The Social Animal (31 page)

Life is filled with strange correspondences. You spend months looking for a good job and then two land at your feet in a day. You spend years looking for a soul mate and then find yourself drawn to two people simultaneously. The day after Harold had his debate with Mark, and effectively closed off one life course for himself, he found himself with another offer. A different life course opened before him.

It came in the form of an e-mail. There was a lunch invitation. It was from a woman named Erica, a friend of a friend. She said she was looking for someone who would help her build her business, and she’d heard that he might be just the person to do that. He checked her out on Facebook and saw a small-boned, attractive Latina-Asian woman. Harold didn’t know about working with her. But he wouldn’t mind getting to know her. Harold wrote Erica back and said he’d be delighted to meet for lunch. He pretended to be interested in the job, but all sorts of romantic fantasies were already burbling in his mind.

LIMERENCE

HAROLD
AND
ERICA
HAD
THEIR
FIRST
MEETING
AT A
STARBUCKS
, where she had arranged a job interview. She made sure to get there first, so she could assume the role of host. He arrived in a suit, but carrying a backpack, which displeased her. She had a coffee waiting for him on the table, and he sat down and introduced himself. He seemed lively and pleasant, though his manners were a tad casual for her taste.

“Let’s do our small talk after,” Erica said after about a minute, cutting him off. “I want to tell you who I am and what I’m looking for.” She briskly ran down a history of her life and a description of the consulting firm she had started. She was completely honest about the difficulties she had experienced so far. “I want someone who can dive into behavioral economics and similar research and find a unique selling proposition—a set of tools we will possess that will help us meet client needs.” She spoke rapidly because, though she would never admit it to herself, she was uncomfortable and a little nervous.

Harold was practically a professional interviewee. He’d been through dozens and by now had his disarming shtick down cold. He didn’t get to use it this time. Instead he stiffened in response to her clipped, efficient tone. He liked her, though. He was entranced by her background and her tough, driven demeanor. He especially liked the fact that she didn’t ask what he hoped to be doing in ten years, or any of those other bullshit questions.

Her queries were precise and practical. Did he know who Daniel Kahneman was? (No.) What sort of research projects had he conducted in the past? (He exaggerated his responsibilities, but not too much.) Had he done fact-checking? (Yes.) It was only at the end that she got to some unusual questions. She asked him to describe the culture at his college. What was the difference between working at a policy magazine and a for-profit business?

The interview took only twenty-five minutes. She hired him. He asked for $55,000 a year and she told him the job would pay $60,000, with raises as business picked up.

She had no office, so they met about three times a week in her kitchen, and then he’d go work at home. She kept her kitchen spare, to give it some semblance of a professional atmosphere, and always kept the door to the bedroom closed. There were no magnets on the refrigerator door. There were no pictures of friends or family that Harold could see. On the other hand, he was impressed by her cutlery and flatware. Harold was still using the utensils he had acquired in college—the drying rack for the dishes, the same six pots and pans, a bottle opener he’d gotten free from a beer distributor. Erica, who was basically his age, had an adult’s kitchen.

There were parts of the business he did not see. She never let him meet potential clients. He didn’t know how much work went into getting a meeting. She’d drop him an e-mail with the name of a possible client, the nature of the problem they were hoping to solve, and a list of the things they would have to do to win the account. Harold would dive into his research, sleeping during the day, working at night, and then he’d arrange to come by her place to present what he had found. She would greet him kindly but firmly, with Chinese tea and sliced carrots.

Business began to pick up. There was a brisk rhythm of proposals and research projects. One company wanted to find ways to break down the wall between its engineers and marketing people. Another wanted to find ways to market banking to young people. Erica would give Harold instructions about what she wanted and tips about where to find the information, and he felt comfortable with her and really enjoyed the work. If there was a period when their relationship blossomed, it was during editing.

Erica would secure a client, then do a series of meetings with them. She’d send Harold off on a research project. He’d write a bunch of memos, and then she’d use them to draft a report that would go to the client. About two-thirds of Harold’s work was doing the research and writing the memos, but a good third was going over her drafts and helping her improve them.

The first time they sat down together Erica almost cried with gratitude. Harold had the ability to read something and really see what the person was trying to get at. When he gave his reactions to her drafts, Erica had this overwhelming sense of being fully listened to and deeply understood. Harold could take a stray wisp of an idea, and get enthralled by it. He’d gush over parts of her draft, making her feel like an absolute star. He’d underline some sections three times and look at her in absolute wonder for having produced them. Then, he’d look at the bad parts as gold mines that just hadn’t come in yet. Erica had a tendency to pile up vague, high-minded sentences as a way to cover up a concept that was still fuzzy in her mind. Harold would clear them away, and chop off sections that simply didn’t work. Then he’d fill in the holes. He developed an ability to write in her voice and to think in her style, and he made her sound smarter than she really was. He was a tremendous editor. He derived pleasure from sublimating his own ego and writing in another’s name.

After six months, they spoke in their own code, with just a few letters indicating what still had to be done. She loosened up in her notes back, telling a few jokes. “I just couldn’t get this to work,” she wrote once, which for her was a major show of vulnerability. If he found some new fact, he’d call her up, flushed with enthusiasm. Sometimes they’d go out for chicken wings and edit the reports together. Once, when she was out of town with a client he ended an e-mail note with “I miss you.” She BlackBerried back, “I miss you, too.”

She had no conscious interest in finding a man then, and Harold was nothing like the sort of man she hoped someday to get involved with. He wasn’t as tough as she was. He wasn’t destined for corporate greatness. He was the sort of guy she could eat alive. But over the months, she found she had real affection for him. He was a genuinely good person. From the bottom of his soul, he wanted her to succeed.

One afternoon, after a hard stretch of work, Harold suggested they go biking. Erica hadn’t ridden a bike in years and didn’t own one. Harold said they could borrow his roommate’s. They drove to his apartment, where Erica had never been, met his strapping and overly charming roommate, whom Erica had never seen, and then went out for a ride. Erica wore her workout gear and Harold had on just regular shorts, a T-shirt, and was kind enough to let Erica use the less dorky of the two bike helmets. They rode for about ten miles, and of course Erica had to accelerate past him up the hills, just to show she could. They got to a steep hill overlooking the water, and Erica began to break away once again, laughing as she outdistanced him. About thirty yards farther on, Harold blew by her. He didn’t just pass her. He blasted by her like she was going backward. He had a huge smile on his face, and he was barely breathing. She had no idea he had that power in him.

Harold stopped at the top of the hill and watched her huff up. He still had the huge grin on his face, and she was laughing between her gasps, when their eyes met as she pulled up alongside him. Erica looked into Harold’s eyes more deeply than she ever had, and saw through them into some of the things he liked and cherished: his flag-football games, his backpack filled with Great Books, his excitement for her and for their projects together.

They stood astride their bikes on the top of the hill, looking out at the view of the water, and Erica slipped her hand into Harold’s. Harold was surprised at how rough and hard her palm felt to the touch, and how lovely.

A few weeks later, Harold sat alone in his apartment, feeling that his life was going tremendously well. All human beings go through life with a fully operational status sonar. We send out continual waves of status measurements and receive a stream of positive or negative feedback signals that cumulatively define our place in society. Harold looked around at his loft.
PING
. A plus signal came back. He loved its open space and high ceilings. Harold contemplated his abs.
PING
. A negative signal came back. He really should go to the gym more. Harold looked at his face in the mirror.
PING
. A neutral signal came back. No sculpted cheekbones, but it could be worse.

All day long the status sonar hums along—a stream of pluses, minuses, and neutrals building in the mind, producing either happiness, anxiety, or doubt. The status sonar isn’t even a conscious process most of the time; it is just the hedonic tone of existence. Much of life, Mark had told Harold, consists of trying to maximize the number of pluses in the stream and minimize the number of minuses. Much of life is a series of adjustments to plus up the flow.

The problem is, nobody’s status sonar is accurate. Some people are status exaggerators. They wildly inflate their spot in the pecking order. They are sixes but they think they are eights and when they ask out women who are nines they are flummoxed when they get rejected. Other people are status minimizers. These people will never apply for jobs for which they are amply qualified because they assume they’ll be crushed by the competition.

The most successful people are mildly delusional status inflators. They maximize their pluses, thus producing self-confidence, and decide their minuses are not really that important anyway, thus eliminating paralyzing self-doubt.

After millennia of male domination, men are big status inflators. A global survey by Adrian Furnham of University College, London, found that men everywhere overestimate their own intelligence. Another study revealed that 95 percent of American men believe they are in the top 50 percent when it comes to social skills. Women are more likely to be status deflaters. Women underestimate their IQ scores by an average of about five points.

Harold’s sonar sensor was like a finely crafted Swiss watch. It was balanced, sensitive, and appropriately forgiving. Like most happy people, Harold judged himself by his intentions, his friends by their deeds, and his rivals by their mistakes. The PINGs continued. The pluses flowed.

And when Harold imagined himself with Erica, well, it was like a surging torrent of pluses. Stendhal observed that each person’s first great love is fueled by ambition. Harold wasn’t merely excited by Erica as a person. He was excited by the whole aura of the hard-charging rags-to-riches girl. He was excited at the thought of the places they would go together. He imagined them together, trading delightful mock insults at dinner parties, like Beatrice and Benedick in
Much Ado about Nothing
.

But there was also something deeper going on. All his life, Harold had lived at a certain level, but now he had discovered deeper compulsions. Coming to this realization was like living in a house all your life and suddenly falling through a trapdoor to find there had been a level underground all along, and then to find another level beneath that, and another level and another. As Matthew Arnold put it:

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light
,

Of what we say we feel—below the stream
,

As Light, of what we think we feel—there flows

With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep
,

The central stream of what we feel indeed
.

Harold couldn’t go five minutes without thinking about Erica. If he was walking down the street alone, he thought he saw her face in the crowd every few blocks. He rarely ate, and neglected his friends. Harold’s whole mood was elevated. Things that used to bore him he now found delightful. People who used to annoy him now seemed warm and friendly. When martins mate, they flutter frantically from branch to branch in a state of hypercharged delirium. Harold now had the energy to stay up all night, to work without breaks.

His mind raced back to certain precious episodes since she had first slipped her hand into his—eating a Chinese dinner in her apartment, their first lovemaking. When he was out running, he would concoct elaborate fantasies in which he heroically saved her from harm (something about the act of running, and the primal chemicals it released in his brain, brought out these Walter Mitty imaginings).

Then, at another moment he might be swept up in fear of losing her. There’s a nineteenth-century poem by a Kwakiutl Indian that captures the crush of Harold’s sweet and searing sensations: “Fires run through my body—/the pain of loving you./Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you./Sickness wanders my body with my love for you./ ... /Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you./I remember what you said to me./I am thinking of your love for me./I am torn by your love for me.”

According to studies by Faby Gagné and John Lydon, 95 percent of those in love believe that their current partner is above average in looks, intelligence, warmth, and sense of humor (while they describe their former lovers as closed-minded, emotionally unstable, and generally unpleasant). Harold was no different. He practiced a most delicious form of self-deception and saw Erica as perfect in every way.