Читать «Infinite jest» онлайн - страница 974

‘A heel of the hand to the forehead or something like that.’

‘Get your manner down just conflicted-looking enough and the Subject herself’ll actually start drawing you out on this fact, the involuntary attraction that’s so painful to you and so flattering and tributary to her.’

‘So wait. This is like a conversation where you’re affecting all this flickering and groaning? Like you mean a cocktail-party-small-talk conversation? Or do you just brandish your fake ring at some girl at a bus stop and start a tortured tribute to your seraphic wife?’

‘It takes place anywhere. Venue-adjustable. 7’s portable and never-miss. The point is to maneuver the issue of your devoted attracted conflicted pain to the point where you can appear to almost sort of break down and can ask the Subject in all tortured sincerity if she thinks your involuntarily finding her so visibly female and attractive makes you a bad husband. Display vulnerability and ask her to evaluate the like integrity of your heart. Seem desperate. Your whole married self-concept shaken. Practically beg the Subject to reassure you you’re not a bad-hearted man. Plead with the Subject to say what she thinks it might be about her charms that could drive your serapic wife even momentarily from your heart. You present the attraction you feel for the Subject as this involuntary identity-threatening soul-searing-type crisis you just desperately need her help with, the Subject’s, person to person.’

‘Sounds very moving.’

‘And if it so happens you really are married, the additional advantage to 7’s pitch is that you and the Subject both, however briefly, get to believe it. The pitch. The involuntary passionate doomed knight-errant-type pitch.’

‘And of course, O., the Subject just happens to be married herself, often with small children, putting her directly in your crosshairs.’

‘A matter of what’s the word personal preference and taste that doesn’t impact 7’s surefire no-miss quality one way or the other. It’s the doomed involuntary conflicted good-man’s-downfall-type quality that no Subject can seemingly resist.’

‘Ainsi, then.’

‘Well O. the thing’s sick. It’s even sicker than 4. Was it 4? The one you said that Loach inspired, where you’d supposedly just that very day dropped out of Jesuit seminary after umpteen years of disciplined celibacy because of carno-spiritual yearnings you hadn’t even been quite in touch with as carno-spiritual in nature until you just now this very moment laid eyes on the Subject? With the breviary and rented collar?’

‘That was 4, yes. 4’s pretty much of a gynecopia also, but within a kind of narrower demographic psychological range of potential Subjects. Notice I never said 4 was no-miss.’