JOI's own account: Hal "completely shut down" in his father's presence

texture · UNDATED, ~B.S., pre-suicide

• When: UNDATED (~before JOI's YTSDB suicide; JOI told Joelle during her closeness with him)
• What: The father's-side corroboration of the JOI-Hal silence. Jim later told Joelle he "simply didn't know how to speak with either of his undamaged sons without their mother's presence and mediation" — Orin couldn't be made to shut up, and "Hal was so completely shut down in Jim's presence that the silences were excruciating." Jim reckoned he and Mario were easy together only because Mario had been too damaged to speak until six, letting them grow comfortable in mutual silence around a shared interest (lenses/film) free of the pressure-to-bond that tennis loaded onto Orin and Hal. Pairs with Hal's own accounts of the not-speaking motif (scenes 167, 170).