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Chapter One – Great Romances of the 20th Century
Say Anything
God life is pointless.
I have two main issues in my life: 1) I am nobody, and 2) I am bored.
When I was a child, I used to wonder if I might be a robot. My theory was this: I have no proof I’m not a robot. Sure, I looked like a person, was made of skin and hair and flesh and stuff, at least on the surface. When I cut myself, I bled. When I injured myself, I hurt. When I felt happy I felt good, and when I felt sad I felt bad. I had all the traits of a human, but still, I was convinced on some days beyond belief that I was absolutely, definitely a robot.
Sure, when I cut myself I bled, but when Arnie cut himself in Terminator 2 he bled as well. He had skin and flesh and blood and stuff; the robotic shit, wiring and circuits and that, was underneath. I never cut myself too deeply as a child, so I had no idea whether, under the shallow cut from which warm, red blood oozed, there were a bunch of green and blue and red wires, tiny little things that powered me instead of brains and nerves like other, actual, people.
I went to hospital a few times as a child; I was very clumsy, I fell down and knocked my head on the concrete playground on multiple occasions. As well as this, I fell out of trees, fell off walls and small buildings. I just generally did a lot of falling. So I’d fall, and go to hospital, and there I’d have an X-ray. The doctor would show my parents the X-ray, and of course I’d be in the room and be able to see it, too. So really, there was proof that under my skin and flesh and arteries and veins and stuff was bones. But: whose bones? Whenever a doctor showed me an X-ray, it could have been for literally anyone. When I fell out of a tree one sunny summer Friday morning and fractured, supposedly, my forearm, in the hospital the doctor showed my parents and myself an X-ray of a broken forearm. But there was no proof it was my arm. It could have been anyone’s fractured forearm, absolutely anyone in the world. You might think this X-ray proved I was human, that underneath it all I was just guts and bowels and organs and stuff, but not me. No, I was deeply cynical.
I mean, I obviously still am deeply cynical, but at least now I’m an adult I know I’m not a robot. Or at least, I theorise that I’m not a robot. I still have no proof either way, but my train of thought now works in this way: if I am a robot, then someone royally fucked up. If I am a robot, what an absolute waste of time and money and resources. If this is the best that people can do when it comes to robotics, just fucking give it up. I ain’t doing anything to prove the rise of robots will ever happen. If anything, I’m living (lol) proof that robotics is fucked, and, unlike in Terminator 2, we have nothing to worry about.
I mean, honestly, if the best that scientists can come up with is a robot with severe, borderline crippling, depression, who’s so lonely that he’d kill himself if he wasn’t such a coward, then fuck me. Give it up lads and lasses! If I, Oliver Jones, am your best effort, then it’s time to find a new career, I’m afraid. I may pass the Turing Test, but at what cost? And I don’t mean, like, philosophically or whatever, I’m not going all Phillip K Dick on you, I mean literally: what’s the cost? If I am a robot, how much did it cost to make me, and was it (it definitely wasn’t) worth it?
Anyway, what even is a robot? According to Wikipedia a robot is a “machine — especially one programmable by a computer — capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically”. “Robots may be constructed to evoke human form” — okay so I definitely fit that criteria, I’d say I definitely “evoke human form”. If only on the outside, at least. When I stand in front of a mirror, staring back at me is, ostensibly, a human being. The person, thing, whatever, that stares back at me has skin, has eyes and ears and teeth and a nose and hair and all that jazz. When I stand in front of a mirror and look at my reversed-facsimile, that facsimile absolutely “evokes human form”.
But it’s all just so surface, isn’t it? What’s underneath it all? Sometimes I find myself leaning in close, looking myself in the eye. I see nothing. The popular saying tells us that the windows are the eyes to the soul. Well, does that mean I don’t have a soul, then? Because my eyes ain’t windows to shit. My eyes are eyes, just two roundish objects, stuck in my head, that allow me to see, but that’s about it. In literature, and in movies, narrators and characters talk about seeing the depth in someone’s eyes, seeing beautiful azure pools of blue, of greens that are forest-like, browns that mix and swirl and come to life. Well, my eyes are fucking dead. That they’re a light-ish kinda grey colour doesn’t help: no one on TV or in films or books has grey eyes. You never read about someone having “beautiful granite-coloured eyes” or “his grey pools, like the concrete of a thousand schoolyards, made her fall in love with him in an instant.”
My eyes, like the rest of me, are completely shallow. Sometimes I’m surprised I’m actually three-dimensional, because really, there’s nothing to me. But I digress: what is a robot? A robot is “programmable by a computer”. Well, what’s a computer? A computer as we know it now is something electronic, a laptop, smartphone, calculator, whatever. But, like, computers used to be people. The term computer originated — I’m pretty sure — at NASA, when complex equations had to be done by hand. The people who carried out these complex equations were computers. So, like, computers can be human. So does that mean, similarly, that robots can be human? So does that mean I can be both a robot, and a human? I think, if so, that would solve a lot of my problems. Well, perhaps problem one anyway, that of me being nobody. I’d still be nobody, but at least if I knew it for certain, knew once and for all that I was a robot, then I’d be happy. As well as this, if other people knew me to be human, they’d be happy, too. If one day it does turn out that I’m a robot, and not a human, I expect to be scorned. People don’t like what’s different to them, and also people don’t like the unfamiliar. If I had proof I was a human, whilst also knowing in my heart of hearts — my motherboard of motherboards — that I was a robot, I think everyone would be happy. Or at least, perhaps everyone would be slightly less unhappy?
But then what the fuck is a cyborg? Heading back to our old friend, Wikipedia, we learn that the definition of a cyborg is “a portmanteau of cybernetic and organism — (is) a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.” Well, that blows everything out of the water. Does that mean Arnie is a cyborg in T2? Now I think of it — I haven’t watched the film for a little while — I believe he is, and even says this. I believe he calls himself, to John Connor, a cybernetic organism. But that doesn’t help me. You know when you’re trying to remember something, a line from a movie or a different movie that one actor has been in, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, and then you remember and you get that incredibly intense feeling of satisfaction? I’m not getting that now whilst I think about cyborgs, and whether or not I might be a cyborg. The problem is, by its very definition a cyborg is partially human, has “organic body parts”. Well, I don’t feel like a cyborg. A cyborg feels very close to being a human, and I don’t feel like a human at all. If I’m being honest, I don’t feel like a robot at all either, but really I just don’t at all feel alive in any way, so being a robot feels like the most natural descriptor to apply to myself. I wouldn’t say I’m an animal or an alien, because these are both alive, and I’m not alive. So therefore I must be a robot. Or not. I don’t even know. To be honest, despite how it may seem, I also don’t even really care. Human, robot, animal, plant, alien, brick, horseshoe, whatever. I don’t care what I am. All I care about is how alone I am.
Have you ever seen the film Say Anything? Released in 1989, written and directed by Cameron Crowe, it tells the story of Lloyd Dobler, played by a very young John Cusack, slowly but surely making Diane Court, played by an also very young Ione Skye, fall in love with him. And it’s perfect.
Well, I mean, it’s kinda perfect. It makes me feel, which is a change — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It makes me feel both wonderfully uplifted: I watch Lloyd and Diane, I watch them meet and get to know each other, make each other smile and laugh, they learn about each other’s personalities, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and dreams. They learn and grow together, and though it isn’t without its faults, their relationship blooms and blossoms and all the other floral metaphors, and they fall madly in love with each other. And watching all of this play out in the space of 100 minutes makes me feel wonderful. I love to watch their love, I love to watch them interact with each other. When they kiss for the first time, it’s a perfect scene. Lloyd is teaching Diane to drive, and it isn’t going well, but that’s okay, he really likes her, he has the patience to take her through it. The car is jerking, Diane can’t work the clutch very well, she bounces from first to second gear, Lloyd is thrown around the car. But he doesn’t mind, and I don’t mind either. Diane isn’t perfect, and that’s another reason we — Lloyd and I — love her. Because I do love her. Not Ione Skye, although in many ways I do think I may be in love with Ione Skye, at least as she was in 1989, but Diane Court. For the 100 minutes this film plays out on my screen, I am completely and utterly in love with Diane Court.
The film makes me feel equal parts wonderful and horrified. I feel wonderful because I’m watching these two people fall in love, I’m watching them take on the world hand in hand; they’re going to face troubles, there’ll be adversity in their lives, things won’t always go to plan, but that’s okay, they have each other. The film makes me feel horrified because I am so, so alone. I have no one. When I go through adversity, I go through it alone. When I wake up in the morning, and the sun is shining through my shitty cheap blinds, and I roll over and my arm graces the other side of the bed, it feels no warmth. It feels mattress, sheet, duvet, and nothing more. There is no other body beside me, there is no one to smile at me, bid me a good morning, ask me how I slept. There is no one to let me know that I exist, to remind me that in many ways I am actually a person.
There is no one.
There’s a woman at my work who I’m in love with. So I want there to be a someone, even though there is no one. She’s called Nicola, and she works in the PR team of the marketing department. She’s fairly short, if I had to guess I’d say five feet and maybe two or three inches. Not tiny, not by a long shot, but I’m six feet and three inches, nearly four, so compared to me she is tiny. She has brown hair, parted in the middle, and it’s always straight. It’s so long, it flows over her shoulders and most of the way down her back, and I wonder how early she has to get up to straighten it. Our official start time in the office is 9am, but really if you’re not there for 8, you’re late. So how early does she get up to straighten that hair? And every day as well? Because even when she has it up in a ponytail or a bun, it’s still straight. Even when her hair is ‘messy’, it’s still straight. She’s crazy. It’s one of the things I love about her.
What else? She has brown eyes, I’m pretty sure, very similar in colour to her hair, which is a light chestnut shade of brown, not mousy but not far from it. I haven’t ever really actually been that close to her, not close enough to really see her eyes clearly, so I’m educatedly-speculating at their colour. She dresses wonderfully: she’s one of those women who work in offices who look amazing every day. One day she might wear a black skirt and a blouse with no sleeves and frills across the front. Another she might wear trousers with a checked pattern, all light and dark greys and whites and blacks, light colours and dark contrasting, with a plain shirt on top, or even a crop top or a vest or whatever. The office dress code, unless there’s a client meeting, is pretty liberal, and I’m grateful for it. If we worked in finance or whatever and she had to wear a suit every day, I wouldn’t have seen the glimpses of her breasts that I have seen working here, that I’ve stored up in my memory and that I masturbate to at night before I cry myself to sleep.
What else? That’s about all I know about her. She’s worked here longer than I have, so at least four years, because that’s how long I’ve worked here. I work in the digital marketing part of the department, so our paths don’t cross too often. In many ways, we’re stuck in our gendered parts of the marketing department: she, in PR, has to meet people, to talk to them and woo them and generally be nice to them in order to get her way, and the company’s way. She’s one of the faces of the company, in media terms at least, and what a face. Whereas I deal mainly with data, which means I’m sequestered away in the corner like a goblin, hunched over my laptop, pulling out figures and sending them on to my boss. I don’t even get to step out of my little cave corner to present the data in meetings or whatever, I simply format it into reports and my boss does the presenting.
It’s probably for the best: I’m a terrible public speaker, I have no confidence whatsoever. Plus, I’m never more than about ten seconds away from bursting into tears, and that wouldn’t be ideal in front of a room full of executives. I fucking hate this job, but it’s also absolutely perfect for me and besides, I need it. I live alone, so have no roommates to fall back on: if I stop paying the rent, the rent stops being paid. So, as much as it physically hurts me to drag myself out of bed every day and schlep down to this office and create Excel reports about how many people visited our website and on what device and how they found it and what they did once they were on the site, I do it because I have no choice.
Well, I mean it’s not all terrible, because I’ll see Nicola in the office, and that makes things better. Not much; maybe one or two percent better, so rather than the day being 100% a living nightmare, it’s only 98 or 99%. But then, she’s only human, which means she goes on leave, or is ill, or works from home, or is out visiting clients or media partners. And on those days I truly, truly want to just scream until I bleed and am fired. On these days, as I walk into the office, my pace becoming exponentially slower the closer I get, like a number being continually halved, except unfortunately I will eventually reach zero, I cannot avoid it, on the days I get there, waiting to see her face, expecting it, and not: those are the really bad days. On those days, the little data goblin that I am is so pronounced I imagine people can feel it, because they tend to leave me alone more than they normally do. I’m not well liked in the department, but I don’t mind. I’m not there to make friends, although I wish I could. I’m not there to fall in love, although I have. I’m just there to work and get paid and pay my way until I die, which hopefully will be any day now.
On the days I know Nicola won’t be in the office, for example it’s a Tuesday and the previous day I found out she was going to be away for the whole week, I silently pray to a god I don’t believe in that I’ll be hit by a bus or something. That as I step off a curb a four-tonne metal box will sweep me off my feet and we will, DENNIS system-style, separate entirely. On the days I know I’m not going to see Nicola, death is the preferable option.
And I’ve never even had a proper conversation with her.
We all want to be Diane Court. I don’t mean that I’m secretly trans and this is my coming out. No, it’s much more basic than that: we all want to be wanted. I think, really, that’s the most basic desire every single person on this planet has, is to be wanted. To be desired, to be needed, to be actively sought after, I think that’s all we really need.
Although, even as I say it, I think it might go a bit deeper than this. To be wanted is to have someone want you somewhere. And to be wanted somewhere is to have somewhere to belong. And I think, really, we all just want to feel like we belong somewhere. With someone who belongs there with us.
It’s not like I’m not trying to be happy. I’ve recently started manifesting, and as I walk to work this morning I’m chanting under my breath, “today will be a good day, today will be a good day, today will be a good day.”
I’d never heard of manifesting until a few weeks ago when Emma, my sister, sent me a link to a Teen Vogue article about it. She WhatsApped me the link accompanied solely by a few laughing emojis as commentary, so I assumed she was mocking it. I was prepared to mock it, too, to scorn at it, but as I read the article I found myself less scornful and more hopeful. Manifesting, the article said, is the idea that you will your dreams into reality. Can you blame my sister for her emojis? When you say it like that, it does sound laughable. But as I read the article, wanting to laugh but instead wondering if this was a potential game-changer, it occurred to me that it’s just another way of saying, ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.
Because that’s essentially all it is, manifesting is incredibly similar to faking it until you make it. The idea of fake it ‘til you make it is that if you pretend to be confident, you’ll become confident. If you pretend to be happy, eventually you’ll actually be happy. If you pretend to be successful, at some point you’ll be successful.
And isn’t that basically what manifesting is? If you pretend to be happy, you’re willing yourself to be happy. You’re manifesting happiness. So whilst people like Emma scorn at the idea of manifesting, think it’s something teenage girls do in order that Harry Styles will completely out of the blue message them on Instagram and declare his love for them, it’s something millions, tens of millions probably, of people do all over the world every day. It’s all just marketing really, isn’t it? Fake it ‘til you make it is tried and tested, it’s old school, it’s been around forever. Business people say it, professional coaches say it, serious people doing serious jobs use the phrase, so it’s an acceptable phrase. Manifesting? No thanks, that’s something teenage girls do, something that comes from social media, something a serious person would never even consider. Manifesting is decidedly unserious behaviour.
But whatever. I’m manifesting today to be a good day, because really, what’s the worst that can happen? If today does end up being a good day, amazing, great success, the manifesting has worked. If today turns out to be a shit day, or really just a completely and utterly nondescript day like almost every other is, then I haven’t lost anything. Manifesting is completely free, it carries absolutely no risk attached to it whatsoever. Worst case scenario; I’ve chanted under my breath for no reason. Low risk, potentially high reward. Isn’t that the capitalist dream?
“Today will be a good day, today will be a good day, today will be a good day…”
At one point I realise I must be saying it louder than I realise because as I’m waiting to cross Broadway, lined up alongside millions of other commuters waiting to cross, facing down a million other commuters waiting to cross in the opposite direction, I can see a couple of people giving me the side eye. There’s a person next to me, female presenting but I don’t want to assume: she’s wearing a power suit, navy blue with the faintest of white stripes, and she’s looking at me like I’m truly, madly, deeply insane. Of course she’s right, but not because I’m muttering under my breath, or should I say over my breath, apparently. I’m truly, madly, deeply insane because I’m 28 years old and have no idea if I’m a robot or not; amongst many, many other things. I want to grab her by the shoulders, I want to turn both our bodies so we’re facing each other, and I want to tell her that yes, I am insane, but to me she’s also insane. The suit has working in a bank or law firm or something similarly bullshit written all over it, and I want to scream at her that she’s insane, she may not be muttering under her breath at 7:46am on a Tuesday morning on the streets of New York City, but she’s still insane. I want to spin her by the shoulders and point out other people and tell her that they’re all insane too, each and every single person at this crossing is insane, both on our side and the other side. We all, every single day, bend over for the capitalist machine, every day we sell our labour-value, we allow ourselves to be exploited for surplus-value, and though we may whine, complain, be unhappy about it, ultimately we do nothing. And isn’t that completely and utterly insane?
Obviously, I don’t do this. Obviously, I look at her out of the side of my eye, and reduce the volume of my manifesting. The light soon grants us permission to traverse the road and we do, and as the two opposing groups of people intertwine and move through each other like corporeal presences, I lose sight of the woman, and she’s gone from my life forever.
My company has its offices in a building on West 45th Street, next to the Museum of Broadway, just down from Times Square. I have to cross at Times Square each morning, and as I stand waiting for the light to change, for an inanimate object to give me permission to move, I can’t help but think about how ridiculous it all is. Even before 8am, Times Square is packed with tourists, all with their cameras taking pictures, smiling and happy and stuff, visiting a place they’ve seen on TV, have known about for years, finally seeing it in the flesh: the myth becoming reality. And I’m there, making my way to a marketing office to do marketing. They’re living their best lives, I’m living my worst.
Times Square is a weird-as-fuck place anyway; all the lights, adverts, it’s a pure capitalist dream. And when it rains, the lights are all reflected on the ground and it’s like there’s two of it, one capitalist nightmare isn’t enough and another must be forced on you. It’s oddly beautiful in a way, in the way that only New York can make steel look pretty. In no other city on the planet, at least as far as I know, do you pay so much money to come and look at offices and apartments from the outside, to stand and stare at girders. The contrast of their lives vs mine is so weird: the Instagram life vs real life. I’m not sure which I hate more.
My office is the closest I ever get to the Upper West Side, except when I meet up with a bunch of people to get day-drunk in the park on a weekend, an event that’s happening with decreasing regularity as we (they) all grow up and begin to get married, have kids, live what is supposedly a proper life. I live in Soho, way, way down from where I work. I don’t always walk to work, it takes like 50 minutes, an hour, it sucks, but this close to pay day — on the wrong side of it — I don’t really have a choice. When I lived in London it was great, as a student I somehow wangled my way to a pre-paid travel card which meant I could get the Underground every day, I didn’t have to deal with the changeable temperatures and climates like I do here. If there’s one thing New York does amazingly, it’s having ridiculous weather that can change on a dime. I’m not one for carrying an umbrella, so I’ve been caught out on more than one occasion.
I’m still manifesting as I reach my building and, checking my phone to see it’s 7:55, I make a mad dash for the elevators, slipping into one just before the doors close. Even though it’s early the elevator is crammed, had I known how full it already was I definitely would have waited for the next one but it’s too late now, I’m here. People around me look annoyed and I hate myself for it, but the doors have now closed and the metal box is ascending, so there’s nothing any of us can do.
I surreptitiously glance around at my fellow passengers; there are a couple of people I recognise from my company, but I don’t know them so don’t acknowledge them in any way, as well as various people from presumably the various other companies that have offices in the building. Satisfied there’s no one I need to interact with I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll through all the usual feeds on all the usual apps — only in New York would an elevator have cell service, because God forbid we go 30 seconds without looking at social media. Despite the fact it’s not even 8 on a Tuesday morning it’s incredible the things people are up to. Someone I went to university with who also somehow ended up here has just finished yoga in the park and has posted a sweaty selfie on Insta; a guy I met once and then followed on Twitter for reasons since lost to the annals of time is evidently training for an Ironman race and is living his best life telling his 417 followers all about his now-daily exercise routine; I’m shocked to see my parents drinking wine, before remembering they live in the UK so it’s 1pm there, and though still perhaps a bit too early for a drink, a lot better than 8am. Yes, my parents have social media, and yes, it’s a whole thing I don’t want to go into. Easier just to chuck them a like then keep scrolling.
The elevator finally grinds to a halt on the 27th floor and I step out, immediately entering my company’s reception area. Matthew, the impossibly handsome 20-something receptionist glances up as the elevator doors open but looks right through me, saying hello to one of the people behind. I use my swipe card to open the glass door into the actual office and navigate my way through to my desk, dropping my bag onto the floor and my arse onto my chair.
Before I’ve even taken my laptop out my boss, Neil, swoops down on me, and I inwardly sigh. It’s going to be one of those days; fuck manifesting.
“Morning, Oli, how you doing? Listen, did you manage to pull the usage reports for the new logistics campaign? Brielle’s on my ass and I have better things to do than deal with her, so if I could get her the report it’d be great.”
“I’m nearly done, just gotta finish it off and I’ll get it over to you.”
“Okay great, do you think you could get it over by 9.30? We have the weekly all hands at 10 and I just know she’ll be on my case about it, so it’ll be good to have some time to digest it beforehand.”
“Yeah no worries, boss.”
“Thanks, pal.”
He walks away, allowing me to finally take off my coat and actually get settled in. I’m such a liar: I haven’t even begun the usage report. But it’s okay, because Neil is an even bigger liar: he never asked me for one. Luckily this kinda report takes about five minutes, so really I could have it over to him by 8.05, but what’s the use? I’m the only data person in the entire marketing department, and as such half of my job is making sure no one else knows how to do my job. If they knew just how little I actually do, how little time all my tasks actually take, there’d be a landslide of new work falling on my head, and that’s something in which I have absolutely no interest.
I envy Neil in many ways, he’s such a normal person. Glancing to my right at his desk now, which is about 10 feet away from mine, I can see he has various pictures of his wife and kids. He has a “world’s best dad” mug, as well as some truly awful artwork I sincerely hope was done by his kids, otherwise I’d be concerned. He seems to genuinely love his wife, and his kids, and genuinely love his job. He goes on about Brielle riding him all the time, but I know secretly he actually likes it, and only bitches about her to me and everyone else so he seems like one of the guys. I did used to think he and Brielle might be having an affair. I only stopped thinking that because I stopped caring.
Tom sits down next to me, also to my right — he’s my buffer to Neil — five minutes late as usual, but no one notices, or if they do, no one says anything. Now Tom I truly am jealous of; he’s one of those people who is just effortless, and as such everyone loves him and he can get away with anything. This morning he reeks of alcohol, and I can see a hangover written all over his face. I wonder what he got up to last night.
“Quiet in here this morning,” he mumbles quietly, his words slurred a little.
“Yeah man,” I reply.
“Where is everyone?”
“I’m not sure, only just got here myself.”
He turns away from me to Neil.
“Neil!” He shouts, far too loud for the distance between them, which is about two feet, but as I say, no one says anything, he gets away with it.
“Morning, Tom. What’s up, bro?”
Yes, Neil actually calls people bro, in all seriousness. Not me, he’s never once referred to me as ‘bro’, but he does so to everyone else. Males at least.
“Where is everyone, boss?”
“Let me see,” Neil raises his hand and begins to tick people off his fingers. “Brielle is in her office, Jacinda is coming in late, some appointment or something, Amrit and Sheena are pitching to this furniture company upstate…”
I zone out, letting the noise wash over me, allowing it to become so much background buzz. As I wait for my laptop to finish loading up I glance around and realise Tom’s right, the office is very quiet. I feel the panic begin to rise within me, building like how I imagine the pressure must in a volcano before it erupts, as my eyes move across the room, towards the desk, towards my Mecca: her desk. It’s empty. But maybe she’s running late, or is making a coffee, or already in a meeting. I force myself to zone back in just as Neil delivers the news which breaks my heart, and confirms how shit the day is going to be.
“…and Nicola is unwell, probably going to be out most of the week Lin says. Food poisoning or something.”
For fucks’ sake. Manifesting really is a crock of shit isn’t it? I mean, today might still be a good day, but I’m struggling to see how. Neil is already on my arse, Nicola isn’t here, Tom smells like he bathed in Maker’s Mark; I’m struggling to see what positives will come from today, at least until 6pm when I’m finally allowed to leave this hell hole.
With a sigh I pull Neil’s report and, attaching it to an email, I auto schedule it to go to him at 9:18, ahead of the deadline enough to look good, not so far ahead as to be too keen, or look like I’ve done it too quickly, and get up to go make myself a coffee. I have no Nicola to get me through the day, so caffeine it’ll have to be. What a world.
When I was a kid I wanted to be, in turn: a writer, a policeman, a politician, Prime Minister (when I still lived in the UK), a rockstar, and then happy. I have achieved none of these things. I am a data analyst in the marketing department of a midrange marketing agency that, even having been here for four years, I’m still not entirely sure what we do. Luckily, I don’t really need to know. I live in Excel and Google Analytics and various other programmes that deliver me cold, hard facts. I don’t need to know any of that marketing shit thankfully, although working in the marketing department it probably wouldn’t hurt.
I did used to have hopes and dreams, even over and above the ones listed above. I used to dream of travel, of seeing the world, seeing all 190-odd countries, experiencing every bit of culture on the planet. And once I did I was then going to change the world, to change the planet. I was going to take the best bits of these cultures and share them, make English people more Polynesian and make the French more Australian. I was going to go to Japan and make them more Greek, then go to China and learn how to make Colombia more Chinese. I was going to be some sort of saviour, some sort of modern-day Jesus. People were going to worship me. Now I’m just glad if I can make it through the day without crying. I fail almost every day.
In Say Anything, when Diane brings Lloyd home for dinner for the first time, her father asks Lloyd what he wants to do with his life. At this point he’s just graduated High School and teaches kickboxing to kids. He says to James Court, played by John Mahoney RIP, that he doesn’t want to sell anything, he doesn’t want to buy anything, nor does he want to process anything as a career.
Around the table are a few of James’ friends, business associates and whatnot, and following Lloyd’s little speech there’s silence, before the adults all scorn Lloyd. He then talks about potentially becoming a professional kickboxer, it being a burgeoning sport in 1989 America. The adults are confused and disappointed, Diane is concerned about their reaction, and Lloyd is, well, Lloyd. Whilst this scene ostensibly plays out in a comedic manor, it’s actually a very telling scene in the film.
All media has to have conflict, and the conflict in Say Anything is that James doesn’t think Lloyd is good enough for Diane. James is a businessman, a capitalist: he owns a very successful nursing home and reaps very large profits from it. Diane is incredibly smart, applying to go to the best colleges all over the world. Lloyd is an army brat, living on a pull-out couch in his sister’s living room, far from being the most academically gifted student. He wants to fight for a living, whereas the Courts are intellectuals. James sees Lloyd as being from the wrong class: he never actually says it, he uses lots of other issues to describe to Diane why he doesn’t like Lloyd, but it’s all there in the subtext. Diane is wealthy, intelligent, beautiful, Lloyd is stupid, poor, and ugly. In many ways it’s a classic case of class warfare, the kind that happens a billion times a day, every day, in every country in the world. Thankfully, as in all good romcoms, love wins. It turns out James is so successful because he’s been stealing from the residents of his care home and their families, and the movie ends with James in jail and Lloyd accompanying Diane to England, where she’s won a scholarship. Lloyd 1, James, 0.
I’ve considered various different careers since I joined the full-time work force. I seriously considered being a social worker, even went so far as to send off for some information from a couple of local colleges, but then I had a realisation one day: much as the basis for conflict in Say Anything is class warfare, so it is in social work. I ran through a bunch of scenarios in my head, the potential kinds of issues I might be faced with and came to one conclusion: they could all be solved by money. In fact, basically every problem on this planet is caused by money, namely most people not having enough of it. Poverty is the cause of so much suffering on the planet, every day, and it’s a political choice. The upper class drain money from the middle and working-class, and hoard it all for themselves. If their money was invested into education, healthcare, youth clubs and all that kinda shit, then kids would probably be less likely to turn to drugs, prostitution, and crime. If parents weren’t paid poverty wages they’d be able to work one job with decent hours and spend time parenting their kids, reading to them and playing with them and bonding with them. If schools had proper funding they’d be able to properly educate kids. If private healthcare was abolished people wouldn’t risk bankruptcy every time they fell over. If ifs and but were candy and nuts…
I don’t want to be a social worker any more. I don’t want to be anything. Well, in the workforce that is. I do want to be one thing, and one thing only: I want to be in with Nicola.
Friday. Finally Friday. TGIF. TFIF. TFIFFF. I’ve wished away another week and here we are, it’s finally fucking Friday. Neil was right, Nicola hasn’t been in the office at all since she fell ill. It’s been a literal nightmare. Considering I’ve basically only ever exchanged about 18 words with her in the four years we’ve worked together, I miss her terribly. There are work drinks tonight which I agreed to attend on the basis that she would. I now have absolutely no desire to go, but it’s too late to back out. Maybe I could have changed my yes to a no on Wednesday or Thursday, but I was hit with an extreme bout of optimism that Nicola would recover, and would be at whatever bar we’re headed to at 5pm, in approximately 45 minutes. Yes, you read that right, 5pm. Not 6pm, oh no: the reason we’re going out is that it’s the end of Q2, and Q2 it turns out was very successful for the company. We made a shitload of money apparently, and so we’re off to celebrate, a whole hour earlier than we’d normally be allowed to leave. Praise the lord for the bosses!
But alas, Nicola is still unwell, so I have to go to drinks and suffer through them. I figure I can possibly slip away after two, three maximum, I probably only need to spend an hour or two socialising before I can disappear into the night. Not like a sexy vampire or anything, not at all, but more like a weasel or something, I suppose less disappear into the night and more skulk back to my apartment and hide until Monday morning.
The office is buzzing, there’s a palpable excitement in the air. Neil is the ringleader: he’s been talking loudly all week about how he’s gotten a pass from his wife to stay out as late as he wants and get as drunk as he wants. Hopefully he’ll be more reserved than he was at the Christmas party when he did some bad coke and after trying to fight a waitress puked all over himself and our table before bursting into tears and being taken home by Brielle. I mean, it was pretty funny, I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t, but it was awful to see as well. The man has a wife and kids, why’s he doing coke in a restaurant bathroom at a work party?
Beers are being passed around the office and Tom hands me one. Despite the fact I’m 28 and am, in all the technical ways, an adult, it’s still a queer thrill to be drinking in the office, at my desk, during work time. I feel like a naughty child doing something I shouldn’t, despite the fact that the beers were literally brought into the office by my boss. I guess it’s the old id vs ego scenario: the rational part of me knows full well what’s happening is fine, but the emotional part of me, the irrational part, still wins. Who needs facts when you have feelings? Fuck you, Freud.
Even though it’s only 4.15PM, people are gathering their things, laptops being turned off and placed into bags, jackets put on because, even though it’s early July, the weather is oddly cold today. People have finished their drinks and trying to remember if our office recycling bins can take glass, and no one seems to know so they all get put in there anyway, if it isn’t recycling it’s wish-cycling which is basically as good. Soon there’s a mass exodus and we all wait in the lobby, the elevators slowly ferrying groups of people down. The entire company is coming to these drinks, obviously illness and leave aside, which means it’s a relay to get us all down to the ground floor and out of the building. I’m one of the last, absolutely refusing to push into an already full elevator, happy to wait my turn. Soon it’s only me and one other person left in the lobby, a woman I don’t recognise. She’s looking at me, and when I look at her we make incredibly awkward eye contact and both look away, me looking at my shoes, the floor, the abyss, her looking wherever she looks.
A soft ding announces the arrival of the elevator and as its doors silently glide open I see it’s empty. Neither of us move until I gesture with my arm and she smiles slightly and enters, and I follow. She’s already pressed the button for the ground floor, and we stand side by side in silence as the elevator descends. Does she work for the same company I do? I could swear I’ve never seen her before. The one beer in me threatens to make me social; she is very attractive, and I’m about to turn to her and ask her, politely of course, who she is, but before I can the elevator dings again and we’re on the ground floor, the doors open and the final two of us rejoin the crowd. She moves out of the elevator and approaches a group of people who I think are lawyers, or maybe they work in the finance department. Either way, they’re not marketing, and I guess that’s why I don’t know her. I stand for a moment watching her, until the elevator doors begin to close and I realise if I don’t move I’ll end up going back up into the building, and so waving a hand to make the sensors open the doors I dash out and find Tom and Neil and the rest of marketing.
“Finally, what took you so long?” Neil asks me, but then continues before I can answer. “Right, that’s everyone, let’s head out.
“Where are we going?” someone asks.
“The Perfect Pint,” Neil replies to the unknown voice. A chorus of groans meet his answer.
“But that’s a total tourist place,” a voice remonstrates.
“It’ll be full of people taking pictures and being all in the way and annoying and that,” another says, equally annoyed.
“For fuck’s sake Neil,” a third voice announces, to general laughter.
Regardless of all the complaints about location, everyone follows Neil out of the building, turning left and entering the next building, a small Irish pub.
Out on the street I hesitate for a moment. There’s a feeling in the air, the anticipation that was covering the office like a fog has come with us. Or perhaps it’s our proximity to Times Square that makes the air feel palpable, gives it a certain tension. Times Square is one of those places that doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t seem like it should actually exist. Even though I grew up in England I was raised by American TV and films, and so Times Square is one of many places I felt like I already knew when I got to New York. But nothing could have prepared me for it actually being real, which was a huge shock to me when I first visited.
I moved here when I was 22: I did my undergrad in Media Studies in London and then was offered a place to do my MA at NYU and was never going to turn that opportunity down. I landed in New York a week before my course started and spent that week exploring, visiting all the places I’d seen and heard and read about, seeing them all come to life. Some, like the Statue of Liberty, were disappointing: it turns out it really is just a massive statue, one that’s not even actually that big compared to the skyscrapers that have been built since the French shipped it over. Others, like the Empire State Building and the view from its roof, were even more amazing than I’d imagined. And then there was a third category, in which Times Square fell: places that just, for one reason or another, didn’t seem real. Six years I’ve been in New York, four years walking through Times Square nearly every day, and yet, and yet. Seeing it for the first time was how I imagine it’d feel to see a Minotaur or Medusa in the flesh: very confusing. Something I felt like I was already so aware of, and yet being there, seeing it, it was so alien to me. New York is less a city and more a collection of mythologies, and Times Square is one I still haven’t been able to reconcile.
Dragging myself away from my asinine thoughts I follow the group into the pub, gratefully accepting the beer someone, Tom I think, hands me. A cheers is called in praise of the Q2 profits, and then all pretence is cast aside and the real drinking begins.
I stand a little in the back and off to one side, observing. I used to see myself as somewhat of a David Attenborough character, simply observing the animals in their natural habitat. This was back when I used to try and find reasons for why I was so aloof, so out of the picture, so uncomfortable. “It’s on purpose,” I’d tell myself, “I’m better than these people, I’m Jane Goodall watching the apes.” Thankfully now that I’m a little older, a little wiser, and very aware that I’m just a bit socially inept, I don’t try and excuse myself. I simply stand far enough away to be left alone, whilst remaining close enough to not look weird or aloof, two things I hate being accused of, despite how true they may be.
Anyway, in a place like The Perfect Pint, when a group as large as ours comes in, there’s nowhere to go. It’s not a huge place, and we are a relatively huge group, so we take up 99% of the space. I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to, which now I think of it makes me shudder a little. I really hope there isn’t a fire.
I finish my beer and am about to go to the bar and order another when one finds its way to me. I take it gratefully and looking up from the beer in my hands to say thank you to the giver I see it’s the attractive woman from earlier, my elevator companion. I’m not sure what to say, so I go with a trusty acknowledgement of her kindness.
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
“You’re not from around here are you?” she says, a slightly drunken lilt in her voice. No “you’re welcome”, no pleasantries of any kind, she’s straight into it.
“I’m not,” I reply. She looks at me as if waiting for me to say more, and when I make no move to she continues.
“So where are you from, then?”
“Oh, I’m from England.”
“England, wow!” she says, and whether it’s because she’s drunk or just American, she genuinely sounds like I’ve blown her mind. “What’s England like?”
“Erm,” I falter. What is England like? “England is England, I suppose,” I say, lamely.
I’m nervous, but not the usual kind of nervous I am when I talk to people; no, this is the special kind of nervousness that I only feel around absolutely stunning women. Because that’s what this woman is, absolutely incredibly beautiful. I was wrong before, attractive doesn’t even start to cover it. Now we’re talking, and not just awkwardly avoiding eye contact in an elevator, I can see her properly. She has platinum blonde hair, so light as to almost be silver, and her eyes are yellow, like a cat’s, and I wonder if she wears coloured contacts or something? She’s shorter than me but not by much, she must be much taller than most women, and I momentarily wonder if that’s why she’s talking to me, because I’m one of the few men in here, in the world, taller than her. It may be 2023 but some things still hold, and I think most straight women want the man they’re with to be taller than them.
“England is England,” she says, mocking me in an exaggerated Cockney accent — the same accent all Americans do in impersonation of an English person no matter where they’re from or whatever accent they may actually have — and she starts to laugh. I try to as well but I fail, instead just watch her. Even though she’s somehow already pretty wasted, it’s barely 6pm, she’s still incredible, her laugh is still musical. Incredible? What does that even mean? She’s so pretty I just can’t describe her, I can’t do her justice. We humans are but ugly rocks on the beach of life, and she’s a mermaid.
“What’s your name, England?”
“Oliver.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what mine is?” she says, starting to look a little peeved now.
“What’s your name?”
“Sophie.”
As she says it she reaches her hand out, but as I go to shake it she grabs my forearm and pulls me into a hug. I stand frozen, not sure how to react: I’m not a hugger, not at all, particularly not with people I don’t even know, and so my response is to freeze. You know people talk about fight or flight? Well that binary is bullshit, because most people do the third option, which is to freeze. I’m a total freezer, and I’m frozen right now.
Eventually I unfreeze enough to move to hug her back, despite my every muscle and sinew screaming against it, but I once again freeze when she whispers in my ear:
“Well, Oliver from England, do you wanna fuck?”
Great Romances of the 20th Century – Robert Welbourn
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