Generation A

by Douglas Coupland

  The person on the other end of the earth was this girl, Simone Ferrero, who was in central Madrid at the corner of Calle Gutenberg and Calle Poeta Esteban de Villegas, at ten o’clock at night—meaning it was ten o’clock in the morning in New Zealand. All I knew of her was that we had agreed online to make a sandwich together.

  The thing is, New Zealanders pretty much have the Earth sandwich game locked up. Most of the planet’s land masses are above the equator and are sandwich partners only with oceans. For example, the other side of North America’s sandwich is entirely composed of the Indian Ocean. Honolulu makes a sliver of a sandwich with Zimbabwe, but that’s all the opportunities there are for Yanks, Mexicans and Canadians.

  The thing is that even while I was taking my photo and being stung, my mind was somewhere else. I’d had a strange phone call that morning from my mother. It was my one sleep-in day of the week, but I’d foolishly forgotten to turn off my mobile phone. For the six other days a week I’m up at 5:00 a.m. to be at the gym to train clients for 6:00, and on my one day of rest I picked up the phone and . . .

  “Samantha, good morning.”

  “Mum.”

  “Did I wake you up? It’s 8:30. I thought for sure you’d be awake.”

  “Mum, what’s up? Wait—I thought you were on vacation.”

  “We are. We’re sixty minutes out of Darwin in a darling little cabin room, and at breakfast we had chocolate brioches and milk and—sorry, dear—I’m getting away from my message.”

  “What’s your message?”

  “I . . . we . . . your father and I, we have some news for you.”

  Yoinks. I braced myself for the worst, my brain already screaming for coffee.

  “We’ve had a discussion, and we thought we should tell you something.”

  Cancer? Bankruptcy? Double yoinks. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your father and I have decided that we don’t believe in anything any more.”

  “You what?”

  “What I just said.”

  “Jesus, Mum, you phoned me up on a Monday morning to tell me you don’t believe in anything.”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, like, God? And religion?”

  “Both.”

  I walked to the kitchen to flip the switch on the Braun. My parakeet, Timbo, a happy remnant of a failed relationship, was sitting on a deck chair, squawking the words “the worst toilet in Scotland” over and over and awaiting his morning treat. “Right. So why are you telling me this?”

  “Well, I believe you still believe in things.”

  “What do you mean, things?”

  “God. Life after death. That sort of thing.”

  “That sort of thing?” My sketchy belief system wasn’t something to haggle about at this time of day, and my brain was racing ass over tit trying to figure out the significance of a call like this.

  I opened the window and threw Timbo an arrowroot biscuit. “So, Mum, what did you believe in before you stopped believing in things?” In the background the Braun was beginning to hiss, and I was glad that the absent bees hadn’t wiped out the planet’s coffee crop.

  “Not much, really. But we’ve decided to make it official.”

  “This is pretty strange, Mum.”

  “No stranger than that afternoon you announced you were becoming a vegetarian.”

  “I was thirteen. It was either that or an eating disorder.”

  “Beliefs are beliefs.”

  “Crikey dick, Mum, but you don’t believe in anything. You just said so. And I’m going to have to ask you a rude question, but are you on drugs?”

  “Sam! No. We’re only taking Solon. It’s safe.”

  “Solon? That stuff that makes time pass quicker?”

  “No. Solon is a lovely drug and it makes my head feel calm.”

  “Okay. It’s still a drug.”

  My mother sighed, which was my cue to say something duti ful and reassuring, my role in the family as first-born. So I said, “It was thoughtful of you to call me and tell me properly.”

  “Thank you, dear. I don’t know how your brothers will take it.”

  “They won’t care. They don’t think about this kind of stuff.”

  “You’re right.”

  Thing is, my brothers are two fuckwits, and lately they’d been taxing my good will by hitting me up for loans and asking me to glue them back together after their never-ending streams of failed relationships with the North Island’s daggiest women. I poured myself a coffee and cut it with hot tap water. “So how do you think this is going to affect your life?”

  “Probably not much. We’re not going to proselytize—if people we know still choose to believe in something, we keep our mouths shut.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Right.”

  We hung up and I looked at my laptop clock. Making an Earth sandwich would take my mind off it all. I finished my coffee, showered, dressed and grabbed my asthma inhaler, and soon I was on my way to visit –40.4083°, 176.3204°.

  The road eastward out of Palmy was empty.

  And my conversation with Mum got me thinking about parents and how they feed your belief systems. I mean, whatever your parents do, good or bad, it allows you to do the same thing with no feelings of guilt. Dad steals cars? Go for it. Mum goes to church every Sunday? You better go too. So, when your parents decide they don’t believe in anything, you can’t rebel against them, because that’d just be rebelling against nothing. It puts you in a state of moral free float. If you copy them and believe in nothing yourself, then it’s the same thing: copying nothing equals zero. You’re buggered either way.

  I wound around the rolling hills. What did I believe in? I’d had five different boyfriends in my twenty-six years, and the boot of each of their vehicles bore a different variation of the Christian fish. Coincidence?

  First off, there was the tousle-haired Kevin, the catalogue model, who had an agape fish on his Honda. Kevin always seemed to have a religious reason for avoiding reality, most memorably not picking me up after work so he could shoot hoops with a Christian men’s group. Relationship breaker. Then there was Miles, the Deadhead atheist, whose fish had DARWIN embedded in its interior. After him came Hal, whose silver fish was followed by the words “AND CHIPS.” After Hal was Ray, who was a total wanker—I don’t know what I was thinking when I was with him. Everyone has a Ray somewhere in his or her past. Ray’s fish wasn’t witty and ironic or anything—it was just a fish. And finally there was Reid, who had a chromed fish skeleton. I thought Reid was going to be the Keeper, but Reid was generic in his willingness to avoid commitment.

  Jesus, look at me labelling these guys like this. In all fairness, they’d probably label me a stuck-up gym bunny and claim that it wasn’t their duty to provide me with their version of the fish like it was shade on a hot day.

  So, yes, I had a few things on my mind when I was photographing my bread slice on a sheep-stinking roadside, not the least of which was jealousy about being in the other hemisphere—the loser’s hemisphere—of being the opposite of Madrid, and sadness because the bees had vanished and therefore so many roadside flowers had all but vanished with them: the cudweed, the monkey musk, the brass buttons, the catchfly. I felt a generalized sense of wonder about the size of the planet and my useless little role atop it or under it.

  And then my cellphone rang and, as I said, I got stung.

  Bingo.

  JULIEN

  12THE ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS, FRANCE

  I think fate is a corny notion. Everything in this world is cause and effect, process not destiny. A bee sting? How sentimental. How old-fashioned. And then, after we were stung, everyone treated us like a collection of Wonka children. Pfft.

  I was stung while I was sitting on a bench in Bois de Vincennes beside a pair of aging papist hags who were bickering about identity theft chip-and-PIN credit cards and complaining about how they have to shred their garbage before they throw it out. Yes, t
he Romanians and the Russians and the Triads must be waiting on tippytoes to pounce on them: With Madame Duclos’s electrical bill, we will bring Caisse d’Epargne to its knees! Their voices got me so angry—angry at the fabric of time, at whatever it is that makes time seem to drag on forever, that makes life feel so long. All I wanted to do was tell them that their religion is decadent and obsolete. I wanted to tell them that their religion was invented thousands of years ago as a way of explaining to those people lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to live past the age of twenty-one the fact that life is too short. These crones, I wanted to tell them that what I would look for in a religion is an explanation of why life is so long. I’m still looking.

  Forget religion, I want to mutate. I want so badly to mutate. I was sitting in the sun in the Bois de Vincennes, willing my body to mutate into whatever it is human beings are slated to turn into next. Do we get giant drosophila fly eyes? Wings? Elephantine snouts? I dream of the day we mutate into something better than the hyped-up chimps we are, chimps who eat Knorr Swiss cream of cauliflower soup while pretending not to notice that half the planet’s at war, fighting over . . . what? Over the right to eat packaged soup without having to emotionally accept our species’ darkness. We are one fucked-up claque of monkeys. Groundskeeper Willie called us cheese-eating surrender monkeys: he almost had it right. But it isn’t just the French—as a species we are all cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

  I am not normally the sort of person who sits on park benches in the 12th arrondissement on a sunny day. In fact, I am the opposite of that sort of person. I didn’t even know what time it was when I was rudely and cruelly ejected from the Astrolite gaming centre on rue Claude Decaen. I was having what is called a shit fit. I had this shit fit because I had spent 114 solid days in-game on World of Warcraft, and was at the end of a twenty-four-hour levelling jag, when my avatar vanished. Not even a little pouf of smoke—I, Xxanthroxxusxx, simply ceased to be. I did the usual things. I shut down. I unplugged. I rebooted. I checked the options and preferences. I logged back into the world. And still I was gone.

  Bleep.

  I am willing to agree that I am not the easiest person to be around. That is because I set high standards for myself. If people are unwilling to live up to my standards, I am not willing to accept them, especially Luc, the greasy bastard at the Astrolite’s front desk, who expectorates all day into a blue Rubbermaid spittoon.

  A spittoon.

  He considers it a colourful character trait; I see it as the devolution of the species. But even the greasy Luc should know that to have one’s “self ” vanish from any world for no known reason is not something one takes lightly. In fact, one is well entitled to have a shit fit when this happens. Luc should have been more understanding of this, and I, in the midst of my shit fit, should not have criticized Luc’s love of anime comics, declaring them bourgeois escapist ecotourism of the brain. Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly.

  And so I was out on the street, tossed into an outdoor Las Vegas casino of timelessness. It was sunny out—ugh!—morning sun or afternoon sun? Noonish, I supposed. I looked around at the cars and the Starbucks and the shop windows and the middle-aged people looking calm and rich, and I thought, I hate the world. I hate the way everything has a surface—hardness; softness—the way everything has a smell: chestnut blossoms and roasting chickens.

  I hate the way our bodies move through the world, clip-clop, like beef marionettes. I hate how the world has turned into one massive hamburger-making machine, how the world is only about people now—everything else on the planet must bow to our will because there’s no longer any other option. Fundamentalists rejoiced when the bees died out; to them it was proof that the planet exists entirely for and was entirely about people. How could such thinking not make you want to go out and vomit into the street? And then I thought, Julien, are you an environmentalist now? I remembered World of Warcraft and I dragged myself along boulevard Poniatowski, turned down avenue de Général Dodds while avoiding the dog merde and tourists too stupid to realize they’re in the 12th arrondissement, and then crossed avenue du Général Laperrine (all these generals; all these wars) and entered Bois de Vincennes, so matronly, so boring, so permanent and a bit too much for my head to absorb just then. My head was a disaster. So I sat down on a bench with two crones afraid of tomorrow. I looked at the trees. What season was it? Summer? Fall? Leaves don’t really fall from the trees any more, do they? They just kind of sit on the branch and randomly commit suicide sometime before January. Seasons are passé. Only suckers believe in seasons.

  I stared at a dead leaf while the barking of the hags pounded my ears. I made a disgusted sound and said, “God, I hate the real world.” That’s when I was stung—a feeling like a paper cut concentrated into a single point of skin. At a club, Ralphe once stuck me with a pin and told me I had AIDS—talk about shit fits! Ralphe is an asshole, and the pin was a Coke tab he’d somehow bent into a small jabby thing. But it stung, and so did the bee sting.

  I looked at this winged insect on my forearm and swatted it away in panic. The two crones looked down at the bee and then fell to their knees and began to pray.

  DIANA

  NORTH BAY, ONTARIO, CANADA

  My name is Diana, and yes, I was named after Diana, Princess of Wales, just as my mother was named after Jackie Kennedy. Plus ça change. I’m the oldest of the Wonka children ( Julien’s term), and because of this, at first, I was more like an older sibling than a peer. I remember very clearly how and when I was stung.

  It was Sunday afternoon and I’d been on Sunday school baking duty. I was washing out some cake tins that had been soaking in water, and I remember dawdling because the tins smelled so wonderful—almond and sugar and lemon—and then feeling sad because almonds are pretty much a thing of the past. I remember all those photos of California almond groves, the close-up shots of the branches where there’d be maybe one almond per tree. The smell of artificial almond extract in turn got me to brooding about the fact that I was thirty-four and single, with no prospects on the horizon. I dried my hands and decided to go online and perhaps find some nice guy to date on a religious dating bulletin board.

  “Bulletin board”—I know, how pre-millennial, but I’m a conservative woman, and while I wasn’t achingly desperate to be with someone, it’s hard for a woman my age to find something long-term, especially if you’re not a putting-out machine like my sister, but she’s another story.

  This time, instead of looking at M4W, I went to W4M. I wanted to check out the competition:

  Hello, my name is Richelle, I’m 23 and I love the Lord passionately, I am totally on fire for my King! My relationship with the Lord is central to my life. I am originally from Ontario, but . . .

  Hi there! Well, here goes: I’m Michelle, 22, and number one, I’m a Christian. I want Christ to be present in every part of my life. I’m searching for someone who shares this same passion . . .

  I’m Sarah, 20. I am seeking a soulmate, someone to live with in Christ and serve Him with. I’m a gentle person and soft-spoken. I try my best to love others as He . . .

  My heart sank. How could I compete with these young things? To them, belief is like memorizing the alphabet—they’re too young to ever have doubts.

  I sat back in my chair, one of those generic black jobs from Staples, and for the first time consciously tried to map out an aloneness strategy for the rest of my life. I had to acknowledge that there’s this hole inside me—I’ve spent my life worrying if people can see this hole. Maybe I should own my hole and be proud of it, even if that sounds disgusting. Maybe I should walk through life slumped over, my face and body reflecting my void.

  Fuskshitpisscunt.

  Isn’t it shocking when it first happens? I have Tourette’s—for real. But you get used to it very quickly. Usually, by the fifth volley of “cunts,” people can tune me out. I don’t notice it much myself any more.

  Mind you, I don’t walk around saying “fuckshitpiss” all t
he time. I also blurt out whatever comes into my head as if I’m a living, breathing, inside-out machine. I would argue that we all think such things; I merely say them out loud.

  . . . lard-ass

  . . . pig-snout nose

  . . . fist-fucker

  . . . Big Bird

  . . . wife beater

  With me, what you hear is what you are.

  Okay, back to the day of the sting.

  I was still slumped in my Staples chair when I heard a dog yelping across the street—Kayla, the Doberman pinscher—one of those yelps that indicate fear and pain blended together. I flew out the front door and onto the sidewalk, hot and wet after a midday storm, to find Kayla’s owner, Mitch, pounding on his dog with a two-by-four.

  A few neighbours up and down the street were watching but not doing anything to help the poor dog, so I ran up to Mitch and put my face right in his face and said, more or less, “You mean ugly fucker; everyone hates you. Stop hitting your dog, fucker, fuck you and die; I’ll kill you any way I can.” Poor Kayla was yelping and one of her legs was bleeding, and she was crouched as far away from Mitch as her tether permitted.

  Mitch took another token swing in Kayla’s direction, but I inserted myself between him and the poor yelping dog. Mitch started brandishing the two-by-four at me, screaming some pretty awful things, but people like him don’t frighten me. I could smell peanut butter on his breath, and a small particle of something flew into the corner of my left eye. But still I didn’t flinch.