Read Online The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell - Free Book Online

firmitude leads you right up to the breasts and your speculations thereupon, you notice how cheerleaders always seem to be refreshingly modest in that department, not amped out on silicone (I refer to the college girls, the professional sideline tramps are another matter),and you are on to the painful-looking perpetual smile that cheerleaders must maintain, and she is bouncing or otherwise celebrating the joyous routine, looking finally rather dumb, the whole thing rather dumb, not really her fault, or their fault, though you do fault her male consorts for being cheerleaders and not on the football team, what the fuck is the matter with them, and so there she is all hot and trim and bouncy and pert and full of vim vigor cheer and goodwill for your benefit, and you are supposed to want her a little and more than a little want your team to do well but you are nagged by this fact: you do not want her at all, and that not wanting has abrogated your wanting the team to do what she ostensibly wants you to want the team to do, and there you sit, a lost fan and a lost man? Do you see now what I mean when I say “gassated cheerleaders”? Can the feeling of not properly wanting a cheerleader be expanded, not unlike a gas as it were, to express your entire purchase in the world, your total stance on desire and life?
    Would you like to have an executive maid who beyond a clean house would assure that you have crisp lettuce at all times and nothing gone bad and no bills not paid? Has it ever occurred to you that people couldhave—and once this occurs to you, you see that they should have, and you wonder how it is that they do not have—a batting average not for baseball but for life? Wouldn’t it be handy to have a life average affixed to a person, so that a homeless person might be hitting .171, and Lance Armstrong might be hitting .338, Michelangelo maybe hit .401? If you had a life average, what do you think it would be?
    Could you entertain the idea that what undoes couples over time is that they neglect to apply polish to the grain of their wood? Is a buzzard a higher-altitude operator than an eagle? Are you familiar with Chester Nimitz? Have you ever watched serious volleyball? Do you think the phrase “in conjunction with Uranus” is responsible for the accenting of Uranus being shifted to the first syllable? Were you to be in a fatal crash, would you prefer whether it was an automobile or plane crash? Would you wear a seersucker suit or dress, or do you now? Did you get Hegel? When you have captured grasshoppers—and if you have never captured grasshoppers, just take a break while I pursue this, it is important—did you notice when you sometimes might have inadvertently squeezed them a dark fluid forms a ball or bubble at their mouths, usually purpleor roan? And was it your experience that a grasshopper so squeezed when released would retract this fluid to whence it came and be apparently no worse for the wear? Can you recall the reasons for which you were catching grasshoppers? Have you seen a bullfight? If you have attended a bullfight, can you say whether on balance you took pleasure in it or not? When you have seen bullfights—and again if you have not seen them, just relax here a bit, finish up what you were doing when the grasshopper stuff began if you took a break then—when the blood is coursing down the side of the bull in those pulsing sheets from the small wounds of the banderillas, and the big one from the lance, in those blinding silver waves when the sun reflects hard off the blood, and in those somber soaked oxblood-and-black hues when the sun is not direct on the bull’s flank, did you think this horrible or beautiful?
    If everybody is back now, may I ask if your predilection to order chocolate or vanilla over time has changed or have you remained more or less constant? Would you rather be in the hospital or in jail? Why do Americans use the article before hospital and not before jail? Would you rather