Bonding, page 11
•
‘What’s Grace really like?’ I asked as we lounged in the hotel. It was in a converted manor. The room was studded with antiques, interspersed with wooden fixtures and the odd, tasteful modern piece. The bed was a massive four-poster, draped with heavy linen curtains. Above our heads was a huge round lamp and an abstract sketch of the countryside.
‘She’s decent.’
‘She’s very hard to read. When we were in Ibiza, I couldn’t figure her out.’
‘She’s nice. She doesn’t take herself too seriously. And she’s always had my back. She’s up for Executive Director now, and if she gets it, she’ll probably take me with her.’
‘She sounds impressive,’ I said.
‘I suppose she is.’
‘Do you think some people are just like that?’
‘Not really, I think she needs the money.’
I absorbed this information for a moment.
‘I thought Niall had money,’ I said. ‘For some reason, he comes across like that.’
Tom laughed.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘Niall puts a lot of effort into how he comes across.’
I was intrigued, I wanted to ask him more but I didn’t want to sound as if I was prying. I sat down on the corner of the bed. I wondered how much the room had cost.
‘Anyway,’ Tom said, ‘I don’t know why we’re talking about work.’
There were sounds coming from the room next door, not some clandestine affair but a podcast about money.
‘The thing with blockchain,’ the muffled voice explained, ‘is that it allows for absolute capitalization.’
I looked out of the window as Tom closed the curtains. It was just beginning to get dark. The garden was green and manicured. I could tell it had been designed meticulously to look organic but not too wild. When he came back, I let him kiss me.
‘Anyone can now create their own IP and sell anything to anyone. Welcome to the Brave New World of the total capitalization of everything.’
I felt my pussy swell as we lay on the bed together. The car journey had been intense but it hadn’t changed things for the worse; in fact, it had somehow brought us closer, as if he’d trusted me with something and we were now bound together by the knowledge. I’d started feeling something for him that I found difficult to describe. He had an effect on me that had reorganized the world around me. I no longer felt as if I was on the periphery of my own existence. I now inhabited my own life as if everything had reorganized itself around me. I’d been aware of this transformation for a while but I hadn’t dared acknowledge it. Now it was becoming clear that he could feel it too. Small movements were suddenly charged. We kissed slowly for a while, the two of us barely moving. A warm flush of happiness overcame me. Neither of us said anything much. I filled my mouth with him, and then my pussy. Outside, I could hear water trickling down some rocks into an artificial lake. Beyond this, it was completely quiet. The window was open but I couldn’t hear any birds.
•
The rest of the weekend passed quickly. We barely left the room. In the restaurant that night, I realized he had a strange mixture of ambition and the supreme confidence of someone who barely registered what other people thought of him. He had a healthy scepticism about the world, a trait that I recognized in myself. It was probably a defensive thing – if you rejected everything, it couldn’t hurt you – but it was also a real intuition that it was important to stay alert, that you might have to swim against the tide, that you couldn’t necessarily trust it.
We spent the whole of Sunday in bed. He let me trawl through his phone. There were old photos of him in there, including shots with Sunny when they were postgrad students. I was a little startled by the pair of them, especially by young Tom.
‘It was a look,’ he said.
‘Hip hop bar mitzvah?’
‘I bought that scarf from Gant, it cost a fortune.’
‘Why do men do this to themselves?’
He peered more closely at the picture.
‘In my defence, Eminem was big.’
‘You want an intimate date, I wanna intimidate?’
‘That sort of thing.’ He looked impressed. ‘I believe there might have been ripped jeans involved.’
‘You think a gay man would find this acceptable?’
He laughed.
‘I don’t think anyone did.’
I wondered what had happened during the London years to have transformed him so completely. He’d said he’d found himself surrounded by women, but surely it couldn’t have been only that. It was a sobering thought, the idea that on some level, everything came down to numbers. He’d seemed almost jaded by the time I’d met him.
Over dinner that night, we revisited his sad virginity story. Then, warming to the subject, we started swapping hot takes on consent. He said the legal system didn’t work as a regulator of sexual boundaries, that Spain had changed the law from ‘no means no’ to ‘yes means yes’, a strong move but still almost impossible to prove in court. I said the consent model was flawed anyway because it was blind to so many externalities – of the more ambient, psychic levels of coercion that led a person to have sex – sex they didn’t exactly want. Like poverty, loneliness, ambition, the time pressure on women to have a child. He said we were a nation of sexual boozehounds who rarely remembered anything about last night. And how hardly anyone made a move unless at least one of them was wasted. He said it was a nightmare being sober in a town where people were always drinking, how it creeped him out to be in that position and how, sometimes, he felt like the whole of London was on a different planet. I ate my seabass fillet with saffron and watched as he filled our glasses from the water jug. I decided I didn’t want my wine after all. The sober thing was a novelty. There was something exposing about it. I liked it. It was like being naked. I pressed my thigh against his as he asked for another jug.
15
For once, the interview had gone well. I realized this was Lara’s doing but I tried to embrace the fact that I was now the dubious beneficiary of her influence. This was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it? I was just working my network.
I arrived for my first day early. My desk was behind a concrete pillar in the basement of an old WeWork building, the remains of the company’s in-house style now reduced to a Prosecco tap, some hanging plants and an exposed heating duct that snaked up the wall behind me. I had a strong sense of déjà vu as I surveyed the sales junk around me – reusable coffee cups, novelty keyrings – this time emblazoned with Openr’s logo. It was an airless, uninspiring room lit only by a row of daylight lamps, which gave you the feeling you were on an endless flight. Free Your Desires, it said in red Helvetica across the wall. Nothing Is Less Binary than Human Attraction. By the entrance was a sofa in the shape of a large upholstered heart, and above it a sign that said: Openr: Experiment Ethically With Your Fellow Humans.
I could hear the sales team across the room. They were all women, all in sweats and T-shirts. Most were youngish – under thirty – and it was tempting to describe them as coming from different cultures, which was true in terms of race and nationality, but they were all united by the only culture that seemed to matter here, something that might once have been called pop culture: they watched the same shows, they followed the same celebrities, they seemed to have barely divergent takes on politics, lifestyle and fashion. Today they were talking about the book Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. My welcome email included a sexy winking gif from my boss Nicole, who was out of the office that morning. The email contained a list of tasks, a Slack invitation and an animated signature that said: Stay Curious.
As I waited for security to set my passcodes, I made myself an Openr account. I ticked every single dating preference in the drop-down menu. The app then sent me on my ‘journey’ – everything was part of a journey at Openr, and every user was ‘part of the community’. We were here, according to the blurb, to be ‘radically open while acting responsibly towards others’. Scrolling through the first few profiles, I came across a surprising number of suits. These men had photographed themselves in black and white – a sort of Christian Grey aesthetic. There was a run of DIY glamour shots and then a guy in a sheepskin loincloth, who was wearing what looked like a pair of horns. The next photo read: Adventurous couple looking for a fun human to join us. It featured a guy holding a cappuccino-coloured cockapoo. His wife was holding a mug that said: This is what a feminist looks like.
I was interrupted by a message from Sir Stephen:
Pardon me good madam, I was wondering if you might accept my assistance with your orgasm this evening?
I checked his profile, he hadn’t uploaded any photos. It was just a drawing of Castle Black, the home of the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones. I replied:
Are you a well-made man? And of good character?
I am
And you are well-versed in the art of love?
Unquestionably
How courteous
I paused for a second, then I wrote:
Might I ask how you mean to abet me?
My phone rang before he could reply – it was IT, something about my permissions. Reluctantly, I let my suitor go. When I returned, he’d disappeared completely.
There was an unmistakeable standardization to the photos in the app – eyes and lips filtered and hyperreal, a repetitiveness of poses and expressions. Some of the more overtly feminine women were the ones who seemed, counterintuitively, to luxuriate most boldly in their kinks. I flicked through them as they stared proudly at the lens – a sort of Cara Delevingne effect. Or they’d gone for the classic bathroom mirror selfie, one foot stacked jauntily on the sink, like a kind of sexy pirate. There were all sorts of people in the system. It was a smorgasbord of human possibility. There were long lists on every profile where each user had ticked a set of boxes. The app demanded details of what they were into, their sexual personality, their wants and needs. There were sections devoted to every niche, from Japanese bondage to public sex – and even for aromanticism, demisexualism, asexualism. And unlike other dating apps, there was a sense of being in a club, a shared spirit of transgression, a proud rejection of the mainstream. This horror of ‘the mainstream’ – whatever that meant – seemed to be the one thing that everyone had in common. It gave people the sense of being part of a club that the rest of the world hadn’t yet caught up with. It was a fantasy of its own, I thought, the idea of transcending something. It was also difficult to pin down exactly what it was that they were trying to leave behind. Victorian social mores, maybe? Although these had themselves become just another niche (for which there was a busy section on Openr called ‘Trad’). Anyway, whatever it was, it didn’t matter. It was the atmosphere that reeled them in. The app was creating a sense of transgression that seemed to permeate the user experience. Lara, as always, was managing to attract attention.
•
How’s things? Lara texted.
The kitchen was on the other side of a ‘collaboration room’ that doubled as a gallery of art. Today there was a display of paintings inspired by the photographer Man Ray that, according to the text on the wall, explored the idea of sex as a form of dance. It was interesting idea in the abstract, but also – like a lot of things about Openr – oddly flat in reality. Four giant, oil-painted nudes loomed over me as I made my way to lunch. I ate one-handed as I scrolled through the iPad I’d been given. There was a long list of ‘Dating Don’ts’ on the app’s community guidelines. ‘Haunting’, it said: ‘stalking people’s social media while ignoring their messages’. ‘Benching’ was ‘stringing a match along while holding out for better options’. ‘Roaching’ was ‘cheating on your partner with the excuse that you hadn’t yet discussed monogamy’. There was a whole page of this stuff. Lying, in general, was frowned upon. Rejections had to be clear-cut and so did, above all, consent. The glaring problem, as far as I could see, was that there was no way of policing all of this. The app relied on the goodwill of its users. The ethical part of it was voluntary. It was like a well-meaning but helpless nanny trying to manage a wayward mob of kids, a mob that kept expanding and becoming more miscellaneous.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the site’s no-no’s had become a way of life. Of course you ‘talked’ to different people; of course you didn’t tell them everything. There was something quaint about the notion that we’d all just go back to ‘dating’: handing your attention to only one person at a time. Going on activities with them. Respecting their feelings etc. And then, finally, deciding they weren’t The One (Return to Go and start over) – or that, in fact, they were (which meant what exactly? Trust? Marriage?). Considering Openr was supposed to be a radical experiment, it had a strangely antique approach to ethics. Its sincerity belonged to a bygone age – the ancient history of Match.com or MySingleFriend, a time when there was still some stigma around the very concept of ‘online dating’.
I’d barely finished eating when Lara appeared in the kitchen.
‘So?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘How’s it going?’
‘All fine.’
I wasn’t really in the mood, I was still recovering from the shock of being at work.
‘You didn’t tell me about this man of yours,’ she said.
‘What man?’
‘You know who I mean.’
‘Who told you?’
She tossed my phone at me.
‘You left it on your desk,’ she said.
We both knew this was neither an explanation nor an excuse.
‘Patrick Bateman-looking fella, isn’t it?’ she sat down in front of me. ‘Who are you?’
I shoved the phone into my pocket.
‘You like him?’ she pressed me.
‘Yes.’
She ate her salad, watching me in silence.
‘Why are you helping me?’ I asked her.
‘We’re friends.’
‘Are we?’
‘You took the job.’
‘I’m not sure if I should have.’
‘Don’t overthink it.’
‘You’re the boss.’
‘I’m not your boss,’ she said, annoyed. ‘I just recommended you.’
‘It’s your company.’
‘What’s left of it, once the vultures have had their slice.’
She was talking about investors, as if I’d sympathize with that.
‘Anyway, we’re a team,’ she said. ‘I don’t pull rank.’
I must have actually rolled my eyes. I really wasn’t enjoying being employed.
‘Well, put it this way, I keep it to a minimum. You know what I mean,’ she conceded. ‘There’s no need to thank me, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What’s your problem?’
‘No problem.’
‘Aren’t you going to forgive me?’
I wondered which of her many offences she was referring to.
‘Never look back?’ she offered, lamely.
I didn’t bother dignifying that with a reply.
•
It wasn’t long after my initiation at Openr that I found myself at Café Cecilia. Tom had invited me for dinner with Grace and Niall. I barely recognized Niall from Ibiza. He showed up late, dishevelled, his raincoat bunched under his arm.
‘Sorry,’ he said as he sat beside his wife. Ignoring Grace completely, he topped my glass up with wine, then filled his own to the brim. He looked scruffier than I remembered. His hair was longer, it was wet from the rain and he was wearing a pair of sweatpants that said No Problemo up the side.
‘I don’t want to bore you,’ Grace said, ‘but there’s something Tom and I need to discuss. It’s work, so don’t feel like you have to listen.’
It was obvious that she and Niall weren’t speaking.
‘I meant to ask how it went,’ Tom said.
‘Well’ – she lowered her voice – ‘I’m thinking of saying yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s a decent offer.’
‘How much?’
‘Two fifty,’ she said. ‘Plus shares.’
I was startled by the number. I tried to hide it by picking up the bottle of wine that Niall had already almost emptied. Anbury Estate Organic the label said.
‘So what’s the verdict?’
‘It’s a big decision,’ she said, glancing at her husband as he spread a hunk of pâté on his bread. The bread was dark and coarse, like something a medieval peasant might have eaten. ‘The company’s in Cambridge. It’s small but they’re partnering with Pharmacon. I’d be working with them as a contractor, so not in-house like at Churchill. It would mean a lot more freedom. Flexibility. I want to spend more time with Evie.’
