Free The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell

nothing under them? If you could attend an execution, would you? If you could slate a class or sect of people because of its behavior alone for execution, who would it be?
     
    ARE YOU GOING TO be happier in the future? Do you understand what is meant by cavitation? Are there dogs in your dreams? Do you have politochnaceous impulses? Do you have a polemical bone in your body? Can you tell which of the two preceding questions is fraudulent? Will you be exercising today? Can you recall the last time you saw, if you ever have seen, a woman in a girdle? Wouldn’t you feel pretty smart if you were the one who worked out the equation for gravity? If a skirt were said to be hemmed with “tertiary hemlock balls,” would you have a visual image of it? Do you know what mahjong is? Are you familiar with the apes that are very much like chimpanzees buteither less or more violent, and are you sure there are not two such apes similar to chimpanzees, and if you are uncertain about any of this, does this particular uncertainty bother you more than other uncertainties you might possess?
    Have you ever seen sparks issue from a wall socket? If you saw a large model train set and the engine issued smoke, would you say “That’s cool” or just be silent about it? How many pairs of eyeglasses have you ruined in your life by sitting or rolling or lying on them? Have you ever seen a cork tree? If you were a creature who lives underground, would you prefer to be a creature who lives in a tree or would you hold your ground as it were? What do you make of the word tinkle ?
    Does any part of your character remind you of that of Fred Rogers, the children’s TV-show host? Do you sometimes wish to sit quiet and alone and without a thing to do but sit there, or does this strike you as insupportably idle? Have you ever tried to pole-vault? What sort of height do you think you could achieve pole-vaulting? Can you walk on stilts? If you were offered the option of trying to walk around on those thirty-foot stilts you see in the circus in lieu of tryingto pole-vault, which one would you prefer to try? What circumstances would be required before you would attempt to garrote someone with a piano wire? Have you ever eaten a candy flower of the sort used to decorate commercial cakes? Would you like to have a Lamborghini? Was your father a bastard outright, a medium bastard, or a light bastard? Was your mother a saint? Are you annoyed, or amused, by the playfulness of the preceding questions? Are you surprised at the absence of the whole-earth niche in the condom market—a biodegradable condom, say, or one made of organic materials, if not of something stone-ground then at least of something like Gore-Tex?
    Is it legally possible nowadays to be burned up on a funeral pyre? Do you ever squeeze your own orange juice? Have you been in the presence of an accidental discharge of a firearm? Do you prefer diarrhea to constipation, or vice versa, if you have to suffer either affliction? How many generations back can you name your relatives? Do you remember seeing lion tamers wielding a whip and a chair—doesn’t a chair seem an odd thing to have in a cage full of giant cats to begin with, let alone to use as a prop or standard instrument of defense? Have you ever heard it said of someone whodrinks a lot but never gets drunk that he has a hollow leg? Would you like, right now, some pancakes with real maple syrup on them? Would you like to send a love letter to anyone? Have you ever mounted insects on a board with pins through their thoraxes? What aspect or adventure of your life strikes you now as having been the biggest waste of your time or energy or resources?
    Would you rather receive as a gift a boomerang or a dead-bolt lock set? Have you ever in the first few minutes naked with a new sexual partner felt or thought you felt a vestigial tail? If you have felt a vestigial tail on a new sexual partner, or thought you felt a vestigial tail, was this an agreeable or