Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

family is not Italian.) It was ironic that it was at this restaurant, on a birthday, that I would be getting back in contact with my folks, because, when I was a little kid, our family tradition was that this was ‘my’ special restaurant, where I always got to go for my birthday. I somewhere, as a kid, got the idea that it was run by The Mob, in which I had a total fascination, as a little kid, and always bugged my folks until they took me on at least my birthday—until, little by little, as I grew up, I outgrew it, and then, somehow, it passed into being my littlest sister’s special restaurant, like she had inherited it. It has black and red checkered table cloths, and all the waiters look like enforcers for The Mob, and, on the restaurant’s tables, there are always empty wine bottles with candles stuck in the hole, which have melted, and several colors of wax run and harden up all over the sides of the bottle in lines and varied patterns. As a little kid, I remembered having a weird fascination in the wine bottles with all the dried wax running all over them, and of having to be asked, over and over, by my father, not to keep picking the wax off. When I arrived at the restaurant, in a coat and tie, they were all already there, at a table. I remember my Mom looked totally enthusiastic and pleased just to see me, and I could tell she was willing to forget the whole year of me not contacting them, she was just so pleased to feel like a family again.
    My father said, ‘You’re late.’ His face had zero expression either way. My Mom said, ‘I’m afraid we already ordered, is that OK.’
    My father said they had ordered for me already, being as I was a little late getting there.
    I sat down, and smilingly asked what they ordered me.
    My father said, ‘A chicken presto dish thing your mother ordered for you.’
    I said, ‘But I hate chicken. I always hated it. How could you forget I hate chicken?’
    We all looked at each other for a second, around the table, even my littlest sister, and her boyfriend with the hair. There was one long split second of all looking at each other. This was when the waiter was bringing everybody’s chicken. Then my father smiled, and drew one of his fists back jokingly, and said, ‘Get the fuck outta here.’ Then my Mom put her hand up against her upper chest, like she does when she is afraid she’s going to laugh too hard, and laughed. The waiter put my plate in front of me, and I pretended to look down and make a face, and we all laughed. It was good.

BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN
    B.I . #40 06-97
    B ENTON R IDGE OH
    ‘It’s the arm. You wouldn’t think of it as a asset like that would you. But it’s the arm. You want to see it? You won’t get disgusted? Well here it is. Here’s the arm. This is why I go by the name Johnny One-Arm. I made it up, not anybody being, like, hardhearted—me. I see how you’re trying to be polite and not look at it. Go ahead and look though. It don’t bother me. Inside my head I don’t call it the arm I call it the Asset. How all would you describe it? Go on. You think it’ll hurt my feelings? You want to hear me describe it? It looks like a arm that changed its mind early on in the game when it was in Mama’s stomach with the rest of me. It’s more like a itty tiny little flipper, it’s little and wet-looking and darker than the rest of me is. It looks wet even when it’s dry. It’s not a pretty sight at all. I usually keep it in the sleeve until it’s time to haul it out and use it for the Asset. Notice the shoulder’s normal, it’s just like the other shoulder. It’s just the arm. It’ll only go down to like the titty-nipple of my chest here, see? It’s a little sucker. It ain’t pretty. It moves fine, I can move it around fine. If you look close here at the end there’s these little majiggers you can tell started out wanting to be fingers but didn’t form. When I was in her stomach. The other arm—see? It’s a normal