Free The Mere Future by Sarah Schulman

I.
    And in the moment I was filled with my love for Nadine, her enormous wish, the pleasure of my life. I was filled with joy.

12. A WORKING GIRL FROM
THE WORKING CLASS
    O F THE TWO women who Harrison loved, only one—Claire Sanchez—was a working girl from the Bronx.
    Like other blue-collar women in the age of empty and compulsive overqualification, she had a Master’s Degree in Techno-Scription and one in Visual Cues. All day long she designed pages for Ad-Month, Ad-Week, Ad-Day, and Ad-Minute.
    Everyday she designed cyberpages that were not real pages for stores that were not real stores. And they all belonged to each other, merged and managed by sinister mysterious and imprecise forces.
    There was no material plane.
    But Claire increasingly noticed, with some surprise, when she walked down the street, that under the new regime every store was different. Yet when she went to work, all the cyberpages remained the same.
    This was very odd.
    Since THE CHANGE , two entirely different cultures seemed to be co-inciting. One was outside, on the street—where each store, sign, design, outfit, motif, and moment were different. The other was inside, online—where it all remained the same.
    When walking lazily on a Sunday afternoon, on the way to and from Competitive Yoga class, Claire could pop in and out of all kinds of eccentric experiences, make singular purchases. The birds chirped, the wind blew, the rain scattered, and everything around her was individual.
    But as soon as she stepped inside her apartment or office and turned on the computer, it was all mass-produced and homogenized. On the pink and blue sidewalks, next to those logo-free buildings, she would never think about buying a brand name. But when she turned on the machine, her mind changed. Suddenly Consistency and Familiarity were the most comforting of all.
    This was the compromise that Sophinisba had struck between Business and Humanity.
    Walking down streets that all had the same stores had proven to be depressing. More and more New Yorkers were complaining of repetition compulsion. The reason that they lived in NYC was to see something new every block. Without that, they felt trapped. With branches of the same bank next to the same fast-food coffee shop on Seventh Street, Eighth Street, Ninth Street, and Tenth, people were getting sadder, and could no longer have crazy, wild great ideas and then carry them out. They already felt defeated by the time they got to work in the morning. The city had become boring. Which made them deranged.
    Before THE CHANGE , New Yorkers were becoming increasingly confused. They could not remember where they were. Differentiation therapists were thriving, but everyone else was schizophrenic. With the removal of all that sameness, the only conformity was through computer screens and mail. Even alienation had become depersonalized.
    Claire had seen that bad stuff unfold and knew that things were a lot more hopeful now. And yet, she felt an uneasy sense of balance. There was a different city outside her door than behind it. Her computers were all inside, although they claimed to be access to the out. Yet nothing outside resembled the world found on her screens, the world within. Claire noticed this regularly and it made her itch.
    She was feeling similarly about Harrison—itchy. And getting nowhere with Jeff.
    I go through men like telephone poles , she thought.
    This thought was some kind of slogan. An ad for her own consciousness. But what did it mean besides a penile allusion? Most ads had sexual innuendo but no meaning, and now her feelings did too. Did people go through telephone poles? It was the other way around, like Frida Kahlo. Or did she mean telephone polls , where they ask you a question to try to make you buy? Even devoid of meaning, the phrase sounded reasonable. It sounded provocative, sexual, dangerous, wise, and glib. It sounded ironic and know-it-all, but it actually meant nothing. It was a facsimile of an idea.