Chapter 10How it’s Supposed to Be
San Francisco. 2012
JJ, despite himself, kept reading other people’s posts and tweets, and clicking through to see what they were checking out. He would admit it, he looked for references about himself, his legal case – to hear his lawyers talk about it, it was a big deal. However, the guy, Robert White (that’s right, Bob White, who would name someone that?), didn’t remember enough of the incident to make much of a case against him personally anyway. And online, nada. So it rankled that he was still on public lockdown. Still getting lectured by them and still expected to go to their stupid office and their stupid meetings.
Plus it annoyed the crap out of him, that even fairly cool aware people – like his roommate Oscar, for instance – could not shut up about the presidential race. Our President, who might as well be another rich white guy for the utter lack of any progressive agenda he had managed to get done. Versus the other guy, the laughably robotic gazillionaire who had out right winged the right wing. But who everybody knew would flip flop his way back to the so called center come the fall. Yeah, the quote center, which was somewhere rightward of the worst of the Reagan administration of his childhood, once considered far right.
Meantime, the movement languished. The one thing he could note with any sort of pride was how the whole percent thing was taking hold in the lexicon. Everybody talked about the 1 percent – candidates, news sites, comedians. That was cool, JJ thought. At least it was something.
And at least, as his main attorney girl Jenna Chin kept calling to remind him, everybody’s attention on the candidates – plus the baseball season and the farmers’ market and family vacations and whatever else – kept the heat off his case. She actually used that phrase. She had been a lawyer for something like two months when her firm put her in charge of the pro bono case.
It was kind of funny. Although when he laughed, and he did sometimes, he couldn’t help it, he noticed that she honestly didn’t get it. She took herself that seriously. She was that young. She would get a nervous little half smile, like she knew she should relate to him somehow, before moving along to the next topic. Usually something about how most of these cases were settled but he still needed to be prepared.
JJ, on this too quiet Tuesday afternoon, clicked languidly through one site after another. Rolling his eyes when stuff was slow to load, thinking he would need a new phone soon. Wondering if he could convince Dad to make it an early Christmas present, or if he should borrow Oscar’s iPad. Except that Oscar was on it all the time. And he used enough of Oscar’s stuff already.
Jenna had sent him three different reminders of their meeting this afternoon – a text, an email, and a smiley faced post on facebook. He texted back, reminded of this sort of thing with his sister. Both of them sure to keep poking at him until he responded.
Back on facebook, he saw a message from Jackie. Sighing, wondering if possibly she was reminding him about the meeting too, he clicked. But he was surprised to see that it was about a re-post from some kid from high school, Her note was that she had come across this and thought he might be interested. Unbelievable. Some tiny group of losers back there from his tiny high school were putting together a 20 year reunion.
It had its own website (somebody else had too much time on their hands), and a pretty damn comprehensive list of classmate emails. His own included, thanks no doubt to Jackie. Of course she would hear about this, never mind she was like 11 years older. She always knew somebody with a half sister or kid she babysat that was in his class. Like her own little spy network.
Don’t get so paranoid, bro, he told himself. It had been years since she had actually ratted him out in any way. Years since she even tried to. Ever since she and Tony got their dogs, probably. Yeah, her most laser-like attention had shifted from him to a set of fussy mincing freak breed dog, something-apoos. That was what they had done instead of have children, he recalled. God help the kid they would have raised, monitoring his every freaking step.
It wasn’t funny, JJ told himself, even has he laughed inwardly. Fact, they wanted to have kids but got started too late, or Jackie had some women’s problem. More likely Tony’s boys just couldn’t make the swim anymore, for sure he had done some decent weed back in the day. But they seemed fine with the dogs, anyway.
He pushed himself up from the couch, tired from zoning out. It was probably time to leave if he wanted to get all the way downtown for his so called meeting. He kept forgetting how long it took on Muni. The time actually on the streetcar wasn’t that long. He just tended to space out waiting for it, and getting there, and the extra blocks to the law firm once he was down in the financial district. To him, it was all a big blur of corporate buildings, but Jenna regularly pointed out that they were almost in North Beach, not in the financial district at all.
JJ caught the first streetcar he could, easing on the back and waving a clenched hand toward the clipper thing, as if tagging it. That’s all he’d need, to get ticketed for fare evasion – Jenna would crap her pants. A furtive glance around revealed only bored fellow passengers, teens and old people mostly, no Muni cops. He checked messages, and texted a couple friends to see if they were going to Occupy on Saturday.
All the while, the car swayed and jostled him back and forth, breaks screeching and his seat jerking at every stop. He tuned out the sounds and voices, kids yelling some inane conversation behind him. No go for Saturday – would anyone show up? Sometimes he was tempted to swing over to the black bloc faction, just to be assured of some company. Those guys were too intense though. Seriously, thumbs up for anarchy, but JJ didn’t especially want to be part of a group that was itself about as militant as the Oakland cops.
He started watching these girls who got on at Van Ness and almost missed his stop. Forget it, he told himself, not even worth an attempt. They were hot and knew it, probably 22 years old. Saw him as some old dude, jeez.
Instead, he hustled down Montgomery, past the corporate types and massive downtown buildings. He had been down here so many times he was getting damn used to seeing this part of town. Where before, he had only been down here for actions. He had been part of the crowd and the suits were the ones hurrying away.
The law firm was in one of those faux distressed buildings – visible wooden beams, wide windows that opened out, a small lobby made to look more like a living room than an office. JJ had spent enough time out there on a comfy chair, waiting for the attorneys to finish up or hand him stuff to review, that was for sure. But they also had a nice kitchen, often leftovers from other meetings available for anyone to share. Jenna always made sure to order him a sandwich if they were meeting anytime near lunch, although she had figured out pretty quick that he was more likely to show up later in the day.
JJ slowed his walk as he approached, not wanting to seem either over eager or out of breath. Glancing down towards Columbus, wishing he were headed to a bar or something rather than a law firm, he sighed and pushed open the heavy ground floor door. Jenna shared her office with the other newbies just beyond the lobby. She caught his eye and waved, pointing to the phone in her other hand and mouthing something.
He waved too, and poked his head into the kitchen. Snagged a couple cookies from an open box and settled in to wait. In a few minutes, Jenna greeted him with her usual serious handshake, and invited him into the conference room.
“We’re this close,” she exclaimed, holding up her little girl fingers to a tiny pinch. “We heard that the bank worked it out with their workers’ comp, and they’re kicking in with some special fund to make sure all Mr. White’s medical expenses are covered. At least they have good coverage at the bank, right?”
JJ rolled his eyes, as he did whenever she chirped some positive sounding comment about her corporate overseers.
“So there’s much less motivation to drag things out. Bottom line is there’s a chance it would cost them from lack of pro
of. I mean obviously everyone knows he was hurt. But your being held, and even the video, none of it is conclusive evidence of your specific intent to cause him harm. Bottom line, they don’t want to risk losing money just to make a point.”
Bottom line, another of her catch phrases. Like all the world was her checkbook. JJ realized she had stopped and was watching him. He nodded earnestly.
She continued on, more about how this or this other thing might or might not happen. He’d noticed it about all the lawyers – they charged by the hour, and loved nothing more than discussing in detail a hundred things that probably would never even occur. Good thing they weren’t charging him here, just wasting more of his time.
The upshot, after she had gone on for awhile, was that he had a lengthy document to review and sign. All it did was summarize exactly what they had previously discussed but he should read it carefully anyway. And then they would review it with the big lawyer, Jenna’s boss, who would be helping her present the case to whoever.
Bottom line, she didn’t quite say out loud but certainly implied, was that since Occupy was pretty much over and done with, the guys at the bank no longer needed a scapegoat to take down.
Bullshit, bullshit, JJ thought but did not say, as he headed back to what he thought of as his chair in the front. He knew for a fact that there would be a huge action at the one year anniversary in October. Things were far from over, everyone would see. They were just getting started.
Still, why not get this bogus stuff out of the way now, right? JJ sat and skimmed the pages. God it was long. He was reminded of college, major déjà vu. How often had he sat in some common room, or sprawled across a library chair, trying to get through some dried up repetitive reading requirement. The words swimming before him, barely making sense at the start and devolving to true randomness as long minutes passed. Suddenly noting how many “ing” endings there were, or funny patterns the spaces between words made trailing down the page. The sentences themselves just repeating, riffing off some central point that was stupid to begin with.
Jenna had explained it already anyway. She was like a cast member from school too, he thought. One of the kids who sat up front and shot their hands in the air in anticipation of the next question. Or the hyper TAs, a couple years out of college and eager to do everything right. The partner lawyer – he was like the professor. He would be grading everyone at some point, but you could barely catch a glimpse of him during the semester.
Whereas JJ, even then, knew his place to be in the back of the lecture hall. Appearing there often enough to get recorded in attendance, but just part of the blur of faces when it came time to call on people. One of the guys on that high school reunion post had gone to the same college, been in a couple of his classes. His name was in his head, JJ realized, because he had just seen it this morning on facebook. Kind of crazy to think old Arnie was still back in Pennsylvania, just a couple towns over from Blossom Valley.
The reunion notice had announced the region was now considered an exurb, that the people who had moved away would be pleasantly surprised by the quality and diversity of local dining options now available. Yeah, right. Probably they meant there was a Taco Bell. JJ wished there was someone here to share this opinion with. He glanced at his phone. Probably not Jackie, she had always been weirdly defensive about the place. He flashed on those days back in the lecture hall. Arnie had also been a back-of-the-class dude, and they had sat together and muttered sarcastic quips to each other in more than one large lecture hall.
God, to think about that now. In 1995, about the time when the internet went from a short cut for sending memos amongst university professors to gearing up to change the world, JJ had still been in school. That fall, in what turned out to be his final semester, he had really started to see how much there was for him out in the world, versus there in the classroom.
There were several guys he knew who had also gotten excellent paid internships that summer. It had been a bummer coming back to school afterwards, taking classes he didn’t really care about after spending fast summer days programming and getting paid for it. He could recall it like it was yesterday, the group of them sitting around the cheap bar near his dorm, almost smell the mix of stale beer and the musty sawdust on the floor, hear the sound of darts and foosball, random shouts from other students.
None of them exactly bragging, but just reveling the knowledge that they had at last gotten ahead. Feeling a bit sorry for the pre-meds and the athletes and all the kids who had taken shitty restaurant jobs or unpaid internships or lived at home. And looking with more pity at the do gooders, who were still struggling to find some sort of free love peace corps ideal in the new economy.
Because he had felt without a doubt back then that he was smart, his computer skills valuable, and that his future held more, a lot more, of everything he had just started tasting that summer. Work that felt more like kicking back with other cool guys and perfecting video games. Workplaces filled with free food, free scooters, not to mention the easy money.
Shit, he had not even known to count stock options amongst the perks that were short to follow. The bumps in pay, the holiday bonuses, handed out at crazy lavish parties. All he had known then – and it gave him a weird little lift, even now, to recall – was that he and the whole world with him had finally figured out that he was that smart guy that people used to say he was. People like his mom and his sister, or teachers sometimes, the younger cooler ones who would try to draw him out, give him interesting word problems after he refused to do the dumb stuff in the text books.
He could go places, get ahead, get rich, be a part of the tech revolution or whatever they were calling it back then. He had always felt somewhat special – more clever than he necessarily let on, keeping an eye on people, learning their secrets. Learning how to let someone know what he knew just by hinting a little, enough to get what he wanted back from then. Back then Jackie, for instance, had recently gotten engaged to Tony, a dude who was friends with her old buddy and their new stepsister Karen.
Was it some weird retribution for Karen stealing a guy from her? JJ didn’t know, but he had stored the info in case of future need. Of course at that point, he had few needs. He could score a hot job without their help at all. Despite Karen living in San Francisco, he could use his own connections from the internship, or like, just from knowing the basic basics. Yeah, maybe Tony had called a friend to help the thing back at the start of the summer, but JJ had taken it from there.
And it had not taken very long for JJ and those guys to realize school was pointless when everything else was taking off so fast. Some of them left mid-semester, he remembered with envy. Those days, a couple months could put you ahead of the pack. JJ had stayed out the semester – had to with both his parents and the new step-mom on his case about it. Dad had already paid the tuition and blah blah.
But he had high tailed it, what, New Year’s day. Driven his old beater of a car, handed off from Jackie a few years before, all the way across the country. What a transition – hours and hours of bleak, cold, flat mid-western interstate, into the mountains and barely accessible roads, and finally over the top, an interminable slog out of the winter and into the wide central valley of California. Interstate 80 blasting him all the way into the heart of San Francisco. It couldn’t have been that great, it was winter, after all, but in JJ’s memory the first weeks of his time here had been bathed in golden sunlight every day.
Crashing with a couple guys he had met that summer, who had moved west and already gotten awesome jobs, a decent apartment. Choosing his first job at Oracle from among the offers, then quickly realizing he’d be happier at the next place. Because you could just glide like that back then, and they’d be happy to have you. The next place already coming up with new perks to lure you away. Everybody needed workers, everybody was growing and expanding.
They used to have these workshops, he recalled. He had been to s
everal different ones, put on or at least sponsored by various companies for the employees. The theme though, no matter what consultant or venue, was that success was inevitable. Failure not an option, not even mentioned as a possibility. It was all about bringing the most to the table, succeeding even more awesomely than everyone else. As though combining the collective talent in those big hotel ballrooms with sheer will would guarantee that even the craziest notion would get its VC funding, its IPO, that stock values that would spiral ever upwards. And hell, even if you hated the group exercises and the manic presenters, you couldn’t argue with the streams of cash flowing into your account those days.
God damn it, he thought, coming suddenly back face to face with the present, in the person of the big boss at the firm standing in front of him. This dude always had the fake smile on his face. He liked to “reach out” to people, the smallest things were “perfect, perfect.”
“Just a few more minutes of both of our time,” he boomed, ushering JJ into the conference room where Jenna was already perched like an anxious puppy dog. “A few more signatures and we’ll be good to go. I’m betting the hearing won’t last more than an hour,” he added.
Jenna nodded eagerly. JJ sat and accepted another sheaf of papers. He’d bet Jenna wished the hearing could go all day. So she could go be a lawyer with a judge instead of sitting around kissing this guy’s ass.
The big lawyer kept talking. JJ could hardly focus on the words – once he had heard that the case against him would probably be dropped, what more was there to know?
This loud voiced guy, though. Man, he was secure about his job. Back when the dot com bubble burst, sure, everybody scaled back. JJ sold the new car he had recently bought, and got used to working for less pay. Not hopping around between start ups but settling in a little more as things ramped back up. But now it had been, what, four years since things went so sour with the fiscal meltdown in 2008. All the politicians kept going on about jobs jobs jobs, but nothing to show for it.
How many damn protests would it take, JJ wondered, until the 99 percent started getting their good jobs back? What would it take to get everybody off their asses to demand change? Despite his beliefs about the inequities, he figured he himself, with his tech skills, would be okay. But how damn long would he have to wait – he was sick of it just now and wished things could hurry up and get back to how they were supposed to be.
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