IVIV (1) The Straightworld Persuasion

[John Carvill]

Like many a Pynchon male, Doc's got it bad (and that ain't good) for a
woman he's no longer with. Shades of Zoyd pining through the hotel
room wall for Frenesi. This just after dropping the beer tin on the
surfer, which has got him in so much trouble, recently, round 'ese
'ere parts:

"Back inside his room, first thing Zoyd looked for was a connecting
door to Frenesi, but no such luck. He lay on the bed, flipped on the
Tube, lit a joint, took out his cock, and imagined her beyond the
drywall barriers that could as well have been the years to come,
seeing her at least as clearly as he would later, again and again, on
the astral night flights he would make to be near and haunt her as
best he knew how, seeing her now taking off her bikini, top and
bottom, then unhooking her earrings, an act, because of how it
revealed her nape, that had never failed to stir Zoyd's heart. She
headed for the shower, feeling soiled, no doubt, by her encounter with
him. Apprentice ghostly peeper, he went right along, watching the
bathing ritual he'd once grown to take for granted, fool, now able
only to fine-tune the way the steam came and went around her body,
being limited, given his own incorporeal state, to the lightest of
physical forms...."