All The Sad Young Literary Men Part 4

the girl in Brooklyn the other girl in Brooklyn

It went on in that vein a little longer. He smiled, remembering. Something of a poem, here. Some poetry in it. A little vulgar, sure, but why not? Hadn't Sam been polite long enough? Hadn't he lowered the toilet seat, alone in his home, only Sam and his tiny Google in that apartment, courteously lowering the seat, raising the seat, lowering it again like an idiot? So he had earned a little list, he thought, he had earned that right.

Yesterday's was not actually The List. That venerable doc.u.ment could be found earlier in the notebook. Since its composition a few weeks before in a moment of sheer quiet desperation, Sam had compiled a number of suggestive permutations. Women he'd seen naked. Jewish women. Women he'd kissed. By height. By age. Political affiliation.

He was profoundly influenced, in his list work, by the baseball stat revisionists. These were the men who'd thought up the slugging percentage and then went on to invent further and more elaborate indices. They secretly hoped thereby to demonstrate that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of all time, and of course Sam wished them well. But no matter how much they fiddled with the numbers, a.s.serted that the most meaningful statistic in baseball, baseball's very essence, was slugging plus on-base percentage minus the average of the two hitters on either side of you divided by the league average-procedures that did in fact move the 1946 Williams ahead of Ty Cobb and Stan Musial and Barry Bonds-they could never, with any conceivable rearrangement of the statistical heavens, push Williams beyond Babe Ruth. It just wasn't possible. Sam found similarly that no matter how much he recalculated and recalibrated, took circ.u.mstances into account and multiplied by three, there simply was no avoiding the fact that he hadn't, in his life, received enough b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs.

He was also, he had to admit, influenced by the Holocaust revisionists. Had he really, in his excitement, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed uselessly onto Lori Miller's thigh that night at Miles Fishbach's house? Had he really really? And had he actually been so flaccid with Rachel Simkin that he never even penetrated? Says who-Rachel? Rachel was drunk, barely-human drunk, as was he. And Toby, to whom he'd confessed the next day? But Toby hadn't been there, and in any case witness testimony is culturally constructed, possibly a case of ma.s.s psychosis. Sam traced a thick, triumphant arrow from Rachel's name in the almost-slept list to the bottom of The List itself. Then he crossed it out.

What was it about this list-making? Was Sam a total degenerate, a s.e.xual accountant, an Excel-chart pervert? Or was it a crisis: did he think he'd never sleep with anyone ever again? Or almost-sleep? So may as well draw up the career totals, send them off to the Hall for consideration? And did he really think he would never kiss or fondle the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of another girl?-for there were those to explain as well.

No, no, that wasn't it, exactly. It was more as if life, the life he'd known, had begun to seem so slippery to him. Who could say what had happened and what it had meant? There'd been so much drinking! He had been close to people-but not quite close enough; and he had given himself to people, but not quite, ever, quite the full of him. So there was a consolation to be had in these lists, he now thought, when he thought about it. With Talia he had been kind, and with Arielle he'd been das.h.i.+ng, and with Lori he'd been eager, and with Rachel Simkin, that time, he'd been an utter failure. And if you put them on a list, was the idea, if you added them up: there he was, finally, a human being.

Sam boarded the Red Line train at Harvard Square. Some people woke up before noon, and what did it get them? A good seat on the inbound 8:45, maybe. Maybe it got them that seat. But at 3:30 every seat was good, and there were plenty to go around. Perhaps this is why Sam worked the late s.h.i.+ft at Fidelity. It also meant less interaction with the bankers themselves, some of whom were Sam's former cla.s.smates-some of whom, in that former life, he had asked out on dates. In certain parts of the temp world his mastery of Excel still held cachet, still commanded attention; but less so, increasingly less so, in the five-year alumni report he kept buried, but constantly updated, deep inside his heart.

The Google had helped, once. His poor little Google! Was there nothing to be done?

Arriving at work five minutes late, Sam ducked into the bathroom and changed into his work clothes, a pair of khakis and his tie, hopping around on one foot while he tried to keep from stepping on the bathroom floor with the other. The toilet with its scan-flusher kept flus.h.i.+ng and flus.h.i.+ng behind him as he hopped.

"Are you OK in there?" someone asked when he was almost done, causing him to trip into the door, the right side of his face momentarily keeping the rest of him from falling.

When Sam finally entered the cavernous main hall of Fidelity's Creative Services, where a thousand monkeys clacked away at a thousand PowerPoint presentations, he tried to keep his head up proudly. He had once quit this place so that he could write his epic, and when he returned, some of his coworkers . . . made fun of him. They resented his ambition, and even more they resented his failure. The Creative Services department at Fidelity was like a small town in an American movie from which everyone dreamed of escaping. It was the end of the line-and to return, at the end of the line, to the end of the line, was not what Sam had planned for himself.

He punched in at his workstation, stowing his backpack in the deep bottom drawer. His apartment was a horrific mess but at work he'd arranged things nicely. He still had, if he recalled correctly, half a roast beef sub in the mini-drawer fridge the company had installed at each quasi-cubicle-and he took it out now. The job queue was empty and so Sam checked his e-mail: nothing. Then his internal e-mail: nothing. Happily he clicked to Slip.com and read Katie's latest s.e.x advice column, on what to do if your girlfriend is a virgin. As always, very sensible. They had met when he was still an up-and-coming Zionist novelist and seriously dating Talia. Katie was a bright and pretty girl and working for the and read Katie's latest s.e.x advice column, on what to do if your girlfriend is a virgin. As always, very sensible. They had met when he was still an up-and-coming Zionist novelist and seriously dating Talia. Katie was a bright and pretty girl and working for the Phoenix, Phoenix, when the alt-weeklies were still a proud inst.i.tution, and they were at a party full of what few journalists and nonuniversity scholars could be mustered on a Cambridge weekend night. Talia wasn't there, for some reason, while Katie's boyfriend was. He was a management consultant, or a lawyer, tall and pasty, and Katie was visibly annoyed by him. That's what you got, Sam thought at the time, if you hung out in Boston. They had stayed intermittently in touch by e-mail-e-mail too was once a proud inst.i.tution-and now, at last, they were single, and were going on a date! Except Sam wasn't the man he'd been when they'd first met. He looked around briefly and Googled himself. Fifteen! when the alt-weeklies were still a proud inst.i.tution, and they were at a party full of what few journalists and nonuniversity scholars could be mustered on a Cambridge weekend night. Talia wasn't there, for some reason, while Katie's boyfriend was. He was a management consultant, or a lawyer, tall and pasty, and Katie was visibly annoyed by him. That's what you got, Sam thought at the time, if you hung out in Boston. They had stayed intermittently in touch by e-mail-e-mail too was once a proud inst.i.tution-and now, at last, they were single, and were going on a date! Except Sam wasn't the man he'd been when they'd first met. He looked around briefly and Googled himself. Fifteen!

On the screen, a job appeared-apparently they knew Sam's schedule, knew when to send down their Excel spreadsheets. This one was easy, almost offensively easy, but Sam took his time. He clicked, he dragged, he checked his e-mail again, then finally he dropped. He glanced at the request form-John Laizer. Sam recognized the name from college, though beyond the inexplicable (except statistically, except statistically) conviction that Laizer was a jerk, he couldn't remember him. He sped up production anyway, forestalling the possibility of Laizer hovering behind him, making nervous hurry-up noises and obnoxious cell phone calls. The resulting chart looked a little goofy, Sam would admit, but rules were rules and he was following them. Besides, he was the only Excel man at Fidelity. He sent the job off and decided to avail himself of the company's long-distance plan.

"h.e.l.lo," a deliberately bored male voice answered on the other end. "Google."

"Hi," said Sam. "Could I speak with Max Sobel, please?"

"Who's calling?"

"My name is Sam. He might not know me. I'm a writer."

"Whom do you write for?"

"Not anywhere in particular. I'm sort of freelance."

"Well, Max is out today. Why don't I take your number and he'll call you."

"I really need to talk to him," said Sam. For all he knew this was was Max. It was a small operation, still, maybe just Max doing Google in different voices. Max. It was a small operation, still, maybe just Max doing Google in different voices.

"I said he'd call you."

Sam checked the faces of the nearby PowerPoint hipsters. He really had freelanced a bit along the way, that much was true, and he'd interviewed people for his Zionist epic. But now he lowered his voice.

"Look," he said. "My Google is shrinking."

"Excuse me?"

"My Google. I Google myself and every time it gets lower."

"Right. Pages often go off-line and then they no longer show up on searches."

"Yes, I understand that, but this is getting out of hand. I was in the mid-three hundreds before. Now I'm at, like, forty," Sam lied.

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about that, sir. Maybe, if you don't mind my saying, you need to do something notable. Write something. Start a blog."

"Look, I tried that, don't you think I tried that? I'm calling because I thought maybe you could s.h.i.+ft the algorithm a little."

"Oh, no, we couldn't do that."

"You couldn't just up my count a little until I get back on my feet?"

The man laughed an uneasy laugh. You couldn't do anything in this country anymore, thought Sam, without someone thinking you were a creep. When the man spoke again it was with a forbidding formality.

"Sir, there's nothing we can do. I can only suggest writing more. Distinguis.h.i.+ng yourself somehow. Google is a fair search engine."

"It's a search engine run by Jews!" Sam suddenly cried, a little louder than he'd meant to.

Everyone turned to look, and though Sam raised his palm and curled down his mouth in an expression meant to a.s.sure them of his abiding control, the man had hung up.

He sent his next job over to technical services to print. He needed to speak with Toby.

Toby was a good friend to have, and Sam's only one. They were brother losers, kindred spirits-a computer genius, an animations specialist, Toby had refused to cash in on the Internet boom just as Sam had somehow refused to cash in on the post-9/11 fascination with the Middle East.

"I guess you don't want to be on Talk of the Nation Talk of the Nation" was how Jay, his former agent, had put it.

"Of course I do," Sam had replied. "More than anything in the world."

"You got an advance for this book," said Jay. "You realize you'll have to give it back?"

"I realize," said Sam. "I realize."

Toby was his only friend, and as Sam made his way over to tech services, he wondered about the others. It used to be, when Sam was still with Talia, that he couldn't get them to stop calling, he had to juggle and sort and combine visits, just to fit them all in. And then-well, would it be ba.n.a.l to admit that, when Sam's epic was going well, he'd traded them in for better friends? Friends like Jay, who lived in lofts, who lived in Brooklyn? And that when his epic collapsed he'd gradually felt this new company sour, himself out of place? That, unable to match them book party for book party, he began to decline their perfectly friendly invitations-so that eventually he was left with no one, or rather with Toby? Would this be ba.n.a.l, too much like a movie, would it be not quite the way life was? And yet it was exactly the way life was.

So therefore Toby, who had been working for several years on a novel about his hometown of Milwaukee. . . . At least, Sam realized as he raised his hand in greeting, that's what he a.s.sumed it was about. Toby had given him a printout of the first two hundred pages a few weeks ago, and Sam hadn't yet gotten around to looking at them.

"What brings you to the lair of the technically d.a.m.ned?" said Toby in greeting.

Sam winked. "Accidentally sent my job over here."

"Listen," said Toby. "I've been meaning to tell you. If you haven't looked at my ma.n.u.script yet, will you wait? I've made some changes."

"OK," Sam said, trying to sound disappointed. In fact he was relieved-and grateful to gentle Toby for his forbearance. Still, he had to tell him about his Google problem, and so he did.

"Look," he concluded. "Couldn't you make my name appear places, kind of invisibly?"

"Heh." Toby chuckled. "Why not just write something? That would be easier."

Toby nodded to the printer, which had long ago emitted Sam's three Excel pages.

Sam took them in his hand. "You see that happening, Toby?" With the Excel pages he gestured in the direction of the Power-Pointers; he hinted broadly, with the sheets, of his enslavement. "Do you?"

They stood in silence for a while, and Sam must have looked bad because eventually Toby relented. "OK," he said. "Theoretically it's possible to write a program that would trick the Google-bot into remembering all the pages you used to be on, almost reposting them, sort of, a.s.suming they've gone off-line, and restoring them within the domain of your own personal private Google search."

"That sounds great!" cried Sam.

"But we can't do it. It wouldn't even be that hard, to be honest. But if the Google people caught me, they'd break my fingers."

"Let me worry about the fingers."

Toby snorted. "They're my my fingers!" fingers!"

"And it's my my Google." Google."

"Right."

"Right."

An impa.s.se. They stood facing each other. Toby was a little taller, but Sam was more full of ire and life, and he had more hair; after Talia broke up with him, Sam had met Semra, an attractive photographer friend of Toby's, and Toby had proceeded to warn her, properly perhaps but still, thought Sam, unnecessarily, against him. She stopped returning his calls. "So you won't do this for me?" said Sam. "There's an injustice being perpetrated, right now, against your old friend, and you won't help him. That's what you're saying."

Toby shrugged helplessly.

"I see," said Sam. "You know," he went on-something in the back of his head burning now, not quite knowing yet what he was about to say, but knowing that it would not be something he could take back-"I always suspected that when the s.h.i.+t hit the fan, you'd be too much of a p.u.s.s.y to help me out."

Toby did look taken aback by this. "This is the s.h.i.+t hitting the fan?" he said. "This is an injustice?"

"For me it is. Yeah. They're trying to disappear me!"

"I'm sorry," said Toby. "That is just crazy. I just-sorry. I don't get it."

"No, you don't. You don't get it. You're going to sit up here with your computers and your so-called f.u.c.king novel. Good luck with that. And they are going to eat you up when they're done with me! They are going to f.u.c.king disappear you." Sam was sticking his finger in Toby's face. "Well, I'm not going to be here to watch."

And with this he gathered up his printouts in disgust and walked off to his workstation, his friend count down to zero.

And at his station he found John Laizer waving Excel sheets angrily in the air. He gestured broadly with them at Sam's incompetence, his carelessness, his indifference to the team, the play of the team, playing as a team. Sam recognized him now-they'd thrown up together over the side of the boat at the soph.o.m.ore year Owl Club Booze Cruise, except that actually they hadn't. Sam threw up, he was a big thrower-upper then, while Laizer just made some throw-up noises in the spirit of team throwing-up. "You didn't throw up," Sam had said. "I kind of did," said Laizer, and then gave him a look that beseeched Sam not to tell the Owl Club members, not to ruin his chances. Sam didn't, and now Laizer pretended not to recognize him. Maybe he'd truly forgotten. Laizer demanded to know where Sam had been, and demanded to know why his columns looked so funny, and demanded all sorts of things before, finally, his cell phone rang, and he left Sam to fix up a chart that really was, now he mentioned it, pretty terrible looking.

The next night he had dinner with Katie. Somehow he'd managed, through the wreck of his male friends.h.i.+ps, to continue seeing women. Perhaps because they didn't notice how sad a spectacle he now was (they weren't Googling him), or perhaps because his demands on them were so trivial, and he always paid for drinks. As for Katie, she was, like many of the girls Sam knew, - pretty, - Jewish, - a Brown graduate, - a reader of the Times Times Sunday book review, with Sunday book review, with - short black hair fas.h.i.+onably cut, - a pierced navel, - and a tight black semi-turtleneck thing that hugged her b.r.e.a.s.t.s,

and as dinner progressed Sam realized he didn't have a chance. He must have been quite formidable when they first met, a man with an agent and a book deal, the audacious self-appointed laureate of American Jewish anxiety over Israel. Did he cut a das.h.i.+ng figure? No, not exactly, probably not, but in retrospect, as he sat before her thus diminished a year later, he thought maybe he'd once exercised a certain pull.

But that was then. Now she told him about how early she had to rise the next morning, a flight to New York for a s.e.x-advice panel sponsored by the MLA, and if Sam was any sort of semiotician, this was not a good sign.

After two beers, however, he didn't care. "My Google," he told Katie. "It's shrinking."

"That's awful. Can't you see a doctor?"

"Funny."

"Well, so what? The important thing is to smell nice. And be good to others."

"But I'm not any of those things! And anyway, what do you know? Your Your Google is ma.s.sive. You have like a thousand hits." Google is ma.s.sive. You have like a thousand hits."

"I don't think I do," said Katie very sternly.

"You do, you do. You're more famous than Jesus."

"That can't be," she said, looking at him to know whether she should laugh.

"No, you're right. Jesus has the most hits, actually."

"More than Britney?"

"More."

"More than Osama?"

"More."

"Well, good for him," she said, smiling for punctuation. She had bright, beautiful teeth. Sam didn't have a chance.

Sam didn't have a chance. It had taken courage-not talent, not wit, and certainly not foresight-to refuse a regular job after school, to do nothing but read about Israel and worry and argue while his cla.s.smates found work at Fidelity or HyperCapital or joined rock bands or traveled the world. Sam knew he had more courage-they were taller, more attractive, they had better table manners and better skin, but he'd gotten all the b.a.l.l.s.

It took b.a.l.l.s to do what he did because if he failed-and he had failed-he'd end up where he was. He hadn't accomplished the things of which he'd dreamed, and now he couldn't even get done the very basic things that most adults did-like pay his bills, for example (a most unpleasant form letter-and purple-was lying on his cluttered desk, somewhere, from Commonwealth Gas), or alphabetize his books. And when he tried, when he took the books off the shelves in order to put them back in alphabetical order, he became so discouraged at the impossibility of categorizing them properly that he just left them lying there, heaped upon the floor. He worked out a lot but he didn't apply moisturizer to his skin at night, and he seldom flossed. And then there was the Google. . . . Whereas Katie, Katie was the sort of girl who, when she replied to e-mails, spliced her responses into segments, in which she answered specific points, which were set off from the margin by little arrows. This just wasn't something Sam could do. He was always writing people back about other things.

And yet Katie seemed willing to sit there. Was she dumb?

"Do you get many e-mails from creeps?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, sometimes someone who doesn't read the magazine will stumble onto the site and write something nasty."

"It is is a real bourgeois genre, you know." a real bourgeois genre, you know."

"I don't think that's what they're objecting to."

"Who knows? It's like those late-Victorian conduct manuals, so that the barbarians could behave themselves in polite society."

"So it's egalitarian. And as far as women are concerned, you know, it's nice when even barbarians know how to behave themselves in bed."

This thought of the barbarians troubled Sam. s.e.x columns and deodorant, also the Gap: these were the forces allowing them into the bedrooms of attractive women who'd studied at Brown.

"You realize how bad the working cla.s.s used to smell?" Sam wanted to know, launching into a cultural history of bathing. He believed that the olfactory element in social interactions had been unfairly neglected in the historical literature. "Orwell has a whole chapter on this in one of his books. He said the Left needed to face facts. Or smell them."