, and are you sure there are not two such apes similar to chimpanzees, and if you are uncertain about any of this, does this particular uncertainty bother you more than other uncertainties you might possess?

  Have you ever seen sparks issue from a wall socket? If you saw a large model train set and the engine issued smoke, would you say “That’s cool” or just be silent about it? How many pairs of eyeglasses have you ruined in your life by sitting or rolling or lying on them? Have you ever seen a cork tree? If you were a creature who lives underground, would you prefer to be a creature who lives in a tree or would you hold your ground as it were? What do you make of the word tinkle?

  Does any part of your character remind you of that of Fred Rogers, the children’s TV-show host? Do you sometimes wish to sit quiet and alone and without a thing to do but sit there, or does this strike you as insupportably idle? Have you ever tried to pole-vault? What sort of height do you think you could achieve pole-vaulting? Can you walk on stilts? If you were offered the option of trying to walk around on those thirty-foot stilts you see in the circus in lieu of trying to pole-vault, which one would you prefer to try? What circumstances would be required before you would attempt to garrote someone with a piano wire? Have you ever eaten a candy flower of the sort used to decorate commercial cakes? Would you like to have a Lamborghini? Was your father a bastard outright, a medium bastard, or a light bastard? Was your mother a saint? Are you annoyed, or amused, by the playfulness of the preceding questions? Are you surprised at the absence of the whole-earth niche in the condom market—a biodegradable condom, say, or one made of organic materials, if not of something stone-ground then at least of something like Gore-Tex?

  Is it legally possible nowadays to be burned up on a funeral pyre? Do you ever squeeze your own orange juice? Have you been in the presence of an accidental discharge of a firearm? Do you prefer diarrhea to constipation, or vice versa, if you have to suffer either affliction? How many generations back can you name your relatives? Do you remember seeing lion tamers wielding a whip and a chair—doesn’t a chair seem an odd thing to have in a cage full of giant cats to begin with, let alone to use as a prop or standard instrument of defense? Have you ever heard it said of someone who drinks a lot but never gets drunk that he has a hollow leg? Would you like, right now, some pancakes with real maple syrup on them? Would you like to send a love letter to anyone? Have you ever mounted insects on a board with pins through their thoraxes? What aspect or adventure of your life strikes you now as having been the biggest waste of your time or energy or resources?

  Would you rather receive as a gift a boomerang or a dead-bolt lock set? Have you ever in the first few minutes naked with a new sexual partner felt or thought you felt a vestigial tail? If you have felt a vestigial tail on a new sexual partner, or thought you felt a vestigial tail, was this an agreeable or a disagreeable moment? If you are asked to name the best rock ’n’ roll band of all time, do you name it, say it depends, or say you don’t know? If you were told you would spend the day in the field hoeing and were offered a short hoe or a long hoe, which would you take? Do you know the name of the condition that protrudes the eyeballs? Have you ever taken a girl to batting cages and there had her foul a ball into her own lip and had to buy her ice cream to stop her from crying? Have you ever lost a shoe and thrown away the second shoe and then found the first shoe? Have you ever known anyone proficient on a unicycle who struck you as a normal person—whose character, apart from the unicycling, did not strike you as deficient somehow or otherwise suspicious? Did you play marbles as a child? Is there a country or culture on earth that strikes you as better than all, or most, others? What to your mind is the most heinous crime? If you could, would you elect to have had more or better education than you received, and would you elect to have been brighter than you were?

  Do you realize that when I asked you about what I called a “bifurcated tunnel,” one side under the sign HOPE and the other NO HOPE, I was describing what I have since learned is called a gauntlet, this splitting of the route, but now that I think about it I see we do not really want either bifurcated tunnel or gauntlet because in my mind one is not yet in a tunnel that splits, one is merely approaching two tunnels so close together that they share a common entry wall, and what I want to know is this: if you found yourself on the left, which is where I envision the Hope tunnel, being swept by the heavy crowd into the Hope tunnel if you go with the flow, would you resist this default entry into Hope and maneuver over to the right to get into the No Hope tunnel, which you can see has a lot fewer people going into it, and which maneuver you think you can effect by some swim moves and other labors? If one of three planes was destined to crash, killing either the entire football team, the entire marching band, or the entire cheerleading squad, and you had to decide which plane crashed, which plane would you select? Are you very much into spelunking? What is meant by tartan?

  Are you aware that there are accounts of dogs—rat terriers one might presume, or dogs that became the foundation for the breed—that have killed more than a thousand rats in a pit in an hour? Have you witnessed the sport called punkin chunkin? Do you know what is meant by defibrillation? Do you know if those large chrome-rimmed gill-like holes on the sides of I believe late-fifties Buicks were functional or merely stylistic? Did you scream when Vincent Price instructed you to in The Tingler? If you could have anyone on earth come over to your place for some sexual relations right now, or in an hour or two if you wanted to get ready, or even later tonight or tomorrow night or next week if you wanted major preparations, or, hell, like in six months or a year if you perhaps have some weight to lose, who would it be? Will you shoot a game animal and will you shoot a person? Are you weaker in trigonometry, algebra, or calculus? Are you a little bothered, as I am, that you don’t know the classic patterns of plaid? Would you rather have written “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” or “It comes with the territor
y” or “Like, whatever”?

  Have you ever been bitten by a cat? Do you know the mechanism of a calliope? Have you ever purchased a rubber from a machine, and do you know when that term (“rubber”) disappeared, and if you could, would you replace the term “condom” with it? In swing dancing, there is two-step and three-step, but isn’t there also one-step? Have you ever drunk from pastel-colored aluminum tumblers? Would you say that you are pro peanut brittle, anti peanut brittle, or would you say “I do not have a dog in the peanut-brittle fight”?

  Would you not like to live for a while in an abandoned silver mine? Have you ever lied to a child, and, if you have, do you find you regret it more or less than lying to an adult? When your webbing goes out on your lawn chairs, do you get webbing kits and restore them or throw them away? Do you use bleach much? Would you say that in general Catholics seem to be intellectually superior to Protestants? Have you ever found live ammunition on the ground? Are girls in your opinion better looking in dresses or in pants? If asked to complete the sentence “Salvation lies in [blank],” how would you complete it? Have you ever heard of a bird bending a wire to use it as a tool? Do you know the current land-speed record? Do you know the word transudate? Have you ever been given help by an aunt or an uncle? Is it fairer to say that as a child you liked comic books or that you simply could not abide them? Do you know why people include “simply” in constructions such as in the previous question when very often the matter might not be simple at all but in fact complex? If you disliked comic books as a child, would you say the distaste was simple or complex? Do you suppose that a trained cormorant used in fishing must be acquired as a young bird, or will a captive adult, uncomfortable in captivity, nonetheless continue to get fish if thrown in the water on a rope? Do you like opera?

  Do you know the names of shoe parts? Are there, would you say, particulars in generalities or generalities in particulars? Are you experienced in any types of eclipse—of the sun, of the moon, of your hopes, of a fool? Are you suspicious of folk who would use the term “barter”? Do you like caramel? What is the most agreeable and least agreeable barnyard animal for you? Do you understand the concept of tensile strength? Does shirking your responsibility matter more or less to you as you age? If you have never shirked your responsibility, would you say you are now more likely to or less likely to than you have been to this point? What if you had an affair with a homeless person you then dropped because you discovered the homelessness, overlooking the preposterousness of your not having known the person homeless to begin with, and then your friends, of whom you don’t really have any but we’ll say you do for the sake of argument, all dropped you because you had shunned the homeless? Do you like what’s called Texas toast, and do you like calling it Texas toast? Have you ever thought you might be clinically mental to any degree? What is something blue? Are you fastidious about keeping the toilet clean? Do you know what an armbar is? Do you know anything about the Holocaust other than the enormity of it? Do you favor one kind of pear over another? Do you wear seat belts? Have you ever been to a VFW dance in a log cabin for couples only? Do you have in general a good feeling about a welding shop or a bad feeling? Have you ever seen straight pubic hair? Are you running out of steam?

  HOW MUCH TIME HAVE you spent in a deer stand? Are you attracted to sausage (and to the idea of sausage), or are you repulsed by it, or are you sausage neutral? Will you get on a bus in a foreign city in which you do not speak the language? Do you wear slippers? A robe? Doesn’t it seem as if fabric printed in a red-and-white checkerboard generally has squares larger than the squares in fabric printed in a blue-and-white checkerboard? Would you rather see Estelle Faulkner hit William Faulkner in the face with a croquet mallet as he reads Time magazine or the episode of Amos ’n’ Andy in which one of them bites down on a roofing nail in a doughnut? Did you see the Tarzan movie in which natives bend two trees into an X and lash their enemies thereto and release the trees, tearing the enemies in half? Do you know your scat? Do you bowl? On a desert island, which strikes me as oxymoronic but the phrase enjoys, I believe, considerable currency, or maybe I confuse it with deserted island, which itself raises a question—namely, has the island once been populated and is only now that you are on it otherwise unpopulated—let us say then on an island all by your own self with nothing to read except one kind of poetry, would you select metaphysical, lyric, language, gift-card, or cowboy poetry?

  Would you like to go on a safari, walking or riding elephants with a full bush camp carried along by porters and—does it ever occur to you that the good things in life have all been done already and all that is left is crappy new things or theatrical reenactments of the good old things? What about just wearing a blatantly stupid but somehow comforting or comfortable poplin bush jacket with epaulets in the privacy of your own home? Can you provide any help as I try to recall who it was and where I witnessed a man, I believe a somewhat socially out-of-it single man, in a suburban house, who was digging in his backyard a well by driving PVC pipe into the ground by hand? Have you ever heard of putting Mercurochrome on bait fish, as in “Put some macurreecomb on ’im”? If you own a crowbar, do you sometimes like to just pick it up and get the heft of it, admire the heavy hex shaft and the claw and the wedge? What color is your crowbar?

  Do you bank in Switzerland or know anyone who does? Do you know anyone with a really good figure? Have you ever drunk mineral oil? Have you ever had a passion for airplanes? Would you be likely to use the phrase “inherent risk” or would just “risk” do for you? How many people have you known called Bobby? Have you played tiddledywinks? Do you like dogs? Can you sing? Are you smart? Do you like terror? Is fire a good thing or a bad thing? What upsets you most in life? Will you use the expression “Has the cat got your tongue?”

  Do you prefer a red bean or a black bean? Have you seen porphyry, and do you know what is meant by porphyrogenitu? Is there an area of expertise which you developed when young that is incomplete but of which the limited parts you command you still command very well? Can you say why there are no longer TV shows featuring the loyal heroics of dogs and horses? When you see an abandoned toilet, do you have any impulse to salvage it or right it or in any way restore to it some lost dignity? When pelicans fly in a V, what do you think are the keys and rules for the spacing, and why do you think they use the formation? Do you like to visit grave sites? If we heard the ice-cream man right now dinging down the street and we scrambled for some change, maybe even from within the sofa, and went out there breathlessly and caught him, what would you order? Is there a particular Big Book you have on your list to read but just never seem to do it? Is there a similar Important Place you mean to go to? Does it seem to you that acne is not so wide a problem now as it was when you were growing up?

  Have you ever rolled coins? Have you eaten a magnolia blossom? About that which cannot be known, is it better to be prudently agnostic or to go ahead and take a blind position and hold it dear? If you were to be executed by beheading or hanging, which would you prefer? If you were to design a wrapper for chocolate, would your wrapper be in general busy or plain, and dark or light? Do you have a supply, or even a stray piece, of surgical tubing? Do you admire the athleticism of jockeys? If there is life after death, would you think one should prepare in any way or does it conversely mean that no preparations whatsoever are in order? What is denoted or connoted by “tinsel town”? If you were availed a high-tech gas balloon and provided a little instruction and told you had clearance to take off, would you take off? Do you study your feces? Can you call to mind the single most remarkable or outrageous thing you have ever witnessed one person say to another? Wouldn’t it have been more obvious, or natural, I suppose I must mean, that peppermint candy be green and white as opposed to red and white?

  Do you know what an articulated joint is as distinct from an unarticulated joint? Have you ever had a meal at a soup kitchen or facility otherwise intended for the poor? What is the fastest you have ever traveled in an automobile? Who is yo
ur favorite western cowboy? When did you last see a pair of pinking shears, and did you enjoy the feel of their teeth on your hand? Have you ever played strip poker, and did anything good happen? If you were to be seriously looked at by the law as a suspect, and you were guilty, what level and what branch of law enforcement would you want doing the looking? Would your answer differ if you were innocent? Historically, what has been your flavor when you order a milk shake? Have you read the Russian biggies? Does any primitive people appeal to you more than others? What do you suppose is your upper limit, in terms of unbroken time aboard, on a sailing vessel? Are you enamored of Scottish bagpipes or do you find their sound unappealing? Do you know precisely what is meant by knurled wood? Of the children you may have known who were afraid of clowns, did they strike you then, or later, as well-adjusted children or disturbed? In your opinion, does the human brain receive a special benefit from chocolate? Can you number the kinds of private lessons, in all venues, you have taken in your life? If you were offered for free a genuine vintage carousel horse, with its steel pole, to be mounted prominently in your house, would you accept it? Do you know what green sputum as opposed to white sputum indicates? Do you dislike being late or not mind being late, and if you accept tardiness of yourself, do you accept it of others?