Padgett Powell - The Interrogative Mood

Would you prefer to expire on a fair day or foul, or do you think you’ll be past appreciating and lamenting the weather by that point? Can you handle honey without getting it on your fingers? Do you know if the Japanese Zero was actually painted chrome yellow or did it for some ahistorical reason appear in that color in the American polystyrene models later made of it? Do you know the names of your great-grandparents? Would you stand a better chance of hitting a long-legged bird with a bolo or with a boomerang? Are you a connoisseur of chocolate, or is your appetite for it unrefined? Can you lay up a basketball? Do you like starch in your clothes? Do you favor any one form of sexual congress over others? Do you prefer hyperactive children or slow children? How far will you walk to procure a daily newspaper? Can you successfully hit the Close Door and Open Door buttons on elevators in time? Do you have any interest in being in a terrorist organization, and if so, which one appeals to you as having the most justified mission? At what point is a gosling a goose?

Do you go in for the tall tale? Do you own any leotards? Are you familiar with the term “the fancy”? Can you spit well? Are you bothered when a popular local weatherman is dismissed for sexual dalliance in a public restroom? Did you have an aunt or an uncle of whom you were more fond than your other relatives? Do you understand when you can cook on copper and when you cannot? Knowing what you might about construction, if you had to build a bridge or dig a tunnel of equal length, which would you prefer? What do you think was the gentlest, sanest civilization in history? If you could transport to a past civilization, which one would it be? What breed of chickens attracts you most? In sexual attraction, is there a feature or set of features that you find is a deal maker or a deal breaker? Has it occurred to you at some point that you are a whole lot less gifted than you might have once thought yourself, in one or in several aspects of your youness, or have you maintained a more or less steady assessment of your abilities and talents and indeed of your worth? Is your ass inordinately chapped by television chefs who in your view cannot cook, or are you amused by them, or are you as indifferent to them as to other pretenders about you?

Isn’t the weather nice today? Is there anyone whom you’ve been thinking about calling for some time for no really good reason so that if you do call you’ll have to explain yourself as just assenting to a whim? Do you like it when people to whom you’ve done no wrong arrange themselves to be done with you? Would you rather be a lumberjack, a plumber, or a croupier? Do you like to handle lead? Have you ever pinned butterflies? In tennis, do you favor a lot of topspin or do you like a flat ball? Have you been so thirsty that you’ve drunk questionable untreated water? Have you heard that water buffalo are more dangerous than tigers and lions and elephants? Was prom-going fun or a misery for you? Would you like, right now, some cornbread?

ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH the economics term “elasticity of demand”? Does the prospect of a vacation tire you out? Do you know a rasp from a file? Have you ever gone out the window or the emergency door of a bus? Have you hunted ducks, and if so, did you use decoys, and if so, did the decoys seem to make the hunting unfair? Would you be more interested in the murder of one chocolatier by another chocolatier than in the murder of one jockey by another jockey? Is there a profession the murder of one member of which by another would interest you more than all other intraprofessional murders? Is there a category of interprofessional murder that would interest you more than others?

Do you sometimes find some appeal, as opposed to your customary cynical derision of the idea, in the notion of issuing a Cry for Help? If a good friend said to you “I’ve never really been happy,” apparently in earnest, would you laugh? Would you have anticipated that Jack LaLanne would outlive Buddy Ebsen? If you were to be confined in close quarters with it, would you prefer a horse, a mule, or a donkey? Do you have a tattoo? Do you use the terms “alloyed” and “unalloyed”? How do you hold with corporal punishment of children? Would a long view through space and time of human history on the earth resemble the compressed photography you may have seen of maggots working a corpse?

Do you know the difference when they are on the wing between a gull and a tern? What are the factors that influence your selection of automobile tires? How many times can you recall as a child eating a good-sized spoonful of dirt? Do you prefer being colder than you wish to be or hotter than you wish to be? If you were from this moment on to be known by any two-name combination of these names — Alice, Emily, Katherine, Sveta, Bruiser, Frank, Gerard, Tyrone — what would your new name be? Do you know who invented Velcro, and when? Do you know how many human lives there have been, including the present batch, and whether the present number alive exceeds the number alive at any time in the past? Have you ever packed your own wheel bearings? What do you do when you get to feeling really low?

If you did play marbles as a child, do you know rings, pig’s eye, what is meant by “dates,” and so forth? Have you been responsible for the death of a songbird? Do you shine your shoes? Does the phrase “rampart standard” mean anything to you? Is there a candy bar you like over others? Why do “making hay” and “haymaker” have substantially different meanings? Does “bimbo” refer only to women? How would you, on impulse, fill this in: “We got to get us some [blank] down heah”? How about “crispins and lardons”? If you heard of a “chiropractic boondoggle,” what would you think that might involve?

What is the right-sized dog for you? Can you hit a golf ball? Do you like lizards? Do you use the word spatial ? Have you ever seen or tried the old sport paddleball, which used very heavy plywood paddles? Did you ever or do you now own a set of French curves? Are you aggressive and with it on money, or passive and out of it? Do you like movies? Can you recall eating crayons? If you hired a maid and she came in the first day and said, “I’ll be needing me some Bab-o and Skinner’s Raisin Bran and for you to get out of my way,” would you think you had made a very good hire, or would the bluster worry you? Would such a maid be the kind you need to make pencil marks on the liquor-bottle labels for, or not? Have you ever seen actual police photos of a crime scene with a corpse in it? Do you sometimes just make up your mind and set out to Have a Very Good Day and not let anything deflect you from doing just that? Will you eat birthday-candle wax on the icing of a cake or do you meticulously pick it out?

Do you think you yourself could make anything out of birch bark? Are you more likely to purchase something calling itself a salve or something calling itself a balm, and are you more drawn to it or less drawn to it if it is in a tin, as opposed to, let’s say, in a tube? If you could be an assassin or an ice-cream manufacturer, which would it be? Are you conversant with wildflowers? When you see public officials, do you see trajectories of menace or do you see public servants doing their best? Does what the Germans did to the Jews, next to what the Americans did to the Indians, differ largely only in the efficiency of the Germans and the inefficiency of the Americans? Have you ever had and really enjoyed cold fountain Pepsi-Cola over shaved ice early in the morning? Would you like something like a little cold Pepsi and a good recreational drug right now? What percentage of people in general would you say are so stupid or misled or just altogether so fucked up in the head that we would be better off if they were not present at all? Do you use throw rugs in your house? Would you ever buy a significant pet, by which I mean something more substantial than a mouse or a fish, from a pet shop as opposed to from a breeder or otherwise less retail purveyor? Do you recall the nice ivory color of a jawbreaker as the red coating wears off, and the nice porcelain knocking sound you can effect with the jawbreaker and your teeth? Do you think there might be a snake equivalent of some sort to the Christmas bird count? Will one hyena stand and fight a dog? Were you any good at Flyback? Is there any circumstance in which you would allow yourself to be addressed as “Skipper”? If someone you knew vaguely called you up and said, “I can do the dirty dog all night long, you want to go out with me?” what would you say?