Notkin's party; Joelle's overdose (pp. 237–238)

Here is the definition, and it comes wrapped in a child's memory of the movies. Joelle traces her whole capacity for this appetite back to the Paducah -plexes, sitting in the front row with her father, letting "the screen fill their whole visual field," loving every film "no matter what it was" — the original template of total, undefended reception. What the freebase gives her now is the same thing the screen gave her then, and she states its nature exactly: to be "entered by something that didn't know she was there and yet was all about making her feel good anyway." That is spectation's core betrayal — the pleasure is total and it is impersonal, aimed at no one, indifferent to the person it fills. "Entertainment is blind": it does not see its audience, it only pours, and the deepest comfort it offers, the sense of being taken care of, is a comfort with no one on the other end of it.