The Mere Future

by Sarah Schulman

  In the glow of this communal light, Nadine whispered into my neck.

  “You know what’s worrying me?”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not you. It’s Sophinisba.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled serenely at the mention of her name.

  “I have a big question about her.”

  “What is it?”

  “How is Sophinisba paying for all of this?”

  “Hmmmm?” I felt a nostalgic kind of unease.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Nadine squealed.

  Shocked at the accusation, I leapt from my deceived serenity with shame, pain, the desire to truly make amends, the courage to change. I looked her in those gorgeous eyes. I mustered every ounce of determination and conviction. I never wanted to be selfish, it wasn’t the real me. It was the disease talking. I truly loved, and that was the ideal that should guide my actions if I was ever to be a fully integrated human bean.

  “Must be something in the private sector, I think,” I said, carefully.

  Nadine smiled back, distractedly, and I hoped the transgression had healed. I was delusional. Nothing heals in one moment. It needs tending. Cutting corners festers the soul. And so the path to hell was laid. How could I know that this problem of my callous dismissal of financing would soon determine the future of my heart?

  4. BOND

  BACK AT THE Opium Restaurant, Harrison Bond was a very private man, and yet I knew so many things about him.

  Before THE CHANGE, he was primarily known as the author of the novel of the year, My Sperm. John Updike, late chief critic for The Brand New York, had said that Bond was “one of the brightest young stars in the literary universe.” He used the word panoply. He said that Bond was “the new Cheever, the new Mailer, the new Pynchon, Roth, and J.D. Salinger. And, oh yeah …Toni Morrison.”

  Bond had a quiet, troubled sadness. He wore an extra-large baseball cap on backward. He’d once had a pierced ear. He stayed in a chair and liked to read. He was bald, had gone to prep-school, was brave enough to have had adult braces. He dated actresses, even two at once. He suffered from depression and was rich. But sad. He felt put-upon, and yet bore the responsibility of his talent. He whined. He wielded power behind the scenes and everyone knew it. He was struggling with his alcoholism, and frequented the rooms on occasion, especially the AA meetings with other sad celebrities, and then they’d go out for coffee and try to keep hidden away from fans. He had written many articles for expensive magazines. One was on designer cell phones, one was on fennel. So, when he ordered three Bombay and tonics, I wondered if this was a product of his swollen liver or swollen bank account(s). Doesn’t all gin taste the same? Yet, being so private, I couldn’t ask him a thing, since his allure worked wonders.

  Here is the opening paragraph of My Sperm by Harrison Bond:

  Thompson Ward had a quiet, troubled sadness. He pushed back his baseball cap, scratched the scar where his pierce used to be, and knocked back another Bombay and tonic, swearing it would be the last one of the day.

  I am not my sperm, he thought. And then poured himself a double.

  I had actually read the first two paragraphs of My Sperm. It was about a young, tall man who was found to be the last fertile man on earth. And yet, being private and somewhat sad, a bit of a drinker, he was not satisfied. He never knew if women actually liked him, even with his slightly monstrous seven-foot frame. Or if they just flattered him for his sperm. It was made into a movie, a television series, and finally a Broadway musical. Financially, Harrison Bond was set for life. People would always remember something about his literary wad, and he was guaranteed permanent aura. And yet, he was somewhat sad.

  Now, because of the miraculous social shift achieved by Sophinisba and her folks, this depressed wealthy icon was forced to speak to me. It was odd, this obligation. What would happen?

  “As you might know …” He cleared his throat. Harrison feared sounding like his father, the golf pro. He loathed his father, but secretly followed golf. He loathed any recognition of his own authority because it forced him to be benevolent, when, after all, he felt like crying and wanted someone to take care of him. “Do you know?”

  “Know what?” I asked.

  Already our dynamic was quite complex.

  “Well, Miss Weigert, you do know that I am the new Brand editor, uhm ... I mean, the fiction editor of The Brand New York.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean ...” I wanted him to like me. But why? “I don’t know who the old editor was either.”

  “Why not?”

  “I only read The Brand New York when my girlfriend Nadine drags me to competitive yoga meets. I sneak a peek at her copy between asanas. I never understood its organization. It seemed to be something for people who used designer cell phones and ate organic fennel. You know, I’m a copywriter. I don’t wear alpaca socks.”

  “So …” Bond trailed off, burdened. He didn’t know what to do now. My answer had, unwittingly, made him terribly sad and insecure, and I felt terrible about it. I became worried for him, and desperately wanted to take care of him. How did that happen? It was miraculous.

  “So?” I prompted softly.

  “So, since I’m new, I have new ideas, which will be different, since I am different,” he whimpered.

  “Is that where I fit in?” I had been wondering about my fit. Not knowing what Harrison wanted was one of life’s less voluptuous experiences. Panic ensued. I knew the odds were likely that I was about to do the wrong thing. But what would be right? What? What? My mind skidded on the icy freeway of fear. I was doomed, doomed, by my own lack of savoir faire.

  If I was a Buddhist, I could look at this fellow and think that only loving, only knowing matter. Because Buddhism is the occult pastime of our age, I could understand that few grasp the experiences I’ve lived and that this was my blessing. And vicey-versy. I could come to terms with the slow pace that invades the depth of my soul when I truly love, when I truly want to understand. But every time I try to be a Buddhist, I fail, simply by trying. I sit in rooms with people who have not yet achieved their goals. They say that the best way to achieve your goals is not to try. But their lives are not proof of that theory. It seems obvious, the contradiction. You have to try. I don’t mind washing water, but can’t I still want a glass to drink out of? Panic, panic, breathe, breathe. Accept that what others do to me is the punishment I deserve?

  Or, I could seize the momentito.

  Bond.

  He held up that week’s issue of The Brand New York. The cover advertisement was for Red Snapper Douche. What a great piece of graphic design, I thought, associating directly to Nadine, my own personal fish, my dearest delish, and her workplace struggles, occurring simultaneously with mine. How romantic.

  Politics had changed so, these last few months. Now that housing was under control, and small business seemed to thrive, there was a group turn to focus on our jobs as the next place to change the world. Let people rearrange their relationship to the machine. But now that the means of production is mental, there are no burly iron workers of yore. Labor is intimate, between us and our computers. Individually, we may each try to subvert, but, of course, individually in the long-term can’t change much. We each have that one computer that we stare at and grow to love/hate. The illusion is that it’s personal, that it loves us back. In the end, we produce smarter, edgier products, and the structure of employment remains intact. THE MEDIA HUB is the major unit of social enforcement; was it going to be the mommy we never had, or a prison of measured time? And what is the difference?

  In this dyasma, my sweetheart Nadine was employed by THE MEDIA HUB, as were eighty percent of citizens who had jobs, including me. She dreamed of being a painter while living chained to software. This contradiction between The Wish and The Real inspired her commitment of conscience towards the DeMarketing Movement, a spiritual state that had no material reality. I
t lived in the minds of workers as a hope, a virtual opposition. No one ever did anything but think about it, but somehow the thought was comforting. It was Tdzen. The knowledge that another life was possible— and may actually be happening simultaneously without our knowledge—but acting to achieve it was socially strange, and so we occasionally yearned while struggling to accept the necessity of amnesia. We read about our yearnings in the Daily Oprah Report. And then they caught on. Yet sometimes, in the dead of night, Nadine wakes up suddenly and realizes that marketing has taken over yet another corner of her soul. She whispers this to me, shudders, and makes me proud of her sharp, useless perceptions.

  But, here, sitting before Harrison Bond, hype was such a seductive crutch. And visions of his red snapper slapped onto my plate.

  Engage the snapper or refuse all fish. These were my choices.

  When Ralph Waldo Emerson went to visit Emily Dickenson’s brother next door, she stayed home.

  Why?

  My guess?

  She knew he would humiliate her.

  What slimy, scaly thing was Mister Bond about to propose?

  I realized in advance that I could never win, and yet still I hoped. How mortal.

  I side with sinners and am recalcitrant. Bad strategy. But, on the spiritual side, writing is my art form, and so I know what dudes like this are doing. That’s what makes his spectacle so difficult to disengorge. I work in white heat, halfway between grace and recognition. God must exist in order to be hidden. There is truth beyond theme, an art even in Mr Bond. Oh decisions, decision. Finally, I took my Power in my Hand and went against the World. ’Twas not so much as David had, But I was twice as bold.

  “That’s a lovely douche you have there on the cover of your magazine,” I said quietly. “Is there an accompanying QVC?”

  He smiled.

  The deal was done. My submission confirmed. Now we could proceed.

  “So, Missy,” Bond said over his late-night breakfast. “I did a tincture on the cyberscam.” He was eating wood-burned scrambled tofu with organic chanterelles, soy cheese, red chard, blackened Cajun fiddleheads, butterwheat focaccia toast with one-hundred percent real-fruit kiwi butter, green chili, organic red potatoes steamed in mock apple cider, and a side of turkey-arugula sausage cake. To drink, he had wheatgrass nectar with ginger and a fourth Bombay and tonic.

  “Yes?”

  He was nervous, poor lad, and my heart involuntarily went out to him again.

  “Because of the new way of doing things around here, that we’re all getting used to, you know … the changes …”

  I nodded.

  “I thought it might be symbolic to give credit where credit is due.”

  My cue.

  “Oh you,” I coo.

  You’ve got to flirt with men in power, even if they know you’re gay, even if you don’t do it well. There is simply no alternative, unless you can age beyond them, in which case they can project “maternal” or let you be smart.

  “We fed the range of human emotion into the Melancthagraph, and it revealed that the thing people need most in this moment in history is for a Punished, Deserving, Overlooked Person to be finally recognized. Research shows that this public reconciliation with the Previously Ignored will serve as a symbolic catharsis that will put all unrecognized people at ease and make them think that the new system could serve them too. Hope will be restored. Like actually knowing someone who wins the Lottery. It makes everyone feel that at any moment they may find a way out. So …”

  I was suspended as fate pulled my chain.

  “So we singled out the most obscure, unknown, best artist in New York City, and we would like you to profile her for the BNY.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a slogan writer.”

  “Yes …”

  “Who best to sum up an artist’s life?”

  “Okay.”

  I was stunned. I had always wanted to do something important and be noticed, then included. Could that moment be now? Oh, Dolly Lama, bless Sophinisba B.

  “Our selected subject is quirky and complex.”

  “Great.”

  “You have eight words.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he smirked, happily content. “Here’s the address. Her name is Glick. Go get her limbs and bring them back in your teeth.”

  With that he drained his glass. And cried.

  5. PRE-KILL

  ON THE WAY to the interview, I practiced my journalistic technique by asking myself a few interesting questions.

  1. Am I trapped where I want to be?

  2. How now, Tao Jones?

  And finally, the most important and impudent of all:

  3. What are little girls made of?

  Road crews were taking down billboards, and any kind of brand name or mass-reproduced symbol was being quietly painted over. No more Nike swooshes, no more yellow arches. It was visually a whole lot quieter out there, but also more complex. I could no longer just glance at a sign and know what it wanted me to do. I had to really look at it. Each one had its own code. Walking down the street took more time, if you were a curious person. And the repair crews weren’t wearing uniforms. Everyone and everything seemed to be a civilian. Civilianization had a new look.

  I was excited. Nadine practically swooned, it was mass art direction from the bottom up. Oh, the tremor of glamor. Could I really be on the path to a new light? This could happen, as well as that. And that! Opportunity had knockers. Maybe I could end up as someone special.

  As soon as I began to imagine myself as a person deserving of love, instead of just happy to have it, Bond’s face loomed over me as that of a VERY GREAT MAN. Since he could never help me before, he had never mattered. Now that there was the promise of “help,” he mattered a lot. Before, I did not ever think about him; if his name flashed in front of me I blipped. But now, his potential benevolence situated him centerfield of my consciousness. Now, I cared about him. I became worried over him. Suddenly, I realized, I was now terrified of a man I had previously ignored. The effort to make him less powerful had actually made him ever so much more so. Now there was so much that he could take away from me that I had never had in the past.

  The nightmarish imaginings of possible future deprivations were unending. I’d spend hours thinking of what I might never have unless Bond said okay. And you know what? I discovered that to be afraid of losing something that you never actually wanted is a very humiliating experience. If I didn’t suck up to this angle-headed glibster, I would not be able to be glamorous, as I now wanted to be. I would not be able to earn the living that Nadine and I had never imagined. The funds that would enable my true love to get away from the keyboard and smear paint instead. I also had some desires on my own behalf that I was too ashamed to articulate.

  I passed a bonfire of shirts with advertisements on them, logos and pictures of dumb products that were fattening and tasted bad. People had decorated their bodies with these items for years and never asked why. They had never asked why Tommy Hilfiger didn’t have to pay them to advertise his business on their chests, nor had they ever wondered how they had been convinced to pay Tommy Hilfiger instead. Well, that weirdness had come to an end. From now on clothes would have designs and colors or any words the wearer had thought of themselves. They could also be plain white. The people tending the fire were relaxed. They could have been anyone, and so then could I.

  “What’s happening now?” I asked. “Have all the big chains gone out of business?”

  “Nope,” a sloppy, quiet guy muttered, tending his ashes. “Just out of public view. They’re still gonna be bigger than ever. We just will have nicer things to look at when walking down the street. We won’t always be reminded.”

  Invisible chain stores or invisible chains?

  Another Sophinisba innovation. One suited to aesthetic principles.

  Now I could answer my own question.

  Was I trapped where I wanted to be?

  The answ
er? Not yet. But maybe soon.

  I wanted to be trapped in a life where I called the shots. Where if I said, “Should we wait for a subway or take a cab? is a question about race and class,” it would be okay.

  Tao Jones went up three points.

  And little girls are socially constructed, so they are made out of our minds.

  Committed to improving, I began to accept my newly required tasks. I would have to start reading all those boring writers like Harrison Bond, actually finish their books. I would have to remember their derivative and limp “ideas” so that I could care about them. I would have to follow The Brand New York like baseball, see who got traded, who was a star. I would have to study the terrain so that I could rise to the top. And once there, stay close to my enemies, watch their every move.

  Yuch.

  I panicked.

  I didn’t want to take in information that I don’t want. It’s the insistent extra. Horror finding me. Horrifying me.

  Why was Bond doing this?

  I felt trapped by progressive change.

  Wait! Accusing Bond of conspiracy was giving him too much credit. Lets face it, the sad truth was that … co-optation theory might be happening to me at last.

  These were my realizations in the eerie light of the flaming logo’d shirts:

  One of two things would happen. Either I would prove myself to Bond, he would let me in, and I would become like him. Or he would throw me one bone and then toss me away.

  With this new knowledge, I arrived at Glick’s house.

  6. THE MOST UNKNOWN ARTIST

  GLICK’S ADDRESS, 123 Siege Street, was situated on a block I did not know, about a half mile from Old Ixtapa, just to the right of North Chelsea. This was a quiet neighborhood of Manhattan, filled with chicken bones. The residents entered the houses through ancient bodegas and then crossed interior courtyards with a hint of apple blossom and Old Gold.