Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

his face was sagging,
     and had long ago forbidden himself to smoke dope around anyone else. He didn’t even know what its draw was anymore. He couldn’t
     even be around anyone else if he’d smoked marijuana that same day, it made him so self-conscious. And the dope often gave
     him a painful case of pleurisy if he smoked it for more than two straight days of heavy continuous smoking in front of the
     Inter-Lace viewer in his bedroom. It made his thoughts jut out crazily in jagged directions and made him stare raptly like
     an unbright child at entertainment cartridges — when he laid in film cartridges for a vacation with marijuana, he favored
     cartridges in which a lot of things blew up and crashed into each other, which he was sure an unpleasant-fact specialist like
     Randi would point out had implications that were not good. He pulled his necktie down smooth while he gathered his intellect,
     will, self-knowledge, and conviction and determined that when this latest woman came as she surely would this would simply
     be his very last marijuana debauch. He’d simply smoke so much so fast that it would be so unpleasant and the memory of it
     so repulsive that once he’d consumed it and gotten it out of his home and his life as quickly as possible he would never want
     to do it again. He would make it his business to create a really bad set of debauched associations with the stuff in his memory.
     The dope scared him. It made him afraid. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the dope, it was that smoking it made him afraid
     of everything else. It had long since stopped being a release or relief or fun. This last time, he would smoke the whole 200
     grams — 120 grams cleaned, destemmed — in four days, over an ounce a day, all in tight heavy economical one-hitters off a
     quality virgin bong, an incredible, insane amount per day, he’d make it a mission, treating it like a penance and behavior-modification
     regimen all at once, he’d smoke his way through thirty high-grade grams a day, starting the moment he woke up and used ice
     water to detach his tongue from the roof of his mouth and took an antacid — averaging out to 200 or 300 heavy bong-hits per
     day, an insane and deliberately unpleasant amount, and he’d make it a mission to smoke it continuously, even though if the
     marijuana was as good as the woman claimed he’d do five hits and then not want to take the trouble to load and one-hit any
     more for at least an hour. But he would force himself to do it anyway. He would smoke it all even if he didn’t want it. Even
     if it started to make him dizzy and ill. He would use discipline and persistence and will and make the whole experience so
     unpleasant, so debased and debauched and unpleasant, that his behavior would be henceforward modified, he’d never even want
     to do it again because the memory of the insane four days to come would be so firmly, terribly emblazoned in his memory. He’d
     cure himself by excess. He predicted that the woman, when she came, might want to smoke some of the 200 grams with him, hang
     out, hole up, listen to some of his impressive collection of Tito Puente recordings, and probably have intercourse. He had
     never once had actual intercourse on marijuana. Frankly, the idea repelled him. Two dry mouths bumping at each other, trying
     to kiss, his self-conscious thoughts twisting around on themselves like a snake on a stick while he bucked and snorted dryly
     above her, his swollen eyes red and his face sagging so that its slack folds maybe touched, limply, the folds of her own loose
     sagging face is it sloshed back and forth on his pillow, its mouth working dryly. The thought was repellent. He decided he’d
     have her toss him what she’d promised to bring, and then would from a distance toss back to her the $1250 U.S. in large bills
     and tell her not to let the door hit her on the butt on the way out. He’d say
ass
instead of
butt
. He’d be so rude and unpleasant