Mario's night walk: Booboo
when Mario brought up real stuff Hal called him Booboo and acted like he’d wet himself and Hal was going to be very patient about helping him change.
Context
Even Hal cannot bear it. The brother who secretly idealizes Mario (064) and secretly loves the unhip earnest thing (132) is here "for once no help," "even more uncomfortable and embarrassed than the fellows at lunch," and deflects Mario's "real stuff" with the cruelest available irony — treating sincerity as incontinence, a shameful mess to be patiently cleaned up. The person who should be Mario's one ally in plainness performs the ironic reflex most reflexively exactly where sincerity is most available. It is the anthology's saddest register-datum: the ironist's armor snaps shut hardest not against enemies but against the sibling offering him the very earnestness he privately reveres.