Since Maslow’s time, the order has changed.
Back then, esteem of others ranked ahead of self-esteem. That is to say that our need for the good regard of fellow human beings was thought to be greater than our need for the esteem in which we hold ourselves. I’m here today to tell you that the single biggest achievement of twentieth-century advertising has been the reversal of these categories. Self-respect now trumps the good regard of others in any measure of consumer aspiration.
From here on in, then, it’s just embracing logic.
If self-respect is a fundamental human need, it follows that its absence is a cause of fundamental human harm. It therefore also follows that whatever enhances self-esteem diminishes harm and therefore is good.
Your product, for example.
Branding is the process by which your product becomes an agent in the self-actualization of its consumer, and thereby an agent for the greater good.
So how do you establish good? Easy. By comparing it to bad. How do you do that? You know where this is going …
24
Stability is the breeding ground of change.
The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck
Truth is, Roebuck does think about other men. Though only for the purpose of more clearly understanding women. His own value as he sees it—the value of his sex—is mostly as a model for comparative analysis.
The benefit of pleasure is the giving not the getting. This, for Roebuck, is as basic as any bottom-line can go. Which of course gives men the advantage. In all his years of study, he has never once discovered evidence of any woman counting backwards from a hundred by threes, or imagining Donald Trump in a Speedo, or silently reciting “The Cremation of Sam McGee” to prevent herself from coming too quickly. Over the space of this last hour, Roebuck himself has relied on each of these techniques in succession plus several others he keeps in reserve. But it has gone well.
He is now indulging in a little span of self-congratulation.
The advantage to men is that sex therefore becomes an exercise in self-control—that most requisite of human skill—which in turns leads straight ahead to self-improvement. He is fairly certain the same applies to other men, but Roebuck is willing to stand proxy. The problem for women is that men are so easy. God knows, he is.
“I mean it,” she says. “Seriously. If it doesn’t take this time, it’s fucking over.”
The last few visits have been structured somewhat differently, but today they have reverted to first principles. Today, officially, is O-Day. Two interpretations of that shorthand come to mind sequentially. Roebuck smiles privately, though perhaps it has shown on his face. Yasmin aims a kick toward his ear. If she were on her feet she’d be dangerous, but since she’s flat on her back a lateral strike is the worst she can manage. He pins her foot against his shoulder. Yasmin’s adductor muscles are alarmingly reflexive.
“Eighteen minutes,” he says. “Hang in.”
“I think you’re shooting blanks so what’s the fucking point?”
Roebuck sighs; they’ve been through all this before. He notes she isn’t moving.
“And definitely no more of those bonus visits in the middle of the month. That’s over. I mean it this time.”
“Okay.”
He swings his legs over the side and climbs off the bed. It is an unusually tall structure.
“Stop bouncing!” Yasmin arches and flexes to account for the spring of the mattress. With her feet against the headboard, she can’t see where he’s going. “Make sure you put the seat down! Last time you left it up. So rude!”
Roebuck’s pants are folded on the creases; his shirt hangs neatly on a hanger. Appointments with Yasmin are not occasions for wildly throwing clothes about the room. He is almost fully dressed before she notices.
“Hey!”
“Be still,” he says. “Thirteen more minutes.”
“Where are you going?” Yasmin twists her head to get a bead, but can’t bring him fully into focus without imperilling her pelvic tilt.
“Don’t move,” he says again.
“We aren’t finished!”
He considers a witticism on vaginal upsuck, but decides it’s inappropriate. Besides, his own reaction to that phrase tends to the Pavlovian, and Roebuck doesn’t want to talk himself back into that bed. He really is fatigued.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
“What the fuck?” says Yasmin, aiming her voice at the ceiling.
“I’m tired,” Roebuck answers, softly reciting while lacing his shoes. Honesty, sometimes, really is the better policy.
Although he understands the many ways in which he is a fool, Roebuck is not so wholly stupid as to go home drenched in Yasmin’s estrus. En route, he stops by at the gym. This is not without its own attendant guilt: his workout schedule has fallen off depressingly these past few months. He does a little shoulder work, a few reps on the bench press, some abs—nothing too stressful, the abs right now are tense enough as it is. The main point today is the shower.
He’d expected to be at Yasmin’s for another hour so Roebuck is now well ahead of schedule. The plan, originally, was to stop off at the market for one of their wonderfully authentic precooked dinners. But now he has the option of preparing something of his own from scratch.
Roebuck walks into the kitchen, freighted down with groceries.
“I’m cooking tonight!”
“Of course you are.”
“Anyway,” he says, “I’m making risotto.”
What with the demands of his schedule, he is obliged more often than he likes to rely on high-end take-out, though once he has it properly garnished and plated they do all sit and eat together—a family law.
“Need help?”
“Yes!” He is feeling better already. Another thing they do well together, he and Anne, is cook. “Let’s open a bottle.”
“You go ahead.”
Anne is a mystery. She has always been a mystery, but since that weekend at the cottage she has graduated to enigma. He had warned himself that it was almost certainly a one-off; the wine, likely—something in the atmosphere on that occasion in particular; who knows, maybe the mosquitoes?—Roebuck was in no way expecting repetition. Yet there she was, a few nights later, slipping in through the adjoining door. “Kids asleep?”
The phrase has taken on a new and more compelling meaning.
If she were a man, he would think it was Viagra, or Cialis, or one of those blockbusters that have left Big Pharma and its shareholders with such impressive hard-ons. But Roebuck is certain no such product has been as yet devised for women. And even if it was—why now? Carefully, extremely carefully—like a sapper approaching a suspected IED—he has sounded out the possibility of early onset menopause or some such evolution in hormonal status-quo. Impossible to broach directly, and anyway it doesn’t fit. Or anything else he can think of. On the other hand, when all is said and done, who is he to look a gift horse in the mouth? “Hope you have an appetite,” he says chopping his sun-dried tomatoes.
“Salute!” Anne is looking arch.
This is eerie. But Roebuck is happy to adapt.
25
When a woman is doing something her husband is not, he is doing nothing insofar as she’s concerned.
The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck
“Did I tell you I’m to be a keynote speaker at a Ferrer/Léche symposium?”
“Really? Interesting.”
“Sometimes I worry about how completely cynical I am capable of being.”
“Are you going to eat that flatbread?”
<
br /> “Someone once described me as a romantic who cloaks himself in cynicism. More and more, I’m wondering if it’s true. Maybe I really am a cynic …”
“You think?”
“This speech. Somehow it’s become … relevant … More so than I thought.”
“Where are you speaking?”
“Ferrer/Léche. They’re hosting a shindig, kicking off the twenty-first century’s second decade. Hundred-proof marketing. You know, the biz school?”
“You said. Right.”
“I started out just having fun …”
“You’re always having fun with MBAs.”
“Yes! That’s how it started. But somehow it got … I don’t know … significant.”
“Will you please pass the bread?”
“Advertising is changing. That’s what’s emerging. In some ways of course it’s the same as always, but in others …”
“Daniel says the world is going digital.”
“Yes. There’s that, too, of course. Though that’s mostly a matter of platform. But you’re right. If the platform changes, what’s above shifts too.”
“You’re not concerned about it?”
“Oh yes. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“What then?”
“That’s the problem. I’m not exactly sure.”
“When is this lecture?”
“Sometime after New Year. Not this one, the one after.”
“But that’s months away! Years!” Lily folds her napkin. “What time is your next meeting?”
“Which meeting?”
“Your next meeting. Today. This afternoon. What time?”
Roebuck checks his new BlackBerry. “One-thirty. Finance.”
“I mean your next important meeting.”
“Two-thirty. Client.”
“Then you have plenty of time to take me home and work on finessing your fireplace technique.”
It has been that kind of week.
That kind of month, really. Though quite a lot of it goes by before he hears again from Yasmin. There have been moments—over the span of this relationship, key moments—when Roebuck has surrendered himself to the discretion of fate. As of now, he’s reached another one of those watersheds. If Yasmin has decided it’s over, then fine. It’s over.
Time passes.
Roebuck spends his days in sphinxian silence.
Another week flows by. He bides his time. He is serene. He had by now become accustomed to seeing Yasmin on a semi-regular basis, but that, too, apparently, is finished. So be it. Life will be simpler. Roebuck’s life could definitely use a little simplifying.
He taps out a message. “Should I keep the 3rd open? (I have meetings.) J.”
November third, according to his spreadsheet, is Yasmin’s next peak-ovulation. Yasmin and her eggs are like the Capistrano swallows; you could set your clock by them. Her answer pings back immediately. “I expect you on the 3rd. I will advise what time. I am also free this afternoon.”
Vaginal upsuck: that deeply comprehensive term. Roebuck reconfigures his itinerary.
He has by now adapted to the quite substantive differences between these unscheduled, off-cycle encounters and their regular O-Day appointments. In terms of contrast, the distinction is mostly positional. When sperm retention is the prime, the singular consideration, Roebuck assumes top missionary spot. For all non-procreative get-togethers—flowback being neither here nor there—Yasmin is the one riding cowboy. Not to say that she doesn’t call the shots from either point of view, but Roebuck usually has a better time of it supine. Woe betide him, in either case, if he finishes ahead of schedule. Interestingly, he finds self-mastery distinctly easier with Yasmin orchestrating from above. Roebuck is a maestro of self-regulation.
The other main departure is the conversation.
When Yasmin’s ovum is positioned at the centre of the universe, there is seldom much demand for small talk. Both parties understand their roles and responsibilities; things move along succinctly. Yasmin’s sole preoccupation is with seizing that tense and fleeting moment when her basal body temperature is that perfect one degree above. Afterward, during hiatus, she concentrates her yogic expertise on maximizing uptake. He is constantly amazed at the contractions she achieves without seemingly moving her legs. As for Roebuck—typically—he spends the downtime with his laptop or, now that that’s forbidden, learning applications on his so-called smartphone.
Off-cycle visits, however, have evolved into format all of their own.
These are closer in spirit to, if not to actually a date, then at least occasions when some degree of social intercourse is understood to be appropriate. Sometimes she will pour a glass of wine or even brew them up a fragrant pot of herbal tea, depending on the time of day. Once or twice Roebuck has brought flowers or a potted plant and they have talked about her preference for narcissus over, say, daffodils. He has learned by now that it’s better to let her introduce the topic rather than throw out something of his own.
Today things have moved along quite nimbly. Roebuck’s heart rate is decelerating. Refractory periods tend to be a little less generous than what’s allowed for O-Days: three-quarters of an hour, typically, give or take. Yasmin has a question.
“What exactly is an art director?”
Roebuck is more than happy to explain that art directors create the images, while copywriters like him provide the words that give them relevance.
“But everyone knows that pictures are more important than words, so why does that make him less important?”
“Why does what make who less important?”
“Daniel.”
“Who?”
“Daniel. He’s the junior, isn’t he? He gets paid less?”
“You mean Daniel Greenwood?”
“Who else are we talking about? Why does he get paid less?”
“Because he’s young! Why are we talking about Daniel Greenwood?”
“But does he make decent money?”
“Of course he makes decent money.”
“How decent?”
“A lot. Why are we talking about Daniel?”
“We’re remodelling his condo.”
Roebuck didn’t know that Greenwood even owned a condo.
Yasmin has suspended a pillow at arm’s length above her midriff; she’s fidgety. “I just want to make sure he can afford us.”
“Oh yes, Daniel can afford you. He’s very good at what he does. You know, I’ve actually been considering …”
“I don’t care how good he is. I only care he has the money. Why are you just lying there?”
26
Same is not the same as equal.
The Collected Sayings of Julius Roebuck
Roebuck has read somewhere that, sometimes, when a woman perceives that other women find a given man attractive, she may herself begin to find that man attractive too. It’s the best theory he’s come up with. Possibly Anne is picking up on some involuntary messaging from Yasmin, chemosensory clues of some kind. Which is worrisome, on its own account. Anne continues to perplex.
Though not half so much as Lily.
Lily—who has always been the picture of discretion—only yesterday strolled into his office and offered him a backrub. It’s true that no one else was there and that first she checked the hall. But she’d have never done a thing like that two months ago. The irony, on top of everything, is that he really could have used it. Roebuck’s sciatic is definitely compressed. Also, she seems to have lost all interest in discussing art and literature—she hasn’t written anything in ages, as far as he can tell—and she never wants to eat at restaurants. “Come to my place,” she says. Last week, twice, he didn’t even end up getting fed.
At least with Anne there’s a blueprint. They were pretty avid in the early years. Though of course bac
k then they didn’t camp in separate tents—yet even this, somehow, has upped the present level of engagement. He never knows on any given night when his door will be opened and his sheets stripped away; Anne has no scruples if he happens to be sleeping. Though it’s always according to her timetable. Roebuck has tried a pre-emptive approach, taking the initiative to her. But any time he has attempted getting into her bed, he’s been sent packing. As ever, he adapts.
“I must say, you still do pretty well for an old guy.”
He has the wit this time to think before responding. Roebuck weighs his options. “I’m inspired,” he says with honest affection. Anne does do astonishingly well.
He has been wondering if maybe it’s time to break down and book an appointment with his GP. So far he hasn’t needed it, though a few times lately it’s been touch and go. It might be prudent, just in case, to stock up on one of those prescriptions. There’s no concern with Anne; Anne always leaves after they are finished; refractory time with him and Anne can still be measured in days not minutes. But for Yasmin—and Lily, too, more recently—Roebuck has been giving serious thought to a back-up supply of those little blue pills.
“Want the shower first?”
“You go ahead.”
Like him, Anne is a morning person. Before kids it was mornings that were best; finding one another in the dim before dawn then drifting back to sleep again enfolded as first-light slipped down from the ceiling. His wife has re-established ancient practice—though Anne remains a mother first and foremost: before she comes to him she looks into each room to be sure the kids are safely asleep, then carefully locks his bedroom door. The alarm will ring in half an hour anyway; soon the house will up—no point lounging in bed. While Anne is in the shower, Roebuck slips downstairs to get the coffee going. He has her cup waiting when she emerges in a towel.
“Tell Daniel he left his portfolio at the studio.”
It takes a moment. Roebuck has been reflecting on the word crepuscular, which to his ear has always sounded like it should mean something much less pleasant. Anne’s back is to him as she speaks. “I meant to bring it home with me so you could give it to him this morning. But I forgot.”
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