Generation X

by Douglas Coupland

  return into her house. The contamination business has bothered her more than we'd suspected. She claims she'll be living with me indefinitely now: "Radiation has more endurance than even Mr. Frank Sinatra, Andy. I'm here for the long haul." Claire will, however, make forays into her residence—no longer than five minutes per foray per day—to retrieve her belongings. Her first trip was as timid a one as might be made by a medieval peasant entering a dying plague town, brandishing a dead goat to ward away evil spirits.

  "How brave," snipes Dag, to which Claire shoots back an angry

  glare. I tell her I think she's overreacting. "Your place is spotless, Claire. You're acting like a techno-peasant."

  "Both of you may laugh, but neither of you has a Chernobyl in their living room."

  "True."

  She spits out a mutant baby peanut and inhales. "Tobias is gone for good. I can tell. Imagine that, the best looking human flesh I'll ever be in contact with—the Walking Orgasm—gone forever."

  "I wouldn't say that, Claire," I say, even though in my heart I know she's right. "Maybe he just stopped for something to eat."

  "Spare me, Andy. It's been three hours now. And he took his bag. I just can't figure out why he'd leave so suddenly."

  I can.

  The two dogs, meanwhile, stare hungrily at the nuts Dag and Claire are shelling.

  "Know what the fastest way to get rid of dogs that beg at the dinner table is?" I ask, to a mumbled response. "Give them a piece of carrot or an olive instead of meat, and give it to them with an earnest face. They'll look at you like you're mad and they'll be gone in seconds. Granted, they might think less of you, too."

  Claire has been ignoring me. "Of course, this means I'll have to follow him to New York." She stands up and heads to the door. "Looks like a white Christmas for me this year, boys. God, obsessions are awful." She looks at her face in the mirror hanging by the door. "Not even thirty and already my upper lip is beginning to shrink. I'm doomed." She leaves.

  "I've dated three women in my life," says my boss and next -door neighbor, Mr. MacArthur, "and I married two of them."

  It's later on at night at Larry's. Two real estate weenies from Indio are singing "wimmaway" into the open mike that belongs to our chanteuse Lorraine, currently taking a break from show-tuning along with her wheezy electronic "rhythm pal," and drinking white wine while oozing sad glamour at bar's end. It's a slow night; bad tips. Dag and I are drying glasses, a strangely restful activity, and we're listening to Mr. M. do his Mr. M. shtick. We feed him lines; it's like watching a Bob Hope TV special but with home viewer participation. He's never funny, but he's funny.

  The evening's highlight was an elderly failed Zsa Zsa who vomited a storm of Sidecars onto the carpet beside the trivia computer game. That is a rare event here; Larry's clientele, while marginalized, have a strong sense of decorum. What was truly interesting about the event, though, happened shortly afterward. Dag said, "Mr. M.! Andy! Come here and check this out—" There, amid the platonic corn -and-spaghetli forms on the carpet were about thirty semidigested gelatin capsules. "Well, well. If this doesn't count as a square on life's bingo card, I don't know what does. Andrew, alert the paramedics."

  That was two hours ago, and after the testosteronal posturing of chatting with the paramedics and showing off medical knowledge ("Gosh," says Dag, "some Ringer's solution, perhaps?"), we are now receiving the history of Mr. M.'s love life—a charming, saved-forthe -wedding -night affair, replete with chaste first, second, and third dates, almost instant marriages, and too many children shortly afterward.

  "What about the date you didn't marry?" I ask.

  "She stole my car. A Ford. Gold. If she hadn't done that, I probably would have married her, too. I didn't know much about selectivity then. I just remember jerking off under my desk ten times a day and thinking how insulted a date must feel if the date didn't lead to marriage. I was lonely; it was Alberta. We didn't have MTV then."

  * * * *

  Claire and I met Mr. and Mrs. M., "Phil 'n' Irene," one delicious day months ago when we looked over the fence and were assaulted by miasmic wafts of smoke and a happy holler from Mr. M. wearing a DINNER'S ON apron. We were promptly invited over and had canned soda and "Ireneburgers" thrust into our mitts. Jolly good fun. And just before Mr. M. came outside with his ukulele, Claire whispered to me, "Andy, I sense

  AIR FAMILY: Describes the false sense of community experienced among coworkers in an office environment.

  SQUIRMING: Discomfort inflicted on young people by old people who see no irony in their gestures. Karen died a thousand deaths as her father made a big show of tasting a recently

  manufactured bottle of wine before allowing it to be poured as the family sat in Steak Hut.

  the high probability of a chinchilla hutch on the side stoop of the house." (Chinchilla Breeders Eat Steak!)

  To this day, Claire and I are just waiting to be taken aside by Irene for a hushed devotional talking-to about the lines of cosmetic products she represents and stockpiles in her garage like so many thousand unwanted, non-give-away-able kittens. "Honey, my elbows were like pine bark before I tried this stuff."

  The two of them are sweet. They're of the generation that believes that steak houses should be dimly lit and frostily chilled (hell, they actually believe in steak houses). Mr. M.'s nose bears a pale spider's web film of veins, of the sort that Las Palmas housewives are currently paying good money to have sclerotherapied away from the backs of their legs. Irene smokes. They both wear sportswear purchased at discount houses —they discovered their bodies too late in life. They were raised to ignore their bodies and that's a little sad. But it's better than no discovery at all. They're soothing.

  In our mind's eye, Irene and Phil live in a permanent 1950s. They still believe in a greeting card future. It is their oversize brandy snifter filled with matchbooks that I think of when I make oversize-brandysnifter-filled-with-matchbook jokes. This snifter rests atop their living room table, a genetic parking lot of framed MacArthur descendant photos, mainly grandchildren, disproportionately hair do'ed in the style of Farrah, squinting with new contact lenses and looking somehow slated for bizarre deaths. Claire once peeked at a letter that was lying on a side table, and she remembered reading a phrase complaining that the jaws of life took two-and-a-half hours to reach a MacArthur descendant impaled inside an overturned tractor.

  We tolerate Irene and Phil's mild racist quirks and planet -destroying peccadilloes ("I could never own any car smaller than my Cutlass Supreme") because their existence acts as a tranquilizer in an otherwise slightly-out-ofcontrol world. "Sometimes," says Dag, "I have a real problem remembering if a celebrity is dead or not. But then I realize it doesn't really matter. Not to sound ghoulish, but that's sort of the way I feel about Irene and Phil—but in the best sense of the meaning, of course." Anyhow—

  *****

  Mr. M. starts off a joke for Dag's and my amusement: "This'll slay you. There are these three old Jewish guys sitting on a beach in Florida— (racial slur this time)—They're talking, and one of the guys asks another one, 'So where'd you get the dough to come down to retire in Florida?' and the guy replies, 'Well, there was afire down at the factory. A very sad affair, but fortunately I was covered by fire insurance.'

  "Fine. So then he asks the other guy where he got the money to come down and retire in Miami Beach, and the second guy replies, 'Funny, but just like my friend here, there was also a fire down at my factory as well. Praise God, I was insured.' '

  At this point Dag laughs out loud and Mr. M.'s joke-telling rhythm is thrown off, and his left hand, which is wiping the inside of a beer stein with a threadbare Birds of Arizona dishrag, stops moving. "Hey, Dag," says Mr. M. "Yeah?"

  "How come you always laugh at my jokes before I even get to the punch line?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Just like I said. You always start snickering halfway through my jokes, like you were laughing at me instead of with me." He starts drying the glass again.


  "Hey, Mr. M. I'm not laughing at you. It's your gestures that are funny— your facial expression. You've got a pro's timing. You're a laugh riot." Mr. MacArthur buys this. "Okay, but don't treat me like a talking seal, okay? Respect my trip. I'm a person and I pay your paycheck, too." (He says this last comment as though Dag were a total prisoner of this colorful but dead -end Mcjob.)

  "Now where were we? Oh yeah, so the two guys turn to the guy that's been asking the questions and they say to him, 'Well what about you? Where'd you get the money to come down and retire here in Florida?' And he replies, 'Just like with you guys there was a disaster at my place, too. There was a flood and the whole place got wiped out. Fortunately, of course, there was insurance.'

  "The two guys look really confused, then one of them says to the third guy, 7 got just one question for you. How'd you arrange a flood?' ' Groans. Mr. M. seems pleased. He walks along the bar counter's length, the surface of which, like the narrow horseshoe of flooring surrounding the toilet of an alcoholic, is a lunar surface of leprotic cigarette

  RECREATIONAL

  SLUMMING: The practice of participating in recreational

  activities of a class one perceives as lower than one's own: "Karen! Donald! Let's go bowling tonight! And don't worry about shoes . . . apparently you can rent them."

  CONVERSATIONAL

  SLUMMING: The selfconscious enjoyment of a given conversation precisely for its lack of intellectual rigor. A major spinoff activity of Recreational Slumming.

  OCCUPATIONAL

  SLUMMING: Taking a job well beneath one's skill or education level as a means of retreat from adult responsibilities and/or avoiding possible failure in one's true occupation.

  Highway 111 (also known as Palm Canyon Drive) is the town's main drag and surprisingly empty tonight. A few ambisexual blondes from Orange County float vacuously back and forth in high-end Volkswagens, while skinhead marines in dented El Caminos make cruising, hustler's screeches but never stop. It's still a car culture town here, and on a busy night it can feel, as Dag so aptly phrases it, "like a Daytona, big tits, burger-and-shake kind of place where kids in go-go boots and asbestos jackets eat Death Fries in orange vinyl restaurant booths shaped like a whitewall GT tire."

  We turn a corner and walk some more.

  "Imagine, Andrew: 48 hours ago little Dagster here was in Nevada," he continues, now seating himself on the trunk of a dazzlingly expensive racing green Aston Martin convertible, lighting a filter-tipped cigarette. "Imagine that."

  We're off the main drag now, on an unlit side street where Dag's expensive "seat" is stupidly parked. In the Aston Martin's back area are cardboard boxes loaded with papers, clothing, and junk, like an accountant's garage sale. It looks as though someone were planning to split town in an awful hurry. Not unlikely in this burg.

  "I spent the night in a little mom-and-pop motel in the middle of nowhere. The walls had knotty pine paneling and fifties lamps and prints of deer on the wall—"

  "Dag, get off the car. I feel really uncomfortable here." "—and there was the smell of those little pink bars of motel soaps. God, I love the smell of those little things. So transient."

  I'm horrified: Dag is burning holes in the roof of the car with the cherry of his cigarette. "Dag! What are you doing—cut that out! Not again." "Andrew, keep your voice down. Please. Where is your cool?" "Dag, this is too much for me. I've got to go." I start walking away. Dag, as I have said, is a vandal. I try to understand his behavior but fail, last week's scraping of the Cutlass Supreme was merely one incident in a long strand of such events. He seems to confine himself exclusively to vehicles bearing bumper stickers he finds repugnant. Sure enough, an inspection of this car's rear reveals a sticker saying ASK ME

  ABOUT MY GRANDCHILDREN.

  "Come back here, Palmer. I'll stop. In a second. And besides, I want to tell you a secret." I pause.

  "It's a secret about my future," he says. Against my better judgment,

  I return.

  "That is so stupid, burning holes like that, Dag."

  "Chill, boy. This sort of thing's a misdemeanor. Statute 594, California penal code. Slap on the wrist. And besides, no one's looking."

  He brushes a small divot of ash away from a cigarette hole. "I want to own a hotel down in Baja California. And I think I'm closer than you think to actually doing so."

  "What?"

  "That's what I want to do in my future. Own a hotel." "Great. Now let's go."

  "No," he lights up another cigarette, "not until I describe my hotel

  to you."

  "Just hurry."

  "I want to open a place down in San Felipe. It's on the east side j

  of the Baja needle. It's a tiny shrimping village surrounded by nothing but sand, abandoned uranium mines, and pelicans. I'd open up a small place for friends and eccentrics only, and for staff I'd only hire elderly Mexican women and stunningly beautiful surfer and hippie type boys j and girls who have had their brains swiss-cheesed from too much dope. There'd be a bar there, where everyone staples business cards and money to the walls and the ceiling, and the only light would be from ten watt bulbs hidden behind cactus skeletons on the ceiling. We'd spend nights washing zinc salves from each other's noses, drinking rum drinks, and telling stories. People who told good stories could stay for free. You wouldn't be allowed to use the bathroom unless you felt -penned a funny joke on the wall. And all of the rooms would be walled in knotty pine wood, and as a souvenir, everyone would receive just a little bar of soap."

  I have to admit, Dag's hotel sounds enchanting, but I also want to leave. "That's great, Dag. I mean, your idea really is great, but let's split now, all right?"

  "I suppose. I —" He looks down at where he has been burning a cigarette hole while I was turned away. "Uh oh—" "What happened?" "Oh, shit."

  The cherry from the cigarette has fallen off, and onto a box of papers and mixed junk in the car. Dag hops off the car and we both stare transfixed as the red hot little poker tip burns through a few newspaper pages, gives the impression of disappearing, then suddenly goes whoooof! as the box combusts as fast as a dog's bark, illuminating our horrified faces with its instant yellow mock cheer.

  "Oh, God!"

  "Ditch!"

  I'm already gone. The two of us scram down the road, heart -in-throat,

  turning around only once we are two blocks away, then only briefly, to see a worst case scenario of the Aston Martin engulfed in fizzy raspberry lava flames in a toasty, kindling ecstasy, dripping onto the road.

  "Shit, Bellinghausen, this is the stupidest effing stunt you've ever pulled," and we're off running again, me ahead of Dag, rny aerobic training paying off.

  Dag rounds a corner behind me when I hear a muffled voice and a thump. I turn around and I see Dag bumping into the Skipper of all people, a Morongo Valley hobo type from up-valley who sometimes hangs out at Larry's (so named for the TV sitcom ship's captain hat he wears).

  "Hi, Dag. Bar closed?"

  "Hi, Skip. You bet. Hot date. Gotta dash," he says, already edging away and pointing his finger at the Skipper like a yuppie insincerely promising to do lunch.

  Ten Texas blocks away we stop exhausted, winded, and making breathless, earth-scraping salaams. 'Wo one finds out about this little blip, Andrew. Got that? No one. Not even Claire."

  "Do I look brain dead? God."

  Puff, puff puff.

  "What about the Skipper," I asked, "think he'll put two and two together?"

  "Him? Naah. His brain turned to carburetor gunk years ago."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah." Our breath returns.

  "Quick. Name ten dead redheads," commands Dag.

  "What?"

  "You have five seconds. One. Two. Three—"

  I figure it out. "George Washington, Danny Kaye—" '

  "He's not dead."

  •'Is, too."

  "Fair enough. Bonus points for you."

  The remaining walk home is less funny.

&n
bsp; I AM NOT JEALOUS

  Apparently Elvissa rode the pooch this afternoon after leaving our pool (hipster codeword: rode the Greyhound bus). She traveled four hours northwest to the coast at Santa Barbara to start a new job, get this, as a gardener at a nunnery. We're floored, really floored by this little chunk of news. 'Well," Claire fudges, "it's not really a nunnery, per se. The women wear these baggy charcoal cassocks—so Japanese!—and they cut their hair short. I saw it in the brochure. And anyhow, she's only gardening." ror. 'Well, the gatethey sent to Elvissa with (good God—) "She found bulletin board; she says head. But I suspect that tis could drift through "Brochure?" More horfolded pizza flyer thing her letter of acceptance." the job on a local parish she wants to clean out her maybe she thinks Curthere, and she wants to

  be around when that happens. That woman is so good at keeping things secret that she wants to." We're now sitting in my kitchen, lolling about on burned-pine bar stools with dog-chewed legs and purple diamond-tufted tops. These are chairs that I lugged away gratis from a somewhat bitter condominium repossession sale over on Palo Fiero Road last month. For atmosphere Dag has placed a cheesy red light bulb in the table counter's light socket and he's mixing dreadful drinks with dreadful names that he learned from the invading teens of last spring's

  NUTRITIONAL SLUMMING: Food whose enjoyment stems not from flavor but from a

  complex mixture of class

  connotations, nostalgia signals, and packaging semiotics: Katie and I bought this tub of MultiWhip instead of real whip cream because we thought petroleum distillate whip topping seemed like the sort of food that air force wives stationed in Pensacola back in the early sixties would feed their husbands to celebrate a career promotion.