The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
“Barely. Shit.”
“Strong little guy.”
“Out of his mind.”
“He flipped. He just totally fucking flipped out. Thought I was gonna have an accident getting him here.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
“He’s gonna tear his throat out.”
“Let’s just get the wrap on him.”
“Roll him over.”
“Ow! Little bastard.”
“Sshh, it’s OK.”
“Get the arm.”
“Ow!”
“Roll him back. Wetzel, roll him back.”
“I got him.”
“Tighten it. Careful, his ribs. One more.”
“Gotcha.”
“Jesus God will you listen to that.”
“Get him in. Wetzel, carry him. Shorlit, get a gumey with leg straps. ”
“I gotcha.”
“Christ, he weighs about ninety pounds. He’s a skeleton.”
“Can’t you make him stop?”
“You’re going to have to get back out of the way.”
“Thorazine?”
“I want Thorazine, 250 c.c.’s. Get a rubber, he may swallow his tongue. Shorlit, get the door.”
“It’s OK, sshh, listen we’re here to help.”
“How can he keep it up? He’s gonna stroke.”
“Get a rubber.”
“Put him down.”
“Jesus.”
“Straps.”
“Thorazine.”
“Give me access to an arm, Shorlit.”
“Come on.”
“Forget the rubber till we get him out. He’ll bite your finger.”
“People are gonna think we’re killing somebody down here.”
“Been drivin’ a cab seventeen years.”
“Please wait outside.”
“Never seen any shit like that.”
“Wetzel.”
“Let’s go, pal. You can wait out here.”
“Go with the orderly, please.”
“It’ll kick, wait a second.”
“Jesus.”
“Look at the eyes. They roll over. They’ll roll back when it kicks.”
“It’s kicking.”
“Thank God.”
“My ears are ringing.”
“Holy shit.”
“You better get a drip ready. Call up on five and fill them in, Cathy, OK? First get the drip.”
“Shit.”
“Thanks, you guys. Shorlit, you want to see if he’s got ID?”
“I’ll roll him over.”
“It’s pretty much kicked.”
“Christ, he wet his pants.”
“I’m going to call up and let Golden know we didn’t murder anybody.”
“No ID.”
“Check his chest. A necklace, tags.”
“Umm ...”
“Undo him. It’s OK, it kicked.”
“I’m gonna go call. Try to find ID, then take him over to Series Start.”
“Jesus.”
“Hell of a start to the night.”
“Here’s a necklace.”
“Pretty nice one.”
“ ‘To JB From LB.’ ”
“His eyes are back, anyway.”
“It’s OK.”
/f/
Just a troubling flash of the Queen Victoria dream, last night. Just a strobe of a florid patch of red dough, curled in scorn. A new one, though. Sinister. Lenore is not unresponsible. This one should make Jay’s day.
I am driving in Mexico, in a Lincoln. The air conditioner is broken. It is unbearably hot. I am wearing a wool suit. The suit is soaked with perspiration. The sand of the desert is black. I have reservations at a motel. I pull up to the motel and park by a cactus. There are scorpions. The motel sign says NO VACANCY, even though it’s in Mexico. But I have a reservation, and I assert that I do to the desk clerk standing behind the counter in a lobby that smells like a burp. The desk clerk is an enormous mouse, with a huge handlebar mustache. The mouse is wearing a faded woolen Mexican poncho.
“I have a reservation,” I say.
“Sí,” says the mouse.
The mouse leads me through a hole in the wall (eat it, Jay, I defy you not to eat it up) to a room that is lovely and air-conditioned and perfect and complete in every way except that it has no sheets on the bed.
“Gee,” I say, “there are no sheets on this bed.”
The mouse looks at me. “Seor,” he says, “if you sheet on my bed, I will keel you.”
We both laugh, and the mouse punches me in the arm.
/g/
“Good moming.”
“Good morning. How are you this morning?”
“I’m just fine, thanks, Patrice. Shall we begin?”
“Oh, please.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Oh, no.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Patrice LaVache.”
“What is your married name?”
“My married name is Patrice Beadsman.”
“How old are you?”
“I am fifty years old.”
“Where are you?”
“I am at a sanitarium in Madison, Wisconsin.”
“What is the name of the sanitarium?”
“....”
“Whom do you look like?”
“I look like John Lennon.”
“Why?”
“I am sharp-featured and wear round John Lennon glasses and have brown hair in a ponytail.”
“Why are you here?”
....“
“Why are you here?”
“Because I want to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years and years.”
“What do you see?”
“I see a trellis I have to climb.”
“Why do you have to climb the trellis?”
“Because I am at the top of the trellis and I have to climb it.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“West bids four hearts.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“The trellis is white, with vines with thorns. They scratch my stomach my stomach is fat.”
“What is wrong with the trellis.”
“The trellis has a crack at the top near the window and it pulls away from the wall and breaks off, the trellis breaks off, with vines that bleed when they break.”
“How high.”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“How high?”
“Around ... the sun. It’s a doozy.”
“Where are you hurt.”
“My back is hurt. My collarbone is hurt. Like a blister I popped open. I gave birth to a blister in the flowers.”
“How far did you fall?” “....”
“I fell for years.”
“Were you hurt.”
“I am.”
“What do you want.”
“Punish me, please.”
“Please tell me what you want to be punished for.”
“For climbing, and falling, and breathing.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis?”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“Nobody.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“A window.”
“Whose window.”
“John and Lenore’s. Clarice’s. Lenore’s window.”
“Lenore was in the window.”
“It cracked.”
“The trellis.”
“Yes.”
“Who was with Lenore?”
“I need to breathe.”
“Breathe. Here, breathe. Let me wipe off your lip.”
“Thank you. Lenore’s governess was with Lenore.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know the na
me of Lenore’s governess.”
“Who was a prisoner?”
“Punish me, please.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“It would be so fun to breathe.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“My son is in horrible trouble, in the south. Higher than the trellis in the south. Smitten from afar. My son is burning in a white place. My son’s eyes are white now. Needs something to make himself dark, in the game. Cut.”
“Patrice. Breathe.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. You are. Watch yourself breathe, Patrice.” “....”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“No she was not a ... prisoner.”
“Why not?”
“God.”
“Why not?”
“My son.”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
“....”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
....“
....“
“Good morning how are you this morning.”
/h/
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP SESSION, THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1990, IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK
VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.
DR. JAY: Hell of a dream.
RICK VIGOROUS: Bet your ass.
JAY: Mice, again.
RICK: Hate mice.
JAY: Yes?
RICK: Yes.
JAY: Can we possibly articulate why?
RICK: Mice are small, soft, and weak. Mice scuttle. Mice get inside things and gnaw. Mice tickle.
JAY: Pretty unclean animals, too, aren’t they?
RICK: Dr. Jay, I swear to God, mention hygiene anxiety just once, here, and I’m going to lunge.
JAY: The prospect of discussing hygiene anxiety makes you uncomfortable.
RICK: Lunge-alert.
JAY: Fine. Your comfort is after all our number one priority, here. RICK: Damn well ought to be.
JAY: What would you like to talk about, then?
RICK : Lenore.
JAY: I rather think not, today, if you don’t mind.
RICK: Pardon me?
JAY: It just so happens Lenore and I made enormous strides today. I smelled breakthrough, big time.
RICK: Christ, breakthrough again.
JAY: I’d just rather sit on the Lenore thing and see what comes out. RICK: As it were.
JAY: The jealousy thing, still. You still think I’m sexually interested in Lenore Beadsman.
RICK: I—
JAY: When will you emotionally digest the information that jealousy is simply the stupid man’s misdirected projection of insecurity? Of identity troubles? Of hygiene anxiety?
RICK: I am just so tired of you.
JAY: Sometimes you’re such a clod, Rick. Think about last night’s dream. After what I understand to be fulfilling coitus, then a story, then a fight. Then a dream. The dream. Let’s do the dream. Black sand and scorpions. Where does that put us, now?
Rick Vigorous pauses.
JAY: Awfully tough to figure out. The G.O.D., where else? But Mexico, too. Which is to say here but not here. Which is to say the here of the dreaming unconscious. A luxurious Lincoln in the midst of a blasted region. Self and Other. Difference. Inside-Outside. Except the air conditioner is broken. The Outside is getting in. The heat is the Outside. It’s getting in, because the Inside’s broken. The Inside doesn’t keep the distinction going. The Inside lets the Outside in. And what does it make you do? You sweat. You’re hot and you sweat. What does the Outside do? It makes you unclean. It coats Self with Other. It pokes at the membrane. And if the membrane is what makes you you and the not-you not you, what does that say about you, when the not-you begins to poke through the membrane?
RICK: Look at this, you’re drooling. I can see saliva on your lips. JAY: It makes you insecure, is what it does. It makes you, the “you,” nonsecure, not tightly fastened into your side of the membrane. So what happens? Communications break down. You get confused, cautious. Things don’t mean what they mean. A Mexican motel sign that should be in Spanish says NO VACANCY. Another person, an Other, becomes a threatening animal, a kind that gets inside things and gnaws, to quote. The lobby smells like the nasty dross of digestion. There are language problems.
RICK: Christ, you can tell Lenore was here. How can you let patients dominate you?
JAY: Come on, Lenore and her particular troubles have nothing to do with it. What’s the whole problem? The request you make for a clean, natural thing is interpreted by the Other/foreigner/threatening animal as a threat to soil, to dirty. The disturbance of your security on your interior side of the Self-Other membrane makes you an erratic and dangerous component of everyone else’s Other-set. Your insecurity bleeds out into and contaminates the identities and hygiene networks of Others. Which again simply reinforces the idea of the hygiene-identity-distinction membrane being permeable—permeable via uncleanness, permeable via misunderstanding—which are ultimately, according to Blentner, not coherently distinguishable.
RICK: Blentner, Blentner. Is this all Blentner?
JAY: To a certain extent. So what? Most of what I’ve said comes out of the seminal Heidelberg Hygiene Lectures of 1962. I’d let you look at them, but they‘re—
RICK: I am so tired. You are deliberately unhelpful. I have a freakishly small penis. Attendant self-esteem and security problems. I want help with them. I want to hear about Lenore and her secrets. Instead I hear Olaf Blentner and membranes. Help me with my penis, Jay. Do something useful and help me with my penis.
JAY: Penis, shmenis. What can I do about your penis? You are not your penis. It’s you I’m interested in.
RICK: Christ.
JAY: Are things so bad? You’ve got Lenore, a beautiful, bright, witty, largely joyful albeit troubled and anyway interestingly troubled girl, and she loves you.
RICK: But I don’t have her. I can’t. I never will.
JAY: The Screen Door of the Great House of Love, et cetera et cetera. RICK: Christ.
JAY: Well, Rick, really, get mad if you want and no doubt will, but I think à la Blentner it all comes back to the membrane. I think the membrane is the breakthrough you want. I think it’s membrane we’re both smelling here. You want to use your penis to put what’s inside of you inside an Other, to tear down distinctions the way you want them torn down. You want to have your membrane and eat it too, so to speak. Your desire to bring the Inside out is just an image of your fear of the Outside getting in ... in short, hygiene anxiety.
RICK: Fuck this. Start the chair.
JAY: I’m your friend.
RICK: I have to go to the bathroom in the worst way.
JAY: We’re making strides. You don’t think we’re striding? I insist that we’re striding.
RICK: Schmuck.
JAY: The scent is everywhere.
RICK: You know who you’d get along with really well, is Norman Bombardini.
JAY: You know Norman?
RICK: Good God. I should have known. Let me out of here.
JAY: Come back on Monday. Give Lenore money so she can come back, too.
RICK: Schnook.
JAY: I’m here for you.
/i/
Lenore saw Mr. Bloemker through the window of Gilligan’s Isle as she was passing by after work on her way to the bus stop. Gilligan’s Isle was a little ways down from the Weight Watchers facility Norman Bombardini had pointed out from the restaurant the night before. In Lenore’s purse was a note from Mr. Bombardini, with a smeared chocolate thumbprint in one comer, that had come with an almost empty box of candy to the Frequent and Vigorous switchboard today. The note said “Be my tiny Yin.”
Gilligan’s Isle was a very popular bar. The inside of the place was round, the walls were painted to look like the filmy blue horizon of the ocean, and the floors were painted and textured to resemble beach. There were palm trees all over, fronds hanging down tick lishly over the patron
s. Sprouting from the floor of the bar were huge statued likenesses of the whole cast: the Skipper, the Howells, Ginger, and the rest, painted in bright castaway colors and all with uncannily characteristic facial expressions. The huge castaways were sunk into the floor at about chest level; their heads, arms, shoulders, and outstretched upturned hands were all tables for patrons. There was a certain amount of intertwining: Mr. Howell’s arm was wrapped part way around Mrs. Howell’s waist, Mary-Ann’s long hair brushed the plastic top of Mr. Howell’s forearm, the Professor’s thumb hovered achingly close to Ginger’s décolletage. The bar itself was made of that vaguely straw-like material that huts on the show were made of. Behind the bar at all times was one of a number of bartenders, all of whom resembled, to a greater or lesser degree, Gilligan. Once an hour the bartender would be required to do something blatantly cloddish and stupid—a standard favorite had the bartender slipping on a bit of spilled banana daiquiri and falling and acting as if he had driven his thumb into his eye—and the patrons would, if they were hip and in the know, say with one voice, “Aww, Gilligan,” and laugh, and clap.
Mr. Bloemker was sitting at the back, at Mary-Ann’s left hand, facing the front window. With him was a very beautiful woman in a shiny dress who stared blankly straight in front of her. Lenore saw them and came inside and went over to their table.
“Hi Mr. Bloemker,” she said.
Mr. Bloemker looked up with a start. “Ms. Beadsman.”
“Hi.”
“Hello. Fancy meeting ...” Mr. Bloemker looked strange and scooted a tiny bit toward Mary-Ann’s wrist, away from the beautiful woman he had been sitting right next to.
“Well Frequent and Vigorous is just over in the Bombardini Building, over there,” said Lenore, “which you can probably see, if you look over in the comer of the window, over there, with the lights on?”
“Well well.”
“Hi, I’m Lenore Beadsman, I know Mr. Bloemker,” Lenore said to the beautiful woman.
The beautiful woman didn’t say anything; she stared straight ahead.
“Lenore Beadsman, this is Brenda, Brenda, may I present Ms. Lenore Beadsman,” said Mr. Bloemker, his fingers in his beard. In front of both Mr. Bloemker and Brenda were drinks in plastic jugs shaped like pineapples, with straws coming out of holes in the top.
“Hi,” Lenore said to Brenda. “....”
“Please sit down,” said Mr. Bloemker.
Lenore sat. “Is Brenda OK?”
“Please don’t mind Brenda. Brenda is very shy,” Mr. Bloemker said. He was slurring a tiny bit. He was apparently a bit tight. His cheeks were lit up above the tendrils of the top of his beard, his nose shone, his glasses were a little steamed, and he was uncombed, a huge, obscene Superman-curl of hair lying like a giant comma across his forehead.
“Strong little guy.”
“Out of his mind.”
“He flipped. He just totally fucking flipped out. Thought I was gonna have an accident getting him here.”
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
“He’s gonna tear his throat out.”
“Let’s just get the wrap on him.”
“Roll him over.”
“Ow! Little bastard.”
“Sshh, it’s OK.”
“Get the arm.”
“Ow!”
“Roll him back. Wetzel, roll him back.”
“I got him.”
“Tighten it. Careful, his ribs. One more.”
“Gotcha.”
“Jesus God will you listen to that.”
“Get him in. Wetzel, carry him. Shorlit, get a gumey with leg straps. ”
“I gotcha.”
“Christ, he weighs about ninety pounds. He’s a skeleton.”
“Can’t you make him stop?”
“You’re going to have to get back out of the way.”
“Thorazine?”
“I want Thorazine, 250 c.c.’s. Get a rubber, he may swallow his tongue. Shorlit, get the door.”
“It’s OK, sshh, listen we’re here to help.”
“How can he keep it up? He’s gonna stroke.”
“Get a rubber.”
“Put him down.”
“Jesus.”
“Straps.”
“Thorazine.”
“Give me access to an arm, Shorlit.”
“Come on.”
“Forget the rubber till we get him out. He’ll bite your finger.”
“People are gonna think we’re killing somebody down here.”
“Been drivin’ a cab seventeen years.”
“Please wait outside.”
“Never seen any shit like that.”
“Wetzel.”
“Let’s go, pal. You can wait out here.”
“Go with the orderly, please.”
“It’ll kick, wait a second.”
“Jesus.”
“Look at the eyes. They roll over. They’ll roll back when it kicks.”
“It’s kicking.”
“Thank God.”
“My ears are ringing.”
“Holy shit.”
“You better get a drip ready. Call up on five and fill them in, Cathy, OK? First get the drip.”
“Shit.”
“Thanks, you guys. Shorlit, you want to see if he’s got ID?”
“I’ll roll him over.”
“It’s pretty much kicked.”
“Christ, he wet his pants.”
“I’m going to call up and let Golden know we didn’t murder anybody.”
“No ID.”
“Check his chest. A necklace, tags.”
“Umm ...”
“Undo him. It’s OK, it kicked.”
“I’m gonna go call. Try to find ID, then take him over to Series Start.”
“Jesus.”
“Hell of a start to the night.”
“Here’s a necklace.”
“Pretty nice one.”
“ ‘To JB From LB.’ ”
“His eyes are back, anyway.”
“It’s OK.”
/f/
Just a troubling flash of the Queen Victoria dream, last night. Just a strobe of a florid patch of red dough, curled in scorn. A new one, though. Sinister. Lenore is not unresponsible. This one should make Jay’s day.
I am driving in Mexico, in a Lincoln. The air conditioner is broken. It is unbearably hot. I am wearing a wool suit. The suit is soaked with perspiration. The sand of the desert is black. I have reservations at a motel. I pull up to the motel and park by a cactus. There are scorpions. The motel sign says NO VACANCY, even though it’s in Mexico. But I have a reservation, and I assert that I do to the desk clerk standing behind the counter in a lobby that smells like a burp. The desk clerk is an enormous mouse, with a huge handlebar mustache. The mouse is wearing a faded woolen Mexican poncho.
“I have a reservation,” I say.
“Sí,” says the mouse.
The mouse leads me through a hole in the wall (eat it, Jay, I defy you not to eat it up) to a room that is lovely and air-conditioned and perfect and complete in every way except that it has no sheets on the bed.
“Gee,” I say, “there are no sheets on this bed.”
The mouse looks at me. “Seor,” he says, “if you sheet on my bed, I will keel you.”
We both laugh, and the mouse punches me in the arm.
/g/
“Good moming.”
“Good morning. How are you this morning?”
“I’m just fine, thanks, Patrice. Shall we begin?”
“Oh, please.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“Oh, no.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Patrice LaVache.”
“What is your married name?”
“My married name is Patrice Beadsman.”
“How old are you?”
“I am fifty years old.”
“Where are you?”
“I am at a sanitarium in Madison, Wisconsin.”
“What is the name of the sanitarium?”
“....”
“Whom do you look like?”
“I look like John Lennon.”
“Why?”
“I am sharp-featured and wear round John Lennon glasses and have brown hair in a ponytail.”
“Why are you here?”
....“
“Why are you here?”
“Because I want to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Years and years.”
“What do you see?”
“I see a trellis I have to climb.”
“Why do you have to climb the trellis?”
“Because I am at the top of the trellis and I have to climb it.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“West bids four hearts.”
“What is wrong with the trellis?”
“The trellis is white, with vines with thorns. They scratch my stomach my stomach is fat.”
“What is wrong with the trellis.”
“The trellis has a crack at the top near the window and it pulls away from the wall and breaks off, the trellis breaks off, with vines that bleed when they break.”
“How high.”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“How high?”
“Around ... the sun. It’s a doozy.”
“Where are you hurt.”
“My back is hurt. My collarbone is hurt. Like a blister I popped open. I gave birth to a blister in the flowers.”
“How far did you fall?” “....”
“I fell for years.”
“Were you hurt.”
“I am.”
“What do you want.”
“Punish me, please.”
“Please tell me what you want to be punished for.”
“For climbing, and falling, and breathing.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis?”
“May I please breathe?”
“Yes.”
“....”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“Nobody.”
“Who was at the top of the trellis.”
“A window.”
“Whose window.”
“John and Lenore’s. Clarice’s. Lenore’s window.”
“Lenore was in the window.”
“It cracked.”
“The trellis.”
“Yes.”
“Who was with Lenore?”
“I need to breathe.”
“Breathe. Here, breathe. Let me wipe off your lip.”
“Thank you. Lenore’s governess was with Lenore.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know the na
“Who was a prisoner?”
“Punish me, please.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“It would be so fun to breathe.”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“My son is in horrible trouble, in the south. Higher than the trellis in the south. Smitten from afar. My son is burning in a white place. My son’s eyes are white now. Needs something to make himself dark, in the game. Cut.”
“Patrice. Breathe.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can. You are. Watch yourself breathe, Patrice.” “....”
“Was Lenore a prisoner?”
“No she was not a ... prisoner.”
“Why not?”
“God.”
“Why not?”
“My son.”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
“....”
“Who was the prisoner, Patrice?”
....“
....“
“Good morning how are you this morning.”
/h/
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF RAP SESSION, THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1990, IN THE OFFICE OF DR. CURTIS JAY, PH.D. PARTICIPANTS: DR. CURTIS JAY AND MR. RICK
VIGOROUS, AGE 42, FILE NUMBER 744-25-4291.
DR. JAY: Hell of a dream.
RICK VIGOROUS: Bet your ass.
JAY: Mice, again.
RICK: Hate mice.
JAY: Yes?
RICK: Yes.
JAY: Can we possibly articulate why?
RICK: Mice are small, soft, and weak. Mice scuttle. Mice get inside things and gnaw. Mice tickle.
JAY: Pretty unclean animals, too, aren’t they?
RICK: Dr. Jay, I swear to God, mention hygiene anxiety just once, here, and I’m going to lunge.
JAY: The prospect of discussing hygiene anxiety makes you uncomfortable.
RICK: Lunge-alert.
JAY: Fine. Your comfort is after all our number one priority, here. RICK: Damn well ought to be.
JAY: What would you like to talk about, then?
RICK : Lenore.
JAY: I rather think not, today, if you don’t mind.
RICK: Pardon me?
JAY: It just so happens Lenore and I made enormous strides today. I smelled breakthrough, big time.
RICK: Christ, breakthrough again.
JAY: I’d just rather sit on the Lenore thing and see what comes out. RICK: As it were.
JAY: The jealousy thing, still. You still think I’m sexually interested in Lenore Beadsman.
RICK: I—
JAY: When will you emotionally digest the information that jealousy is simply the stupid man’s misdirected projection of insecurity? Of identity troubles? Of hygiene anxiety?
RICK: I am just so tired of you.
JAY: Sometimes you’re such a clod, Rick. Think about last night’s dream. After what I understand to be fulfilling coitus, then a story, then a fight. Then a dream. The dream. Let’s do the dream. Black sand and scorpions. Where does that put us, now?
Rick Vigorous pauses.
JAY: Awfully tough to figure out. The G.O.D., where else? But Mexico, too. Which is to say here but not here. Which is to say the here of the dreaming unconscious. A luxurious Lincoln in the midst of a blasted region. Self and Other. Difference. Inside-Outside. Except the air conditioner is broken. The Outside is getting in. The heat is the Outside. It’s getting in, because the Inside’s broken. The Inside doesn’t keep the distinction going. The Inside lets the Outside in. And what does it make you do? You sweat. You’re hot and you sweat. What does the Outside do? It makes you unclean. It coats Self with Other. It pokes at the membrane. And if the membrane is what makes you you and the not-you not you, what does that say about you, when the not-you begins to poke through the membrane?
RICK: Look at this, you’re drooling. I can see saliva on your lips. JAY: It makes you insecure, is what it does. It makes you, the “you,” nonsecure, not tightly fastened into your side of the membrane. So what happens? Communications break down. You get confused, cautious. Things don’t mean what they mean. A Mexican motel sign that should be in Spanish says NO VACANCY. Another person, an Other, becomes a threatening animal, a kind that gets inside things and gnaws, to quote. The lobby smells like the nasty dross of digestion. There are language problems.
RICK: Christ, you can tell Lenore was here. How can you let patients dominate you?
JAY: Come on, Lenore and her particular troubles have nothing to do with it. What’s the whole problem? The request you make for a clean, natural thing is interpreted by the Other/foreigner/threatening animal as a threat to soil, to dirty. The disturbance of your security on your interior side of the Self-Other membrane makes you an erratic and dangerous component of everyone else’s Other-set. Your insecurity bleeds out into and contaminates the identities and hygiene networks of Others. Which again simply reinforces the idea of the hygiene-identity-distinction membrane being permeable—permeable via uncleanness, permeable via misunderstanding—which are ultimately, according to Blentner, not coherently distinguishable.
RICK: Blentner, Blentner. Is this all Blentner?
JAY: To a certain extent. So what? Most of what I’ve said comes out of the seminal Heidelberg Hygiene Lectures of 1962. I’d let you look at them, but they‘re—
RICK: I am so tired. You are deliberately unhelpful. I have a freakishly small penis. Attendant self-esteem and security problems. I want help with them. I want to hear about Lenore and her secrets. Instead I hear Olaf Blentner and membranes. Help me with my penis, Jay. Do something useful and help me with my penis.
JAY: Penis, shmenis. What can I do about your penis? You are not your penis. It’s you I’m interested in.
RICK: Christ.
JAY: Are things so bad? You’ve got Lenore, a beautiful, bright, witty, largely joyful albeit troubled and anyway interestingly troubled girl, and she loves you.
RICK: But I don’t have her. I can’t. I never will.
JAY: The Screen Door of the Great House of Love, et cetera et cetera. RICK: Christ.
JAY: Well, Rick, really, get mad if you want and no doubt will, but I think à la Blentner it all comes back to the membrane. I think the membrane is the breakthrough you want. I think it’s membrane we’re both smelling here. You want to use your penis to put what’s inside of you inside an Other, to tear down distinctions the way you want them torn down. You want to have your membrane and eat it too, so to speak. Your desire to bring the Inside out is just an image of your fear of the Outside getting in ... in short, hygiene anxiety.
RICK: Fuck this. Start the chair.
JAY: I’m your friend.
RICK: I have to go to the bathroom in the worst way.
JAY: We’re making strides. You don’t think we’re striding? I insist that we’re striding.
RICK: Schmuck.
JAY: The scent is everywhere.
RICK: You know who you’d get along with really well, is Norman Bombardini.
JAY: You know Norman?
RICK: Good God. I should have known. Let me out of here.
JAY: Come back on Monday. Give Lenore money so she can come back, too.
RICK: Schnook.
JAY: I’m here for you.
/i/
Lenore saw Mr. Bloemker through the window of Gilligan’s Isle as she was passing by after work on her way to the bus stop. Gilligan’s Isle was a little ways down from the Weight Watchers facility Norman Bombardini had pointed out from the restaurant the night before. In Lenore’s purse was a note from Mr. Bombardini, with a smeared chocolate thumbprint in one comer, that had come with an almost empty box of candy to the Frequent and Vigorous switchboard today. The note said “Be my tiny Yin.”
Gilligan’s Isle was a very popular bar. The inside of the place was round, the walls were painted to look like the filmy blue horizon of the ocean, and the floors were painted and textured to resemble beach. There were palm trees all over, fronds hanging down tick lishly over the patron
Mr. Bloemker was sitting at the back, at Mary-Ann’s left hand, facing the front window. With him was a very beautiful woman in a shiny dress who stared blankly straight in front of her. Lenore saw them and came inside and went over to their table.
“Hi Mr. Bloemker,” she said.
Mr. Bloemker looked up with a start. “Ms. Beadsman.”
“Hi.”
“Hello. Fancy meeting ...” Mr. Bloemker looked strange and scooted a tiny bit toward Mary-Ann’s wrist, away from the beautiful woman he had been sitting right next to.
“Well Frequent and Vigorous is just over in the Bombardini Building, over there,” said Lenore, “which you can probably see, if you look over in the comer of the window, over there, with the lights on?”
“Well well.”
“Hi, I’m Lenore Beadsman, I know Mr. Bloemker,” Lenore said to the beautiful woman.
The beautiful woman didn’t say anything; she stared straight ahead.
“Lenore Beadsman, this is Brenda, Brenda, may I present Ms. Lenore Beadsman,” said Mr. Bloemker, his fingers in his beard. In front of both Mr. Bloemker and Brenda were drinks in plastic jugs shaped like pineapples, with straws coming out of holes in the top.
“Hi,” Lenore said to Brenda. “....”
“Please sit down,” said Mr. Bloemker.
Lenore sat. “Is Brenda OK?”
“Please don’t mind Brenda. Brenda is very shy,” Mr. Bloemker said. He was slurring a tiny bit. He was apparently a bit tight. His cheeks were lit up above the tendrils of the top of his beard, his nose shone, his glasses were a little steamed, and he was uncombed, a huge, obscene Superman-curl of hair lying like a giant comma across his forehead.