What is a girl’s desire in the world of men?
The Office Women, the “Datists,” convert raw numeric 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 see you feel you smell you. . .” hum the machines.
Days at the Data Center processing data. Worlds of data. Brass pots, terra cotta. Lives enlivened by ivy, pothos, spider-plants, whatever can bear life under fluorescent light in stale, anemic soil.
Datists badgered by memory. Lives they’d rather not have lived: skirt-blouse scent of second shelf cologne; narcotic dates with pimply Letter Men. Sports heroes, teenage wunderkinder (where are they now? where are they now?). Giggle girls bloom death, top forty dreams of beardless boys, awkward in pussy, quick-squirters all. Hiding behind cigarettes, reaching for cigarettes, uniform factory-rolled quick-burn dumbly into Past; brand insignias puffed with numb indifference; brown-tips white-tips filter-less.
Datists want Love, they want Life.
They think: Oh my god they have murdered the world all we valued all we loved in atonement we offer ourselves it won’t be suicide but be murder killing the time allotted to our bodies — what remains in us, however long or short the sentence — in defense of Self…
They’d been girls once, years ago (ten? fifteen? twenty-five?). Now was now. Now. Datists dreamed pleasure. Who can please, who can please? Rare men magic tongues stir nectars thrill to flowing. 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 daily. 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 white florescent suns. Headsets plugged into machines. Songs. Popular sunshine sing-a-long songs. Blaze of knowing sharing songs.
Those clothes, this coffee, that cigarette.
Oppressive.
Headsets plugged into machines. Tunes yanked from the Network, sexy songs stretched nude like paramours on twilight balconies of daydream.
Those clothes, this coffee that cigarette.
Oppressive.
And evil.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty. . . ,” etc. and “classic” Rock ‘n’ Roll burned days like snowflakes on a skillet.
Friday drink the week to chill conclusion. Scan the bar. Seek eyes legs torso one can live with.
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 an event itself. “Who cooked this one up, Payroll, Human Resources?” the Datists – Eventists? — collectively wondered over pitchers of dry ale.
Friday drink the night closed. Scan the scene. Seek eyes legs torso one can live with until morning.
“… take me, Plantman. Take me from here…”
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