Fakebook (24 page)

I walked the handful of steps to my bathroom. I leaned forward onto the sink, and with both hands supporting me, I began to steady. Tomorrow was Friday. I could sleep on Friday, I thought. No, I had to work. And then I had jury duty. And then I had a date.

Saturday…no, not Saturday. It was the Toy Fair, and I had to work.

Sunday…maybe on Sunday I could rest. Maybe. Just make it until Sunday. Get it together until then. I had work to do. I had to keep it together. After all, Fake Dave didn't.

The next morning, I savored the walk to my half day of work. At jury duty, everyone was still shaken from the Tin Man case. Crazy Juror 8 told us she drove up to Morningside Heights—in what I assume was a wildly illegal act—to check out the scene of the crime. I like to imagine she used a big sleuthing magnifying glass.

I got home just in time to shower before meeting Dhara for our Valentine's Day date. I made her a “Lower East Side fixed-menu date” to play off the prolific restaurant deals. She had three venue choices for each course—dinner, dessert, and drinks. She noticed the grammatical errors before the effort, and the night had all the passion you'd expect from a woman who was going through the motions and a guy afraid of doing something wrong. I got an early night and a homemade card.

Saturday I worked at the Toy Fair, acting as security for toy collectors—the only crowd I could ever intimidate. It was the scene I had hoped for, full of the fun of toys celebrating themselves and the weirdness of a playpen filled only with adults. On my break, I shot out a few Fakebook posts on other people's walls—enjoying the heckler-like relationship the Facebook format allowed for.

Sunday, Dhara was back in town and I saw her at her request. Her text was short and devoid of whimsy. I arrived at the bar first. When she arrived, she offered me only her cheek. I asked her what she wanted to drink, while pulling out my wallet. She placed her card down on the bar.

I remember sliding a glass of Jameson in small circles around the booth's oak tabletop while I waited for my brother to arrive.

It's funny. In moments like those I'm more interested in holding the whiskey than I am in drinking it…the same way I've never felt an impulse to smoke but occasionally would like to gesture with a lit cigarette.

I guess I really am an artist—always concerned about the aesthetics. Like the way I couldn't help but think about how much this bar I'd stumbled into looked like a bar. There's nothing distinct about it; everything's made of wood, and there is some Irish name above the door. It feels like a bar “template,” content to be unassuming and let the patrons fill it with character.

The places I usually go downtown, or in Brooklyn and Jersey City, tend to skew a bit younger and a bit more…novel. So many of those bars, like the people in them, seem to need some sort of statement—a twist to capture the interest of a purpose-hungry crowd. It's a bar meant to feel like a '70s basement or a speakeasy, or the bar that's all German imports… They all have to have something to validate their existence. As if being a place to gather wasn't enough.

I took a sip of the whiskey.

My brother, Mark, finally came in. Normally I didn't notice, but he had a specific way of entering. He stepped in quickly and sort of leaned forward as he looked around the room with an economy of movement. He was…focused.

I liked talking to my brother. He never patronized me with reassuring lies.

“Baby brother,” he patronized. “What's the matter?”

“I got dumped.”

“Is this the Princeton girl? You were barely going out with her.”

“Yeah, I know. It was just another false start. It's frustrating. I can pull it together long enough to get my shot with a girl like that, but…”

“A girl like that? What does that mean?” Mark chimed in, taking offense at putting anyone on a pedestal.

I showed him a photo on my phone.

“Empirically speaking, that's the best you'll ever do.”

“Unquestionably. There's something strange about dating a girl like that. She's so…unfamiliar with certain things. Uninhibited.”

“Yeah?” Mark said with a slight, filthy interest.

“Haha, that's not what I meant.”

“What do you mean, then?”

“Like, she lives in a world where people want her to like them…It's a stacked deck. Her sense of what's…normal…is somehow wider. I dug that, actually.

“But listen,” I continued, “I'm under no delusions. I don't think she's one of the great loves of my life. I don't think this was ‘meant to be' or any bullshit like that. What she is, however, is very bright. Very perceptive.”

I paused, a bit of a lump rising in my throat. “I asked her to be honest, and she was. Her reasons were insightful…accurate.” I paused again. “She handled everything respectfully…maturely…I can't say I'm even angry or hurt exactly. I just feel…”

I was embarrassed by how hard I was taking this.

“When Dhara was breaking up with me, her focus felt entirely on letting me down easy…like she didn't want to hurt me because I did nothing to deserve being hurt. I mean, that's what really stung. That…more than anything in particular that she said. It's that dismissive quality to it all.”

“Right,” Mark said. “Like the rejection was total.”

I was startled by Mark's succinct description. He was right. That's exactly what I felt like. I was rejected not only as a boyfriend, but also as an equal.

Looking down, I slid my glass again in a small circular pattern. “Yeah…” I said. “I'm the ‘nice guy' to her…and that's just not who I always viewed myself as…but I think that may be true.”

“What does that even mean?” Mark asked.

“Hard to describe…like, I always aspired to be a ‘good man,' but that's different, too. I think it's assertiveness. A nice guy is passive, accommodating. He's nice because it avoids conflict—he has no point of view. It's not admirable or anything you respect…it's just well-packaged weakness.”

I paused for a moment, attempting to collect my thoughts. I tried to make it clear how I had fallen into the pattern of making half-stances, and how that had eaten away at who I was…allowed doubt to grow inside me. I needed to make clear how this all connected to the girl who didn't think enough of me and the career I compromised in and the audience whose respect I earned only by being someone else. How it was all part of this general frustration and anxiety of my stalled-out life.

“Like, I'm bright. I'm capable. I could have done what someone like you has done…have that kind of success.”

“You're clearly too distraught to think clearly,” Mark said.

“The point is, I had this creative itch. I decided I'd reject a safe road for the chance to be creative…but then I flinched. And now I live check to check in service of other people's ideas. It's…so…subordinate.

“But I always thought that was just what I had to do to make a living,” I continued. “I don't expect people to pay me to do what I say, you know? But when I'm treated that way by a woman I thought a lot of…”

“I see,” Mark said.

“So when that happens, it makes me think…maybe I am that ‘nice guy.' What have I done that says otherwise? Maybe I am that guy who just does what I'm told. It's like I set out to be Superman, and I've arrived at Clark Kent.”

“When most people look at Superman,” Mark said, “all they see is Clark Kent.” With an impatient tone, he continued, “What are you looking for exactly? Validation?”

“I don't know…maybe…”

“This girl didn't see it in you. So what? You weren't in love with her, so she's not important, an extra, a background character of your life who had a scene and now it's probably over. Professionally, if you think you're not able to go anywhere, then change your environment. Go somewhere else.”

“Yeah, I just think I need…”

“Stop it. You always come up with another half-step instead of the big one you should just shut up and take.”

“Yeah…” I said.

“It's a good thing to put a certain amount of pressure—to evaluate,” he said in a softer tone. “But Dave, you're crippling yourself. Stop thinking about all these things you can't change or who you wish you were…Just focus on what you can do and let go of what you can't.

“Go home,” he said. “Get some rest.”

So I did.

The first things I saw when I got home were my two Valentine's Day cards from recent breakups in both my lives. I picked up Dhara's, which read:
I
(Italian flag) Agnostic Girls.
It was a
Jersey
Shore
reference—a show I only pretended to like. It struck me how funny it was—one card from a girl I'd made up and the other to a guy I pretended to be.

I put down Dhara's card. For just a moment, I felt unburdened. It was still Sunday. Now I could rest.

I should have been stepping into bed. It was getting late, and the next morning a car was coming at the crack of dawn to take me to a 7:00 a.m. print run. But instead I was stepping into a running shower, fully clothed.

This must have looked completely ridiculous—but having already gone through shaving off a bow-tie sized square of chest hair, that didn't even register. Everything is relative, I suppose.

What an idiot! I'd forgotten the camera. I stepped out of the shower and ran to my living room, leaving a puddle with each step. When I grabbed my camera from the table, the errant strap grazed a dried-out blossom of my Thanksgiving flowers from my fake girlfriend, causing it to fall from the stem.

I could relate to the state of those tulips. After the past three weeks of being pulled apart by the competing demands of my professional, personal, civic, and fictional lives, I shouldn't have had the energy to stage a ridiculous, one-man photo shoot. Especially when its purpose was to further the cause of my recent troubles. But here I was, camera in hand, staging a Fakebook rainstorm.

The thing is, I did burn out. But there's something cleansing about the process. I felt lighter, somehow clearer, than I had in months. Years, even. I simply didn't have the energy to go through the paces of indecision. Jamie McAllister had quit her job because of my online hoax. Some stranger had complete leverage over me with his knowledge of it, and I'd spent the last few months pretending to have a girlfriend. My reputation was fucked. I'd come to accept that there simply was no graceful landing for this thing, so I might as well enjoy the crash. So I let those fears go and felt a lot lighter for it.

And with the new “who gives a damn” attitude and the home stretch in sight, I decided to reinvest in my original absurdist vision. It was what I wanted to do. It was why I started Fakebook. I was done letting my fears dictate the life I scripted.

It felt good. Because when you stripped everything away, there was something about Fakebook I still enjoyed, and something about it that felt worthwhile. And I for damned sure wasn't going to let it whimper away after all I'd sacrificed. So every night I was at it, building a library of assets that I'd use in this crazy experiment's final chapter.

It wasn't just Fakebook I'd reinvested in. I was now about the business of changing things in my real life, too. The conversation with my brother hadn't exactly made everything clear, but it encouraged me to have momentum. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, but I knew I needed to stop thinking and start doing. As he put it, I needed to stop inventing half-steps. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for, other than options. So I spent much of my night scouring the job boards, finding out what those options could be.

And my personal life…I don't know how to describe it. It almost felt like I was getting over a hangover.

But all that didn't matter. I was moving forward. I was done being overwhelmed. I felt capable again. It might have looked ridiculous, me standing in a running shower fully clothed, camera in my outstretched hand—but it felt like I was taking control.

A box of Entenmann's powdered sugar doughnuts held my gaze, but I settled for pouring myself a tall black coffee instead. I needed the coffee more.

I might have been full of energy last night, but I was exhausted this morning. That's not to say I wasn't excited. My superhero promotional shipper—complete with my original illustration—was minutes away from going on press. All the late nights I'd spent on this were now in the past. The finished product was in my immediate future. I was filled with anticipation and now caffeine.

I sat down at the round faux wood table and took another sip of the strong coffee. The waiting area looked like anywhere else, with the standard grayish-blue carpeting below drop-down ceilings and fluorescent lights. The only difference was that the walls were decorated with a half-dozen large-format posters of cable dramas—the kind that get installed at bus stops and train stations. They must have been printed there, probably on the same press as my job.

Before I had a chance to open the paper, Fred, my print rep, came in and told me they were ready. I followed him off the carpet and onto the concrete floor of the warehouse. We walked down the hallway of finished flat sheets and fresh cover stock on our way to the press, where the technicians greeted us with hearty, ink-stained handshakes.

This wasn't a Kinko's where flyers got printed on a poorly maintained photocopier—it was a big operation with gigantic, million-dollar printing presses. In their glory, they had churned out hundreds of thousands of prints a day. I had a lot of reverence for these machines—the pinnacle of the four-hundred-year-old industry of spreading ideas. We were ready to begin.

CHOOM CHOOM CHOOM
.

Forty-inch sheets bolted through the massive machine as each page was pressed by four unique metal plates with amazing speed and perfect registration—allowing four single-color images to mix on page and form an exact reproduction of my artwork. In a handful of seconds, the press recreated a few dozen times what took me a hundred hours.

Fred pulled off a sheet and, in a sweeping motion, placed a copy above the control panel. But it wasn't a copy of the work, was it? It was the work.

This was abundantly clear as I leaned over the sheet and realized just how
big
this thing was. I had this amazing feeling of actually discovering my own art.

“This is a cool one,” Fred said.

“Yeah…I'm proud of it.”

We went over it methodically, making a few marks with a Sharpie as we went. The side of my hand became slightly discolored from resting on the not-quite-dry press sheet.

“I think there's a little dust on one of the plates,” I said. “And maybe we want to tone down the cyan on the left-hand side. It's probably my fault. I used blue in the shadows, but it's coming across as purple.”

“You heard the man,” Fred said to the technician, who adjusted a couple of sliders on what looked like a soundboard.

I was there to inspect the job and make any last-minute adjustments to make sure we got the highest-quality product for our client. I was there for business—but it was a pleasure. It was the moment when work comes to life—when screen becomes paper and pixels become ink. It was the moment when something imagined becomes real.

I went back to the waiting area with a rolled-up flat sheet of the approved art and again took a seat at the faux wooden table with my half-full cup of coffee, feeling like I no longer needed it. There was plenty of time to get comfortable. I had an hour before the first run concluded and the second side of the piece was ready for print, so I finally leaned back with the newspaper.

Ink from the paper mixed on my fingertips with the red ink already there. I found what I was looking for and began reading a recap of last night's Devils game.

As screens replace paper, the press check is becoming a dying ritual. Even in the five years I've been out of school, things have changed dramatically. More and more of my work is digital, and these big printed pieces have become rarer and rarer. For all the merits of designing for the Web, it's anticlimactic to have finished work living in the same environment you used to create it. There's no tangible sense of satisfaction in actually making an object, in having a project become unquestionably done.

But nostalgia can be a vice. You can only move forward. I put the newspaper down and picked up my smartphone—NHL.com should have video from last night's game.

The boys in the print shop hand cut and assembled a mock-up for me as the last step of the press check before the printed pieces went to another factory to be mechanically cut and assembled. It was an odd companion—a twenty-inch cube of high-gloss superhero. But I was really proud of it.

I rested my arm across it. I looked out the window as the black sedan drove onto the turnpike on-ramp en route to Manhattan via the Holland Tunnel—along the infamous stretch of highway that has all the sights and smells that live up to New Jersey's reputation.

When we drove by the Meadowlands, I couldn't help but rubberneck at the worst wreck the turnpike had ever seen—Xanadu. This proposed mega-mall was the latest attempt to turn Exit 16W into something other than a swamp—an endeavor that four major sports teams and a world-class racetrack couldn't pull off.

And the more you read, the more confounding this multi-billion-dollar debacle became. A gigantic Ferris wheel overlooking the New Jersey Turnpike, an Egyptian-themed movie theater—complete with a rooftop lounge and helipad—and an indoor ski slope that almost seemed like a show of modesty.

But besides creating the world's most readable Wikipedia page, the project was an epic disaster. Construction was frozen, and corporate lawyers were hard at work trying to find escape clauses for the retailers. I felt bad for the people who were literally making it—the architects and designers. I've never been in a project of that scale, but I recognized the pitfalls of an open-air movie-theater lounge downwind from a Hess oil refinery.

Too many people had too much input. People—especially in a group—can become unable to view their work with unbiased eyes. The desire to do something spectacular overwhelms common sense, and mass delusion results in big, wrong decisions. And the handful of people who protest get drowned out by a committee that doesn't want to face the implications of the whole endeavor being a bad idea.

I looked again at my superhero shipper. I had a part in another billion-dollar project, didn't I? This project was part of a gigantic machine—a machine that churned out every piece of licensed product you can imagine, from breakfast cereals to school supplies to men's cologne. If you're paying attention, you'll notice that the image of this summer's superhero appearing in a Burger King Value Meal is the same image you see on a children's umbrella.

This is because before a licensor begins making that licensed T-shirt or pencil topper or laptop case, they are given guidelines as part of the licensing agreement. Any deviation from these guidelines gives the company the right to deny production. As a result, the country gets carpeted in millions of repeating superheroes. All in the same half-dozen heroic, generic poses—united in the mission to make sure the franchise has a singular image.

It's quality control. It's serious business. It's branding. And I deviated from that. Big time.

I didn't tweak an image or rotate a logo ninety degrees. I created a unique image of the title character. I literally redrew the face of the franchise. This is not something you can do. It's not allowed. I worked completely outside this gated garden on a project that will be the first glimpse of a major product line.

But it got approved.

I'd pushed my original image through the studio, the publisher, and the toy company—three distinct bureaucratic approval processes—and all it would have taken was one of them to chime in and send this the way of Xanadu.

But here it was, in my hands as I got out of the car and walked toward my apartment building. It was a ballsy move to commit to doing an original illustration, but judging by the reaction I was getting walking down the street, the gamble had paid off.

Every dude on Delancey was checking me out, ignoring their girlfriends as I walked by—all trying to gather the courage to say hello. So this is what a hot chick feels like, I thought to myself.

A giant box of toys…some things you just don't outgrow.

I put it up, on top of the dresser in my bedroom, and checked the time. I didn't have time to sit around, but I took one more glimpse. It was the accomplishment of my professional life.

Juror 10 was thumbing through her textbook,
Marketing
and
Social
Media
, as we waited for the next case to begin. There were only a few days left in jury duty. Without Dhara in my head, I finally allowed myself to notice just how pretty a girl Juror 10 was.

Truth is, if I hadn't just dated Dhara, I probably would have found Juror 10 really intimidating. And the textbook—she'd gone back to school, which is a gutsy thing to do. You could sort of get that sense of independence from her. Maybe I'd ask her out. I mean, we did seem to have a similar sense of justice.

“Do you have to tweet your final paper?” I asked.

She smiled and brushed hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I have to keep it under 140 characters or else my grade is a Fail Whale.”

“How's Fakebook going?” she asked. “Still convincing people you are in a cult?”

“Ha! Yeah, I'm wrapping that up,” I said as I opened Facebook on my phone.

“Very ominous,” she said with a smirk.

Our moment was interrupted when the bailiff announced the next case. “Tin Man.”

It was a continued case, and everyone knew which one. We all steeled ourselves for a return visit from Amadi.