Pages 503–507
The night after the I-Day picnic, Johnette Foltz escorts Ennet House's two marijuana casualties to metro Boston's one NA meeting devoted entirely to grass — and those two are old acquaintances of yours: Ken Erdedy, last seen waiting by the phone with his 200 grams (pp. 17–27), and Kate Gompert from the psych-ward bed (pp. 68–78), both now residents. The scene is a meeting, then a closing ritual that goes badly for Erdedy. Two registers collide on purpose: his fussy professional-class qualifications against Roy Tony's Boston street speech; the collision is the engine, not a transcription problem.
Terms, in order of appearance
- NA (p. 503) — Narcotics Anonymous: AA's machinery, any Substance; Beginners' Discussion is the entry-level format.
- anechoic (p. 503) — echo-killing; an oddly soundproofed vestry for so much confession.
- anhedonia (p. 504) — clinical: the incapacity to feel pleasure. The word's first appearance in the book, naming what no beginner in the room will.
- Just For Today (p. 504) — real NA slogan and daily-reading title; the meeting's closing liturgy.
- anorak (p. 506) — a hooded shell jacket; what Erdedy gets hoisted by.
- James River Traders / Calvin Klein (p. 506) — real catalog menswear and real designer aftershave; Roy Tony's forensic reading of Erdedy's class.
After you read: three things
1. The catalog, and the fog above it. The meeting's testimony builds the book's clinical portrait of marijuana addiction and withdrawal — the point being how "completely nonunique and unalone" the newcomers are. But nobody says "melancholy or anhedonia or depression": that "logarithm of all suffering" hangs "fog-like just over the room's heads" (p. 504), too dreaded to name. In the margin, Kate Gompert mimes a finger-revolver at her temple — her pp. 68–78 thread, still live.
2. You've heard this name twice. Roy Tony: the man who menaced Wardine in the pp. 37–38 section, and the dealer holding his bench at the Brighton Projects on pp. 128–135. The scene never says this fatigue-jacketed NA veteran is the same man — but the résumé fits, and if so, his getting clean happened entirely off-page. The placing is yours.
3. Irony loses by physical force. Erdedy's genteel hug-refusal meets the program's epistemology from its least likely exponent: "We fucking do what they tell us. They tell us Hugs Not Drugs in here. We done motherfucking surrendered our wills in here" (p. 506) — Roy hates the hugs too; that's the point. Given a choice between vulnerability and decapitation, Erdedy converts so hard that Gompert later reports "it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him" (p. 507).
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.