6/3/09

p 33-39

This section is divided into three parts

p 33-37 YDAU [2009] April 1
place Boston
narrated in third person

synopsis:

The first part centers around an unnamed medical attache, half Arab but born in and a resident of Canada. He is a consultant to the personal physician of Prince Q----, Saudi Minister of Home Entertainment who is in Boston to cut a 'mammoth' deal with Interlace TelEntertainment. His main duties are to assist in draining the sores of the face and sinus that result from the fact that the Prince eats almost nothing but Toblerone Chocolate. Ordinarily he arrives at home to find that his wife has prepared a piping hot dinner and an evening's worth of entertainment cartridges. She then wordlessly attends to him until he's asleep. But Wednesdays his wife has her weekly tennis league, and this particular Wednesday the attache gets home early and is at a loss as to how to procure the entertainment cartridges he needs. He tries watching the regularly programmed TV, but finds nothing better than an aerobics show which threatens to elicit impure thoughts. He goes in search of cartridges and finds among the days mail a padded cartridge-mailer, with 'happy anniversary' [it's not his anniversary] and a smiley face in place of a return address, postmarked Phoenix, but not with the official stamp of Prince Q----'s legation in Phoenix. Inside is a standard cartridge with no label aside from another smiley face. He heats his dinner in the microwave and begins viewing the cartridge at 1927h.

p 37-38
Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar [2004] month?
place Brighton [MA?]
narrated in first person [Clenette]

synopsis:

This part is narrated in a heavy inner city dialect by Clenette who tells a very repetitive complicated web of stories which I will try to summarize:

Wardine's mother has beaten her with a coat hanger causing lacerations on her back. Her mother blamed her for 'tempting' her boyfriend Roy Tony 'into sin,' when in reality Roy Tony had molested her (or at least tried to). Much of this told to the narrator by Reginald who is in love with Wardine, but Wardine's mother has threatened to kill her if she has sex with Reginald before she is 16. Roy tony is out on parole for killing Columbus Epps over a lover's spat involving the narrator's mother. Roy Tony's brother is Wardine's father, but he's gone. Wardine begs Reginald and Clenette [the narrator] not to tell their mothers. Wardine also calls Clenette her half sister. Clenette decides not to tell her mother, because her mother is frightened by Roy Tony. However she suspects that Reginald did tell his mother. Reginald says that he is going to stand up to Roy Tony and tell him to leave Wardine alone. Clenette thinks that Roy Tony will then kill Reginald and leave. She thinks that Wardine's mother will beat her to death with the hanger, and she will then be the only one who knows. And she's pregnant.

p 38-39

presumably Year of the Trial Size Dove Bar [2004] ?
place Winchester [MA?]
narrated in third person

synopsis:

This part concerns Bruce Green who in the 8th grade is hopelessly in love with Mildred Bonk, who is a fatally pretty, nubile and wraithlike flaxen-haired beauty. She reaches puberty well ahead of Bruce Green, and drives him crazy with lust. Then in 10th grade she transforms into a pot-smoking, beer drinking vixen with teased up hair who skips school and hangs around guys with low slung cars. So Bruce becomes one of those guys in order to win her. Win her he does, and by the time they would have graduated they are married with a baby living in a trailer in Allston with another couple as well as Tommy Doocey who is a harelipped pot dealer. Mildred gets high and watches serial cartridges, while Bruce works at Leisure Time Ice. Their life is one big party.



notes
April 1 does fall on a Wednesday in 2009, confirming that YDAU is almost certainly 2009. The Near East medical attache in the first part obviously suggests some relation to the Moms, and it's perhaps significant that this episode also takes place on April 1, albeit six years after the 'professional conversationalist' episode [p 27-31]. The anonymous cartridge also portends importance, and it's perhaps important to note that it comes from Phoenix.

If Clenette and Wardine are half-sisters then Roy Tony's brother must be father to both.

The harelipped pot dealer Tommy Doocey, is the same person from whom Erdeddy's source is planning to get the pot [p 17-27]

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