JPod

by Douglas Coupland

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  Bloom berg TV Deutsch land

  . . .

  I made Dad stop at a 7-Eleven and we bought chocolate bars, bottled water and orange juice for the people in the back. As we neared the production's trailers, my cell rang. It was Cowboy.

  "Ethan, man, I'm losing it."

  "Losing what}"

  "You've got to help me, man."

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm in North Van."

  "What happened?"

  "I was in a fourgy with these three BMX chicks I met last weekend, and it was a dream come true, and then this one chick puts on a Raggedy Ann wig and a red foam nose, and says, Took at me, Tm Ronald McDonald, and I freaked."

  I hopped out and made a gotta go hand gesture to Dad. "You freaked over a wig}"

  "You don't understand. We wrote all those crazy-assed letters to Ronald, and he somehow got registered in my subconscious as the devil. It was like I could already see the cheesy high-8 video of a four-way, and instead of hair, Ronald's ass had red yarn sticking out of it."

  "Uh-huh. And makeup all over the sheets."

  "Don't mock my freak-out."

  "Are you on anything tonight?"

  Silence.

  "Cowboy, are you?"

  "I got pretty 'tussed up beforehand."

  "Cowboy, you know you can't drink cough syrup. Robitussin takes you to the dark side every time. It's your kryptonite."

  "But these chicks were all doing it, and I had to look cool in front of them."

  "Cowboy, if these naked chicks were jumping off a cliff, would you jump after them?"

  "Sure."

  I thought about that for a second.

  He said, "Man, it was so freaky. It was like Ronald could look into my eyes and see the part of me that's dying."

  "Where are you specifically?"

  "In the Denny's on Marine Drive."

  "Did you manage to dress before you fled?"

  "Sort of. I didn't have time for underwear, and I left my favourite Doritos baseball cap behind."

  "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

  I got into my own car. There's nothing like driving on an empty freeway to clear the mind. How often have I rescued Cowboy from his sex/death freak-outs? Too many times. I really had to lay down the law this time, and I was practising my speech as I pulled into the parking lot.

  I found him hunched in a booth, a coffee in front of him. "Okay, Cowboy—three BMX chicks? Please. What's the real story?"

  "You don't believe me?"

  "No. Girls rarely enter bike culture. If they do, they're fully mated. Who were you really with?"

  "I can't believe you don't believe me."

  "You're boring me."

  "All right, all right. They were skanks."

  "I knew it. Where'd you meet?"

  "At a coffee place on Marine Drive. They were at the next table and buzzed out on 'tuss, and we made eye contact and—it just kind of happened. I mean, Ethan, nobody plans a four-way."

  We ordered Grand Slams and when the food arrived, we picked at our scrambled eggs half-heartedly. Finally Cowboy said he was feeling better and apologized for having roped me into his el skanko lifestyle. It was four-thirty a.m. when we left the Denny's.

  In the back seat of my car was a pile of kitchen things I'd promised to return to Mom. As I was near the old house, I decided to drop them right then. I drove up the hill, pulled into my parents' street, and there, parked in front of their hedge, was a Touareg with a box sitting on top of it wrapped in gold paper with a big silk bow. The driver's door was open, and as I slowly drove past I saw Steve at the wheel. I stopped and got out. Steve was shaving in the rear-view mirror.

  "Oh. Ethan. Hi. Uh. How are you?"

  "Steve, why are you shaving at the end of my parents' driveway at 4:45 in the morning?"

  "It's not what it looks like."

  "Which would be what?"

  'Your mother's a fine woman, Ethan."

  "And?"

  "I think I'm in love."

  That shut me up.

  "I know she's fifteen years older than me, but I can't stop thinking about her."

  "Steve, she's married to my dad. And you're going to give her a present at 4:45 in the morning? What kind of a loser are you?"

  "I was going to wait until six."

  "Steve, why don't you go home right now, and I'll forget this ever happened."

  "I need to talk about her a bit. Let me do that. There's nobody in my life I can do that with, and it's killing me."

  "I thought you were married."

  "Divorced."

  "Okay, here's the deal: you get to talk about my mother for five minutes, but no sex stuff. In return, I get to ask you privileged questions about BoardX."

  "Deal."

  "I go first. Why are you wrecking a potentially massive and successful game with this pathetic turtle idea?"

  "Who says it's pathetic?"

  "Cough up some truth, or I'm not going to discuss Mom with you. You know the turtle's a crappy idea. Something's up."

  "My kid likes turtles."

  "I know that. So what?"

  "I don't have visitation rights."

  "Why not?"

  "I won't talk about that."

  "So you're sticking a turtle in our game in order to communicate with your son?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know how many man-years go into making a game? How much heart and soul? You'd fuck that over to send a personal message to your kid?"

  "I would. Jeff is worth it."

  "Jeff? I thought you told us his name is Carter."

  "I fibbed."

  We heard the first bird tweets of the day.

  "Steve," I said, "send your kid a fruit basket. A birthday card. An FTD bouquet of gerbera daisies, but don't doom our game to oblivion because you can't get your fathering act together."

  "Your feelings are valid, Ethan, but my therapist warned me that if I don't go through with the Jeff character, I could easily enter a shame spiral from which I might never return."

  "That's it. I'm leaving."

  "Ethan? It's my turn to talk about your mother. A deal's a deal."

  "Okay, but remember, she's married to my father and they've been together forever, so you know right from the start that any hope you might have for a relationship is doomed."

  "I do."

  I looked at my watch. "One, two, three, go."

  "Where to begin? Well, she made me a pie. It was blueberry, and when she gave it to me, its smell mixed with her perfume and it made me feel—"

  "Stop. Getting too personal."

  "And she even brought a cloth napkin, not a paper one . . ."

  "Deal's off. I can't do this."

  I abandoned him there, half-shaved and moony.

  . . .

  The sun was rising—a glowing apricot washed by pink clouds. Lions Gate Bridge was empty and the ducks in Lost Lagoon were chattering away. Closer to home, the junkie needles and gum wrappers on the streets twinkled like Mario sprites.

  My phone rang just as I was passing the vegetable stalls setting up for the day on Keefer Street: Bree.

  "Ethan, do you have a minute?"

  "Bree, it's almost six in the morning—why are you calling?"

  "Don't play the time card stunt with me. You know we're not like other people."

  "Is everything okay?"

  "Yes. No."

  "Where are you?"

  "jPod."

  "And?"

  "Ethan, I feel so old."

  T
his isn't the first time I've had this call from Bree. "So?"

  "It's different for girls than it is for boys."

  "How?"

  "Because we have a finite number of eggs, Ethan. It's not like we generate a billion new ones every time we get off."

  "Are you pregnant?"

  "I wish. No, strike that—no, I don't wish. I have no idea."

  "Let me pull over to the side of the road." I did. "When was the last time you got some sleep?"

  "Two days ago."

  "Go home and sleep, then."

  "Sleep is overrated. Everyone thinks that just because you have a nap, your life is fixed."

  "Bree, did the whole city just take the same drug? Everybody in my life is going random all over the place."

  "Like who?"

  "My dad—and probably my mother. And Cowboy had another sex/death bottoming-out. He was the filling in a skank sandwich in North Van. Triple-decker. One of them put on a Ronald McDonald wig, and he flipped out."

  "No way."

  "It's true."

  "Was he 'tussed up?"

  "Yeah."

  "He's got to stay away from that stuff. Why was a skank wearing a Ronald McDonald wig?"

  "Strictly speaking, it was a Raggedy Ann wig."

  Vitamin G: gossip. I could tell Bree was feeling a bit better, but I was suddenly racked by a wave of sleepiness and told Bree I had to hang up. Inasmuch as a car can limp, I limped home, back to my crappy furniture, which had magically reappeared a few weeks ago.

  However, when I got there, I saw five profoundly expensive cars parked outside my place—a Bentley, a Lotus and three Italian some­things. I parked behind them, and as I got out of my car, I heard loud music and the sounds of cats in great pain. At my front door stood a gym goon wearing a headset.

  "You're Ethan? Go in."

  "Gee, thanks."

  Taped to the door was a laser-printed sheet of 8 Vi x 11 paper:

  SOUTHEAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE

  SCHOOL OF TYPING AND BUSINESS ACUMEN20TH REUNION

  The transition from the early morning sunlight into the mysteriously darkened house made me squint. Projected onto my living-room wall was a soft-lens film shot of fluttering cherry petals. In front of it stood a stout little fireplug of a Chinese guy singing a cat-wailing version of "Maniac." He was obviously tanked. Arranged around him in a semicircle were maybe a dozen other Chinese guys, including Kam Fong.

  Mr. Fireplug finished his tune, and the others clapped loudly and sarcastically. Kam looked over at me. In Chinese, he said to the guys in the room,

  ("This is that loser I was telling you about. Let's play with his mind and goad him into singing a ridiculous song.")

  Everybody clapped and invited me over to try some of their paint-stripper sake, served by three pretty young women in hot pants and top hats. Then one of the guys stood up and began singing the Psychedelic Furs classic "Love My Way," against a backdrop of the neon-lit alleys of Tokyo.

  "Kam, what's all this about?"

  "These are guys I went to school with. We're having a blast."

  "Why are you in my house?"

  "We needed a place with an atmosphere of poverty to remind us of the old days. Come on and drink with us. Get hammered."

  "Kam, it's morning."

  "Not in Hong Kong." He clapped his hands, and one of the servers brought a Scotch and soda. Before I had a chance to wave my hands and say no, Kam and his buddies made a toast that appeared to be to me. What the heck—I drank it—and, three drinks later, I was catapulted into that fetid pit of ritualized humiliation called karaoke.

  Kam clapped his hands, and the male technician running the karaoke machine giggled as he put on, yes, Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." I was doomed.

  What is the science behind humiliation? Does it generate a special molecule of adrenaline? Does your blood recognize what's happening and take different paths through your body in response? And why does the inside of your mouth turn to lint and your ears begin to burn?

  I looked behind me: dandelions fluffed across a Swiss meadow. A lark flittered from a branch out into a blue sky draped with marshmallow clouds as the first few notes of the song's tinkling dirge haunted my living room. I was totally fucked—which, of course, made great entertainment for Kam's drunken buddies. I tried to put down the mike thirty seconds in, but Kam slammed his glass on the table in a manner that let me know it would be disadvantageous to do so.

  I suppose I blacked out after that point. I remember the music dying down and opening my eyes to see everybody—servers and tech guy included—cramped with laughter. Needless to say, the technician filmed the whole thing.

  Suddenly it was ten a.m. I went upstairs to my bedroom, which was being used as the party's coatroom. I considered sleeping on the floor again, above the raucous chattering below, then went back downstairs. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a box of Chinese donuts made with bean paste, then got into my car and drove directly to work. The only person in jPod was Kaitlin. She said, "Caught your performance. Kam did a live webcast."

  "I—" I handed her the box of donuts. "I brought these for you. By the way, I really like you."

  She looked at them as if I'd just handed her a dismantled carburetor.

  "Please. Just eat them," I said. "I'm tired right now. I'm going to nap under my desk."

  I was on the cusp of sleep when Kaitlin moved my chair away and bent down to speak to me. "You know, the whole Subway website thing was a hoax."

  "What?"

  "I just wanted to fuck with all of you. I've been a size 2 my entire life. I eat like a pig, and nothing sticks."

  "But how did they get that photo of you? You weighed, like, 337 pounds!"

  "That's my sister. She got the family's lard gene."

  "But—"

  "Ethan, be quiet. I saw you at that conference my first week here—your momma walked in and you were really nice to her, and then here, this morning, you give me donuts, which means you're not trying to change me or anything—that you can handle me being me, even if that means eating myself to death."

  I looked up and was suddenly, irrationally, pleased there was no gum tucked under the desk's front lip.

  Kaitlin said, "I'm going to see Princess Mononoke tonight at the Ridge—and you're coming with me."

  I nodded yes.

  "Good." She gave me a kiss. "I'll keep people away so you can sleep. I'll wake you up at seven."

  "Thanks."

  "Good night, Ethan."

  "Good night, Kaitlin."

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