Hal crashes the wrong meeting (Inner-Infant men's group); envies those with parents to blame; dissociative escape

pivotal · 17 Nov YDAU, 1730h

• When: 17 Nov YDAU, 1730h
• What: The booklet (nearly two years out of date; the Ennet House girl may have "kertwanged" him) leads Hal not to an NA meeting but into a men's-movement Inner-Infant group — bearded middle-aged men clutching identical throttled teddy bears while Kevin Bain (Marlon Bain's brother) does projectile-weeping over abandonment. Central Hal reflection: unlike Bain, Hal was "continually held and dandled and told at high volume that he was loved" as an infant and it made him neither whole nor Substance-free; he "rather envies a man who feels he has something to explain his being fucked up, parents to blame it on" — his emptiness has no external cause. Throughout he dissociates into elaborate escapist geographies (Appian Way, Aruba, the Azores, Ascension Island), a live demonstration of the anhedonic checking-out. His terror at possible recognition yields "the first really desperate and sincere prayer Hal can remember offering since he'd stopped wearing pajamas with feet in them." The scene ends with Bain crawling toward Hal.