Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (C. AD 2009) in a Large City (8 page)

So people, particularly people who did not have many “dollars” on hand, could borrow
automatically, through these cards, in exchange for paying the total amount due at
the end of the month.

It was not long—not even ten years—after that that there came the credit card. With
the credit card, the holder was not compelled to pay the money due at the end of the
month. Instead, in exchange for allowing the holder to retain the money he or she
had spent, the issuer of the card—a bank—would simply charge the card user “interest.”

“Interest” was such a funny word to be chosen to mean this. “Interest” was an old,
old word, first meaning “to concern,” later meaning “to draw the attention of” and
also “cognizance for one’s own earnings”—and in this case it meant essentially that,
if there was an outstanding “balance,” then the issuer of the credit card would increase
the amount that was owed.

Interest was usually expressed as a percentage; it could range from almost nothing
to as high as in the hundreds. What kind of rate one was given was, at least in part,
based on how well—but not too well—one behaved with other credit cards. For instance,
never paying money owed was a very bad thing. Never borrowing money at all was a less
bad thing, but still not a good thing, in the eyes of financial institutions. Always
paying some was considered the best thing of all.

In a sense, interest was insurance for the bank. There would always be people who
would not pay, after all, so the interest earned from others would offset those losses.

But also there was money to be made there. For instance, some cards had fees just
for users to be allowed to have them. Some cards started with a very low “interest”
rate that then jumped dramatically. There were also “late fees,” for any tardiness
in payment.

Eventually it became necessary for the government to intervene on behalf of credit
card users. Just then, laws were enacted that said credit card companies could not,
for instance, dramatically raise the interest rates on cards without allowing people
to continue paying off what they owed at the prior rate. The government had to mandate
that monthly due dates for payments could not fall on a day on which mail was not
delivered. The government had to declare that cardholders could, when they had multiple
cards with the same issuer, first pay off the account with the highest interest; previously
the credit card companies had declared that any payments would be applied to the lowest-interest
card first.

Just six companies were responsible for issuing four out of every five credit cards.
At around this time, all the credit cards in the country had about 950 billion dollars
in debt piled upon them, spread between about 150 million people. In the year previous,
all kinds of fees—late fees, over-the-“limit” fees, annual fees—were thought to total
20 billion dollars.

AT A BOOK
party a week after Edward and John met—that is, a party to celebrate a book—a friend
of Amy’s came up to John and said, hey, wow, Edward really, really likes you. And
John was elated.

Later John would find out that Edward wrote that stupid thing on Twitter about being
sad only because it was raining outside. Edward had actually never been happier in
his life.

IN THE END,
the elected members of the City Council, after hearing from the public, were compelled
to decide whether the Mayor could run for the third time, and the vote went 29 in
favor to 22 opposed. This was, apparently, legal, even if it seemed like it shouldn’t
be. “Our City is facing the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression,” the head
of the City Council said. The Great Depression was the last great contagion, eighty
years previous. Her implication was that continuity in leadership would help prevent
things getting worse. She planned on being the mayor herself after the current Mayor’s
third term.

Most everyone felt dimly outraged—some more than dimly. In the council chambers, after
the vote, people were actually screaming from the balconies. But then what? Not enough
people were so outraged as to go and do—well, what? March on the Mayor’s house? People
had to go to work, after all. Also there were so many good things on their TVs.

EDWARD WAS BEING
cagey, but finally John convinced Edward to get together for drinks, at the Nowhere
Bar, a red-tinted basement bar, dark and campy and not far from Edward’s place, or,
that is to say, Edward and Edward’s boyfriend’s place. It was more than a week but
less than two weeks after they had met. They were having a lot of fun! John was so
happy to see him. They sat next to each other in the dark, and the glow of their faces
was all there was.

I may be moving back down to the Capital soon, Edward said, to my parents’ house.
John grabbed his arm. You can’t do that, you can’t leave town, he said. And Edward
said, you know we can’t do this, right?

And John said, why not? And Edward said, because I’m fucked up. And I love my boyfriend.

And yet. Edward was really effusive too. He said that he really liked John. But what
were they supposed to do, exactly? Edward asked. He said he’d seen a number of friends
leave their boyfriends for another person, and look what happened. It never worked.

So they went their own ways.

After this night, John kept harassing Edward online, flirting, chatting . . . but
then he was faced with this chill, and he did back off. He didn’t want to be a complication,
exactly, because actually he did like Edward. He didn’t want him in trouble or in
torment.

John and Kevin and a bunch of others went to see Edward at a bar right before he left
to go live with his parents for a while, to send him off. John intentionally didn’t
look at Edward the whole night.

And at the end of that night, Kevin said to John, it is so hilarious how all you do
is stare at Edward and all Edward does is stare at you.

I wasn’t even looking at him! John said. And Kevin said, please, all you do is stare
at each other longingly.

So John came up to Edward right before he left. Well, I’ll be down your way pretty
soon myself for a weekend, he said. I’ll come see you maybe. Would you like that?

THE CITY’S OWNERS
were its engine, a kind of smaller city within the City, and they flatly served its
purposes, to amass organizations that made and also spent capital. To do so they needed
a few segments of population. So it served to have all these various layers of people:
the people to work in the offices, the people to clean the offices, the people to
buy and sell the offices, the people to feed the people within the offices, and the
people to feed the people who owned the offices. Everyone else was a kind of gray
noise while the credit card numbers bounced from tower to tower, transaction to transaction.
Some people’s entire lives were nothing but the reverberations of this noise! “Leisure
time” was spent consuming, handing over hours of one’s day to someone’s corporate
entity. This was a fair trade. It must be said that people wanted it that way or they
wouldn’t have been converting their dollars into products.

And also this was the attraction of the City: the proximity of the plates of classes
grinding together, the corner office visible from the bullpen. When someone was young
in the City, he couldn’t know what he would be, and that was an alluring mystery.
Some days he might think he was bound for riches too. Some hours he might think he
was slipping into a permanent disaster.

And everything else that was free, the people you spoke with and the people you slept
with, those were strategies of filling a need you could not address in a system of
capital. Which is to say, the good news was that no matter how hard the City tried,
or the owners in the City tried, it could not make absolutely everything about profit
and need.

People’s lives would always seep out toward freedom, trashy or hilarious or messy
or sexy or whatever—toward things that lie beyond profit and loss and order and economy.

ONE NIGHT CHAD
said, I’ll be downtown, let’s hang out. And John said, great, I’ll be with Fred. So
they met up at the Magician, the worst place, a terrible plain little bar where John
and his coworkers went after work and drank too much, where tonight Diego’s friends
were hanging out. When John got there, one of Chad’s friends, Dan, was storming out
of the bar. And Chad was running after him, yelling, wait, wait, Dan!

And John was like, whoa, hello. And: Slow down, can you explain what’s happening?
And Chad said, it’s all my fault, but apparently one of Diego’s friends wanted a really
low-key evening, where it was just her and her friends hanging out, and so I offered
Dan a free table nearby so you guys could sit there.

So John said, come sit with us, Dan, who cares. He didn’t even want to sit with Diego
and his college friends. Fred joined them at their side table, away from everyone,
and they spent most of the time talking about how they thought Diego was bizarrely
mean to them. John said so first, and Dan said, oh, you too? Hmm! Every time they’d
get into it, Chad would come by and they’d quickly start talking about sports. Diego
had what John thought was a crazy new haircut that was shaved on the sides and long
on top, and John went by to say, hey, nice haircut.

The night wound down. Diego’s friends were walking out. And Diego stopped by their
table and said, John, what’s going on with your hair?

What do you mean? John asked.

And Diego said, it’s just really ridiculous right now. And your five o’clock shadow?
And your hair? It’s really, really disconcerting.

John’s whole face tightened and he said, well, you look great. And Diego said, I dunno,
John. And then: Well, I hope you’re coming to this Saturday birthday party we’re having.

Oh, we’ll definitely be there, John said. Chad was all aquiver in anxiety. They left.
Thank God you were the bigger man, Dan and Fred said. Really? John said. Because I
found his gut disconcerting.

The following Tuesday, he had drinks with Chad. How’s your capacity for a difficult
subject? John asked. Well, I dunno, said Chad. Okay, here’s the deal, I never want
to see your boyfriend again, John said. Chad was really good about it. Diego really
likes you! Chad said. I will listen to whatever you tell me, John said. If you tell
me I’m an overly sensitive asshole, that’s fine. Let’s table this, Chad said, and
I will talk to him subtly. And I’ll do whatever you want, John said. John actually
hated Diego at this point, but he was making something of an attempt. Maybe he was
a little mad that he was thinking about Edward all the time, and Edward was floating
there just out of reach, and here was a pair of lovers, and it was nowhere near as
good, or so he thought.

JOHN WAS ON
the highway, on his way down to the Capital, and he got an email on his phone. It
was from Edward: “Are you still coming down?” He was driving down with his coworker
Rex. And John asked Rex, do we even have time? And should I even see him? Well yeah,
you should definitely go see him, Rex said. Rex was secretly deep, John thought.

So John had dinner with his friends that night, and afterward went outside to smoke
and wait for Edward, who eventually showed up wearing a purple deep-V shirt and torn
jeans, a very funny outfit. John was in a suit. He jumped into Edward’s parents’ white
minivan. Where are we going to go? he asked. And Edward said, well, we can go to the
sports bar or we can go somewhere else. Somewhere else, John said. No, I’m taking
you to the sports bar, Edward said. It’s called Nellie’s and it has an outdoor smoking
section. John had already turned off the part of him that was into Edward, he thought,
but they spent an hour at the bar and had so much fun and fast talk and it was all
corny, laughing, brain-chemical crush. They went from one side of the bar to the other.
Every guy is checking you out, Edward said. But there’s only one guy I’m here with,
that I’m interested in, John said. Then it was two a.m. and the bar was closing. John
had been drinking seltzer all night. Edward was drinking though. Well, alright, I
guess I’ll drive you back to where you’re staying, Edward said. And it was time to
say good night. So what are you doing now? John asked. Oh, I’m going to go watch movies
in my parents’ rec room, Edward said. Well, I wish you’d told me that earlier, John
said, I would have watched movies in your parents’ rec room. Well, you can if you
want, Edward said. How about this? John said. I have to go back to where I’m staying,
I have a ton of work stuff to do down here, and I have to get up early, but tell you
what, why don’t you pick me up tomorrow and we’ll go watch movies in your parents’
rec room.

John got through the next day and a long night of work. John messaged Edward: Wanna
come pick me up? So Edward showed up in the dark in the white minivan. John got in.
Hey, kid, it’s good to see you, John said and touched the back of his head. His hair
was wet. Did you just take a shower? John said. Well maybe, Edward said. Oh okay,
John said. They went off to suburbia, a fifteen-minute ride, and Edward made him laugh.
They passed a girl not wearing very much walking down the street, and Edward said,
oh, this town’s really in transition. They got back to the dark house and they smoked
in the backyard. Edward’s parents and his grandmother were asleep upstairs. They went
down to the basement. There were wood-paneled walls and a little TV. So we can watch
one of two movies, Edward said. We can watch
Back to the Future
or
Real World: Season One
.

Real World: Season One
, John said. John took his tie and his coat off and spread across the couch. I’m so
tired, he said. And John turned and Edward was staring at him. Look at you, he said.
Then Edward pounced on him.

They fell asleep on this couch. Suddenly Edward was shaking him. It was five twenty
in the morning.