What is a girl’s desire in the world of men?
The Office Women, the “Datists,” convert raw material of alphanumeric symbols to “actionable” info. Datists sit smartly at squat machines. Squarish, sleek machines. Explosion of words, images, connections; algorithms of deception; comedy of ease — click clack click – terror’s brilliant pixel-hues.
“Do not fear us, we cannot replace you, you have souls and lips and skin, mutable, we smell you…” hum the machines.
Days at the Data Center processing data. Worlds of data.
Pots of brass and Terra cotta. Lives brightened by ivy, pothos, spider-plants, whatever can live under flourescent light in bland, anemic soil.
Badgered by memories. Lives they’d rather not have lived: skirt-blouse scent of second shelf cologne; awkward dates with pimply Letter Men. Football baseball basketball heroes, teenage wonders (where are they now? where are they now?).
Giggle girls bloom death, top forty dreams of beardless boys, awkward in pussy, quick squirters. Hiding behind cigarettes, reaching for cigarettes, factory cigarettes, uniform roll, burned quickly, dumbly into Past; brand insignias puffed with numb indifference; brown tips white tips filter-less; Datists want love. Life.
They’d been girls once, years ago ( fifteen? twenty? twenty-five?). Now was now. Now. Datists dreamed pleasure. Who can please, who can please? Rare men whose magic tongues stir nectars of thrill. A nice-sized, well-behaved prick never hurt anyone either.
Paperback romance on the bus (TV at home). Typed data. Manipulated code. Day-after-day began and ended in tall buildings. Remember the beach, high school hurrah? How long must people live, anyway? how long labor in glass towers?
Computers sucked girl juice dry from cunt to womb. Terrible bright noon under florescent suns. Headsets plugged into machines. Tunes yanked from the Network and shared CDs, sexy songs stretched nude like paramours on twilight balconies of daydream.
Those clothes, this coffee that cigarette. Oppressive. Untrue. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” etc. and “classic” Rock ‘n’ Roll burned days away like snowflakes on a skillet.
Friday night at Life Cafe: drink the week to chill cobalt conclusion. Seek eyes legs torso one can live with or take home till morning.
Data to be called “events ” from this day on, according to the week’s last memo. Workers in the office of Integral Events — formerly the Data Center — no longer “processed data” but “logged events.” Circulation of the memo was an event itself. Who cooked this one up, Payroll, Human Resources? the Datists — Eventists? — collectively wondered over pitchers of beer.
“…take me,” a Datist will plead when alone with someone of means who might possibly care. “Take me from here…”
ADAM ENGEL can be reached at: bartleby.samsa@verizon.net
