The stories he tells on himself: the Librium toss and the tank as surrender

texture · STANDING (self-told)

• When: STANDING — his own detox is decades past; the tellings recur (Commitment podiums; the July car ride).
• What: Two self-accounts do his characterizing for him. From the Commitment podium he tells the little detox-story: they gave him Librium to help with the discomfort of Withdrawal, and "he just threw the Librium hard over his left shoulder, for luck, and has had very good luck ever since." And about the oxygen tank and the taped tube, all he'd ever say is "that they were not his personal will but that he'd submitted to advice and now here he was, still sucking air and staying rabidly Active" — surrender-to-advice as a working principle, worn on the face. The tank line is the template for everything he later refuses to do at Gately's bedside (event 10).