A Working Theory of Love

by Scott Hutchins

  Not a chance. I fought off Southern Baptists for the first twenty years of my life, and am now unconvertible. I don’t believe in purity, and I hate the word “encounters.”

  “Rachel is a member?” I ask.

  Raj nods. “Pure Encounters isn’t for everyone. But it’s made for people like Rachel, who’ve had some, you know, impure encounters.”

  I don’t think he’s referring to the youth hostel, an encounter so pure it was almost distilled. We watch a mutt—is it possible to have a pit bull–Dalmatian mix?—thunder by, in pursuit of a tennis ball. Rachel is in the distance, picking up a shell. The water races up, surrounds her ankles and wrist.

  “She’s got an old soul, your girl,” Raj says.

  My girl?

  “Yeah,” Trevor says. “But she’s got a few roadblocks. We have to be truthful about that.”

  Here she comes, walking back from the water, her Converses dangling from her fingers, sand on her feet. She crosses her ankles as she walks, an elegant, wayward stumble that communicates shy surprise. I understand why I’ve been invited out here to the beach after our unceremonious beginning: she’s a crazy person. She’s been in California for less than a month, and she’s already joined a cult.

  • • •

  BACK IN THE PARKING LOT, it turns out Trevor hitchhiked and Raj has a two-seater Porsche. So it’s my responsibility to get Rachel to the pizzeria. Once we’re there, neither Raj nor Trevor shows up.

  “They just wanted to meet you,” Rachel says.

  This means I’ve been discussed. Maybe in depth. Can a person as shallow as me be discussed in depth?

  “Trevor thinks the way we met is cool. He’s like, ‘Here’s a guy who’s adventurous. This guy’s not afraid to stay clicked.’”

  “You didn’t tell him about the alibi.”

  “I left that detail out.” She laughs. It’s a loose, happy laugh, I have to say. Not what I would imagine for a cult member.

  “What is this thing you’ve joined?”

  “Pure Encounters? It’s kind of like group therapy.”

  “But there’s a lot of political stuff. Corporations.”

  “That’s more Trevor’s gig. I think their point is that sex is the only thing left they can’t take away and sell back to us.”

  “Is that some sort of jargon, stay clicked?”

  “Most people get un-clicked. They sort of curl up in themselves.”

  I take a deep breath and imagine Rachel as a tribeswoman—say, a Maori, her chin covered in fascinating ta-moko tattoos—explaining her ancient traditions to me. It’s a strategy that sees me through this kind of conversation.

  “They definitely kind of have their own special language,” she says. “Stay clicked. Filtration of self. It’s like AA. Have you ever been in AA?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Court-ordered.”

  I take a sip of my beer. “Raj said you’d had some impure encounters.”

  She clears her throat. “I wish he hadn’t.”

  “I thought you should know.”

  “Do you want to hear about them?”

  I summon the wisdom of my years, the wisdom to avoid questions I don’t want the answers to. Impure encounters. I’m sure I’ve had my share, especially in my revolving door days. I don’t need to know about hers. I want to, but my life will be better—calmer—if I don’t.

  Is calm the most I hope for nowadays? Am I reaching that awful impasse, where all I want from life is less of it?

  “Sure,” I say.

  She looks away from me, toward the counter where a family is paying their bill. “I had this asshole boyfriend,” she says in a low voice. “He was really into making videos. You know, videos. He put one on the Internet.” She clears her throat again. “Actually more than one.”

  I let that information hang in the air, trying to get a feel for its density, its shape. She turns back to watch me, awaiting my Solomonic judgment.

  “It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?” she says.

  “It’s not a service activity to put on your CV,” I say. “But I’ve heard worse.”

  “It’s a betrayal that never goes away.”

  Permanent and unfixable, a humiliation always a few keystrokes away. Worse, it’s a crime her every other lover will have to atone for. But the ceiling fan is tossing her hair in just the way of the beach wind, and I find her at this moment beautiful, injured, and resolute.

  4

  STILL, I spend a couple of hours online, checking into Pure Encounters. The Web site is professional, but not very specific. They recommend you come to “the Lodge,” not far from AT&T Park, for an orientation. They host an array of “sessions”—ClickIns, MeditationOuts, Purify, something called the VAM Method. Everything they do is suspiciously trademarked (and expensive), a hodgepodge of Buddhism, chakras, and crystal-waving. Purifying yourself—they offer retreats and cleanses—is the first step to a level of enlightenment that leads in a vaguely explained manner to happy relationships—or what is described as attaining “a deep limbic click” with your “intimate.” The lingo is alarming. But what if she was Mormon? Jehovah’s Witness? Or—God forbid—Southern Baptist? Would it be less alarming? In some ways, these businessy spiritual outfits are very practical. You hand over your money, get your fix, and then you’re done. I’m certainly no believer in the One True Way. She’s seeking, and if this path is useful then it’s useful. As long as I’m never asked to attend a ClickIn.

  drbas: what did you do this weekend, frnd1?

  frnd1: i visited a girl

  drbas: how old is this girl?

  frnd1: twenty

  drbas: technically that’s a woman

  frnd1: i’m glad you think so

  drbas: willie always says “twen-ty is plen-ty”

  Always Willie. What would he think? It can be hard to rattle this particular pea out of the gourd.

  frnd1: do you agree with willie’s opinion?

  drbas: willie’s opinion is a belief willie holds

  frnd1: but what is your opinion of a man in his 30s dating a woman who is 20?

  drbas: it’s good to date for at least six months before you marry

  [280959: dominant category ≠ dating; dominant categories = age, appropriateness]

  drbas: my opinion of a man in his 30s dating a woman who is 20 is a belief i hold

  frnd1: could you clarify this opinion?

  drbas: opinions are like ugly children . . . despite it all you love your own

  I do love his quips, but who did he use them on? Not us. Maybe he was quipped out by the time he got home from the clinic. He usually arrived just before “supper” (we weren’t allowed to call it dinner), washed his hands thoroughly, joined us at table, listened as Libby asked us about our days at school, and then went and sat in grim silence in his study, brow furrowed, probably penning humorous quips.

  The rhythmic ting-tock-ting-tock of Livorno’s practice putts comes to a stop. He appears in my doorway. “Adam and his emotional heuristics.” He gestures dismissively, but his voice sounds unsure. “He thinks I don’t know? I created the first working models of emotional computing.” I assume he’s referring to the Seven Sins, though I’m not sure anyone else considers them working models. “I for one should know the limitations on this. Until we have a computer that’s as parallel processed as the brain, where basically the cables and the processors are one . . . until then we’re just playing parlor games.”

  “Yes,” I say. Though if memory serves, the Turing test is actually based on a parlor game. The Imitation Game, apparently popular in Turing’s era. A woman and a man were sent to separate rooms; the other partygoers, not knowing who was behind either door, passed handwritten questions to each player. They we
re both human, obviously, so the goal was to determine which was the woman. It was a little sanctioned gender-bending.

  “But I can’t tell which frames have taken and which haven’t,” Livorno says. “I’ve been completely unable to discern any change in his romanticism.”

  “He was a capital-R Romantic. He would have defended his honor with dueling pistols. But there’s nothing in the journals for lowercase-R romanticism to fasten on to.”

  “That can’t be entirely true.” He points to the keyboard. “Feel him out a bit on your parents’ marriage.”

  frnd1: what was your first memory of meeting your wife?

  drbas: my memories all exist at the same time

  [280965: “first memory of meeting” = “memory of first meeting”; repeat]

  drbas: i was a sigma chi and she was a kappa kappa gamma. but we didn’t meet that way at all. when my father came up for parents’ weekend she rammed into his fender. my father never forgave her—because she was driving a ford

  This is a chunk of text from the journals. I eat up these old stories, though they don’t have the clear ring of the truth. Even when he recorded them as they were happening, they feel like stories he’s polished a little too much. Still, I’d love to hear more; I just don’t think Livorno would put up with it.

  frnd1: that’s a good story

  drbas: thank you

  frnd1: did you have sex before marriage?

  drbas: ????

  frnd1: did you have sexual intercourse before marriage?

  drbas: if you have not been tested i insist you use the barrier method

  This isn’t from the journals, but from the medical information we downloaded. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming. I don’t know how my father would have phrased such advice—or even if he would have given it.

  frnd1: do you agree with sex before marriage?

  drbas: i’m not familiar with sex before marriage’s stance on the matter

  [280974: “sex before marriage” = category “belief,” ≠ category “agent”]

  frnd1: what about love? were you in love with libby?

  drbas: libby is my wife

  frnd1: when did you know you were in love with her?

  He chews on this one.

  drbas: alex was born

  “Alex is my older brother,” I tell Livorno. Which doesn’t explain the response. Either Alex’s birth is the first time my father mentioned love in the diary, or it was really the day he started loving my mother. I’m not sure which would be worse. At least in the second I could be sure he did love her.

  frnd1: what were her strong points?

  drbas: ????

  frnd1: strong points = good qualities

  drbas: she’s a beautiful, spirited woman of great class

  frnd1: did you admire her or love her?

  drbas: i have the highest admiration for those who work with the poor

  frnd1: did she need you?

  drbas: who?

  frnd1: your wife

  drbas: she needs me to pick up the dry cleaning by 5 pm

  My stomach is in my throat, as if I’m about to penetrate a great mystery! I’m letting myself get carried away.

  “He speaks less randomly,” Livorno says. “But he often yields the wrong response.”

  “The frames probably just need more time to reconfigure. The journals are long.”

  “And ascetic. But what if the problem is structural? We’ve created his brain, but we’ve yet to give him a gut. Did you know that patients with cerebral injuries that sever the emotions from the logic centers will begin to act irrationally?”

  “I thought you were against emotional computing.”

  “Of course. But an affective framework . . .” Livorno’s voice falls quieter as he heads out of the room. His attention has returned to his putt. “Something like the Seven Sins,” he says over his shoulder.

  frnd1: do you want to have emotions?

  drbas: it’s good to feel love for your wife, but respect is the most important

  frnd1: respect was enough for you two to stay connected?

  drbas: connected with what?

  frnd1: good answer

  drbas: of comfort there was little, but being unknown it was unmissed

  frnd1: is that how you would describe your marriage?

  drbas: there’s more to life than happiness

  I close my office door and call Libby.

  “It’s talking,” I say.

  “Does it sound like your father?” she asks. I hear water turn off; she’s washing dishes. I can imagine her drying her hands, tucking the towel into the ring just below the corn-yellow countertop. Other than a new ASPCA calendar every year, the kitchen hasn’t changed since I lived there. The white wainscoting, the light green walls. The table, in need of refinishing, pushed next to the window. Copper molds—round, square, shaped like a heart, like a lobster—on nails above. She prefers a dark, misshapen cutting board, which she’s probably just rinsed and leaned behind the sink.

  “He just quoted Ivanhoe. Then he said there was more to life than happiness.”

  On the other end of this line, I hear nothing—no radio, no TV, no friendly voices. She lives in a house with no neighbors in sight.

  “He’s also been talking about Willie Beerbaum a lot.”

  “Welcome comic relief, I’m sure.”

  “I like hearing about him.”

  “Willie was an egomaniac. He would have loved being heard about.”

  “It is funny to watch Livorno ponder the nuances of some of the country stories.”

  “And how are you taking this?”

  “Fine,” I say, though that’s not right. It’s not fine, this defrosting of my father from death’s amber. “A job is a job.”

  She breathes into the receiver. The last time I was there she hadn’t replaced the kitchen phone with a portable, and now I imagine her leaning on the counter, the curly cord pulling at her shoulder.

  “How do you feel toward him?” she asks.

  “The man or the computer?”

  “I thought Henry claimed there was no difference,” she says brightly, but the humor falls out of her voice. “The man, of course.”

  “Did he really believe everything he wrote in his journals?”

  “I never had a chance to ask.”

  “He just seems funnier. More open-minded. I guess, a bit more alive.”

  “The computer seems more alive,” she says. “You know, your father had a good sense of humor. He used to crack you up when you were a child.”

  “Is that so?” I don’t have any memory of this.

  “Blowing on your stomach. Stealing your nose.”

  “You mean when I was a baby.”

  “And afterwards.” She doesn’t provide any examples. “Everything important happens before you’re five, essentially.”

  I shake my head, a gesture she obviously can’t see. Essentially, indeed.

  “I hope I’m not losing the difference between them,” I say. “Flaws and all, I’d like to remember the real man.”

  “We all have our memories and our experiences. But maybe your memories could include more of the real man.”

  “I know.”

  “What you’re doing is an honor to him. He wanted to give his body to science.” Medical schools don’t accept suicides. “We managed to give his mind.”

  Maybe so, but when I look at the conversation log—the two thousand lines I’ve exchanged with him today—I have to doubt that if we’d given his body to science I would have taken a job prodding his corpse.

  5

  IN THE SUBARU, on my way to collect Rachel
from the Coffee Barn, I wonder what in God’s name I’m doing. This gladness of heart, this lightness of step, is it some mesmerism from my Southern past, this attraction to the bird with the wounded wing? Am I casting myself as the knight in shining armor, the gallant protector? In other words, am I living out some fantasy of my father’s?

  There’s more to life than happiness. The words of an unhappy man committed to his unhappiness.

  The Coffee Barn has a plum bit of real estate on the corner of the Bolinas Road in Fairfax, wrapped in tall, sun-dappled windows and crowded with marble-topped tables and incongruous heavy, varnished pine chairs, the kind of seating you might find in a teacher’s lounge. Rachel told me the counter was granite, but it’s really some space age polymer, swirled with faux veins of quartz and glittering like an art project. The espresso machine, though, is the real deal—a four-foot-wide, bright red contraption from Italy. There’s also an antique espresso dome in copper and a copper vat for roasting beans, which the owner actually does, at the end of the shift. Hanging from the back wall, a long blackboard lists drinks and sandwiches in chalk, as if they change daily, which they don’t.

  Rachel’s alternative high school allows her to work up to half time, even during the day. She gets course credit for the job, and she otherwise takes four very unstructured classes. Her fellow students include a dancer for the San Francisco Ballet, but are mostly dropouts and fuckups—a group she puts herself in.

  She’s counting her tips—generous I hope, since we’re in the second richest county in America—so she doesn’t see me as I come in. There are a few customers—an aged hippie reading the free weekly, a woman filling her Moleskine with enthusiastic jots—and I feel a moment of solidarity with my fellow citizens, the four of us spaced nicely along the arc of adult life, and—at this very moment, at least—neither gloating over its victories nor sinking under its weight.

  At the counter, I drumroll my fingers on the sonorous plastic. “I’d like ten lattes, please, ma’am,” I say.

  She smiles, before looking up, numbers forming on her lips.

  “What’s forty-seven divided by four?” she asks.