Infinite Jest

by David Foster Wallace

he, Gately, had perked up considerably at 30 days clean when he found he could raise his big mitt in Beginner Meetings and say publicly just how much he hates this limp AA drivel about gratitude and humility and miracles and how he hates it and thinks it’s horseshit and hates the AAs and how they all seem like limp smug moronic self-satisfied shit-eating pricks with their lobotomized smiles and goopy sentiment and how he wishes them all violent technicolor harm in the worst way, new Gately sitting there spraying vitriol, wet-lipped and red-eared, trying to get kicked out, purposely trying to outrage the AAs into giving him the boot so he could quick-march back to Ennet House and tell crippled Pat Montesian and his counselor Gene M. how he’d been given the boot at AA, how they’d pleaded for honest sharing of innermost feelings and OK he’d honestly shared his deepest feelings on the matter of them and the grinning hypocrites had shaken their fists and told him to screw… and but so in the meetings the poison would leap and spurt from him, and how but he found out all that these veteran White Flaggers would do as a Group when he like vocally wished them harm was nod furiously in empathetic Identification and shout with maddening cheer ‘Keep Coming!’ and one or two Flaggers with medium amounts of sober time would come up to him after the meeting and say how it was so good to hear him share and holy mackerel could they ever Identify with the deeply honest feelings he’d shared an...

Just about soaking my hanky here, I'm so choked up.