Scene 052: montesian transcripts

• p. 176: Title block: "SELECTED TRANSCRIPTS OF THE RESIDENT-INTERFACE-DROP-IN-HOURS OF MS. PATRICIA MONTESIAN, M.A., C.S.A.C." (n.58: Commonwealth-certified Substance Abuse Counselor), Wed. 4 Nov. YDAU.
• p. 176-177: Nell Gunther on the fingers-drumming that provoked the forking — "the sound of a fucking mind coming apart"; amends-readiness as plea bargain; "Did I mention I'm grateful to be here?"
• p. 177: Tiny Ewell's deposition: "I cannot deny what I don't understand. This is my position." Formication, pancreas trouble, the masturbating judge — denial conducted as contract law.
• p. 177-178: The victim's account: Nell "positively aloft, leaping across the table"; Gately and Diehl pull the fork out of hand and tabletop; Percocet refused at the ER (n.59); "I know bashing... this was unabashed bashing at its most fascist"; "that specimen goes or I do."
• p. 178: "I was wondering if maybe there was any special Program prayer for when you want to hang yourself." — four lines, the scene's darkest drop-in.
• p. 178: Alfonso: "How does to admit I am powerless make me stop what the thing is I am powerless to stop?... Is hope of power the bad way for Alfonso as drug addict?"
• p. 178: Staffer interruption — the Division's "ultimatum" about the vermin.
• p. 178-179: The men's upstairs toilet: the thing that won't flush — "It's made it real clear it's not going anywhere"; request for instructions, "possibly also protective equipment."
• p. 179: The Hunt's Pudding Cup theft; McDade "got this big thing of pudding on his chin."
• p. 179: The septumless cocaine addict's loop: "Isn't being here proof I want to stop? But then so how come I can't stop, if I want to stop, is the thing."
• p. 179-180: Bruce Green on Doocey ("Tho you want to fuck me, Mildred"), the mice, the under-trailer chickens, Mildred drawing the line, Pine Street, the lice — "Who wouldn't have to get high just to stand it?"
• p. 180-181: The disease-skeptic (probably Geoffrey Day — inferred, no name in the transcript; Carlisle declines to attribute, noting the late snippets "could potentially be attributed to more than one resident," the interchangeability being designed): "I dismantle my life and career... and I'm prescribed prayer? Does the word retrograde signify?"
• p. 181: "Fine, fine. Fine.... The grinding? ... Expression of all-around fineness. Likewise the thing with the eyelid."
• p. 181: The job-search woman facing the boot: "Snot my fault. Go on and ask Clenette.... I said where'm I suppose to go to?"
• p. 181 (spilling past the section's nominal page edge): seven more snippets — mouthwash Restriction ("misdemeanor gargling"), someone else's farting, Ewell again on "duress," "It's back. For a second there I hoped," "First just let me say one thing."

Backward

• Form rhymes with scene 036's Big Buddy chorus — institutional polyphony, the listener structurally silent.
• Carlisle's continuity arithmetic: he places Clenette here "five years after" the Wardine monologue (scene 008), which would date scene 008 c. 2004 — a reading recorded here, though the Wardine thread itself is undated on the page.
• The unflushable thing in the men's toilet ("It won't go away. It keeps reappearing.") answers Pemulis's "The turd emergeth" eight pages earlier (p. 171, scene 050) — the chapter's waste-that-returns figure (Carlisle's Ch-15 commentary, where Nell's "positively aloft" horizontal leap also joins Sr.'s 1933 sprint and Pemulis's bus loop as images of moving desperately forward).

Forward

• Ewell's definition-of-"alcoholic" filibuster is named in scene 056 (p. 205) as the first of his serial detox obsessions, before cookies, hospital corners, and tattoos; his arrival was scene 027.
• Bruce Green's monologue is the resident's-eye retelling of scenes 009-010 (pp. 38-42, Mildred Bonk and the Doocey trailer); his MILDRED BONK tattoo gets catalogued in scene 056 (p. 207).
• Day's DIS-EASE polemic continues in scene 056 (p. 203) and blooms in the Boston AA section (pp. 270-281 shift notes); the fork incident enters House lore (Gately's later shift-note voice).
• The unanswered "where'm I suppose to go to?" is the D.S.S./discharge machinery from scene 056's opening facts (p. 200) in a single voice; Clenette and Thrale are the link by which the Wardine thread's narrator is inferred to be inside Ennet House (cf. scene 008, which closes "And I am gone have a child." — a question the novel never answers; the YDAU material re-attests neither the pregnancy nor the child).

• p. 177: "The sound of a fucking mind coming apart." — Nell on the drumming; the House's ambient psychic noise named.
• p. 178: "any special Program prayer for when you want to hang yourself." — the book's flattest, most devastating suicide line; depression-anhedonia pull.
• p. 178: "How does to admit I am powerless make me stop...?" — Alfonso states the AA paradox better than any counselor in the book.
• p. 179: "How come I'd even be here if I didn't want to stop? But then so how come I can't stop..." — the addiction koan verbatim.
• p. 180: "Who wouldn't have to get high just to stand it?" — Green's closing question; the addict's whole etiology in ten words.
• p. 181: "I said where'm I suppose to go to?" — the transcript's stranded question; the safety net's edge.