Microserfs (31 page)

SEE?

Back at the office, drunk, Susan demonstrated for us the Official Chyx handshake - all Chyx members greet each other by emulating the world-famous Farrah Fawcett simultaneous hair-flip-and-aim gesture, touching fingertips in mock gun-firing pose at the end of the gesture's completion. Dusty, Karla, Michael, and Susan were in the Lego garden practicing, and it was like boot camp:

"Make it fluid, kids - remember, you're sweeping twelve pounds of Texan corn-fed hair out of your eyes and readying a loaded Colt .45 almost simultaneously. There's a slight flip of the neck involved, and the left gun-holding hand must reach horizontal position at exactly the same moment the hair-flipping finger has swept the hair and is ready to pull the trigger. Michael - a bit more grace. Dusty, what would Kelly, Jill, and Sabrina say about that jerkiness between the hair and the trigger? Take aim, Chyx. You are the world. Free your mind. Unplug. Plug in."

Thought: all PC-style consumer electronics are the same oyster-gray color of Macintoshes. The guy who makes the gray pigment must be one rich pigment maker. And all TV-style things are black. What will be the color when TVs and PCs merge?

Abe has defected! Susan was on CNN! What a day! Exclamation marks!

First of all, Abe arrived with a U-Haul filled with 10,000 plastic drinking straws, Jif, a bed, and, hopefully, a Scrooge McDuck-like heap of money. He entered our Hamilton Street office around noon wearing his Starship Enterprise T-shirt. I said to him, "Hi, Abe, welcome home," and he said, "Hello, Daniel. I'm having my trampoline shipped down - even though it would probably be cheaper to buy one here."

He paused here and looked about the Lego garden. "It would be a shame not to bring the trampster with me, you know - such a useful metaphor for labor in the 1990s." He scanned the room further, seemingly unfazed by its colorful shock value, and pulled a plump-looking Costco bag out from underneath his armpit. "Oh, hello, Michael . . . I brought you some cheese slices to help us through those all-nighters. Now please tell me, just where is my space going to be?"

Abe had a brief meeting with Michael and Ethan ran out shouting, "We're liquid! We're liquid! We really are the liquid engineers. Daniel . . . how do you spell relief? Spell it, C-A-P-I-T-A-L."

Indeed, Abe is becoming an equity partner. He's going to help Michael out as a "senior" engineer and finish some core low-level code for him. Not only that but, in the interim until he finds a place to live, Abe is also moving in with Ethan up at the Dirty Harry house, and Ethan's overjoyed at the prospect of cash. Ethan was like that old cartoon dog character who, every time he received a bone, his ears would twirl up like a helicopter, his body would rise into the sky, and then he would float down to the earth in limp abandon.

Abe said, "People without lives like to hang out with other people who don't have lives. Thus they form lives." Even better, he'll have company.

CNN: We bootlegged a coaxial cable line in from the next office over and had it blasting on the monitor all day, watching "our Susan" every hour on the hour until around six o'clock, demonstrating for 137 countries around the world the Official Chyx handshake, discussing gender-blindness in the tech world, and, best of all, sneaking in her Net address.

It was very "TV." After 6:00, her segment was replaced by a segment on toilet training your cat.

Susan never even told us she did a CNN interview. But she came across so well. She's a star! And already her Chyx mailbox on our little Oop! node is jammed with responses. Susan, wearing a T-shirt portraying gender intelligence researcher Brenda Laurel that she had custom-made at Kinko's, was radiantly happy - not just at seeing her equity in Oop! saved at the last minute by Abe's money bin, but in seeing Chyx explode internationally. "Quelle plug for Chyx," she said, obviously thrilled. "And that Chyx handshake looked so good on TV. Best idea I ever had."

We celebrated all of the day's news with sundown drinks at the Empire Tap Room, and people were coming up to Susan and saying, "You're the smart one!" and Susan admitted that she, indeed, identified with Kate Jackson on Charlie's Angels.

Michael mixed Robitussin with his Calistoga water. We asked him if the drink had a name and he said, "I hereby christen this drink, 'the Justine Bateman' after the lovely and talented sister character, Mallory, of TV's beloved mid-eighties sitcom, Family Ties."

Abe felt left out and wanted to invent a drink, too, so he put two Redoxon vitamin tablets into his diet Coke and rum and christened it a "Tina Yothers," "the smart, sassy younger sister of the above-mentioned TV sitcom."

We then tormented the staff by demanding those European layered drinks with all of the various liqueurs of varying specific gravities in tall, thin glasses. Dusty called the drinks "metaphor for the class system," and we were all weirded-out because we remembered she used to be so political and now she just changes the subject whenever it comes up.

Then, because so many people in the Bay Area have tattoos, we lapsed into a discussion of the subject. In the end, we all basically decided, "Yuck," all except for Bug who is still considering a lifetime of body mutilation with an earring appointment he has next week. Bug was actually being a bit mopey - the breakup, I suppose.

Anyway, we concluded that if we were forced at gunpoint to have a tattoo put onto us, the only acceptable tattoo we could think of was a bar code symbol.

We then tried to decide which bar codes would be coolest, and we decided the best ones would be products with high brand-name recognition: Kraft dinner, Kotex, Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and so forth.

And then we figured that bar codes will be obsolete soon enough, and having one on your shoulder or forehead would be like having a Betamax tattooed on your shoulder or forehead.

So in the end we couldn't decide on a tattoo.

There was this weird moment at the end of the night when everybody was pixelated. Ethan was carrying two flaming Sambucas, and tripped over a Planet of the Apes lunchbox somebody left on the floor next to a backpack, and the drinks sloshed all over the back of Susan's T-shirt, and she was on fire, like the "Flame On!" guy from the Fantastic Four.

Emmett leapt over to her from behind and smothered her flames with his body and Susan, who was so drunk she didn't even know about the Sambuca, said, "I forgive you, my love," and Emmett kissed her on the neck and then he whispered to Karla and me, "She's on fire and she doesn't even know it. Poor baby."

After the Tap Room, we were all far too drunk to drive - even the intake-conscious pregnant Dusty - so we wobbled back to the office (piss tanks, all of us) and we turned the lights down low, so that only the dimmer lights were glowing on our Lego garden, as though it were sunset. We were all just lolling about on the floor, feeling childish because we weren't coding for another few hours. Dusty and Karla were making hair accessories out of Lego bricks ("Ooh, it's a Topsy Tail!") and Ethan, Emmett, and Michael were having a half-hearted (make that quarter-hearted) game of Nerf Wars across the Lego garden. Todd was lying on his stomach staring at Dusty's stomach (no visible baby yet) and Bug was taking apart and rebuilding a small house my father had built, and seemed lost in some other world.

Susan was building a striped, Dr. Seuss-like radio tower, and asked Bug what was on his mind, and Bug said, "1978."

Susan said, "Not the best year for music."

Bug said, "That was the year I fell in love. The year I got my heart broken."

Drunk or not, all ears, visibly or surreptitiously, turned to Bug.

"I wasn't supposed to fall in love. I didn't even know it was love. I didn't even know that love was some sort of option. All I knew was that I couldn't take my eyes off him. I wasn't even looking around, but somehow this guy drew my attention magnetically, and I was bewitched."

Unsolicited confession: woah!

"This guy . . . he worked at the SeaFirst on Sherman Avenue in Coeur d'Alene. I'm not saying his name - as if it matters now. No. I will say his name. His name was Allan. So I've said his name. I've never done that before." A pause. "Allan."

Bug removed the roof completely from the house and plucked out, brick by brick, the interior.

"I came in one day around lunch hour - just before lunch hour - and I asked if he was into a quick bite nearby. He said yes. We went to a Sizzler, and it was such a loser lunch. Anonymous food, but it didn't matter. Allan was acknowledging the fact I existed, and I was half crazy for him. Hell, I was totally crazy for him."

Bug asked Susan if she had some extra six-stud white beams, and she gave him some.

"I asked Allan what he did on Friday nights. He said he went to this one bar. I don't even think it had a name. A dive. Truck stop with grease burgers and piss beer. I went there three weekends in a row, and on the third weekend, he showed up, and I tried to be so casual. And we talked, and we got really deep really quickly - that scary kind of deep you experience when someone has you entranced.

"And he asked me to go for a drive with him. And so ask me, did I go?"

"Did you go?" asked Michael.

"Oh yeah. We drove around for an hour in his pickup and we talked and drank Bud Light, and I kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but my problem was I didn't know what it was, or where it was supposed to go . . . where there was.

He'd swig and wipe his mouth and wipe his hand on the upholstery and nothing seemed to happen. Finally we returned to the bar. Back there, at the bar, he said he had to go, back to his . . . girlfriend. But before he went he held my hand and he stroked it, and I thought I'd die of excitement."

Bug sighed.

"What happened next?" asked Susan.

"Me? I hounded him. Oh fuck, what a loser I was. I made all these needless deposits and withdrawals at the bank. $20. $50. $10. The manager finally came over and pointedly showed me the ATM machine. Allan always managed to elude me, so I never talked to him again.

"Around the same time, I got a job offer at Microsoft and I took it - talk about escape hatch! And so there was never any closure with Allan. He's probably married now, and has 44 kids. I've been avoiding people ever since.

"But there was one final incident, though. The weekend before I left for Microsoft, I went back to the dive, and there was Allan. I felt something swell in my heart, that maybe I'd have a second chance after all to really find out what it was that I wanted to happen, and I bought two beers and was carrying them over when I saw him go out to the parking lot with some other guy, taking some other guy out for a drive, and my heart fell like a bowl of goldfish smashing onto a cathedral floor. I guess it's his gig - little drives that go nowhere, with lonely boys. Whatta sleazebag."

Total silence had fallen over our office, save for a few machines purring. Bug picked up his Lego house and held it and smelled it.

"Sure, I know I'm a geek, and I know that predisposes me to introversion. And Microsoft did allow me to feed the introversion. But as you're all noticing for yourselves, you can't retreat like that here in the Valley. There's no excuse anymore to introvert. You can't use tech culture as an excuse not to confront personal issues for astounding periods of time. It's like outer space, where the vacuum makes your body explode unless you locate sanctuary."

Ethan said, "You mean to say you haven't . . . done anything since the mid-1980s?"

Susan said, "What do you mean, done, Ethan?"

"You know - made whoopee, for Christ's sake."

Bug said, "More like ever, Eth . . . I had my hand held once. Woo-ee! I'd be a lousy contestant on The Newlywed Game."

Michael had gone to the bathroom when this subject came up.

Susan asked, "Well, Bug, what about now?"

Bug said, "Now? I don't know if it's because I was afraid of being gay or because I was afraid of being rejected, but all I know is that now feels like the first chance at having some sort of go at being in love with someone else. I was so busy geeking out that I never had to examine my feelings about anything. I jumped into one of those little cartoon holes they use in old Merry Melodies, and I just came out the other side, and the other side is here. Didn't you ever wonder where the other side was?"

This was actually a pretty good question, and I got to remembering that I did sort of used to wonder where the cartoon holes would take you if you hopped into them.

Bug got quiet and put his head on Susan's legs. "You know, Sooz, I would have come here for nothing. I never had to get paid." Bug looked up. "Oh God, Ethan. you didn't hear that." He relaxed. "Well you know what I mean. I just wanted to leave the old me behind and start all over again. It's not the money. It's never been the money. It rarely ever is. It wasn't with any of us - was it? Ever?"

I don't think it ever was. We lay around and were silent while Bug pulled himself together. I put on an old Bessie Smith CD and we sat, alcohol scrambling our codes, our thoughts, our lives, if only for the remaining darkness, until work made its claim upon us once more.

Today was one of those days where I was snapped awake by a bad dream and a hangover. Beware of those layered Eurodrinks - they're made with scary, bee-sting-filled liqueurs!

All of us received an e-mail from Bug:

Hi kids. Me here.

Remember back in high school, there were always those peple who were in relationhips starting in eighth grade, and they're still in relationships today? They know all the logical sequnce of the way things are supposed to happen. Like in the third week, they have a spat, and they say, "Oh, well this is just the Third Week Spat," and it passes. Never having had a relationship, I don't know how all the steps in a relationship are suppossed to go. I have to learn all the steps, decades later. But I'll do it.

Sorry I lost it last night. I'm off to a B&B in Napa for a few days to think things through. Leisure and all of that. Freaky but necessary. Live and love. Bye kids.