The NA-meeting hug confrontation: Roy Tony vs. the hug-refusing Erdedy

pivotal · 9 Nov YDAU

• When: 9 Nov YDAU, the Monday-night marijuana NA Beginners' Meeting in an upscale church vestry ("either west Belmont or east Waltham" in Erdedy's guess)
• What: When the meeting closes in NA's rampant indiscriminate hugging, Erdedy retreats to the literature table — and "a tall heavy Afro-American fellow with a gold incisor and perfect vertical cylinder of Afro-American hairstyle" peels off a group-hug and spreads the arms of his fatigue jacket at him. Erdedy declines ("Thanks, but I don't particularly like to hug"), then offers a handshake; the fellow lets his arms fall — "A single styptic blink. 'Roy Tony,' he said." — and answers the shake with the back-of-the-neck dis. Erdedy's escalating politeness reads to Roy Tony as public humiliation of a risked vulnerability: "And now you go and disrespect me in front of my whole clean and sober set just when I gone risk sharing my vulnerability and discomfort with you?" It goes physical — Erdedy hoisted off the floor by his anorak lapels, then held one-handed, called "You little faggot," while an onlooker claps and shouts "Talk about it!" and Johnette Foltz is reduced to "sort of pawing at the back of Roy Tony's fatigue jacket," then hauling two-handed at his coat, Keds scrabbling on the parquet, talking him down by name — "Yo Roy T. man, easy there Dude, Man, Esse, Bro, Posse, Crew, Homes, Jim, Brother, he’s just new is all" — familiarity the scene shows and never explains. The ultimatum is the scene's famous line: "you gone risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I gone fucking rip your head off and shit down your neck?" Erdedy capitulates so completely that Kate Gompert later tells Joelle "it looked like Erdedy was trying to climb him." Aftermath, two mornings later at Ennet House (scene 104, Roy Tony unnamed): "that Kate girl said Ken E. like to get killed by some son of a bitch last night at that Waltham NA thing." This is Roy Tony's last attestation in the novel.