It would be so weird to all of a sudden have to take all of the myths and stereotypes and information about another kind of sexual orientation and somehow wade through them in order to construct yourself within that image. Susan’s kind of doing it, too, but within heterosexuality—all of a sudden she’s a Sexual Being, and I think she’s having to learn as much about sex as Bug is, even though theoretically she’s been heterosexual all her life.

Many geeks don’t really have a sexuality—they just have work. I think the sequence is that they get jobs at Microsoft or wherever right out of school, and they’re so excited to have this “real” job and money that they just figure that the relationships will naturally happen, but then they wake up and they’re thirty and they haven’t had sex in eight years. There are always these flings at conferences and trade shows, and everyone brags about them, but nothing seems to emerge from them and life goes back to the primary relationship: Geek and Machine.

She said, “We look at a flock of birds and we think one bird is the same as any other bird—a bird unit. But a bird looks at thousands of people, at a Giants game up at Candlestick Park, say, and all they see is ‘people units.’ We’re all as identical to them as they are to us. So what makes you different from me! Him from you? Them from her? What makes any one person any different from any other? Where does your individuality end and your species-hood begin? As always, it’s a big question on my mind. You have to remember that most of us who’ve moved to Silicon Valley, we don’t have the traditional identity-donating structures like other places in the world have: religion, politics, cohesive family structure, roots, a sense of history or other prescribed belief systems that take the onus off individuals having to figure out who they are. You’re on your own here. It’s a big task, but just look at the flood of ideas that emerges from the plastic!”

I stared at her, and I imagine she was assuming I was digesting—compiling—what she’d just told me, but instead, all I could think of, looking into her eyes, was that there was this entity—Karla—who was different from all others I knew because just under the surface of her skin lay the essence of herself, the person who thinks and dreams these things she tells to me and only me. I felt like a lucky loser and I kissed her on the nose. So that’s me for the day.

This afternoon while visiting Todd and Dusty’s cottage in Redwood City, I tried to find a snack in their fridge.

Bad idea.

Pills, lotions, capsules, powders … anything except what normal human beings might call “food.” There was a Rubbermaid container of popcorn. There was Turbo Tea, Amino mass, pure Creatine, Mus-L-Blast 2000+, raw chickens, Super Infiniti 3000, and chromium supplements as well as small bottles I thought it more polite not to inquire about.

I really have to wonder if Todd’s doing steroids. I mean, he’s just not physically normal. We’re all going to have to face this.

Dusty was out at the Lucky mart buying bananas and kelp. I asked Todd, “Shit, Todd—what is it exactly you want your body to do for you? What is it your body’s not doing for you now that it’s going to do for you at some future date?” Not really Todd’s sort of question.

“I think I want to have sex using a new body which allows me to not have to remember my ultrareligious family.” Todd mulled this over. We looked around the apartment, strewn with hex dumbells and rubber flooring mats. “My body was just something I could believe in because there was nothing else around.”

I later told Dusty Michael’s theory of history being dead and she went goggle-eyed. Dusty said conspiratorially, “Michael may be a crypto-Marxist.” (Oh God …) She kept blabbing, and it’s so weird to see Dusty’s mouth moving and genuine political words emerge. It just doesn’t mesh with her computer image. I get the impression she should be discussing exfoliation or tanning factors instead, but then, bodies are political, too. Or so Dusty has informed the office.

I surprised Dusty. I said that, “Since Marxism is explicitly based on property, ownership, and control of means of production, it may well end up being the final true politik of this Benetton world we now live in.” She said, “Hey, Danster—I underestimated you.”

It was interesting to briefly enter the political realm—as such.

Dusty was trying to tell us all about “Mehrwert“—surplus value per unit of time/labor: “A worker creates more value than that for which he is compensated. You know?”

Michael went purple, like a Burger King manager who hears one of his employees discuss unionization.

And then Karla screwed Michael’s notions of production up even further by passing along a meme somebody spammed her on the Net that day, that any multiple of 6, minus one, is a prime number. Easy as this was to disprove, all work stopped immediately as everybody set out to prove its validity.

Karla pointed out that there are more Gaps than just the Gap. “J. Crew is a thinly veiled Gap. So is Eddie Bauer. Banana Republic is owned by the same people as the Gap. Armani A/X is a EuroGap. Brooks Brothers is a Gap for people with more disposable income whose bodies need hiding, upscaling, and standardization. Victoria’s Secret is a Gap of calculated naughtiness for ladies. McDonald’s is the Gap of hamburgers. LensCrafters is the Gap of eyewear. Mrs. Fields is the Gap of cookies. And so on.”

Ethan says Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share, and the transmission vector for these diseases is the DOOR CLOSE button on elevators that only get pushed by impatient, Type-A people. Ethan pushes these buttons with his elbow, now. I’m starting to worry about all of us.

Susan said, “Playtex suck because they just get longer, not wider … When I bleed, it’s not a vertical thing … it’s 360 degrees. And it’s so freaky because when you put it in, it’s this innocuous little lipstick size, and then when you take it out there’s this long cotton rope at the end of the string! I’m afraid it’s going to hook my uterus and I’ll accidentally drag it out!”'

Todd sent me an instant mail, which blinked on my screen, saying, I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“Sure, I know I’m a geek, and I know that predisposes me to introversion. And Microsoft did allow me to feed the introversion. But as you’re all noticing for yourselves, you can’t retreat like that here in the Valley. There’s no excuse anymore to introvert. You can’t use tech culture as an excuse not to confront personal issues for astounding periods of time. It’s like outer space, where the vacuum makes your body explode unless you locate sanctuary.”

Bug got quiet and put his head on Susan’s legs. “You know, Sooz, I would have come here for nothing. I never had to get paid.” Bug looked up. “Oh God, Ethan, you didn’t hear that.” He relaxed. “Well you know what I mean. I just wanted to leave the old me behind and start all over again. It’s not the money. It’s never been the money. It rarely ever is. It wasn’t with any of us—was it? Ever?”

I don’t think it ever was. We lay around and were silent while Bug pulled himself together. I put on an old Bessie Smith CD and we sat, alcohol scrambling our codes, our thoughts, our lives, if only for the remaining darkness, until work made its claim upon us once more.