But Cooper only wanted to have sex with the lights out, from behind, with me lying perfectly still. It felt clinical. Or as if we were role-playing a bank heist during which my sole job was to avoid being detected by lasers. In theory, this should’ve been a flag, but I’d dated Cooper right after Dave and, more important, after I’d spent a lifetime absorbing the idea that women wound up sublimating their sexual needs for men. It was therefore refreshing, relatable even, to be with two men in a row who needed something more narrative than friction to get off, whose sexuality slid like an abacus. This did not last long.
A magnificent knot of contradictions, Cooper had United Colors of Benetton ads framed in his bathroom, a catalog of musical soundtracks in his living room, and a vanity full of specialized products. He also owned a black leather couch, never had any food in the house, and worked in the merchandising department of the NBA. One day, I asked him: Why this sport and not all other sports? And with the straightest of faces, he told me that in other sports, at least the ones with leagues and federations, you couldn’t see the exertion of the players’ bodies. You couldn’t see the way their muscles shifted from the back to the biceps, from the thigh to the knee.
There was really no bouncing back from that one.
Cooper didn’t flinch when he saw me. I was a memory for him, enough for the power of suggestion to get him here, but I was not a life event. Not compared with everything that came after me. I was excited to talk to him, as there was no risk of entanglement. I was not going to cry in front of, slap, or grope Cooper.
But Cooper only grinned, pivoted his phone away from his face, and pecked me on the cheek.
“Cute,” he mouthed, gesturing at my outfit.
He was gone before I uttered a word.
I didn’t think either of these men was significant enough to write home about. But their presence provided the news that they thought about me, however minimally. Their surfaces could be scratched. Perhaps, I thought, closure was not achieved by exhausting oneself with analysis, but via carrot, through the ego’s feeble need for confirmation. There is a membrane of pride that surrounds the heart and I found that when that area got damaged, it was hard to figure out what took the hit. Sometimes it was the heart; often it was only the cellophane.
Seeing these people was a reminder that I had not been through all this by myself. This was a frequently employed tactic among men I knew, to knock you down and then ask what you’re doing on the floor. The adult iteration of Why Are You Hitting Yourself? Except most of them sincerely wanted to know. Causation was Greek to them. But I was starting to sense that some of them had grasped the truth of what had happened all along. Some of their hands had been extending down this whole time or vice versa as we wiped the dirt from our butts and waited for the nerves to stop throbbing.
Think you’ll live? Good. Then back into the game you go.
* * *
I made enough noise to scare the rats. We’d come to an understanding: I would not kill them on purpose and they would not kill me by accident, by making me jump and slam my head on a beam. Once folded into Jin’s chair, I licked the suction cup and reported on the nothing of my evening, on how the nothing made me feel. I tried not to lie to the needle about my feelings or to manufacture them. I found it a challenge to experience emotions in the moment and hold on to them at the same time. The blank I drew was genuine. It was fine, seeing Howard and Cooper, just fine. Perhaps, I thought, this was why, whenever I had doubts about Boots, I tried to just concentrate on appreciating him instead.
Vadis left the room in a huff when I told her I’d spoken to neither man, that I’d even gone so far as to avoid one.
“This is why you can’t have nice things!” she shouted.
“I don’t even want this nice thing!”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Do you know what that word means? Or is your brain too stuffed with adaptogen powders?”
After she slammed the door, I wondered, aloud to Jin, if my biofeedback was really helping. What good was my heart doing anyone, in any sense?
“It’s an information continuum,” Jin said. “We just want to know how your psyche is faring from every possible angle, and then we present our findings to Clive, who presents them to our investors.”
I knew better than to push too hard with her. Jin was all in. Not only was she like Errol, newly enamored of Clive, but people like her, who invested this deeply in spiritualism, had a history of desperation when it came to technology （ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Ouija Board, the Dream Catcher, the Voodoo Doll）。 It hadn’t worked yet. Was Clive Glenn, inventor of a DSM drinking game, really going to crack a code that had stumped humanity dating back to ancient Egypt?