Generation A (13 page)

HARJ

Oh, to live the life of a Craig—a life of the gods! A heady blender drink of beer, casual American style and questionable morality.

The Craigs and the female Craigs took me to their bosom and made me one of their tribe. The girls, they were in love with me in a way I’d never imagined possible. My intimate knowledge of both apparel and the cleverness of modern retail integration were ambrosia to these lovely, ambitious things, especially young Andrea. We stood in one of the hundreds of tastefully appointed rooms at the A&F headquarters as she introduced me to her co-workers.

“Guys, meet Apu here. Isn’t he just the cutest thing!” She turned to me. “You don’t look like a terrorist to me at all, Apu. Wait—” Her brows furrowed. “You’re
not
in a sleeper cell, are you?”

“No. I do not approve of violence.”

“Good. Let’s kit you out in some pre-distressed waffle-knit Henley shirts. Apu, we’re going to take you from Third World to world class. What’s your favourite colour?”

“Shoji.”

“Shoji?” A dreamy look came into Andrea’s eyes.

“Yes. Sort of an off-white, with hints of the exotic Far East.”

I began a medley of banter from the Trincomalee call centre. “Would you like that Italian merino wool cable-knit sweater chunky? For only twenty dollars more, the same sweater is available in cashmere. Perhaps a Prince of Wales vest in Duncan tartan with genuine antler buttons? Buy one now and you’ll receive a complimentary three-pack of earth-toned socks made of free-range Chilean fleece.”

Someone at the back of the room said, “Apu, tell us about your bee sting.”

So I told them about the bee sting, and of my flight to America and my month below ground in the neutrality chamber—and then of my voyage to the fabulous Abercrom bie & Fitch corporate campus.

When I was done, Craig Number One came up to me and said, “Apu, my man,
you
are staying at our place from now on. We’ve got an extra room, and you can stay as long as you want.”

New Albany is a magical place filled with massive estate homes built within mighty neighbourhoods with imperial-sounding names like Lambton Park, Clivdon, Fenway and Lansdowne.

“Andrea, the names of these neighbourhoods—they sound so exotic, as if they were high-end alpaca coats selling between the price points of $1,500 and $2,000.”

“Apu, you are
so
adorable. I could eat you up right here and now.”

I thought,
My, this young lady travels certainly quickly, from zero to frisky, and I’ve never even met her parents.

Under a big, warm sun, we drove to an area called Market Square. It boasted a Starbucks, the Chocolate Octopus candy company and the Rusty Bucket Corner Tavern. “That’s my hangout,” said Andrea. “We have a bunch of famous people who live here in New Albany, too.”

“Who might they be?”

“Former race driver and racing team owner Bobby Rahal, as well as Leslie Wexner, the founder of Limited Brands. I’m hungry.”

“Oh my.”

“Cool, huh?”

“You are very lucky to have such prosperity and access to so much gasoline.”

“We kind of run the planet here. It comes with the turf. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

We went into a restaurant and Andrea ordered no-fat, no-carb nachos for herself, while I ordered a vegetarian platter. She bought me a beer that was both brewed and bottled in Mexico. I thanked her but kept my mouth shut—why on earth would someone choose a beverage made in Mexico? When it arrived, it sat on the table and I stared at it as though it were from the Dark Ages. People want America, not Mexico. Well, maybe at least the
idea
of America . . . America before the year 2000.

Andrea seemed to know everybody in the restaurant and was talking with people from all sides. Me? I was drunk on the knowledge that a girl as beautiful as Andrea chose to sit with me in a beautiful restaurant. Then my picture appeared on the TV above the bar area. No one there could have imagined that the gentleman in the photo was me, as the gentleman in that photo was standing in Trincomalee and sweating heavily while wearing a wife-beater shirt covered in duck’s blood after having helped a neighbour press the bird for a delicious religious feast. Even I did not believe I was me at that point. And I didn’t need a beer to get drunk. Life had done that for me. I had (to use a term favoured by the Craigs) “peaked.”

My afternoon with Andrea was sadly cut short by her appointments for a bikini wax and a chakra alignment. She dropped me off at the Craigs’ place—a miniature White House with columns and a lawn of uniform green, free of any weedy blemishes. I bent down to touch it with my hands—it was soft, like cold fur.

At the front door stood Craig Number One, wearing madras Bermuda shorts (Chesapeake blue with Cherokee red and Sacramento yellow bands) and an XXL acid-washed T-shirt bearing the name of a fictitious football team.
Apu! My man! Good timing! The party’s just beginning! Let me show you your new room!

Do Craigs always put exclamation marks at the end of everything they say? In any event, just at that moment, one of those large American mobile homes—a Winnebago—drove up the crescent-shaped driveway and parked by the front door, and a dozen more Craigs emerged. The party had begun. I was not, however, so hypnotized by the Craigs that I did not recognize that moment as one of temptation. I knew I could either accept or reject the house on the hill and the fun within—life does not throw a person many moments where the fork in the road is so clearly evident. For once, I decided I was going to take the less scrupulous path.

The low road I had chosen was what the Craigs called a “kegger,” drinking copious amounts of Czech lager and placing ever more numbers of exclamation marks at the end of everything they shouted at me and at each other.

“Long live Aberzombie & Feltch!! Woohoo!”

“Apu, you’re the
best
!!”

“The best at what?”

“Man, you’ve just gotta love this guy!!”

Another Craig brought in what he called a doobie and lit it. “Monster ganja, Apu!!”

I was horrified:
drugs
. “I am sorry, Craig, but I cannot partake of your doobie—I am a guest in your country and do not wish to be deported. Also, I come from a land of strict drug laws and I have a lifelong fear of becoming bum candy within the Sri Lankan penal system. I’m sure your prisons cannot be much better.”

“More for us, then, dude!!”

I looked around for Andrea, who’d promised to come. I very much wished to discuss with her my theories on how to keep the inventories of B- and C-level stores fully charged with as many sizes and styles as possible without engendering undue returns of off-size garments.

That, and I thought she might wish to be carnal with me.

Increasingly large numbers of increasingly drunk he-Craigs and she-Craigs came up to me and made buzzing noises and pretended to sting me. Almost everyone was recording me on some sort of device, and a shadow crept over me, a shadow called . . .
vlog
.

I asked my new friends if the party was being vlogged in real time, and their response told me that a life without vlogging was unthinkable. The Craigs also showed me the cellphone images of me while I was speaking with Leslie from the
New York Times
—as well as the dead bee from that bizarre sting that happened to me in some other life. I had reincarnated while still inside my own body.

My old office: the clutter and its sad cardboard cubicle partitions, the guava bin at the back now a beige clot of pixels on a fuzzy screen. I recalled its smells: incense and the scorch of rubber military plane tires hitting the runway’s tarmac; Hemesh’s dismal Adidas cologne and the peanut butter and rice cakes I kept in my drawer as lunchtime rewards for when I upsold over ten units of anything priced more than $19.99.

This was when Andrea arrived. I noticed that she was having a heated discussion with a dozen or so people just outside the door who were definitely
not
Craigs. I went over to view these people more closely, and when they saw me, they screamed, then ran towards me in a typhoon of need and desperation.

Andrea was furious. “Bloody hell, who posted tonight’s party online?”

Everybody had.

“Get these fucking cud-chewing hicks off of Apu.” Andrea orchestrated the removal of non-Craigs from my body. We looked and saw dozens more non-Craigs walking up the driveway like movie zombies. One non-Craig drove an ancient Volvo onto the majestic weedless lawn, branding tire skid marks on its green fur. I climbed up the baronial main staircase. Its carpeting was so deep and lush that I felt I was walking the expensive all-wool gold-card-customers-only version of the front lawn.

I sat on my bed and looked at the chest of drawers that was in my room. I wondered what I could possibly put into it, aside from my stylish new wardrobe. In Sri Lanka, a dog in a doghouse owned more than I did. Could I ever be a Craig? No. A person must be born into Craigdom, with its multiple ski holidays, complex orthodontia, proper nutrition and casual, healthy view of recreational sex.

My mouth twisted unpleasantly—the taste of Czech lager had turned sour. I went to brush my teeth. I opened the mirrored door of my bathroom cupboard to find two shelves heavily stocked with Solon.

Andrea’s voice came from behind me. “Don’t be shocked, Apu.”

I had never actually seen Solon before, though I knew it was that year’s new wonder drug. The evil Hemesh once discussed it, calling it a drug for spinsters and convicts. “My old boss said Solon was for people who did not want to think of the future.”

Andrea smiled. “Sort of. You live in a constant present. It makes life more intense. You’re not needy. You don’t stress about things. You can take people or leave them. Solon turns you from a dog into a cat.”

“But to not think of the future? All of you smart and rich young people—whose future could be more charming and golden?”

“The future? Not for me. Not for us. I’m happy to think about next year’s product lines, but I don’t want to think about next year’s web headlines and enter a doom spiral.” She came close to me, and I could feel the heat from her body radiating through her blouse. She smelled like apricots. “Wouldn’t want
that
, would we?”

“
All
of you take Solon?”

“Abso
lute
ly.”

I hesitate to say this, but at that point she dragged me over to the bed and straddled me. I was feeling . . .
heightened
. This was the first time I had ever—well, you can understand. I had always imagined it would be with the Vietnamese girl who works at the naan stall beside the Vespa repairman in the local farmers’ market.

“Andrea, this is so . . .”

“It’s the first time for you?”

“I am perhaps not a man of the world . . .”

“Oh, be quiet.”

We had started to kiss—
bliss
—when the door swung open. Craig Number One: “Christ, it’s
Dawn of the Dead
out there, Apu. Those people want your blood. We have to get you out of here.”

“Where will I—?”

“Out the window! Come on, Apu,
schnell!
”

ZACK

The apple was delicious. It snapped cleanly to my bite, was crisp without being hard, and was oh so juicy. I sat in the truck’s cab, savouring its tart, pear-like notes. It was a Braeburn variety that had been hand-pollinated in a boutique apple ranch in Southern Oregon. Braeburns had once been an important commercial apple variety. They had originated in New Zealand in the 1950s, and by the last decades of the twentieth century had been planted in all the major apple-growing regions of the world. Braeburns once accounted for forty percent of the apple production of New Zealand. Even in Washington State, the largest apple-producing area in the U.S., where Red Delicious and Golden Delicious had always held sway, Braeburns had been in the top five varieties grown, prior to the pollination crisis.

The parallels between the dildo-ization of corn and the crunchification of apples are hard to miss. Braeburns grew quickly, produced heavily and stored well. Best of all, they shipped without bruising. At a time when consumers were starting to look for something more exotic in their weekly shopping, Braeburn was the right apple at the right time. Unfortunately, when the bees vanished, they were totally fucked.

I finished my Braeburn and stashed the core in the glove compartment and then squandered my generous gasoline credits driving from nowhere to nowhere, watching the listless small clouds in the sky. They reminded me of my appendix floating in a rubbing alcohol–filled mayonnaise jar when I was ten.

I saw a dozen bee-themed mailboxes and fields of grass with out flowers, no hawkweed or wild yarrow or blue vervain; my mission became to collect a bouquet for my hard-working harem of raging she-beasts, even though this made me feel hypocritical, as, since I talked with Sam, I’d just stopped being into them. I drove and drove, but all I could find were dandelions, efficient self-pollinators that basically reproduce through floral masturbation. Even flowers have their scuzzy side.

I came home empty-handed, but that was moot, as those girls who remained looked at me with the enthusiasm teenagers feel for summer school. They were clearing out. Rachel had already packed most of her things onto a truck bed and was just loading her rationed gas canister into the truck’s strongbox when I got home.

“Rachel?”

“Save it for your Aussie friend, Sam. We’re outta here.”

“She’s Kiwi, not Aussie. Where are you guys going?”

“To find someone who thinks of us as special. That’s all
any
girl wants, Zack.”

“But all of you
are
special to me—”

Rachel shushed me. “No need to phone it in, Zack.”

End of an era.