Word: selfing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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OBLIVION. Not diffusion of the ego into a tinted bardo, as on acid; not greasy expansion of the superego into a slimy wet bladder, as with booze. It is the smothering of the self, the extinguishing of all that you have been, of everything that you are, of anything you could hope to be. Heroin, my heroine, the White Lady of Blackness, the ghost of electricity, no more problems with you, Sweet Marie, no more problems, no, no, no more...
...that big category of things known as "speed," and is part of an even greater gathering of "ups." However, the term "speed" is usually applied to those very large does of amphetamines that hippies and other tramps take for kicks. Taking drugs for kicks is the kind of sensory self-indulgence that we of the protestant ethic scorn. These self same people who become "speed freaks" also take LSD, not for the clear light and revelation, but for the voltage that burns out their synapses. These people are not to be worried about, though, because most of them...
People who take things to excess is something we see all around us, and something that we, in most cases, have accepted. Just because most of our population is obese because they are helplessly self-indulgent when given easy access to mashed potatoes, this doesn't mean mashed potatoes should be made illegal. And any heart specialist knows obesity kills...
...defense mechanisms that help them survive in a world where "failure is the only thing with which [they] feel at home." For Donald, the only escape is to go to the library and read book after book. Michael, worried about getting old, stays alive with the help of self-deprecating wisecracks ("Well, one thing you can say about masturbation. . . you certainly don't have to look your best...
Michael, perhaps the most "anxious queer' of them all, uses the game as a device to make all the others share in the self-hatred he feels at being a homosexual. While he hopes that "not all faggots bump themselves off at the end of the story," he cannot escape his conviction that misery is all he will ever know ("Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gray corpse"). He places his final hopes on the possibility that even seemingly straight Alan is in reality a "closet queer," unhappy like the rest of them...