"Master/slave is a model of communication where one device or process has unidirectional control over one or more other devices. In some systems a master is elected from a group of eligible devices, with the other devices acting in the role of slaves."
- Microsoft Knowledgebase
"Computers are useless. They only give answers."
- Pablo Picasso
Jeena kicked me out and now I’ve got to spend my night roaming and searching for a human being in this pixilated jungle. Told me she couldn’t make love without her laptop. Fucking thing freaks me out, I told her.
The first time she came she told me she had recorded it on some microscopic camera that looked like a skin popper’s rejected spoon – it was silver and sloped and bent like a weary cobra. It was mounted on her computer. And she never took the damn thing down. In bed, I tried my best but I always felt I had to perform. And she would chide me for not showing more skin to the camera and for wanting her all to myself. She had made it clear – I could have the privilege of spreading her legs as long as the laptop had the privilege of recording them. Jeena was to be shared. I told her it was my first time with a computer, that I’d never been in a ménage-a-troiswith an electronic device. She called me a prude.
I really don’t know why I got involved with Jeena. Or why I tried to get involved with her. Jeena was clearly involved in some other region of the mind. I disliked holding her hands – her fingers were always hot and calloused from working on the computer – but her heart had some softness in it every now and then…and well, it was still better than being alone. But I was getting anxious in bed. She always seem pre-occupied, obsessed with the eye of the laptop. I could kiss her only on the sides of her face and could never mount her for fear of blocking her view of the computer and its camera. “Baptiste” she named it. And wherever she went, Baptiste focused. I hadn’t known Jeena that long, but I suppose that’s what you get for hooking up with strange women online. But Jeena would certainly not consider herself strange. No, I was the strange one – I did not own a computer, didn’t have a blackberry, didn’t have a credit card, and did not have a Facebook account. When we met, I owned a black neon car – but she would never ride in it with me. “Who would see me with my blackberry?” she asked. She said everything had to be on foot and if we were in a cab – at least the driver could look in his rear-view mirror and see her with her blackberry. I was afraid to ask what her blackberry’s name was.
Most nights, I never knew what Jeena saw in me. Tonight was different, however. Tonight, I saw Jeena as she really is. They say technology brings out your true personality. The same way alcohol speaks sober thoughts. Seeing her earlier it was as if I had looked at the portrait of Dorian Gray.
She had been anxious all evening to show me her new purchase. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew I wouldn’t like it – for every time she pressed her blackberry to check the time I felt we were entering a lower defcon number. It was incredible how that tiny device controlled the boundaries of our existence together. She worshipped clocks, always had to be precise and have everything planned out. It was her birthday, so I was to meet her in the lobby of her building at 8:00PM, we’d walk two blocks to the train station, depending on where we went – we would spend an hour at the bar and fifteen minutes exactly “loitering” (she considered talking to be loitering) and we’d have to be back at her place by 10:00 -- earlier if she planned for us to have sex, and by midnight every day on the dot she’d spend time with Baptiste. For Valentine’s Day, I gave her a pocket watch. It was a 1930’s art nouveau-type of pocket watch. Very classy, a lost glamour shimmered from its edges and I thought it might be the perfect gift for someone who deserved to be considered sophisticated. She hated it. She said if it didn’t have a warranty what was the point. What was even more disturbing is that she asked me what it was when she first saw it. She had never seen an analog watch, but even more shocking – she could not read it! No, numbers were her specialty and she was a true devotee of the decimal point. Riding in the taxi back to her apartment, I began to think about what we were losing as a couple, as souls consumed with time. To Jeena, there was nothing lost – she was determined to be a winner. And winners don’t lose. Not when her God was a mathematician.
I told her my apprehension about clock-watching and monitoring our dates like a military drill. She told me without clocks there would be no order. I told her without clocks there would have been no capitalism. She said “Capitalists created the watch, stupid. So they could keep track of all the money they could make.”
We got back to her place and the beast was unleashed. She pulled out a large golden shopping bag. At first, I thought she might have bought me an outfit – she was always complaining I didn’t look “bummy” enough and once even made additional holes in my jeans so I would look “cooler.” However, when I saw the rectangular object she removed from the bag, I became a lot calmer. I thought maybe she had bought me a laptop. She said if I didn’t carry a blackberry, I should at least have a computer so she could contact me at any time of the day. I told her she could call me and she said “You are sooo old-school. No one calls anybody anymore.”
She unzipped the computer bag and revealed the most hideous object I have ever seen.
What may have just appeared to be a Macbook to the untrained eye, was a shiny garish laptop smothered in 12,000 diamond-like studs. It gave me a headache just looking at the damn thing.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“…What is it?”
“It’s a Macbook Air. Golden Age.”
“…What is all that stuff?”
“That stuff ain’t a what. It’s 12,000 Swarovksi crystals!”
“It’s…disgusting.”
Gaudy, graceless, twinkling like disco ball. I got up closer to have a better look. I still couldn’t believe it. “BLING MY THING” was engraved on the cover.
“Where did you get this from?”
“Isn’t it amazing?”
“It’s putrid. It looks like an MTV video exploded onto your computer…”
“Show’s how much you know. It cost $40,000.00.”
“Forty-!? Who gave it to you?”
“Gave it? What the fuck I look like to you? I don’t need no one to give me nothing. Them days are over, baby. I gave it to myself. For my birthday.”
“You spent…forty thousand…Where did you get all that money from?”
“My savings, my 401K, my --"
“Do you know what you could do with $40,000.00? Especially in this economy? All the people you could help…”
“Oh, please – I donate online, I give enough money to the children in Mumbai --"
“Forget about India! What about the people right here?”
“What about them?”
“You have neighbors who’ve lost their jobs, lost their homes – don’t you think that you could have helped them?”
“Help them?? Do I look like someone’s mother to you? I ain’t giving no handout to these lazy ass people!”
“I can’t allow this. There’s no way I can allow this. You should be ashamed of yourself. Return it at once!”
“Can’t return this. It came all the way from the British. And I got a dozen people already waiting to see this baby! This is better than having a Louis Vuitton! I’m naming him Nathaniel.”
I said “It’s him or me.”
It wasn’t hard for her to make a decision. Computer addicts never have a problem telling you to back off at the stroke of midnight. The quick burst of adrenaline they get when using a digital device makes them feel omnipotent. Brains have been…rewired.
I went to shower, when I got out there was an SMS message on my phone:
“Leave or I will text the police.”
“Visigoth!” I muttered and stepped out into the rain.
The streets were hysterical, but desolate, from the torrential rain – it seems no one will go out anymore when the showers roll down. Not until they create special umbrellas to protect their electronic gear. The entire city is one large battery afraid of short-circuiting or becoming electrocuted. I welcomed the rain – God’s spit falling down on us in an attempt to baptize our digitally-funk-infested-minds. Lightning struck and thunder rolled like a pair of tom-toms signaling the end. I dove under a doorway with a deep façade and parapet above my head. I was drenched now. I looked at my pocket watch and all I could see was Jeena’s beady eyes. It was just a little after twelve. My own internal clock was breaking down into seconds…I felt like a deck of card shuffled out of order. I had been made into a commodity for Jeena. I was just another one of her computers.
Originally published in TroubL webzine
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