The Big Buddy "loneliness" session: the ornate, competitive talker emerges

pivotal · 3 Nov YDAU

• When: 3 Nov YDAU, immediately following event 1 — Hal's twice-weekly Big Buddy small-group in Viewing Room 6
• What: In Hal's Big Buddy interface (a Stan Smith visualization cartridge looping on the wall), the previously mute Arslanian turns loquacious and formal — the book's core characterization of him. He notes "Very much bitching also in the lavatories"; slots himself in the pecking order ("I am over Blott. I am over Ingersoll") and is corrected by Hal on the details; when Hal asks how Ingersoll could root for Arslanian in his Port Washington singles when Idris losing would let Ingersoll challenge for his spot, Arslanian declines the need for any rooting and bares his canines; he supplies the seminar's vocabulary — "alienation," "Existential individuality," "Solipsism" — and answers its loneliness question with "Twenty-eight pull-ups." His running texture is established here: the queer faint hot-doggish smell, the upper lip working up and down over his teeth.