David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘I think I’d like a couple more Kahlua and milks.’

‘There was the trouble of the digestive tracking. There were seizures also. There were progressive decays of circulation and vessel, which calls itself restenosis. There were the more than standard accepted amounts of eyes and cavities in many different stages of development upon different parts of the body. There were the fugue states and rages and frequency of coma. She had wandered away from a public institution of Swiss charitable care. Worst for choosing to love was the cerebro-and-spinal fluids which dribbled at all times from her distending oral cavity.’

‘And but your passionate love for each other dried up her cerebro-spinal drool and ended the seizures and there were certain hats she looked so good in it just about drove you mad with love? Is that it?’

‘Garçon!’

‘Is the madly-in-love part coming up?’

‘Katherine, I had too believed there was no love without passion. Pleasure. This was part of the pain of the no legs, this fear that for me there would be no passion. The fear of the pain is many times worse than the pain of the pain, n’est ce —?’

‘Ramy I don’t think I’m like thinking this is a feel-better story at all.’

‘I tried to leave the soft-head and cerebro-spinally incontinent woman, m’épouse au future, behind at the hôpital of grave nature and to wheel off into my new life of uncaged acceptance and choice. I would roll into the fraying of battle for my despoiled nation, for now I saw the point not of winning but of choosing merely to fight. But I had travelled no more than several revolutions of the fauteuil when the old despair of before choosing this no-skull creature rose up once again inside me. Within several revolutions there was no point again and no legs, and only fear of the pain that made me not choose. Pain rolled me backwards to this woman, my wife.’

‘You’re saying this is love? This isn’t love. I’ll know when it’s love because of the way it’ll feel. It won’t be about spinal fluid and despair believe you me, Bucko. It’ll be about your eyes meet across someplace and both your knees give out and from that second forward you know you’re not going to be alone and in hell. You’re not half the guy I started to think you might have been, Ray.’

‘I had to face: I had chosen. My choice, this was love. I had chosen I think the way out of the chains of the cage. I needed this woman. Without her to choose over myself, there was only pain and not choosing, rolling drunkenly and making fantasies of death.’

‘This is love? It’s like you were chained to her. It’s like if you tried to get on with your own life the pain of the clinical depression came back. It’s like the clinical depression was a shotgun nudging you down the wedding aisle. Was there a wedding aisle? Could she even get down a wedding aisle?’

‘My wife’s wedding helmet was of the finest nickel mined and molded by friends in the nickel mines of southwest Switzerland. Each of us, we were rolled down the aisle in special conveyings. Hers with special pans and drains, for the fluids. It was the happiest day ever for me, since the train. The cleric asked did I choose this woman. There was a long time of silence. My whole very being came to a knifelike point in that instant, Katharine, my hand holding tenderly the hook of my wife.’

‘Hook? As in hand-hook?’

‘I have been knowing since the wedding night her death was coming. Her restenosis of the heart, it is irreversible. Now my Gertraude, she has been in a comatose and vegetating state for almost one year. This coma has no exit, it is said. The advanced Jaarvik IX Exterior Artificial Heart is said by the public-aid cardiologists of Switzerland to be her chance for life. With it they say my wife can live for many more years in a comatose and vegetated state.’

‘So you’re down here like pressing your case to the Jaarvik IX people at Harvard or wherever.’

‘It is for her I betray my friends and cell, the cause of my nation, which now that victory and independence of the neighbors is possible I am betraying it.’

‘You’re spying and betraying Switzerland to try and keep alive somebody with a hook and spinal fluid and no skull in an irreversible coma? And I thought / was disturbed. You’re making me totally reorient my idea of disturbed, mister.’

‘I am not telling for disturbing you, poor Katherine. I am telling of pain and saving a life, and love.’

‘Well, Ray, far be it from far for me, but that’s not love: that’s low self-esteem and self-abuse and Settling For Less, choosing a coma over your comrades. Assuming you’re even not totally lying to get me into the hay or some fucked-up disturbed sicko shit like that.’

This —’

‘Which I’ve got to tell you, saying I remind you of her isn’t exactly the way to sweep my feet off, you know what I’m saying here?’

‘This is what is hard to tell. To ask any person to see. It is no choice. It is not choosing Gertraude over the A.F.R., my companions. Over the causes. Choosing Gertraude to love as my wife was necessary for the others, these other choices. Without the choice of her life there are no other choices. I tried leaving at the commencement. I got only very few revolutions of the fauteuil.’

‘Sounds more like a gun to your head than a choice. If you can’t choose the other way, there’s no choice.’

‘No, but this choice, Katherine: I made it. It chains me, but the chains are of my choice. The other chains: no. The others were the chains of not choosing.’

‘Do you have a twin that just came in and sat down just to the left of you but is also like about one-third overlapping on you?’

‘You are merely drunk. This will happened quickly if unused to alcohol. Nausea often accompanies this. Do not be alarmed if there is visual doubling, losing balance, and nausea of the stomach.’

‘The price of a like complete normal human digestive tract. I used to throw up every morning without drinking. Rain and shine both.’

‘You think there is no love without the pleasure, the no-choice compelling of passion.’

‘I appreciate the drinks and all, but I don’t think I’m going to like memorize a lecture on love from somebody who marries somebody with cerebro-fluid spewing out of their mouth, no offense intended.’

‘As you say. My opinions are only that the love you of this country speak of yields none of the pleasure you seek in love. This whole idea of the pleasure and good feelings being what to choose. To give yourself away to. That all choice for you leads there — this pleasure of not choosing.’

‘Don’t grudge me a little feeling good, of all people, Ray, asshole, shit-puddle, Swisshead.’

‘…’

‘Is it better to throw up right away or try to wait before you throw up, Mr. Drinking Expert?’

‘I am thinking: what if I were to claim we might leave and I could lead you only three streets from here and show you something with this promise: you would feel more good feeling and pleasure than ever before for you: you would never again feel sorrow or pity or the pain of the chains and cage of never choosing. I am thinking of this offer: you would reply to me what?’

‘ I voot make ze hreply zat I’ve heard that one before, asshole, and from … from guys with a little more to them south of the waist, if you follow.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘What I’d reply is I’m a shitty lay. As in sex-partner. I’ve only ever been sexual twice, and both times it was awful, and Brad Anderson when I called and said why didn’t you call again Brad Anderson you know what he said? He said I was a lousy lay and my snatch was sure awful big for somebody with such a little flat ass, Brad Anderson said.’