Mario's romantic experience with Millicent Kent — "Mario’s face was so squashed against…"
Mario’s face was so squashed against the U.S.S. Millicent’s thorax that he had to contort his mouth way out to the left to breathe. […] U.S.S.M.K. was trying to undo Mario’s corduroys but was frustrated by the complex system of snaps and fasteners at the bottom of his police lock’s Velcro vest, which overlapped his trouser’s own fasteners
Context
The book's gentlest inversion of U.H.I.D. shame: what drives Millicent Kent around the bend is precisely the apparatus of Mario's deformity — the lashes and the police-lock vest he needs to stand up — and the head crushed sideways to breathe is the body-as-logistics comedy turned erotic. Carlisle sharpens it: the police lock that assists Mario is itself what defeats Kent's intentions — the prosthesis as accidental chastity hardware.