"Infinite Jest: Reviews, Articles,
and Miscellany"
NOTHING HAPPENED
By David Foster Wallace
Open City, Number Five, 1997
Here is a weird one for you. It was a couple of years ago, and I was 19,
and getting ready to move out of my folks' house, and get out on my own,
and one day as I was getting ready, I suddenly get this memory of my father
waggling his dick in my face one time when I was a little kid. The memory
comes up out of nowhere, but it is so detailed and solid-seeming, I know
it is totally true. I suddenly know it really happened and was not a dream,
even though it had the same kind of bizarre weirdness to it that dreams
have. Here is the sudden memory. I was around eight or nine, and I was down
in the rec room by myself, after school, watching TV. My father came down
and came into the rec room, and was standing in front of me, like between
me and the TV, not saying anything, and I didn't say anything. And, without
saying anything, he took his dick out and started kind of waggling it in
my face. I remember nobody else was home. I think it was winter, because
I remember that it was cold down in the rec room, and I had Mom's TV afghan
wrapped around me. Part of the total weirdness of the incident of my father
waggling his dick at me down there was that, the whole time, he did not
say anything, (I would have remembered it if he said anything), and there
was nothing in the memory about what his face was doing, like what his facial
expression looked like. I do not remember if he even looked at me. All I
remember was the dick. The dick like claimed all of my attention. He was
just sort of waggling it in my face, without saying anything or making any
type of comment, shaking it kind of like you do in the can, when you are
shaking off, but, also, there was something threatening and a little bully-like
about the way he did it, I remember, too, like the dick was a fist he was
putting in my face and daring me to say anything, and I remember I was wrapped
up tight in the afghan, and could not get up or move out of the way of the
dick, and all I can remember doing was sort of like moving my head all over
the place, trying to get it out of my face, (the dick). It was one of those
totally bizarre incidents that is so weird it seems like it is not happening
even while it is happening to you. The only time I had even glimpsed my
father's dick before was in locker rooms. I remember my head kind of moving
around, all over the place, on my neck, and the dick kind of following me
all over the place, and having totally weird thoughts going through my head
while he did it, like, "I am moving my head just like a snake,"
etc. He did not have a boner. I remember the dick was a little bit darker
than the rest of him, and big, with a big ugly vein down one side of it.
The little hole-thing at the end looked slitty and pissed off, and it opened
and closed a little as my father waggled the dick, keeping the dick threateningly
in my face no matter where I moved my head around to. That is the memory.
After I had it, (the memory), I went around my folks' house in a haze, in
like a cloud, totally freaked out, not telling anybody about it, and not
asking anybody anything. That was the only time my father ever did anything
like that. This was when I was packing, and going around to stores getting
boxes to move with. Sometimes, I walked around my folks' house in shock,
and feeling totally weird. I kept thinking about the sudden memory. I went
into my folks' room, and down to the rec room. The rec room had a new entertainment
system instead of the old TV, but my mom's TV afghan was still there, spread
over the back of the couch when not in use. It was still the same afghan
as in the memory. I kept trying to think about why my father would do something
like that, and what he could have been thinking of, like what it could have
meant, and trying to remember if there had been any kind of look or expression,
during it, on his face.
Now it gets even weirder, because I finally, the day my father took a half
day off and we went down and rented a van for me to pack and move out with,
I finally, in the van, on the way home from the rental place, brought it
up, and asked him about the memory. I asked him about it straight out. It
is not like there is a graceful way to gradually lead up to something like
that. My father had put the rental of the van on his card, and he was the
one driving the van home. I remember that the radio in the van did not work.
In the van, out of (from his perspective) nowhere, I suddenly tell my father
that I recently remembered the day that he came down and waggled his dick
in my face when I was a little kid, and I sort of briefly described what
I remembered, and asked him, "What the fuck was up with _that_?"
When he simply kept driving the van, and did not say or do anything to respond,
I persisted, and brought the incident up again, and maybe he did not hear
what I said the first time. And then what my father does -- we are in the
van, on a brief straightaway on the route home to my folks' house, so I
can get ready to move out on my own -- he, without moving his hands on the
wheel or moving one muscle except his neck, turns his head to look at me,
and gives me this look. It is not a pissed off look, nor a confused one
like he believes he did not quite hear. And it is not like he says, "What
the hell is the matter with you," or, "Get the fuck outta here,"
or any of the usual things he says when you can tell that he is pissed off.
He does not say anything, however, this look he gives me says it all, like
he can not believe he just heard this shit come out of my mouth, like he
is in total disbelief and total disgust, like not only did he never in his
life waggle his dick at me for no reason when I was a little kid but just
the fact that I could even fucking _imagine_ that he ever waggled his dick
at me, and then like _believe_ it, and then come into his presence in the
rented van and like _accuse_ him. Etc., etc. The look he reacted and gave
me in the van while he drove, after I brought up the memory and asked him
about it straight out -- this is what sent me totally over the edge where
my father was concerned. The look he turned and slowly gave me said he was
embarrassed for me and embarrassed for himself for being related to me.
Imagine if you were at a large, fancy, coat-and-tie dinner or track banquet
with your father, and if you all of a sudden got up on the banquet table
and bent down and took a shit on the table, in front of everybody at the
dinner -- this would be the kind of look that your father would be giving
you as you did it. Roughly, it was then, in the van, that I felt like I
could have killed him. It is weird -- the memory in itself did not, at the
time, get me pissed off, but only freaked out, like in a shocked daze. But,
in the van that day, the way my father did not even say anything, but merely
drove home to their house in silence, with both hands on the wheel, and
that look on his face about me asking about it -- now I was totally pissed
off. I always thought that that thing you hear about seeing "red"
if you get mad enough was just a figure of speech, but it is real. After
I packed all my shit in the van, I moved away, and did not get in contact
with my folks for over a year. Not a word. My apartment, in the same town,
was two miles at most away, but I did not even tell them my phone number.
I pretended they did not exist. I was so disgusted and pissed off. My Mom
had no clue why I was not in contact, but I sure was not going to mention
a word to her about any of it, and I knew for fucking-A sure that my father
was not going to say anything to her about it. Everything I saw stayed slightly
red for months, after I moved out and broke off contact, or at least a pink
tinge. I did not think of the memory of my father waggling his dick at me
as a little kid very often, but hardly a day went by that I did not remember
that look in the van he gave me when I brought it up again. I wanted to
kill him. For months, I thought about going home when nobody was there and
kicking his ass. My sisters had no clue why I was not in contact with my
folks, and said I must have gone crazy, and was breaking my Mom's heart,
and when I called them they gave me shit about breaking off contact without
explanation constantly, but I was so pissed off, I knew I was going to my
grave never saying another fucking word about it. It was not that I was
chicken to say anything about it, but I was so fucking over the edge about
it, it felt like, if I ever mentioned it again, and got any sort of look
from somebody, something terrible would happen. Almost every day, I imagined
that, as I went home and was kicking his ass, my father would keep asking
me why I was doing it and what it meant, but I would not say anything, nor
would my face have any look on it as I beat the shit out of him.
Then, as time passed, I, little by little, got over the whole thing. I still
knew that the memory of my father coming down into the rec room and waggling
his dick at me was totally real, but, little by little, I realized that,
just because I remembered the incident, that did not mean that my _father_
necessarily did. I started to see that, maybe, he had forgotten the whole
incident. It was possible that the whole incident was so weird and unexplained
that my father psychologically blocked it out of his memory, and that when
I, out of (from his point of view) nowhere, brought it up to him in the
van, he did not remember ever doing something as bizarre and unexplained
as coming down and threateningly waggling his dick at a little kid, and
thought I had lost my fucking mind, and gave me a look that said he was
totally disgusted and embarrassed. It is not like I totally _believed_ that
my father had no memory of it -- it was more like I, little by little, was
admitting that it was _possible_ that he blocked it out. To me, it seemed,
little by little, like the moral of the memory of any incident that totally
weird is, "anything is possible." After the year, I got to this
position in my attitude where I figured that, if my father was willing to
forget about the whole thing of me bringing up the memory of the incident
in the van, and to never bring it up, then I was willing to forget the whole
thing. I knew that I, for fucking-A _damn_ sure, would never bring any of
it up again. When I arrived at this attitude about the whole thing, it was
around early July, right before the 4th of July, which is also my little
sister's birthday, and so, out of (to them) nowhere, I call my folks' house
and ask if I can come along for my sister's birthday and meet them at this
one special restaurant that they traditionally take my sister to on her
birthday, because she loves it so much. This restaurant, which is in our
town's downtown, is Italian, expensive, and has mostly dark decor, and has
menus in 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's tradition was that this was my special restaurant,
where I always got taken for my birthday -- I somewhere, as a kid, got the
idea that it was run by the Mob, in which, as a kid, I had a total fascination,
and always badgered my folks until they took me on at least my birthday
-- until, little by little, as I aged, 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 tablecloths, and all the waiters
look like Mob enforcers, and on the restaurant's tables are always wine
bottles with candles stuck in the hole, which have melted, and various colors
of wax run and harden up all over the sides of the bottle in lines and varied
patterns. As a little kid, I remember having a weird fascination with the
wine bottles with all the dried wax running all over them, and of having
to be asked, by my father, over and over not to keep picking off the wax.
When I arrived at the restaurant in a coat and tie, they were all already
there, at a table. My Mom looked totally enthusiastic and pleased just to
see me, and I could tell that she was willing to forget the whole year of
me not contacting them, she was just so pleased to feel like a real 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 okay."
My father said that they had ordered for me already, being as I was a little
late getting there.
I sat down, and smilingly asked what they had 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 guys
forget I hate chicken?"
We all looked at each other for a second, even my little 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 hands back jokingly, and said,
"Get the fuck outta here!" Then my Mom leaned her head back and
put her hand up against her upper chest, like she does when she is afraid
she is 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.
****** END