Microserfs (23 page)

We LOVE our new office and we no longer have to worry about rubbing our fingers on surfaces and finding accumulations of Ethan's dead scalp particles. Dad has a Dustbuster mounted on the wall. We also have SPACE.

Nobody scored last night. Susan got Phil's phone number and Bug got the PF Magic guy's number, even though he's not sure if he's straight or not. The 1990s!

Susan was a bit sheepish around me and Karla, because she knows Phil is a loser, and she knows that we know.

Tech moment: we have our own Internet domain and are subservient to nobody. Our house is wired directly to the Net with a mail-order 486 using Linux on a 14.4 modem with a SLIP connection to the Little Garden (an Internet service provider down here). I am now [email protected].

"@" could become the "Me" or "Mac" of the next millennium.

Surprise: Mom told me that Dad's been looking for work elsewhere - and that Michael knows about it. "He needs to be among his own kind, dear."

Actually, today was just a big waste of a day, work-wise. I didn't get anything done because I had too many interruptions. I'd start to do something, then I'd be distracted by something else, forget what I was doing in the first place, and then get so worried that I wasn't getting anything done, that it wrecked even further my ability to get anything done. Sometimes too much communication is too much communication. I should rent a Nature video and relax, but instead, tonight we rented The Poseidon Adventure and watched the ship turning upside down scene over and over about fifty times and then we rented Earthquake and watched LA dismantle itself about fifty times, frame-by-frame.

Mom was in the breakfast nook typing a letter to her sister on an IBM Selectric and we got into an argument about whether anybody made them anymore. Maybe in Malaysia.

Dusty is now working with us! Michael hired her under the condition that she devote herself to the company and confine her body experimentation to off-hours - as well as to forgo aerobic instruction moonlighting altogether until shipping. "And no smart drugs!" said Michael. "Not that it's my business, but smart drugs turn people into Tasmanian Devils, not Einsteins."

"Touché, Michelangelo," said Dusty. "That's French for meow." She has a hard time calling anybody by their real name.

Dusty was trying on a new marigold yellow posing bikini she's hoping to wear in this Fall's Iron Rose IV Competition in San Diego. Dusty herself was the color of a roasted turkey.

Karla and Susan were once again certainly gaping. But in the end they broke down, approaching her, asking probing questions, touching her body like it was the monolith in 2001. They've - we've - never seen such a hyper-articulated body before. It reminds me of the first time I ever saw an SGI rendering at full blast.

"Toddy" has bailed out of his geek house near the Shoreline off-ramp and has moved in with Dusty up in Redwood City. Eyebrows shot up at the news of such speedy cohabitation, and then Todd confessed he and Dusty had been seeing each other for MONTHS. How could he keep a secret like that in an office as small as ours?

Look and Feel escaped this afternoon from their newly reconfigured Habitrail and chewed up the caboose on Michael's Lego train. So they're on probation now.

All of us went to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont in San Francisco to celebrate Dusty's first day as our hacker, working with Michael. It was this incredible blowout, like in college. Dusty cut in front of all these people who were lined up to get in and then blithely waved us over to the table she'd procured. Cool! She's a bulldozer.

The Tonga Room is filled with rich dentists from Dusseldorf watching this Gilligan 's Island fake Tiki raft float across an old swimming pool while fake thunder and rain roar, and a live band plays disco medleys. We ordered these ridiculous umbrella and fruit-wedge drinks with high centers of gravity, so every time somebody got up to dance (Oyez Como Va!), all the drinks fell over and the waitresses just wanted to kill us. We had to switch tables three times because of the fruit pulp buildup, and the ochre tablecloths looked like swamps of barf.

Two things: Dusty said, "I put myself through school working as a waitress. The guys loved me. I brought them food and beer - and then I left them. Pigs."

Karla and Susan said, "Amen," much to my horror. They were all wearing those little drink umbrellas in their hair.

Michael noted that the Tonga Room uses a form of ice that is neither cubic nor slush-based: "Someone had better notify 7-Eleven immediately. It's a niche!"

Dusty gave Susan lessons in dating architecture: "Tech women hold all the cards, and they know it. Tech men outnumber tech women by about three to one, so the women can choose and discard mates at will. And let's face it, it's cool for a guy to be dating a tech chick."

I inwardly agreed with this. "Tech chicks" all seem so much wiser and mature than the guys (the Karla Attraction Factor) that I think they must get fed up. I overheard Susan and Karla complaining about tech guys at a geek party last month, and I started to feel a little insecure. Up at Microsoft, geeks looked exactly like what they were - nerds, misfits, Dungeons & Dragons players out on day pass. Down here in the Valley, these tech guys are good-looking - they can pass in the "normal" world without revealing their math team past. Whenever Susan and Karla started gushing over some cute guy, I started saying, "He's probably in MARKETING." It made me feel better.

Susan, nonetheless, wanted to know why she was having such a dating problem. Dusty said, "I think your problem is that you think everyone else is a freak except you, but everybody's a freak - you included - and once you learn that, the World of Dating is yours."

I thought Susan would go ballistic, but instead she agreed.

Dad was out today - job hunting. Anywhere else on earth except here in the Valley he wouldn't have a chance, but here he might find something.

Bug is freaked out because Magic Eye stereograms, the black light posters of the 1990s, don't work with him. He's worried it's color-blindness linked, and he called the Garage Museum down in San Jose to see if it means something bad. He remembers those genetics charts they had there. "I'm stereo-gramatically blind!"

Ethan and I went out for a drink again. He was really swigging down the drinks, and so I asked him if it was smart to drink while taking antidepressants. He said, "Technically no, it's a pretty fuck-witted thing to do, but drinking allows me to take an identity holiday."

I asked him what this meant. He said that since the new isomers of anti-depressants are rewiring his brain, and since he's becoming a new person because of it, every day he forgets more and more what the old person was who used to be.

"On the stuff I'm taking, booze never really makes you smashed," he said, "but it does allow me to remember the sensation of what I used to be and feel like. Just briefly. Life wasn't all bad back then. I'd never go back to it full time, but I do get nostalgic for my old personality. I imagine in a parallel-forked road universe there's a sad, fucked-up Ethan, achieving nothing, feeling cramped, and going nowhere. I don't know. Once you've experienced the turbo-charged version of yourself, there's no going backward."

He had another Wallbanger - "You know, pal - maybe I should de-wire myself. De-wiring would reconnect me to the world of natural time - sunsets and rainbows and crashing waves and Smurfs." He took a final sip. "Nahhhh..."

Susan caught a cold, "From having my panties systematically saturated with fruit pulp at the Tonga Room."

Tomorrow we move into our house-sitting house.

Before bed I told Karla about Ethan's identity holiday - of drinking to recapture the feeling of what your real personality used to feel like.

"It's all about identity," she said.

She said, "We look at a flock of birds and we think one bird is the same as any other bird - a bird unit. But a bird looks at thousands of people, at a Giants game up at Candlestick Park, say, and all they see is 'people units.' We're all as identical to them as they are to us. So what makes you different from me? Him from you? Them from her? What makes any one person any different from any other? Where does your individuality end and your species-hood begin? As always, it's a big question on my mind. You have to remember that most of us who've moved to Silicon Valley, we don't have the traditional identity-donating structures like other places in the world have: religion, politics, cohesive family structure, roots, a sense of history or other prescribed belief systems that take the onus off individuals having to figure out who they are. You're on your own here. It's a big task, but just look at the flood of ideas that emerges from the plastic!"

I stared at her, and I imagine she was assuming I was digesting - compiling - what she'd just told me, but instead, all I could think of, looking into her eyes, was that there was this entity - Karla - who was different from all others I knew because just under the surface of her skin lay the essence of herself, the person who thinks and dreams these things she tells to me and only me. I felt like a lucky loser and I kissed her on the nose. So that's me for the day.

Oh . . . I found a big stack of old Sunset magazines for sale in a secondhand shop. I bought them for Mom. She's a Sunset freak. Mom picked them up like they were feathers. She's strong now. She's all for Dusty developing her body. She and Dusty have been comparing notes. It's such a relief when your friends date cool people.

Abe:

Today I called 1-800 numbers and ragged on companies about therir products. I complsined to the Matell hotline (1-880-524-TOYS) that the new HotWheels aren't as cool the ones I had when I wazs growing up. The only decent one they have is a Lexzus SC400. I've bought 3 of them (the toys), but be this as it may, Mattel is NOT exonerated, where are the Bubble cars, may I ask? So this is my life, Dan. C'est la Vie.

Mattel karma! Susan came storming into the office late in the afternoon, having just visited a Toys-R-Us store in pursuit of a present for her niece. Susan was furious about Mattel products, too - in particular about Barbie dolls. As I was the only person in the office, I received the entirety of her postfeminist critique.

"The aisle - it was pink - I mean, the entire aisle was this shocking, moist, Las Vegas labia pink color, and it was a big aisle, Dan. Tens of thousands of Barbies gazing vapidly at me - this wall of mall hair - the aisle haunted with the ghostly sound of purged vomit yet to come - of unsustainable desire. Their necks thicker than their waists; sparkles; an incitement to eating disorders -"

Susan was just going on and on, so I used that tactic you use on little kids who won't stop crying - I simply changed the subject. I told her how weird it is to think that simply by walking down the wrong aisle at Toys-R-Us at the wrong moment in your child's development, you can forever screw up their future: "They have a whole aisle devoted to McDonald's restaurant products - french-fry making machines, burger makers, shake makers . . . Say you overlook the computer aisle and walk down the McDonald's aisle instead - one tiny error and your kid's got a drive-thru headset surgically embedded in his cranium for the next seven decades.

"Toy stores are like Brave New World. Mom! Pop! Choose your aisle correctly. That's all I can say."

I later e-mailed this Huxleyan thought to Abe who replied:

*1959*

100th McDonald's: Fon du Lac, Wisconsin

*1960*

200th McDonald's: KnoHuille, Tennessee

*1964*

Filet-o-Fish born

*1966*

First indoor-seating McDonald's: Huntsville, Alabama

*1970*

First McDonald's breakfast: Waikiki, Hawaii

*1973*

Quarter Pounder born

*1975*

Egg McMuffin born

*1975* Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun

*1983*

McNuggets born

At the office we've decided that instead of Friday being jeans day, we'd have Boxer Shorts Day instead. It's way comfier, way sexier, and it's funny watching Michael admonish the male staff members, "Er . . . gentlemen: no units displayed if at all possible."

Dad came in to the office from job hunting around sundown. We made him a Cup O'Noodles and played some crank phone call tapes to cheer him up. Dusty tried to get him to wear a pair of striped boxers but Dad politely refused. Later on I went up to the house and helped him remove an old basketball hoop above the garage that's been there since the dawn of bell-bottoms. I fell and cut myself on some of Mom's rosebushes, and I know it's corny, but I got to thinking, it's no surprise roses are the Official Flower of Love.

My hard drive accidentally trashed today's file, so I include a snippet of the trash here as a curiosity piece. Language!

All 11I 11 It the office we" live decided that instead of Friday Fll11113636111136being jeans day, we" 11111111113636373733d have Boxoi Shorts Day instead. It" 11113838393940404141424243434444s way comfici, way sexier, lllland it"lllls funny watching Michael admonish the male stall members, ""1111451111114545464647474811114848Please guys, no units displayed if at all possible.""! 111494950505l&f&v&w&x&z&A&e&i&a&A&n&O' '4'O'S'['_'o 'Q'U**"*t*l*}+ + + L + h + v, ,?,'-9-a-}-A-6-0-©-*-0-»-A-0-fl-,,-AOU. .?.G.O.S.T.b.l.~.N.6.e.e.i.i.u.ii.B.0/ / /S/b/c/d/e/A/6oOO¥Of~lT'lJnLrt^^^ " " I " I A A I " „ " „ " „ " " U " U " " " U " " U " U " \ ] c U A V A I vUAcH]UA]c$\]cPR5151525253535454555556561111111111Dusty tried to get him to wear a pair of striped boxers but Dad politely refused.

Today was the day Karla and I finally moved into our (temporarily) own place . . . the Apple friend of Anatole who's going to Tasmania for eight months to study batik (she got the layoff package . . . it's like backward Microsoft) and so we're house-sitting for her. Like so many techie houses, it's big, sterile, stuffed with consumer electronics, and there's nothing on the walls and there are about six empty rooms lit by dozens of skylights. At least it's not one of these big Mediterranean 1980s stucco houses Susan calls "Drug Lord" houses - ostentatious stucco monuments with a Porsche 928-S parked out front.