Jesus' Son

“Emergency” explores the themes of Substance Use Disorder and Violence as Inevitability through the story of Georgie and F**khead’s friendship at the hospital. Both characters are portrayed as engaging in self-deception—F**khead considers himself more competent than Georgie, who is visibly intoxicated while working, but accidentally kills the baby rabbits, to Georgie’s consternation; Georgie, on the other hand, is portrayed as being dangerous to the point that the doctor notices, but he characterizes himself as a lifesaver to a hitchhiker. These self-deceptions represent the ways that Georgie and F**khead wish to view themselves—as responsible people who can take care of others. This presents a contradiction between who they are and who they wish themselves to be, suggesting an awareness of their shortcomings that they then project onto each other. These self-deceptions are reflected in other ways, such as through other characters; the man with the knife in his eye implies that he deserved the attack for peeping on the next-door neighbor. The violence that is enacted on these characters—both external violence, as with the stabbed man, and internal violence, as with both Georgie and F**khead’s cycle of substance use disorder—is shown, then, as being a natural consequence of that self-deception, showing again the motif of hopelessness in the narrative.

Just as much as “Emergency” is a story about Georgie’s addictions, it’s also a story about F**khead’s self-perceptions and competency. Early on, F**khead is portrayed as more reliable that Georgie, who removes a knife from a patient’s eye despite the direct instructions by the doctor. However, when F**khead accidentally squashes the rabbits, Georgie asks him, “Does everything you touch turn to shit? Does this happen to you every time?” (68). This moment references the origin of F**khead’s nickname, and it’s telling that it comes in the context of feeling incompetent. F**khead’s fears about himself are validated by the people around him, hence his cold happiness when McInnes dies in “Dundun,” as McInnes gave him the nickname. This highlights one of the most significant pieces of characterization of F**khead that throughout the book: He very rarely succeeds at what he sets out to do. Even though this trait could be caused by his substance use disorder, he seems to view it as an unavoidable aspect of his own character, and, in “Emergency,” it leads to violence as inevitability when he crushes the baby rabbits. Just as F**khead frequently implies that drugs and alcohol would be nearly impossible for him to quit, he also seems to see his own failures as impossible to rectify. The substance use disorder, then, could be a function of an underlying hopelessness for F**khead, an acceptance that things will never change for the better. Further, the violence enacted within this story works as an inevitable consequence of the character’s decisions, but the decisions themselves are unavoidable for F**khead and Georgie.