the compulsion to have any compliant ear
instead Lenz on the way home finds himself under huge hydrolystic compulsion to have Green right there by his side—or basically anyone who can’t get away or won’t go away—right there with him, and to share with Green or any compliant ear pretty much every experience and thought he’s ever had
Context
The drug's actual effect, opposite to the cool self-possession Lenz always previsions: cocaine produces not sangfroid but a helpless compulsion to talk, to keep a captive listener pinned at his side and pour every datum of himself into any ear that can't escape. The stimulant that was going to let him assert his need for solitude instead makes solitude unbearable — the substance doing precisely the reverse of what the user recruited it to do, which is the cage's small daily joke.