Fakebook

by Dave Cicirelli

  “Is this the right one?” she asked. “Actually, I’m sure it’s the right train—I’m a natural at public transportation. When I was only seven years old, a set of train doors separated me and my little sister from our parents. I got us off at the next stop, switched to the other side of the tracks, and made it back to my folks, all before my sister had the chance to stop crying.”

  “That’s pretty impressive.”

  “Oh, I know. My mom tells the story every Thanksgiving.”

  The train PA system announced the next stop. We were on the wrong train. “I promise not to cry for very long,” I joked, looking slyly at her out of the corner of my eye.

  “Well, this is all your fault,” she replied, playfully hitting me on the shoulder.

  “I think your mom’s going to be really disappointed.”

  “You can’t tell her anything! She’ll be crushed to hear that my train skills are…deproving? Is that even a word?”

  We ran across the platform and she leaned into her luggage the way a kid would before racing a shopping cart. You could see a manic brain behind her eyes, always darting from one thing to the next.

  As we dashed onto the train through the closing doors, I turned and said to her, “We’re halfway there.”

  She paused for a moment before cocking her head to a silent beat. “Whoa-oh,” she sang under her breath, “we’re living on a prayer!”

  Had she just cited Bon Jovi? Could this be…a Jersey girl? I’d spent most of my life trying to dissuade people of New Jersey stereotypes, but it’s true that it’s absolutely impossible for someone from Jersey to hear the phrase “we’re halfway there” without finishing the lyric.

  “I have to ask…Are you from New Jersey?”

  She laughed. “Well, sort of. I lived there for a couple years as a kid, and I went to college in New Jersey. But I was born in India, and I went to high school in North Carolina. I’m from all over, but I’m enough of a Jersey girl to sing Bon Jovi. I’m guessing you’re from Jersey, too?”

  “Yep. I grew up on the Jersey Shore.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Yes, I’m an Italian American from the Jersey Shore. You’re making me nostalgic for the days when that was only mildly embarrassing and The Sopranos was the defining show assassinating our character.” I was starting to relax. “So you went to school in New Jersey…?”

  She turned away and sheepishly replied, “Princeton.” It was the first time she’d spoken without looking right at me. Ivy Leaguers can be strangely insecure about their accomplishments.

  “I love Princeton. You can’t walk ten feet in that town without tripping over a statue.”

  She seemed put at ease by my light response.

  The truth is, I did love Princeton. In fact, as a Rutgers undergrad, I was Princeton obsessed. The two campuses are only sixteen miles down the road from one another, but light years apart in every other conceivable way. Princeton, both the town and university, is perfectly idyllic. It’s almost like Main Street USA in Disney World—not a real town, but the true potential, the promise of what a town could be. Full of buffer spaces in between parallel parking spots and stores selling sweaters meant to be tied around shoulders (or as my roommate Paco put it, “sweater necklaces”). It’s an oasis of calm compared to the urban sprawl of Rutgers’s five campuses.

  And contrary to what television has taught us, smart and nerdy-looking need not walk hand in hand. I was routinely floored by how attractive the Princeton women were. I even developed a couple of working theories—about the offspring of old rich men and their hot second wives. I wanted in. I shamelessly abandoned the Rutgers scene to go to Princeton bars with grand visions of being the dude a Princeton girl used to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. But all of these stunning scholars disappeared when the sun went down. It was completely maddening.

  But I soon learned that I wasn’t the first overreaching state-school type to develop a Princeton infatuation. Those overachievers locked us out by moving the entire social scene behind closed doors, inside members-only “eating clubs.” With the Princeton women quarantined away, I’d all but given up on my dream of being used like the piece of publicly educated meat that I aspired to be.

  And yet here I was, hitting it off with Dhara on a shuttle train. This was a landmark moment, not just for me, but for state school alums everywhere. If I’d known the Rutgers fight song, I’d have sung it.

  “So what were you doing in Chicago?” she asked.

  “Visiting my brother and his wife—and their house. It’s like he’s a grown-up or something.”

  “What does that make you?”

  “Me? I’m clearly a child,” I said.

  She smiled and went on to tell me all about her family, and the initial wish fulfillment of talking to a Princeton girl quickly gave way to the simple pleasure of talking to, well, a charming and intelligent supermodel. This was someone I wanted to see again.

  A few minutes later the Air Train dropped us off at the subway entrance and she said, “Thanks so much, Dave. It was really sweet of you to help me with my suitcase.”

  Her train was fast approaching, and as a commercial artist, I understand the importance of deadlines. I asked, “Do you have a card? I don’t want you to think I had ulterior motives or anything, but…”

  “Sure!” She handed me her number and stepped onto her Queens-bound A train before it sped off into the tunnel.

  That night I was the happiest guy on the J line. Only in Bond movies had the inexplicable combination of nuclear physicist and lingerie model been revealed to me before that night.

  Now, I had a date with a real-life Bond girl. The fifty-minute subway ride had felt like five. A light dusting of snow made the Lower East Side shimmer, and there was magic in the crisp air. I looked behind me and saw that I left no footprints. I was floating toward my building, right next to the base of the Williamsburg Bridge. My mind wandered as I shuffled through a week’s worth of mail—until I found a letter from Kate’s father.

  That is, a letter from an imaginary Amish farmer. A letter from the imaginary father of my imaginary Amish girlfriend.

  My nemesis had struck again.

  Suddenly, it all came crashing down. The air wasn’t crisp; it was just miserably cold out. I was simply confused—instead of the air smelling like wet garbage, it smelled like frozen garbage, which was a slight improvement. I lived under a bridge, like a troll.

  I sent a quick text to Elizabeth, hoping she was still awake. “Hey. If you met someone on the subway, what are the chances you’d look him up on Facebook before having a drink with him?”

  She wrote back immediately. “100%.”

  Great. Welcome to 2010. And Dhara was a Princeton girl; she’d definitely do her homework.

  My entire profile was a red flag. My most recent post was an account of my bow tie tattoo being applied. The last several months would appear to be one act of poor judgment after another. Instead of seeing the real me, she’d see someone who antagonized the homeless and toilet-papered the pious.

  A generation ago, Dhara would have been enticed to see me again for the same reason I wanted to see her—based on what little we knew about each other, we wanted to know more. That paradigm still holds true, but now, with the advent of search engines and Facebook, it’s reckless for a young woman to meet a total stranger unless she looks up things about him. It’s so easy to do, like flipping to the back of a baseball card for a player’s stats.

  We’ve always carried emotional baggage, but it’s never been easier to shuffle through it. There’s no “past” with Facebook, and there’s no “distance.” Nothing happened “then,” and nothing ever happens “somewhere else.” It all pools together, fossilizes, and creates a permanent but evolving here and now.

  “Getting to know someone” is still the cornerstone of starting a new relationship, but Face
book has forever changed the process. How many conversations won’t take place because we don’t have to ask what someone’s favorite book is anymore? How suspicious would you be if someone had the same answer as you? Does that coincidence lose its meaning online? I had no doubt that the new romantic landscape could lead to happy endings, but for an overly analytical fool with a fake profile, the landscape was a minefield.

  Through Fakebook and because of it, I was simultaneously learning what it was like to start and end a relationship in the Facebook era. The morning of my flight, I’d woken up in the new home of a growing family. That night I climbed into an empty bed, fairly certain that my real relationship status was going to remain “single” for a very long time.

  It’s almost funny. “As I climb into an empty bed…” is actually a line from “I Know It’s Over,” the song I’d imagined Fake Dave consoling himself with. I fell asleep that night thinking of the girl on the train, while The Smiths sang, “I know it’s over and it never really began. But in my heart it felt so real…”

  Maybe I should have changed my status to “Married.” After all, I’d sacrificed everything for the committed relationship I was in with my own Facebook profile.

  5I reached out to the owner of Tatooine, Chris Bailey, on Facebook. He immediately got the point of Fakebook and accepted my friend request. He granted me permission to use his shop as a set piece and to use his photos as a base for Fake Dave and Amish Kate’s life in Arizona.

  “This is ballsy,” Joe said, standing over my proposal on Handler’s main conference table. “Your boss sign off on this?”

  “Yeah. You know her,” I said with a hint of pride in my voice. “She’s gutsy.”

  We were looking at a proposal for our next promotional mailer—twenty-inch, high-gloss, fully printed shippable packaging. The idea was to get media members excited when our newest superhero toy line arrived on their desk and to ensure they opened the package. This was the fifth one we’d produced, and the mailers had been one of our most successful tactics.

  “I’m just thinking back to last year,” Joe said. “When the lawyers made us change our tagline a half dozen times.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “We couldn’t legally guarantee that our product ‘makes you feel like a superhero,’ right?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, chuckling a bit. “It’s ridiculous. But it’s also why this makes me nervous. You want to create a completely original drawing of the main character. I don’t think they’ll let you get away with it.”

  He was right. This was a huge risk. The brand sent assets—beautiful high-resolution images created by the best illustrators in the business. Usually we’d use these images in our design. It was what we’d always done. But I couldn’t do the same thing over and over. I’d gotten the creative itch and wanted to try something new. So I proposed going outside the assets and creating original artwork.

  “And even if they approve the proposal,” Joe said, “if you can’t make the drawing look as good as the official images, we’re screwed. And it’s not just our client but all the licensing partners, too. This also would have to be approved by the publisher and the film studio.” Joe looked up from the comp on the table and at me straight on. “Three groups of brand managers. Three legal departments. If I pitch this,” he said sternly, “you have to pull it off.”

  I wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I’ve always been a good illustrator, but it was a skill I’d sidelined. Now I was committing to do my best work ever, after years of rust. It was foolish of me to even suggest it—putting at risk weeks of work and the company’s reputation. Yet, how could I not try?

  I mean, I was a comic-book kid growing up. Deep down, I still am. I’d never forgive myself for passing on this opportunity.

  “I can do it,” I said.

  “All right then,” Joe said. “Let’s pitch it.”

  I walked back to my desk, a little exhilarated and a little nervous. I knew I was making my life hard. A drawing like that—at the size it needed to be and the standard it had to meet—was going to take a couple hundred hours.

  But man…I’d get to earn the next couple paychecks drawing a superhero. For once, it was more exciting than anything going on with my other life. Fake Dave was just sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

  And people noticed.

  Matt Campbell

  I worry when I don’t hear any updates for a few days.

  Like · Comment

  Dave Cicirelli Ha. Sorry pal. Even in my life there are boring days. I think I’ve earned a few.

  1 hour ago via mobile · Like

  I’d tried to be a little experimental with his downtime and had even tried to inject Fake Dave into a live event. From my couch in New York, I used Twitter to pull live photos from the night’s Devils-Coyotes hockey game in Glendale, Arizona.

  It was an interesting little experiment—a trial run for potentially sending Fake Dave to Vancouver for the upcoming Olympics. I liked infusing a live event with fiction—where Fake Dave’s presence might make someone to tune in for the crowd instead of the competition. But having Fake Dave watch things was still not very engaging. Fortunately, it was just one night, and it did serve the need for some downtime.

  This period of quiet also helped me serve another specific, if still hypothetical audience. I had a vested interest in not appearing insane if Dhara looked me up.

  I looked at her card on my desk. It’d been a few days since our encounter. Now or never, I thought, as I gathered the courage to write her an email:

  Recipient: Dhara101@email.com

  SUBJECT:

  Hey Dhara,

  It’s Dave from the train. Just wanted to make sure you got home all right. I’m a little worried that you just kept getting on the wrong car, and are forever stuck crisscrossing New York—surviving on the change you earn singing Bon Jovi’s greatest hits! ;)

  Let me know!

  I thought it was cute. I even went as far to use a winky-face emoticon, unusual for any self-respecting guy. For better or worse, that was probably my A-game.

  I was still hoping against hope she wouldn’t dig too deeply into the strange back story of my public profile. Though I did tempt fate by committing the cardinal sin of blue-state New York dating—Republican-themed humor.

  Dave Cicirelli

  I can’t believe there is no good Barry Goldwater museum in Phoenix or Glendale. There’s like a center where they have speeches sometimes, but that’s it. Is it possible there is no market for the Barry GoldWater Park? Is my dream of an aquatic adventure land based around the founder of modern conservatism doomed to go unfulfilled? If I build it, will they come?

  Like · Comment

  Erin Brennan Hanson If that’s the eventual end to your mission, you would have been better off staying home. And I say that because I know my husband would end up dragging me there for a day of Goldwater-themed “fun.”

  about an hour ago via mobile · Like

  Dave Cicirelli You’d make a great Goldwater Girl, haha.

  about an hour ago via mobile · Like

  Michael Surabian My Mom was a Goldwater Girl. Apparently apples do fall far from the tree.

  12 minutes ago via mobile · Like

  Dave Cicirelli Your mother sounds both very wise and in need of a worthwhile legacy. Perhaps she’d be interested in investing in my vision?

  less than a minute ago via mobile · Like

  I could keep Fakebook in a holding pattern for a week or two—it made sense for the story. But ultimately I had to tell a story worthy of having a second life. Fakebook was my priority, and maybe that meant scaring away the girl from the train.

  But to my surprise, all my concerns were for naught. An hour later, she wrote back.

  “You find the place all right?” I asked with a smile. “There shouldn’t have been any confusing transfers.”

  We met fo
r drinks that Saturday at Vol de Nuit, a Belgian beer hall in the West Village. It was a cool place with a good beer selection and a unique red-lit enclosed courtyard. It had a casual but intimate vibe that felt right for a first date.

  “Haha,” Dhara said as she sat down. “I should tell you now, though. I have a friend’s party that I have to go to later tonight.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” I said. “I have a late-night slice of pizza I have to eat in my apartment later.” I got the message fairly clearly. This date was an audition.

  “So be honest,” I said, “you Facebook-stalked me, didn’t you?”

  “Well,” Dhara said, “did you really just get a bow tie tattoo?”

  I laughed and began to tell her about Fakebook.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “Why would you do this?”

  “Well, don’t you find the whole Facebook experience kind of strange?” I asked. “I mean, you suddenly gain access to the lives of people you barely remember.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said almost disinterestedly. “They are just people’s profiles. I can’t say it upsets me.”

  I was a little struck by her nonchalance toward social media. In my months of explaining Fakebook, not everyone understood why I would specifically do what I did, but everyone understood the underlying suspicion of social media’s implications.

  “I wouldn’t say it upsets me…” I said.

  I took a real look across the table and studied her for a moment. She was younger than me, twenty-two to my twenty-six. And while four years isn’t much, the age gap felt significant all of a sudden. I became self-conscious and saw myself as an old man complaining about “how low kids wear their pants these days.”

  “It’s just interesting…” I continued. “Something I think is worth playing around with.”