Gately & Joelle: the mask of acceptance

The anthology's clearest anatomy of the affect-mask — not a physical disguise but the performance of a feeling you don't have. The U.H.I.D. doctrine describes it exactly: over the real shame you lay a feigned acceptance, and then a shame about the shame, recursively annular, "you hide your hiding." And it cuts both ways in the scene — Joelle names Gately's own "protective mask of House Staff," the nod-and-smile professional face laid over the private "What a fucking yutz… Where's the net." Two people trading masks of composure, each reading the other's, each performing an equanimity neither has. This is the register's cost made structural: the mask is not on the face but on the affect, and taking it off is the thing recovery keeps demanding and shame keeps refusing. (Per plan reciprocal rule: the affect-mask is ours; the physical veil / operational concealment is surveillance-disguise's.)