Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

Will you forgive me my impertinence? Would you be persuaded to do so by the news that perhaps I was overindulging my pain pills against the impending medical adjudication as to whether or not my recent biopsy is malignant? Do you traffic much in facial creams and lotions and such? Do you breathe correctly, as, say, you are wont to be taught in yoga environs, or do you just breathe any which old way? When did you last have a piece of Melba toast? Are you familiar with the particular dead quality of the Suwannee River with respect to fish? Do you listen to the music of the spheres or do you dance a dull sublunary ditty?

What percentage of men or women have the capacity, or historically have had the capacity, to declare war? Do you keep a balanced checkbook? Would you take a red-colored dog or a white-colored dog? Do your shoes fit well? Do you know that in some countries men do all the public cooking and women do all the private cooking? Do you know that for some time I have wanted to ask you a question relating to bolos and boomerangs but that I cannot figure out the question? Do you know which is the stouter snake, Russell’s or Gaboon’s viper? Do you prefer a home brew for cleaning windows or a commercial formula like Windex? What is it called when a product begins to serve as the generic term for that class of things the product is a member of, as in Scotch tape, make a Xerox of that, get me a Kleenex, and so on? Would you include “Magic Marker” in this category of eponymous generics?

Have you seen a person recently so delicious-looking that, were you and this person to be scrambling for ice-cream change with your arms in the sofa and your faces laid on the cushions looking at each other as you felt for coins and the ice-cream truck dinged on by and your hands in there felt only the lint of the sofa scrofula and your faces were fairly close across a distance of that knobby nylon terrain, you might feel compelled to slide your face toward this delicious-looking person’s and kiss him or her — have you seen anyone like this recently? Would you like to see a person so delicious-looking that you might feel compelled to try to kiss the person without, as it were, propriety? Do you know what conservative bone-fracture management might mean as opposed to nonconservative bone-fracture management? Would you take a ballet class now?

When you go to a football game, will you wave a towel for your team? Do you have any mounted animals or pelts? Do you ever have a notion such as “Today would be a good day for me to use a lever on something”? Are you very happy with your hands or could they be other hands and suit you better? Can you quickly name a good thing and a bad thing? Do you understand really how a radio works? Do you eat cake for the icing or icing for the cake? What is the best narcotic in your experience? Am I the only one who thinks CBS should be prosecuted for getting rid of Jill Arrington over the nipple erection during the Florida-Tennessee game? Of course they covered their tracks and will not be found accountable, but the fact remains that someone owes Jill an apology, don’t you think? Would that apology of course not be tantamount to the entire United States’ apologizing for its Puritan hysteria and hypocrisies — to apologizing for its very existence? Can someone explain successfully why commercials for erectile dysfunction are allowed to frame the verboten erect-nipple episode? Is it because the impotence-pill commercial is the revenue-generating vehicle that just happens to televise the nipple? Is the impotence-pill commercial a medical issue while the nipple is in obvious good health — that is, is nonworking sex okay but working sex not okay? Is there any end to the inane ways one can phrase this stupid question about a stupid country?

CAN YOU COOK? Can you fight? Can you lie? Can you do anything well? Have you acquired a sufficient stock of clothes from a mail-order seller that you can, if you want to, flip through the catalog to decide what to wear that day? Do you know a peony from a petunia? What exactly does “Standard & Poor” mean to you? Can you hang ten? Do you dance? Do you view extreme sports as legitimate enterprises or are they just imprudent fucking around until you get hurt? Can the same question not be asked of sexual consort? Has it been a while since you cracked a can of readymade biscuits over the counter and felt that gratifying modest explosion of clammy dough in your hand?

Are you given to the canary or the parakeet? Does the prospect of a pet’s outliving you give you pause? Can we relax and trust that our wishes in these regards, our posthumous affairs as it were, will really be administered as we have stipulated, or will we be frustrated and yelling through the glass walls of heaven or the hot opaque obsidian walls of hell at the corrupt disregard for our eternal wishes? What if you saw, from heaven, your macaw starve in its cage? What if you saw your horse led to the glue factory?

How many people per hundred would you say are asses? Should non-asses have to put up with asses? Should asses have to put up with non-asses? Who deserves less having to endure the other? Does it seem that by definition an ass is not so bothered by things as a non-ass? Is it fair to say, in fact, that asses are the unbothered and non-asses are the bothered? Do you think the bothered were really meant to inherit the earth?

Do you know that since I last asked you about the disappearance of the blue jay — I meant to, if I did not — that I have found one blue jay feather under my house? Would a complete familiarization with the military campaigns of Napoleon provide the modern-day general with much of value, or little of value, or a medium quantity of value in terms of what is called the necessary skill set for a general today? Are you innocent of The Nutcracker ballet or are you of the surprising number of people who see The Nutcracker ballet every year? If a dog needs to be shaved because it is overheating but the haircut embarrasses the dog, should it be shaved anyway? Do you sometimes ice a part of your body gratuitously? When was the last time you gapped a spark plug yourself? Would you rather be bitten by an alligator or a large cat? How many diapers would you say you have changed in your life?

“Why must it all suck so bad?”—is this a question asked by a suicide candidate or a comedian? Does turmeric lift the spirits or just dye everything? Do you loosen your pants after eating? Do you realize that on Sunday-morning network television in the United States of America one can hear a voice-over in a commercial for erectile dysfunction informing the target audience, presumably families headed for church, returning from church, or not going to church, that an erection lasting more than four hours should be regarded a medical emergency? Would you rather be kicked in the head by a horse or a bull? Do bulls in fact kick as horses do? Would you be unsettled a bit if someone said to you, “Hey, I’m going down to the Brain Tumor Treatment Center for just a bit and I’ll stop by later tonight”?

What does “It just goes to show you” mean? Have you ever built or operated a trebuchet? If you could get ahold of some dynamite for recreational purposes, would you be hesitant, indifferent, or eager? Do you have a specific length shorts must be or are you flexible in this regard? Is Santa Claus in your view essentially a pedophile? How long would it take you to get over a house fire that destroyed everything you owned and thought dear to you? At what age does a fawn stop sitting in your lap and acting like a house cat or a dog and become a deer, and why does this change necessarily obtain? If you heard someone say “In America, one word says it all,” what would you expect the word to be?

What is the name of the last person with whom you enjoyed sleeping? What things or people would you use the word hardy to describe? Do you understand how whether baseball players use steroids or not is a matter for the United States Congress to attend? Do you comprehend exactly how more casualties on a battlefield can be said to render previous casualties on a battlefield not to have been in vain? Is the argument beneath this logic not that the losing dead are worse off than the winning dead?