Sensation Machines

by Adam Wilson

  Still, despite my jealousy, I was aroused by the sight of my wife in this outfit, the way the black lace popped against her pink skin. Eric kissed Wendy’s neck and shoulder, and she gave off soft moans, and Dido’s voice on “Stan” spun me back to senior year, smoking blunts in Ricky’s car when we were supposed to be in gym, that elegiac piano line seeming, in my hazy state, to echo the patter of rain on the windshield as Ricky stroked the peach fuzz at the nape of my neck and just that once I didn’t stop him.

  “They don’t make beats like this anymore,” I said, but no one responded. Eric ran his hands down Wendy’s arms. She made figure eights around his abs and closed her eyes.

  As they continued to kiss, I gave some background on the album, enlightening Eric on the rapper’s three personas—Slim Shady, Eminem, and Marshall Mathers; id, ego, and superego, respectively—who battle for dominance, but of course the id wins, the id always wins.

  “But what makes it all work,” I hastened to add, as Eric’s finger toured the elastic rim of Wendy’s thong, “is that buried beneath Slim’s violent antics and homophobic epithets, there lies Marshall, a rare and fragile bird, cornered by predatory critics, protecting the nest where his baby bird sleeps.”

  Wendy said, “There, right there.” Eric was wrist-deep in her panties.

  I moved to the edge of the bed. Eric was still fully clothed, but Wendy was now being stripped, first of her stockings, then the garter. He kissed up her stomach, from navel to neck, before unclasping her bra and fitting his mouth around one of her breasts. When Eric slipped off Wendy’s panties her impulse was to clutch her knees together, but he pushed them apart and she didn’t resist. We’d arrived at the album’s horrorcore apex, a song called “Kim,” in which Marshall, or Slim, or whoever he is, slits his ex-wife’s throat in a jealous rage as she screams in protest and their daughter looks on.

  “It’s a horrible song,” I said, eyes on the stranger going down on my wife, on the back of his head, as Em’s ex-wife Kim, or, to be more specific, a voice actress playing Kim, screamed in terror. “It’s painful to listen to, and harder to reconcile. And it’s not even the lyrics that create this effect, but Em’s very voice, the edges of his consonants, can you hear them, the sharpness on letters like t and q? And yet, isn’t it interesting that, for all of this album’s insular narcissism, what sticks with you, at the end of the day, is Kim’s screaming voice, her palpable fear?”

  “Yes,” said Wendy at the edge of her breath.

  I was impressed with Eric’s ability to nose breathe. I imagined he swam a formidable front crawl. He stood and removed his underwear. His penis was average, which was both a relief and a disappointment. I reached down to do the same, but found myself soft. Eric mounted Wendy and quickly built to a frenetic pace that I knew, from experience, she would not appreciate. She called my name.

  “Mike,” she said.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “Michael,” she said a little louder.

  I said, “I’m here,” and placed a hand on Wendy’s foot. A thick layer of callus covered her sole. I squeezed.

  Wendy cried out, either from pleasure or pain I couldn’t tell. Eric accelerated. The actress playing Kim continued to scream. I held Wendy’s leg, which was slipping away.

  Eric shuddered to a standstill and dropped his weight on my wife. When he climbed off, I could see that Wendy was in tears. I tried to embrace her but she pushed me away and ran to the bathroom. I offered Eric a monogrammed towel, a wedding gift from my cousin Hannah. He cleaned himself off, dressed, and left. Wendy locked the bathroom door and ran the tub.

  Wendy

  At five o’clock, I gathered my belongings and took the A train uptown to talk to Michael in person. I’d tried both his cell and office landline and I’d left messages. I’d sent a strongly worded email.

  On my way from the subway to Clayton & Sons, I stopped at The Shops at Columbus Circle to use the restroom, passing stores on my way that I’d been shopping at since childhood. I recalled doing homework at Jamba Juice. Throwing a fit outside Hugo Boss because my father was forcing me to take Latin instead of Spanish like everyone else. Trying on dresses in the changing room at Bebe. Scoping senior boys who worked at J. Crew. My friend Monica stole a Coach bag. I cowardly declined. Monica got caught and the guard called her mother and Monica was sent to boarding school in New Hampshire. My mother died and my father brought me here to pick out something special. I chose a Chanel jacket and never once wore it.

  The mall was filled with members of the target demographic for my new campaign. They walked its halls and waited in its lines. They ponied up for immersion blenders. For cashmere bathrobes. For jeans with hundred-dollar holes in the knees. These were the people I would have to convince. First, I’d have to convince myself.

  For most of my life, politics was a matter of principles and hypotheticals. I supported a woman’s right to choose, but had never needed to make that choice. I supported legal marijuana, but smoking made me paranoid. I was against war, but wouldn’t be eligible for a draft if there were one. I was for gay weddings, but had never been invited to one. I was worried about the ozone layer and our reliance on crude oil, but I would be dead before the fallout.

  The UBI would affect me directly. If it passed, 60 percent of my salary would go to income tax. We’d pay a 6 percent mansion tax on the current valuation of our home. From a practical standpoint, it was hard to object. There was abundant wealth and not enough work. The gap between rich and poor was growing. I’d read about the pilots in Canada and Kenya, and I’d seen the studies showing that Basic Income actually led to reduced spending on drugs and alcohol. I’d read the arguments about the UBI kick-starting the economy. That rich people tend to buy imported goods, but the poor spend money on American products. That people would have more time and energy to volunteer. That it would wipe out homelessness and extreme poverty, lower crime, increase the bargaining power of labor unions, and improve public health. Artists would have time to make art and the world would become a more beautiful place. Battered women would have the financial independence to leave abusive husbands. Women would not be forced into sex work. With less competition around low wage jobs, racist and xenophobic sentiment would visibly decline. Despite what the Republicans argued, I knew that having money didn’t make people lazy or less motivated—I’d met billionaires who worked eighty hours a week—and that even if it did, then $23,000 would not satisfy anyone’s desire for a life of leisure and material things.

  And yet, in my secret, selfish heart, objections were raised. Lucas was right about the meth-heads in Appalachia. I didn’t want my work to pay for their indolence. Money is a fickle thing, as I already knew, and was reminded of that morning in the boutique. This was why we had a system for saving. I believed in that system despite Michael’s apparent failure to exploit it. And if the UBI passed, then what would we do? Michael would be jobless and the combined $46,000 we’d receive from the government wouldn’t help with our debt when I’d be paying more than that in income tax.

  Dissenters warned of other issues as well. That free money gave people false reassurance when they bought cars and homes on credit. That this would create another bubble, a feedback loop that would increase rather than diminish debt. That inflation would moot all potential benefits. That the pilot studies could not be trusted—Canadians and Kenyans were fundamentally different—and we’d soon become a country of obese, lazy people, living off dribbles from the state’s leaking teat.

  These feelings made me uncomfortable. They were feelings I would never express. They were feelings I barely allowed myself to acknowledge. Neither would the people at this mall. We spent our days on social media where friends encouraged us to attend protests and call our senators. They suggested we check our privilege. Implied that we were awful human beings if we didn’t retweet. That we would be ostracized, villainized. We wanted to be liked. Lucas was asking me to alter t
his paradigm. It seemed an impossible task.

  After using the restroom, I walked briskly down Broadway in the direction of Rockefeller Center. The Clayton & Sons office was an avenue over, but even in my haste, I wanted to stop and watch the skaters. I grew up on Manhattan’s West Side, near Lincoln Center. After my mother passed, I would walk from my apartment through the crowds lingering outside the Metropolitan Opera, then down past Columbus Circle, onto Central Park South, and eventually to Rockefeller Plaza, where I would stand in my earmuffs on the overlook above the ice rink. My favorites were the lone adults doing figure eights. I imagined that if I ever fell in love it would be with one of these skaters, someone able to carve a slice of solitude from public space.

  In November of 2008, I met Michael at the rink after work and we stood in a packed crowd and watched the electoral map that was projected on the ice turn blue. The crowd erupted for each state filled in. Michael and I held hands. We’d unquestioningly supported Obama. We loved his intelligence. We loved his wife. We loved what it said about us that we loved him.

  The rink was closed due to weather. I walked away, down Sixth Avenue, past the Van Lewig Building where Chip himself was said to keep his New York office. I pictured the mogul smoking a cigar, looking down from a high window at the masses below. I pictured his wife waving smoke from her face.

  Muzak played in the C&S lobby. Leather chairs sat empty. Men walked briskly in and out of elevators. Piped-in air conditioning chilled the building and I stepped to the front desk and asked to be connected to Michael’s office.

  When the assistant called, there was no answer.

  I asked for Ricky’s office. No answer either.

  I asked the assistant if she’d seen Michael and I showed her a picture on my phone. She said a lot of people passed through the lobby each day and they were all white men in dark suits with quarter-inch stubble and gelled hair. She suggested I try Michael’s cellphone. I thanked her for her time.

  I was about to exit when I felt an arm around me. The arm belonged to Edward Jin, Michael’s boss. I did not have warm feelings for the man. He always managed to touch some part of my body: a forearm squeeze or a head pat or an arm around my shoulder. I asked if he’d seen Michael. He invited me upstairs. We rode the elevator in silence.

  I was not expecting the piles of cardboard boxes that filled the hallways and cubicle areas. People knelt on the floor feeding paper to shredders. Bloomberg terminals blinked unattended. Desks sat empty. A watercooler lay overturned, leaking onto the tile. I followed Edward into his office.

  “Sit,” he said, and indicated a chair piled high with paperwork.

  “Can I move these papers?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” He poured whiskey into a small plastic cup, the kind they give you to rinse at the dentist.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Oh it wasn’t for you,” said Edward. He drank from the cup and refilled.

  “Where’s Michael?”

  “No idea. Haven’t seen him all day.” He took a second shot of whiskey.

  “So why did you bring me up here?”

  “Just thought I’d check in, make sure you’re set for the next step.”

  “Next step?”

  “The place is swarming with Japanese if you haven’t noticed.”

  I hadn’t noticed.

  “Utter chaos. We thought the deal was on, but now the SEC’s up in our shiz and we’ve got to shred everything in sight. I don’t know much Japanese because my dad was Mr. Assimilation. Wouldn’t even touch sushi until I was in my thirties. Now I love the stuff, but only the real American kind. I put the ginger right on top of the roll. An embarrassment. Meanwhile C&S thinks I’m the guy to charm these fuckers at karaoke every night. You know how many sloppy renditions of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ I’ve sung? It’s getting to the point where I can’t tell whether I’m drunk or sober.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “You may be right. Anyway, I wanted to make sure things were okay on your end because I know Michael has more paper tied up in this drowning ship than nearly anyone.”

  This was news to me.

  “There were memos going around for months telling everyone to diversify. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. But Michael’s been a bit checked out. Or maybe he’s an idiot. Pardon me. I didn’t mean that. He’s not an idiot. Just very dumb. Nice guy, but very stupid, low IQ. I hope everything works out.”

  I poured myself a drink. The whiskey tasted terrible.

  “Bottom shelf,” said Edward. “End times.”

  I exited Jin’s office and walked down the hall to Michael’s. The last time I’d visited was when he’d been upgraded into this office, a south-facing room with floor-to-ceiling windows. He’d had grand plans to decorate, but I saw now that he’d never done it. The walls were empty. The leather couch was empty. It seemed to be the only room in the building not overflowing with paperwork. Even the trash bin was empty. The shredder was room-temperature, unplugged.

  Michael

  I followed my therapist into his office, plopped myself onto one of his Eames chairs, unloosed a cough drop, lay my legs on the ottoman, and closed my eyes.

  I’d been to this office once a week for some twenty-odd years. When I first started seeing Dr. Becker, I was a depressed college student, though I’d have been hesitant to use that term. All I knew was that I stayed in bed for days at a time, sleeping through weekends, and sometimes into the week, missing classes; that rising to face the morning felt like a monumental task. I wasn’t planning to kill myself, but I thought about suicide a lot, imagining, in methodical detail, the way I’d do it: buying a stepladder from the hardware store on 109th and Broadway, hanging the rope from an exposed pipe in my dorm’s laundry room. I knew these feelings weren’t normal, and I’d met this girl—this woman—Wendy, and I wanted to be normal.

  From the get-go, Dr. Becker had pushed medication. I was resistant at first, fearful in the trite, familiar ways: that I would become a different person, unfeeling, delibidinized, dimmed into hippie placidity. My doctor did his best to quell these fears. I remember, once, he told me I was giving the drug “too much credit,” that, as a person who’d experimented with everything from ketamine to cortisone anti-itch supplements, and who’d spent my senior year of high school in a marijuana haze, I was—in so many words—acting like a little bitch. But it was my experience with stonerism that made me suspicious. I’d lived under the delusion that smoking marijuana at hourly intervals had no effect on things like my short-term memory, levels of motivation, or enjoyment of certain Southern rap groups. It was only after suffering from mono that summer, that I realized how powerfully I’d been under the spell of such a supposedly harmless narcotic. Thinking clearly for the first time in a while, I realized just how unclearly I’d been thinking.

  The same held true for Prozac, which I did end up taking, and was still taking in daily, sixty-milligram doses when I arrived that afternoon at Dr. Becker’s office. As I’d feared, it was hard to say how Prozac had affected my personality. I was a different person than when I’d started on the drug—higher functioning, certainly—but it was unclear how much these improvements had to do with the meds, and how much they had to do with the slow but consistent crawl of maturation. Besides, where had it gotten me? A stable mood hadn’t stopped my life from falling apart.

  “We’ll just be a moment, Michael, no need to get comfortable.”

  The ottoman slipped from under my feet and I almost fell.

  “Why are they called ottomans, anyway?” I said. “It must have something to do with the Ottoman Empire. Which makes me think of Empire Chinese. You know that place? On Broadway?”

  “This is not a session, Michael.”

  Becker checked his watch.

  “Who was that guy in the waiting room?”

  “You know I can’t discuss another
patient. What I want to talk about is why you’re here. You can’t just show up at my office. I know you know that, because you’ve never done it before. Is this an emergency?”

  “I’m having a weird day.”

  It seemed as good an explanation as any. I’d woken in the library, shivering cold, with that catnap feeling of time stretched and jellied. I opened another document, but couldn’t find my mojo. Ricky’s sure thing investment rattled in my brain. I pictured the movers packing up our apartment, Wendy’s face red with rage. I found myself walking to Becker’s, not really thinking, just moving my feet, mumbling: Before coming to prominence in the field of hip-hop, Marshall Mathers worked as a pizza chef at the Little Caesars Family Fun Center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan.

  “I’ve been withholding,” I explained. We’d spent the last many sessions treading in irrelevance, rehashing childhood hang-ups. This was my doing. Becker had asked about Wendy and work and I’d deflected.

  “Withholding?”

  “For example: I lost all my money.”

  “How?”

  “I bet on America.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Becker, though the calm way he said it, free of worry that I might now require some kind of subsidy in order to continue attending these sessions, made it clear that he did not.