Sensation Machines

privileged urban youth. He was currently finishing a semester in Milan.
After Damien’s father ran off with the younger wife of a deceased Kuwaiti oil baron, Lillian swore off men, only to return amid this golden era of online dating. My boss was a fit and elegant fifty, subtly Botoxed, with sharp brown eyes and long natural lashes. She wore her hair in a chic, angular bob that flattered her narrow face and gave off a shimmering aura of money. In the current dating climate, these attributes weren’t enough. We often spent lunch breaks swiping profiles on Kügr, but she rarely matched with anyone of interest. I used to wonder how I’d do, what currency my looks still carried. Since the death of our daughter, Nina, I’d noted a down-tilt in male attention. Men used to stare while I swam laps at the Red Hook pool. Now stretch marks scored my stomach. Wrinkles spidered from my eyes. Michael told me I looked beautiful. He was not an objective audience.
“It does seem shortsighted,” I agreed.
“I mean, for one,” Lillian continued, “they’re acting without regard for their own interests. Everyone knows a soldier in the heat of battle is a maniac in the sack. And, for two, they’re absolutely fucking deluded. Denying a man sex is the most surefire way to incite mass violence. History has proven it: the Christian Crusades, 9/11. Both could have been prevented by blowjobs. Why do you think Clinton was the only president in recent history who didn’t nuke the shit out of some sleepy Islamic hamlet?”
I started to say something, but it wasn’t worth it. Provocation was her mode, and I’d learned, over the years, to avoid being baited. In my loftier moments, I projected onto Lillian a feminist objective: to co-opt locker-room talk, reclaim vulgarity from its province on the right.
It may have simply been her style. My boss’s disposition toward crass innuendo surely had Darwinian value in her deft infiltration of our industry’s boys’ club. I was the closest thing she had to a protégé, and I sensed her desire to instill in me something of this bro-ish bearing. I knew that my refusal—was it refusal or failure?—had affected my career. Male clients tended to request Greg as their account liaison.
“The way to manipulate men is not by denying them sex,” Lillian explained, “but by forcing them to make promises while their dicks are in your mouth. You ever been with a soldier?”
One thing she respects is a lengthy sexual CV. My own was not. Lillian knew this but pretended to forget. I shook my head.
“You really should try it sometime. Their penises are tiny and they compensate by going down on you for hours. They love to take directions.”
She knew I was married too.
“I used to keep a stash of plastic medals I’d hand out after mission complete.”
A compulsive liar.
“After sex they cry. It’s better than most standup routines. Anyway, tell me something about you for a change. How’s Michael?”
She refilled my wine without my asking. She wanted me to spill marital secrets. A few months prior, I’d mistakenly confessed to a sexual experiment Michael and I had undertaken, a threesome. I thought telling Lillian would get her off my back. It only provoked.
“Michael’s fine,” I said.
“Even with this Wall Street bullshit?”
The truth was I didn’t know. I watched TV and scanned my news feeds. I read the The New York Times. The intricacies of the crisis were buried beneath stories of other catastrophes, the cataclysmic wreckage of the last administration. Headlines warned of coming hurricanes and tsunamis. Warned of rising sea levels and methane emissions. Chronicled the continuing barrage of Weinstein-esque behavior in politics and entertainment. Addressed the uptick in anti-immigration violence in the wake of mass layoffs at fast food chains in Texas and Arizona, the right-wing backlash against the soda ban in public schools. It all just kept coming. That morning’s front page featured a Florida militia with stockpiled Uzis who wore swastika armbands but touted their support for the Jewish State.
I did know that the hacking group mAchete had leaked internal memos from the C&S brass, suggesting bank employees unload their company shares. I knew the board was trying to push a last-minute sale of the bank and its holdings to a Japanese megabank.
The Universal Basic Income, or UBI as it was called, was a threat to the entire financial apparatus. If the proposal passed, the government would award every American with $23,000 per year. This $10 trillion dividend would be funded largely by tax hikes for the wealthy, and by increasing taxes on carbon emissions. But it would also be funded, in part, by charging fees to financial institutions on all individual trades and transactions. As far as I understood it, this meant that large investment banks like C&S, which processed nearly three million transactions daily, would be forced to drastically scale down their operations. Right-wing pundits warned of the negative effect this would have on lending. They warned that it would cause steep inflation and disrupt the economy’s flow. They warned that this restriction on capital movement would have widespread repercussions for job creation and trickle-down wealth. They’d used these arguments for decades against other forms of socialization.
There is no way I could have known then, as I leaned back in my chair and watched the day’s last light impart a Coppertone glow on the old brick church across Lillian’s street, that Project Pinky would be linked to the UBI. That, in fact, the person in charge of Project Pinky hoped to tank the bill and replace it with a system of his own design. I’m not sure what, if anything, this knowledge would have changed.
Michael and I didn’t talk about the crisis or its possible ramifications for us. We worked late. We left early. At home, we lay in bed staring at separate laptops. We argued about whose turn it was to take out the trash. Michael let the cat sprawl across his ribcage. He stroked her