V-2nd - Chap 8 / I have really never read this book this closely before

[Michael Bailey]

Is the hardon central to V.?  Although people tend to notate GR more
heavily in that direction, still, for the Benny sections, the hardon
in the park is pretty important.

(I don't want to harp on this too much - after all, I don't want to be
guilty of phallogocentrism!  I often want to see that as
"phallologocentrism" just because it's a little more generous with the
syllables.  Another intriguing possibility is phthalologocentrism, or
talking around phthalates...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalic_acid )

(it's kind of like in that Steve Martin movie, The Jerk, where Navin's
mother tells him his penis is his "special purpose" and when he meets
the Bernadette Peters character, whose mother wants her to get
involved with a man who has a special purpose, he's delighted - "Your
mother's going to love me!  I've got one of those!)

If he's "finagled himself into falling in love" with Rachel, as we
learned back in the Catskills, it's with a lack of conviction that is
unique to Benny.  Yet she writes him letters and he even replies!
Perhaps he is a victim of a feeling of unworthiness for her, but in
any case after the party on the Scaffold he sends her Paola instead of
himself going to her.

This is - c'mon - pretty strange behavior, even for him.  He figures
himself as a charity case for Rachel, and sends her Paola to fulfill
that need?

So: is his foray into the Puerto Rican community as a result of his
feelings of inadequacy to satisfy Rachel a bit of colonialism writ
small?

Does Mott Street turn into Vheissu at the "Playboy Mansion"?

not my call...we're in Chapter 8, dadgum it, and the question before
us (is where's her clitoris...) ummm, the question before us is -

is it important that his hardon doesn't actually PEAK at Space-Time
Employment Agency (leading him back to Rachel), but instead SUBSIDES
to that listing?

would that be a decadence of some kind?  or a return to the furrow
after being cammed out by some uncontrollable urge, which is only
covered over by his feelings of inadequacy ---

or is he in fact "going forth for the millionth time to create anew in
the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race" and the
smithy itself, hammer and tongs and anvil even, is suffering metal
fatigue (as mentioned on Broadway in the 60s) - after all, a million
goes at creating a conscience would involve a lot of torsions and so
forth - and in his weariness is unaware that he's treading the
colonialist path

and attains a kind of innocence, an unwillingness to selfishly pursue
his own goals based on a fellow-feeling, a communion of young lust
that he can (out of weariness, hopelessness, unthinkingness even)
allow to subside and point him back to Rachel?

who of course has a life of her own, no matter how kindly and willing
she's depicted as being, and has imperatives that will eventually NOT
actually draw him in like a tractor beam but send him off on yet
another adventure with Paola and Stencil?