IJ study archive

The White Flag AA meeting (p. 367)

quote

decides he’ll just turn it over and ask Ferocious Francis G. for feedback on subjunctives and countersexuals, and the infant leaves its playpen alone inside him

Context

The aria's afterlife in Gately's head: Joelle said "counterfactual," and by the time he's resolved to take the problem to his sponsor it has become "countersexuals" — the grammar-term garbled in transit through a mind that owns none of that vocabulary, played for tenderness rather than mockery, since the mangling is itself what lets the panic subside.

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