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

arm, a little muscley on account of using it all the time. It’s normal and long and the right color, that’s the arm I show all the time, most times I keep the other sleeve pinned up so it don’t look to be even anything like a arm in there at all. It’s strong though. The arm is. It’s hard on the eyes but it’s strong, sometimes I’ll try and get them to armwrestle it to see how strong it is. It’s a strong little flippery sucker. If they think they can stand to touch it. I always say if they don’t think they can stand touching it why that’s OK, it don’t hurt my feelings. You want to touch it?’
    Q.
    ‘That’s all right. That is all right.’
    Q.
    ‘What it is is—well first there’s always some girls around. You know what I mean? At the foundry there, at the Lanes. There’s a tavern right down by the bus stop there. Jackpot—that’s my best friend—Jackpot and Kenny Kirk—Kenny Kirk’s his cousin, Jackpot’s, that are both over me at the foundry cause I finished school and didn’t get in the union till after—they’re real good-looking and normal-looking and Good With The Ladies if you know what I mean, and there’s always girls hanging back around. Like in a group, a bunch or group of all of us, we’ll all just hang back, drink some beers. Jackpot and Kenny’re always going with one of them or the other and then the ones they’re going with got friends. You know. A whole, say, group of us there. You follow the picture here? And I’ll start hanging back with this one or that one, and after a while the first stage is I’ll start in to telling them how I got the name Johnny One-Arm and about the arm. That’s a stage of the thing. Of getting some pussy using the Asset. I’ll describe the arm while it’s still up in the sleeve and make it sound like just about the ugliest thing you ever did see. They’ll get this look on their face like Oh You Poor Little Fella You’re Being Too Hard On Yourself You Shouldn’t Be Shameful Of The Arm. So on. How I’m such a nice young fella and it breaks their heart to see me talk about my own part of me that way especially since it weren’t any fault of mine to get born with the arm. At which time when they start with that stage of it the next stage is I ask them do they want to see it. I say how I’m shameful of the arm but somehow I trust them and they seem real nice and if they want I’ll unpin the sleeve and let the arm out and let them look at the arm if they think they could stand it. I’ll go on about the arm until they can’t hardly stand to hear no more about it. Sometimes it’s a ex of Jackpot’s that’s the one that starts hanging back with me down at Frame Eleven over to the Lanes and saying how I’m such a good listener and sensitive not like Jackpot or Kenny and she can’t believe there’s any way the arm’s as bad as I’m making out and like that. Or we’ll be hanging back at her place in the kitchenette or some such and I’ll go It’s So Hot I Feel Like Taking My Shirt Off But I Don’t Want To On Account Of I’m Shameful Of The Arm. Like that. There’s numerous, like, stages. I never out loud call it the Asset believe you me. Go on and touch it whenever you get a mind to. One of the stages is I know after some time I really am starting to come off creepy to the girl, I can tell, cause all I can talk about is the arm and how wet and flippery it is but how it’s strong but how I’d just about up and die if a girl as nice and pretty and perfect as I think she is saw it and got disgusted, and I can tell all the talk starts creeping them up inside and they start to secretly think I’m kind of a loser but they can’t back out on me cause after all here they been all this time saying all this nice shit about what a sensitive young fella I am and how I shouldn’t be shameful and there’s no way the arm can be that bad. In this stage it’s like they’re committed into a corner and if they quit hanging back with me now