HOW MANY BLACK ABORTIONS DID YOU HAVE
HOW MANY BLACK ABORTIONS DID YOU HAVE
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
At present—and this is an important clarification, a kind of epistemological fulcrum on which much of the misunderstanding seems to hinge—I am, despite what certain speculative glances, widened pupils, or giddy intonations from the peanut gallery might suggest,
not under the influence of nitrous oxide, colloquially known as laughing gas (though that designation is itself a kind of etymological sleight-of-hand, implying a cheerful harmlessness, a dentist’s benign tool, when in fact it’s a dissociative anesthetic with a long and storied history of recreational abuse, Victorian parlors, Grateful Dead shows, and dubious tank-dragging subcultures who refer to the stuff as “hippie crack”—none of which applies to me right now, at this moment, I swear). I am not experiencing that familiar helium-light mental effervescence, the sound-distorting echo-chamber giddiness, the cartoonish delay between cause and effect that renders one’s own thoughts less like linear cognition and more like watching a VHS tape with the tracking screwed up. I am not grinning involuntarily, I am not caught in the recursive loop of thinking about how funny it is that I’m thinking about how funny it is, etc. If I appear light-headed or overly amused or prone to digression (which, yes, fine, I admit, can happen without chemical encouragement), it is not due to any exogenous nitrous-fueled joy. My bloodstream, for the record, remains a dry county as far as N₂O is concerned. Whatever levity, loquacity, or lilt you might be perceiving is, regrettably or admirably depending on your view of the natural human condition, entirely endogenous.