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David Foster Wallace

SELECTED SNIPPET FROM THE INDIVIDUAL-RESIDENT-INFORMAL–INTERFACE HOURS OF D. W. GATELY, LIVE-IN STAFF, ENNET HOUSE DRUG AND ALCOHOL RECOVERY HOUSE, ENFIELD MA, ON AND OFF FROM JUST AFTER THE BROOKLINE YOUNG PEOPLE’S AA MTNG UP to ABOUT 2329H., WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER Y.D.A.U.

‘I fear I simply have to deny the insinuation that it’s disloyal or ungrateful to find oneself troubled by certain quite glaring inconsistencies in this master quote unquote Program you all seem to expect us simply to open up and blindly swallow whole and then walk around glazed with our arms right out straight in front of us parroting, reciting.’ ‘Geoff— Geoffrey, man, I don’t think anybody’s trying to insinuate anything over on you, brother. I know I ain’t trying to.’

No, you simply sit there with your arms crossed nodding with that timeless patience that communicates condescension and judgment without exposing you to responsibility for insinuating anything aloud.’

‘Maybe when I look patient I’m really trying to be patient with myself, for not finishing school and etcetera and having a hard time keeping up with you.’

This AA tactic of masking condescension behind humility…’

‘I guess I’m just sorry for you you’re feeling frustrated with the Program today. I know there’s lots of days I’m frustrated with it. So I don’t know what to say helpful to you except what they said to me, to just hang in there.’

‘One Day at a One Day at a One Day.’

‘Brother, that’s just all I know to tell you that’s worked for me. I know for me it don’t matter if there’s days I fucking hate it. I just have to do it. And it don’t help me or anybody else if I go around negativing on newcomers and trying to take out my issues on trying to fuck them up with God-puzzles.’

‘Mr. Gately Sir, I found myself sitting tonight in yet another Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting the central Message of which was the importance of going to still more Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings. This infuriating carrot-and-donkey aspect of trudging to Meetings only to be told to trudge to still more Meetings.’

‘I hear you.’

‘As if, I mean, what’s supposedly going to be communicated at these future meetings I’m exhorted to trudge to that cannot simply be communicated now, at this meeting, instead of the glazed recitation of exhortations to attend these vague future revelatory meetings?’

‘I’m doing my best to stay with you here Day man.’

‘And tonight I’m just settling in in yet another uneven-legged chair, cultivating that glazed passive spectatorial state of mind that is clearly what they’re trying to inspire in the ephebe, settling in next to a positively redolent Emil M. and trying to hold my poor addled Denial-ridden mind open with all available main, listening to this ravaged-looking Yalie in yellow slacks detail episodes of tremens whose gruesomeness interdicted any possible Identification —’

‘I’m remembering I heard Pat tell you that thinking people who are walking ahead of you are following you is a pretty bad kind of D.T.s, brother.’

‘And I informed her that there’s a well-known surveillance tactic known as the Box-surveillance, which involves certain members of the surveillance team establishing themselves in front of the subject.’