JOSHUA GRABER
This Fine Experience
Saturday, May 21st
Tonight we open the first ExperiPlex outside of a major metropolitan area and I will stand there with a pair scissors made for a man ten times my height, give a speech after the Mayor, and cut the ribbon. I am the Venue Manager – first title of my life that I can really, truly be proud of – although I also have a stake in this enterprise. I’m the franchisee. Took out a second mortgage to buy the old Movies 8 across town and convert it. And Leora, well, she’s proud too. Since we got married, she’s talked about having a family (kids!), which on the hourly I was making managing the FunZone over on Liberty St. would not have been a wise decision, but at my projected income now, we should be able to swing it just fine. We’ve been better lately in our relationship as well, and making love almost daily (thinking that this has something to do with my career change and her having some kind of new respect for a man and all). She even gasped fuck me this morning in bed and then said it louder and that’s how I know it was good for her (the important thing [!]) because she finds fuck vulgar when talking about sex and well things were starting to get stale in that respect, so things are better in our marriage lately, because of the increased lovemaking and because of our thinking positive, taking steps to better us. Have a speech prepared that I have to go rehearse. Have decided to begin secret journaling project (why I’m writing here) for the future me to look back on. Maybe will want to write a book about this opening the ExperiPlex in Westangle, which everyone knows has been in the economic dumps so to speak, since Big Steel left, and Mayor Ringhardt, well she thinks this may be just the thing to revive the town and that some day they’ll call me a visionary.
[Later]
Wow! What a night! It is late now, but I wanted to write down just how ecstatic I am feeling about tonight. Everything was perfect – the ribbon cutting, Mayor Ringhardt’s speech. I thought I’d fucked up my speech just a little bit, but after, everyone said that it came off just fine and I had nothing to worry about (regarding thinking I’d fucked it up) and that I sounded strong and confident and well why wouldn’t I be? Strong and confident, that is. Thinking positive. Resparque even came in from Chicago, and said that the reports afterwards obliterated expectations [!] for a first night opening, and that he’s confident that ExperiPlex Westangle can continue from this launching pad, he said, since our proximity to three major cities makes us prime real estate. I’m over the moon! All departments running on all cylinders – Experiential Technical, Admissions, Bar, Bustodial, et al, and when I talked to guests I heard things like it’s so real! and it felt like I was Hepburn! etc. etc. Oskar ran the bar like an old time pro in his pressed white shirt and bow-tie and he and Marta came around to our place after for a nightcap. Glad to see O & M having a good time. Things have been rough for them since O lost his job. Leora said after they left that she saw M looking at me (like that) like she does when her and O are having problems, L said. Because of Marta and I having a roll in the hay back in high school, Leora gets these little spouts of jealousy, which I assure her are unfounded (some ugly truths are best kept secret).
Monday, May 23rd
I two days, I met our quota for the week. This is good. Others had never Experienced (L, O, & M), so decided to take them on a Group Experience... to show them the genius of it. So tonight after we closed, we all went dancing in Spain, and since it was their first time, they all said things like good God is it realistic! When it all gets going you can’t even feel the Cognition Sensors! It felt like there was even warm wind on my cheek! You could probably take a whole vacation that way, Leora said, which I wrote down earlier as a possible marketing strategy.
{Note to (Future) Self – Should note that the technology was developed to respond to desires, even deep unconscious ones. That’s part of the brilliance of the thing. It gives you what you want! It’s the ultimate in entertainment! The diegetic of the Experience even changes, adjusts to those desires [!]. So well anyways, Leora read this in my training materials months ago, so she had some things to say about the way Marta moved when we shared a dance after L and O took a break. I said it’s nothing: the tango’s a sexual dance, but you’re cute when you’re jealous, I said.}
Friday, June 3rd
Oskar acting strangely, like he’s avoiding me or something, and spending a good bit of money on after-work Experiences, which is completely allowed. But I know he and M can’t afford the sort of money he’s been spending. Tonight he left early though – didn’t even stay for our usual drink – said he had to get going, had something going on.
Monday, June 6th
Mayor Ringhardt called today, just to see how things are going, she said. I told her what she wanted to hear: that we hired ten new employees this month. She’d promised new jobs, and the ExperiPlex made her look good so long as it provided them. So she is pleased with our success indeed, politically speaking. Still protesters, however, holding signs saying things like DON’T FAKE INTIMACY and YOUR IDENTITY IS YOURS – DON’T TRADE IT. Seems to me like they’re taking it all a bit seriously. It’s entertainment after all. Ringhardt seems unconcerned. Tells me if it becomes a problem to let her know [!].
L went for a fertility test today, which she’s convinced she needs – our insurance seems to think otherwise [!] – even though we’ve only been trying for a month. Should hear back within a couple of days.
Thursday, June 9th
Leora’s test came back today. All is well, says the doc. So well now I’m hoping we get some good news this month, because if not there would be some serious doubt about my sperm count and she’ll be wanting me to get the test as well, and well these things aren’t completely covered by the insurance.
L invited O and M over for dinner tonight and I got home to the smell of a roast, almost ready. It was good, but M kept being all condescending to O. Not sure what’s up with her. But when I asked how Maggie was doing, she said something along the lines of: well, I was hoping to send her back to ballet lessons this month and snark-eyed O when she said it. Talked with Leora about it after they left. L told me later that M got a little drunk on margaritas the other week and told a few of “the girls” that she and O hadn’t fucked (Marta’s words, L made sure to say) in four months and well she had suspicions that he might be cheating, and meanwhile all I’m thinking of is the rolls in the hay M and I had back in high school and I really felt bad for thinking about it, but any man would. She’s a pretty woman and has been giving me the eyes (you know, “the eyes”) lately, I can tell, but I’m self-conscious about that because sometimes you can see what you want to see.
Monday, June 13th
Today is June’s greatest day of fertility, according to L’s schedule, so I’m staying home trying to make a baby. This frequency of lovemaking was attractive in the beginning, but it’s starting to be a bit like a chore that needs done. Never thought I’d say I’m having too much sex! Shouldn’t be complaining, I suppose. Trying also to think positive re: starting a family and all.
Thursday, June 16th
Big problem. The Gazette ran a story, syndicated, about a study done in Chicago, where Resparque started Experiential, Int, and the whole thing is not exactly positive, these psychologists say [!] for the mind to be put under such mechanical manipulation (what they called it) on a regular basis. There are more protesters now, because of this I’d have to say, maybe fifteen or so in total with signs painted on the back of campaign posters. Fifteen’s not a lot really, but enough to be inconvenient. O and I’s old Sunday school teacher waves tracts at us every morning, which is also unsettling. Profits haven’t taken a hit yet, but I’m concerned they might and well, I have the mortgage to pay and the second mortgage to pay. Not a problem as long as I keep hitting targets (my salary is part profit-sharing, have I recorded that?). But if not, I may be in some trouble, financially speaking.
Friday, June 17th
This is turning into an eventful week. Marta left Oskar last night [!]. Apparently her suspicions were true. He’d cheated, multiple times. And recently. Called him last night. He said he couldn’t live with himself lying like that, had to tell her, said they’d fallen out of love a long time ago, that it was best to call it quits now, not hang onto a dead thing, is how he put it. Went for a drink with him after work tonight. Seemed like he was in good spirits, all things considered. Said this had been going on for years. Didn’t tell me who he was fucking, just said I don’t know them (doubt it, given the size of this town). I have my suspicions, but figured the decent thing was to keep them to myself. Feels like petty gossip even writing it in here, but this is a secret journal, so I will keep it.
{Nt(F)S – you think it was M.I.L. or J.B.H. (if those details prove pertinent at any point)}
But well anyways, it was odd, him being so happy about all this. Thought there’s no way M is feeling the same. L called while we were at the bar, said M was going to be staying in the guest room, to warn me about bringing O over. So, well, I should mention what just happened, just before I came up here to my office to write. I walked in the door, past 1 a.m. and the TV was on, some long-form commercial for StainRid playing. I tried to walk quietly up the stairs, but I heard Marta from the couch. How is he? she asked me. I walked over to the couch where she was. Fine, I said, didn’t talk about much of anything, you know, just hung out a while. And then I sat on the opposite end of the couch, a comfortable distance that she closed almost immediately, throwing arms around me and said this: why couldn’t I have ended up with you? Which was really the wrong thing to say (considering our history and the fact that my wife was upstairs). So I tried to just laugh it off, you know. But she pressed the issue, saying that our rolls in the hay were some of the best times of her life [!] and sentimental things like this and I admitted that I’d thought too what might have been [!] which I shouldn’t’ve said, and she knew it and I knew it, that this road of conversation led nowhere good. Silence, uncomfortably long. Finally, she apologized and blamed her inappropriate gushing on her – what did she call it? – her fragile state, having just watched her life collapse, etc. I got up then, gave her shoulder a friendly squeeze, and told her I’m sorry about what’s happened (meaning her and O splitting up) and to get some rest, and went to bed to lie there and stare at the ceiling, and the possibilities are enough to make a man crazy, thinking about it like that, feeling like a piece of pond scum (because of acknowledging out loud these things I’ve wondered, you know), but on the other hand feeling like you might deserve to think that way... maybe deserve is the wrong word. Maybe having just written this will help me sleep.
Saturday, June 18th
No sleep. Woke Leora up and gave her a kiss goodbye. Went to work (very) early to go for a hike through the Blue Ridge Mountains to clear my head. I felt exhausted after three miles, but got out of the Pod and had no sense of having walked that far. Didn’t do much for my fitness, but felt good nonetheless. And some beautiful scenery! The after-effects of Experiences are minimal (some dream intrusion has been documented, though I’ve never experienced it). I finished around the time the rest of the staff was arriving. Post-sanitized the Pod myself to save Custodial the hassle. Wondering the speculative possibilities of Experiences. In Grief & Loss, we project a present and future of the deceased person, based on photographs and video, whatever we can get our hands on (similar to the technology used by law enforcement to project what long-missing persons might now look like, is how Resparque explained it to me). In most cases, that projection is pretty damn accurate, according to Client Satisfaction Reports. Wondering about the possible what-if scenarios that could be created – wondering if I could test out, so to speak, what life would be like if I’d made different choices – something that hasn’t been done before, as far as I know. Will pitch the idea to Design.
{Nt(F)S – BRM = gorgeous. Take future family on a vacation there.}
Another thing. Sent Resparque an email. The Gazette has been running letters to the editor, mostly anonymous, from people who say the ExperiPlex has been affecting their lives negatively and such, like a woman who said that her husband spends more time here than at home (surely if it weren’t here, it’d be a bar or somewhere else) and the man who says his fiancé, having Experienced the Sally Field Acceptance Speech, wants now to move to Hollywood and pursue an acting career (a long foregone dream, said the letter), which moving he does not want to do, says she’s having delusions of grandeur, etc. Hoping for his sake she skipped reading the paper that day. There have been positives, mostly from those in the agro-tourism industry, hotels, restaurants and the like, whose business is up from out-of-towners coming to Experience. But it’s mostly negative. Paper’s been calling for my response. Not sure quite how to deal with this. Will wait for R’s response.
Monday, June 20th
My commitment and ability as a leader being questioned by Resparque today, who is typically very encouraging and positive. Stings a bit, this apparent lack of faith. Says I haven’t handled this crisis in the best way. My silence is incriminating. Told me he shouldn’t be needing to hold my hand. That these things come up and its my job to handle them. He’s right, I suppose. Trying to stay positive about the whole thing. Gave me some advice, R did. Said it would be helpful to also cite studies done about the Grief & Loss Experiences we’ve put together. It’s apparently helpful to the grieving process, eases the pain of loss, things like this. Or the Therapeutic Experience Division, for example. These ones help with disorders of all types... apparently the AMA is considering implementing them in hospitals even [!]. Read all of this during the weeks before we opened, should’ve already referenced, I suppose. R said it’s not my job to prove anyone else wrong, just to show Experiental, Int’l in the best light possible. Highlight the positives (there are many). Think positive. Apologized for my lack of action. He said just to handle it. Said I would. Wrote eloquent response to Gazette this afternoon, referencing all the positive things the ExperiPlex is doing for people and besides, with such reactive Cognition Response, the whole thing is more of a mirror than a chisel (good metaphor to use, I thought), revealing desire and identity rather than shaping it. With perspective, I understand that this whole thing will be a blip on the screen by the time I write the book... perhaps a chapter called Adversity and Overcoming or something like that.
{Nt(F)S – Adversity and Overcoming probably too self-helpy, but if you don’t think so now, then maybe go for it.}
Tuesday, June 21st
Resparque filling my inbox today, messages re: the protesters, Gazette, etc... Says News 8 out of Cleveland wants to do a story on us and ExperiPlex CLE. Said it looks like they’ll show us as a positive thing for the community and economy, he said. I responded, said I’d be happy to do it. This is good news. Also contacted Experiential Design. Talked to a guy named Clyde re: my idea. Said the speculative prospects are in the framework already [!]. Will take a few little programming tweaks, he said, but should be doable. Asked about what it is that the client wants. Told him I have a client who wants to Experience what it would be like if he were still with an ex-girlfriend now. Broke up years ago. Made sure to make a joke about this point about this being very pathetic (because I’m very aware that it is). Clyde tells me to fill out a custom Grief & Loss Experience form and attach photos, videos, etc, just the same as we would for a G & L and get it to him ASAP with the personality questionnaire and relevant life events (I made up some, some are truthful) to give the most realistic depiction possible. Says it would be helpful also to have a variety of photos from different time periods, for absolute verisimilitude, etc. I say give me to the end of the day. This process will be easy. L and M both got into digital scrapbooking [?!] a few years back. There’s a record of just about fucking everything in these online documents they’ve created (hundreds of pages!). Always told Leora it makes me nervous, all of that being out there. She tells me to lighten up. Says I’m turning into a curmudgeon already, at my tender old age of 33.
Thursday, June 23rd
Leora = Pregnant [!]. I would write more about it, but I’m too busy being excited.
Friday, June 24th
Went to see doc today, to confirm Leora’s pregnancy (like three preg. tests could have all failed!) Doc says yes, confirmed, we will be parents. Rushed back from doc’s office to do interview with News 8. Was nervous about that. Lots riding on this – finally get a voice to answer critics, etc. Hopeful that they show us in a good light. Never can tell with these things what sort of angle they’ll take.
Sunday, June 26th
Interview aired tonight, presented us well, I think. Most of the attention focused on ExperiPlex CLE (understandable). Shots look great! Brass bar looks sharp on the tube! Got some calls of congratulations on the interview. O & M both called (O moved into apartment, M back at their house, which she’ll undoubtedly get in the divorce, which is going ahead), as did Mayor R. Still haven’t told anyone (not even parents) about the baby, per Leora.
Monday, June 27th
Resparque called, said he thinks I did well with the interview. Wonders what the reaction has been locally. I told him it’s too soon to tell, but it can probably only be positive. R said also that he’s been told about the project I’ve got design working on. Complimented me on my great idea, said he’d not thought of it. Keep the ideas coming, he said, lots of room within ExInt for innovation. Fresh thinking, he says he values. But so he wants to know how the client likes it, this new thing, Speculative Experience he thinks we’ll call it.
Got a call from Leora. Said O was coming over for dinner. She’d invited him, she said, because he needs us now, she said. Of course, I told her, and let her know I’d be home around six. When I walked through the door, O had lost some of that original happy freedom it seemed and looked like someone very involved in his own brain (that look, you know – hard to describe – of someone who’s got a lot on his mind). Had nice dinner, drank some wine, watched some tube. Pretty ordinary night otherwise. L said later that it doesn’t matter that we didn’t talk much with Oskar, that just spending time with him was probably good for him. I agreed, came in here to write. Bedtime now, early day tomorrow.
Tuesday, June 28th
It was my hand, but not quite the same, a different accumulation marking it. An unrecognizable scar here, a gold wedding band (mine is usually platinum) there, trimmed fingernails – at the start of the Experience I looked at it and marveled at its details, before sliding it into Marta’s and walking down the streets, an unfamiliar city I knew to be L.A. A dark bar, a band playing a hodge-podge of covers spanning three decades. I sat with her there and listened and the motley mix of tunes responded to M’s liking of sentimental love ballads and mine for early-90s grunge. Really, both of them advertise the same thing: carefree adolescence. Carefree? Shit. The bar began to change with the Musak, changing from swanky Hollywood lounge into wood-trimmed dive bar, smelling of stale smoke and piss (not unlike Frank’s, where we’ve all been drinking since seventeen). Posters for Fourth of July celebrations – years out of date – on the walls, curling. We were having a very nice time, I think. Everything shifting. Was so hard to tell what was genuine feeling. An idealized version of her, I realized – what I saw of her – built from memories, a time not remembered correctly. It was a time in life – not bad, not good, not anything really – but it was full and vibrant in memory. It was like something out of one of those bad Mellencamp songs she liked so much – the memories I mean. A trick! Remembered experience. The good old days were not so good. They were just days. Like the day M and I fucked in my car (probably Mellencamp playing on the radio). Conversation kept going there (of all things! Did we both really desire that so deeply? Uncomfortably fucking in a non-descript sedan?), to just how much fun it all was (that carefree adolescence again[!]) and how brave and free we were (her sentimentality, not mine). I reminded her we’d been busted – lying there post-coital and bare-assed – by a sheriff who knew both of our parents personally and had shone his spotlight on our bare bodies to be recorded by the dashcam. Further evidence in case our parents needed any other proof in order to ground us for just about fucking ever, which in the universe of the Experience apparently only intensified our desire to just be together at all costs. Again, total horseshit. She was embarrassed to be seen with me, I with her, and the relationship nose-dived. Comic reality. Idealized memory must have no room for comedy.
But so this is the rub – we get back to this (our?) apartment, and the (our?) bedroom is decorated a hell of a lot like her bedroom (where we first were intimate). And this – this is a fact the designers could not have known. I did not tell them about it or show them photos or anything. This bedroom – I realized – is a product of my own desire and imagination as sensed by the ExperiPod! How awesome, how terrifying, being in the grasp of a thing beyond control! There we were on a small bed with a chintzy cover and she looked over at me, her hair now long and black again (streaks of gray actually in it now) and I was confronted, full on by my own longings, this having been well outside the construction of the original Experience. And she began unbuckling my belt and there it was. There was no way I could go through with this, the way I couldn’t ever do it in reality. Old boy Oskar had courage at least (to act on his passions) but it’s not like that with me. My life is good. I am having a child. I am happy. I ended the Experience and stepped out of the Pod. It was still daylight. I went to Central Control and pulled the miniature memory stick, deleted it from the Pod I’d used, and hid the stick deep in an unused drawer of my desk to be forgotten.
Wednesday, June 29th
Resparque wants the Client Satisfaction Report for this first Speculative Experience and I told him I’d have it to him as soon as the client gets it back to me. Under Diegetic – How Real Did it Seem? I marked very. Comment: unsettling how real it was. Nothing to mark that it was an Experience. You get sucked in.
{Nt(F)S – telling Resparque what he wants to hear right now – actual experience different, more tenuous, shapeshifting}
Under Accuracy – How Well Was the Personality Represented? I marked moderately well. Comment: Influence of unconscious desires (mine) changed personality. Perhaps adjust the degree of that influence.
{Nt(F)S – being more honest here}
I mark Pricing - fair, Technology – Were there any Glitches? - No, and on and on, and write some brief comments (trying to come from an actual client’s perspective, not one of an ExperiPlex Venue Manager. I finish this and go to the (clever) trouble of creating a fake email account in the name of the client I’d put on the invoice, sent it to myself, and forwarded to Resparque (Note: keep monitoring account in case Resparque tries to contact directly). Done and sent, I went to meet Leora at a bar down the road. She wanted to tell M about the baby, since we called our parents last night. She wanted M to be the first to know. When I arrived, they were both already sitting at the bar, drinks in hand, my bourbon on rocks waiting to L’s right. I hugged and kissed my wife and hugged M with flashes of today’s Experience visiting my eye. We raised our glasses and Leora toasted to New Chapters of Life, which is her term for all that has been happening in our lives lately. I sat back and drank, while the ladies talked in high, excited voices.
Joshua Graber lives in a small apartment in Akron, OH with his wife. He recently participated in an ekphrastic event at the Akron Art Museum, and his writing may be found elsewhere in Denver Syntax and Buried Letter Press.
