the NA hug: rampant, indiscriminate hugging
It was just hugging, as far as Erdedy could see. Rampant, indiscriminate hugging, where the point seemed to be to hug as many people as possible regardless of whether you’d ever seen them before in your life.
Context
The scene sets its trap by rendering enforced sincerity as physical horror to the ironist. The meeting ends and "somebody'd thrown a switch": bodies close on each other, "jowls ground into other jowls," male-to-male hugs stripped even of the exculpatory back-thump. To the room it's fellowship; to Erdedy — who "never particularly liked hugging" — it's an assault of intimacy, and he does the ironist's instinctive thing, retreating "way back from the throng" to stand "by himself" and "pretending to study the coffee urn with great interest." The comedy engine of the scene is loaded here: single-entendre bodily sincerity as a mob, and postmodern self-protection edging toward the exit.