The default world, p.4
The Default World, page 4
“Well yeah, but that was Samuel L. Jackson. And, you know—a movie.”
“Totally,” Jhanvi said. “Actually, maybe I should do good—that would really organize my life.”
“Is this a bit?” Henry asked. “I was telling Audrey some of your classic college bits. Like your alter ego, Hassan? Remember him?” That was the name she gave people at parties so they wouldn’t know who to hate after she vomited or blacked out. But he’d grown, developing into an entire character of his own. Eventually she met a real Hassan, a Saudi prince, and convinced him to make Nikhil (her birth name) his alter ego. But she’d thought the roguish part of her had disappeared when she stopped drinking.
“It wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to call it a bit.”
“It’s a good one. Like, this is San Francisco. I think a lot of fire-eaters think of themselves as adventurers, so they’d probably love that kind of talk.”
“Would they?” Jhanvi asked. “Or would they make fun of it? I think to be quirky and weird, you need money or beauty or charm. Or something. I don’t know.”
“Jhanvi,” he said. “Stop being so negative. There is some really exciting stuff happening here.” He was pacing around, and then he sat on the beanbag chair in a corner of his room and picked at the strings of a ukulele with his long fingers. “There’s a girl in the house, Roshie. She’s got some great ideas. We’re, like, right on the verge of taking it to the next level—all buying property together—doing it up, like a real community.”
“Sure you are.”
“I’m serious. I’ve gotten really into this whole idea of, like, the community coming together and being self-sufficient—doing stuff that in the olden days the whole village would’ve done.”
Fuck you. The thought came instinctively to Jhanvi’s mind, and she just as instinctively said to herself, No, that’s not fair.
Sometimes Henry brought out a side of Jhanvi that she didn’t like, and she knew exactly why. During their senior year in college, when they were drunk, he’d blown her. Her entire time in college, she’d seen other people get drunk and hook up, and she’d wondered, Why is that not happening for me? What is wrong with me? But for once, it’d actually worked! They’d ended up together at the end of the night, grunting and sweaty and fumbling unpleasurably with each other. And the next day she’d texted him shyly, Hey I should return the favor, or, like, maybe we should do other stuff, and he’d been like Sorry, I totally had a good time, but I think maybe that was a one-off, since we’re friends and stuff. He wasn’t rude, but it’d destroyed her. Until then she’d been a straight guy, wondering why she was so different from everyone, why she could never feel at home. She’d hoped this sexual incident, the first in her life, could be an unlocking. Like, maybe, finally, she could experience what everyone else spent so much time going on about. But he’d tossed the key back into her face. Not his fault, of course. You don’t owe someone your body. Jhanvi blinked rapidly, trying to stop herself from crying. She hadn’t thought about that night in years.
She leaned forward, trying to stay focused. “That sounds super exciting! So, what would you do?”
“Maybe buy the building where we have the dungeon. Roshie’s negotiating with the landlord. Roshie’s incredible. She’s amazing. She’s like … okay, this is going to sound weird, but I never understood being an adult until I met her. Like, everything you always thought you needed permission to do? She just does. Like … she went out and organized the tenants in the building into a little union! She is nuts. I actually can’t wait until you meet her.”
“What does Katie think about all this?”
“Oh,” Henry said. “She might not join. She’s worried about displacement and stuff. Sad. She might stay here.”
“And Audrey would be okay with that?”
He waved a hand. “We’re figuring it out. I told her there’d be a studio in there, with better lighting for her videos. Sort of like a YouTube house, or whatever, but for fire-eaters.”
Jhanvi narrowed her eyes. “You know … it’s totally okay to break up with Audrey. You don’t have to go along with whatever she wants.”
“Nah, nah, we’re working it out,” Henry said. “So, what’re you in town for? You mentioned some big plan. Ready for your triumphant return from the provinces?”
Once again, Jhanvi had come to that crossroads: the place where she had to reveal herself. She could hear traffic noise from Divisadero Street below, with cars honking at each other and people shouting. Maybe Toni had ended her shift at the bar. She thought, Toni is more human than any of these fucks. Jhanvi flushed with sudden rage, and, just as automatically, hated herself for it.
“Well, uhh, you remember that marriage plan, right?” she said. “Like, about finding some techie? And scamming their company out of their trans benefits?”
“Right on!” he said. “Now that’s a good bit.” He reached out a hand, and they high-fived like high school bros. He grabbed his desk chair and sat in it backwards, like he was the bad kid in an after-school special, and leaned toward her. “Remind me what you were thinking.”
“Tech companies,” she said, “have insane trans benefits. Besides healthcare—the best—they offer tens of thousands of dollars a year for ‘cosmetic’ procedures insurance won’t cover, but stuff you really need, to like, be gender-affirmed. You know, nose jobs and hair removal or whatever.”
“You’re looking great, by the way.”
“Sure, sure,” Jhanvi said. “But what do you think? Is that insane?”
“No,” Henry shook his head. “No, this is a good idea. But what’s better is if you, like, made it an app. Made it a movement.”
Jhanvi’s eyes went wide, not because the idea was smart—it wasn’t—but because somehow Henry’s words cut to the core of what San Francisco had become. Nothing here was ever allowed to be purely personal—it always had to be larger than life, to disrupt all of society.
“Mmmhmm,” Jhanvi said. “An app, to, you know, match people who have good health insurance with people who need it.”
“It could be for all kinds of chronic conditions!” Henry said. “Not just being trans. Like, stuff that’s expensive. Anything.”
“Yeah,” Jhanvi said. “But … they would have to get married.”
“Or do domestic partnership.”
There were legal issues with the latter, Jhanvi had researched it, but Henry was on a roll, laying out points as his fingertips tapped against his taut thigh, expanding the idea. His eyes were dancing, and Jhanvi was filled with a sudden contempt for him. Which was insane! She actually liked this guy—he was such an old friend, a good guy—and he was willingly entering into her madness. But at the same time, she knew, without a fragment of doubt, that under no circumstances whatsoever would Henry go through with this marriage plan.
“Insurance companies would try to take it down.”
“Okay, but how?” Henry said. “How could they prove you’re not ‘really’ married?”
“Prove it’s transactional.”
“But there’s no exchange of money! In fact, they could move in together for the duration—even sleep together—like, it could be a genuine dating vehicle. And we could have prewritten prenups to protect people’s assets. There could even be an aspect like an old-world ton—if the person dies, you get their stuff—not to be morbid.”
“Then that would be transactional.”
“Hahaha, yeah, okay,” Henry said. “Hey, you should put this on the idea board. Like, to introduce yourself. We find that guests work well when they enter the life of the house. Or anyway, so sayeth Katie—she taught a seminar recently on how to cause less friction with our guests.”
“Don’t call the cops.”
“Well, that goes without saying, but yeah,” Henry said. “Just how to be good community citizens, both to San Francisco and to the friends of our friends—like, I’m working on an app to export our extended social graph—because if you think about it, all your friends are, well, not my friends, but my community too.”
“Totally,” Jhanvi said, wondering whether Toni, or some of her dad’s Indian college friends, would be welcome in this house.
“Anyway, the idea board is out in the hall. You should really take your shot.”
“You think?”
“Totally, yeah. And sorry, I’ll email everyone, introduce you around.”
“K.”
They sat for a few more seconds, then Henry clapped his knees, got up. Jhanvi stood as well and watched as he dragged his desk chair in front of his computer and sat. She watched the muscles in his neck, and let her eyes trail up to his wavy hair. She had a brief glimpse of Henry fucking her ass. They hadn’t hooked up in person since that time in college, but their sexts were pretty involved. And they’d been intimate once before, so it wasn’t impossible!
Jhanvi sat on his bed again, sighed, started reading her book. He smiled crookedly at her, put on his headphones. He had come home pretty tired, insisting he was about to sleep, but they’d talked for a few hours anyway, having fun, eating a late dinner at a burrito place. She was too shy to ask him to pay, even though that’s what an adventurer would do.
When Henry said he needed to concentrate, Jhanvi laid out Henry’s sleeping bag and mat, which still reeked of bonfire smoke, and shyly slipped off her leggings and tunic. For a moment she was in her underwear on his floor, with her elbows pushing on her small, perky breasts. She huddled up—the house was always cold, especially at night.
Henry was still at his desk, and his eyes didn’t fall on her. The old anger flared up. Look at me. This was pathetic. Not even an adventure: just another embarrassing moment she could never reveal to anyone. She crawled into the sleeping bag.
She rewatched a dumb sitcom on her phone, turning up the volume on her headphones when she heard his housemates talking in the hall. At some point he left without inviting her, and he didn’t come back. Although they lived in separate rooms now, he’d said he still spent most nights with Audrey, when she didn’t have someone else over.
Jhanvi spent a couple hours crafting a very fine, very eloquent email on her phone. Henry, we’ve known each other for years, and I was wondering, since you thought the idea was so good, whether you’d be willing to … The moment she hit send, she plugged in her phone and closed her eyes to sleep.
3
A couple mornings later, Jhanvi came out of Henry’s room and saw Audrey standing in the hall wearing nothing but boxer shorts, toweling her wet hair and looking at the board where Henry had written down Jhanvi’s idea.
Jhanvi’s eyes drifted from the girl’s bare breasts to the interlocking tattoos on her arms and back and shoulders—they were vaguely mechanical, something like the gears of a clock.
“Oh hey,” Jhanvi said.
“Hey,” Audrey said.
Jhanvi walked into the front den, where she usually spent her time. The sky outside the window was a terrible gray from SF’s famous fog, and even inside the apartment, a chill permeated her body. She rooted through her bag looking for a second pair of socks and didn’t turn when Audrey dropped down on the couch.
She was short, maybe 5'3" or so, and her brown hair was perpetually in a ponytail. She looked like a gymnast, slight at first glance, almost elfin, but her arms and thighs and back were knotted muscle.
“Oh hey,” the girl said. “Don’t leave. The room’s for everybody, at least during the day. I only really need people out when I’m shooting a one-on-one.”
“Uhh, okay,” Jhanvi said. Her tired brain stuttered. “Katie said …”
“Everything’s up in the air, I know. I’m so glad you’re here to keep Henry company. It’ll be so restorative, don’t you think? I’m so impressed you got him to agree to this marriage idea. Henry can sometimes be sort of too introspective, you know?”
Jhanvi’s forehead and ears were suddenly damp. She’d pressed Henry for an answer the day after she’d emailed him, and he’d mumbled something vaguely affirmative. She’d expected it to fall apart, but the next day he emailed her a web link about getting a marriage license and asked her to sort it out. He was working hard on a big release for the next few days, but on Friday she and Henry were planning to head to the courthouse.
“I’m just so impressed with him. And it makes me happy that he’s really, like, moving on,” Audrey said. “Hey … you’ve spent more time with him these past days than anyone. How is he? How’s he holding up?”
Apparently, they hadn’t broken up. They’d “uncoupled.” But since they still lived together, albeit not in the same room, and screwed nightly, Jhanvi didn’t really understand the distinction. Except she knew from what other people had said that this was considered a big emotional tragedy—a broken love. It was like one time when some girl cried to Jhanvi over how she’d never ever find love, and Jhanvi realized the girl had just broken up with some perfectly good guy because he “just wasn’t going anywhere in life.” Emotionally the girl might feel hopeless and bereft, and Jhanvi might sympathize in some way, but the reality bore no relation to the abyssal plains of Jhanvi’s loneliness.
Jhanvi shrugged. “He’s okay. Misses you, obviously …” The conversation sat awkwardly, and she felt a pang in her stomach. She had a sudden flash of contempt for this girl. “Let him feel his feelings. It’s okay to feel bad about a breakup.”
“Did he call it a breakup?”
“I mean the uncoupling.”
“But I don’t know if that word is right either. We’re trying something really new. I don’t have the answers. I thought, with you and the marriage plan—it seemed like maybe Henry would get on board with it.”
Jhanvi brushed a strand of hair out of her face. Audrey squatted like a gargoyle on the arm of the couch. “It’s not really new,” Jhanvi muttered.
“What?”
“It’s not new,” Jhanvi said. “You’re breaking up. It’s just slow and messy and complicated because you’re mostly but not totally compatible,”—because Audrey wanted to keep fucking other people—“but that’s a really normal problem.”
“Did he say that?” Audrey rubbed at the corner of her eye with a fingertip. “Look, you love Henry, I can tell. Everyone loves him so much. I am so lucky to have him in my life—and I would never, ever want to lose that. I really envision us living together forever. Like, raising kids together, maybe even our own kids. But definitely being part of each other’s lives.”
“Sure.” Jhanvi shrugged.
“It’s just, this is the point in people’s lives when they’re supposed to abandon their friends and fall into their little two-by-two Noah’s ark pairs, and I think Henry and I both just totally reject that.”
Jhanvi had heard so many people talk like this in her life. Nuclear families suck. We can’t keep building these towns and cities full of detached homes, occupied by two lonely, friendless married people. We need real community! We should be there for each other. We should do something bold and new and creative.
The idea was inherently attractive, because it dispensed with the need to find love. But it just didn’t work. Like, what if her “found family” had a stroke? Would Audrey spoon-feed them? Or if they lost their job, got depressed, couldn’t or wouldn’t work? Would Audrey cover their rent? No fucking way. Once you realized how shallow friendship really was, you realized it was stupid to give up a decent guy.
“Most people would prefer their twenties to never end, I guess,” Jhanvi said.
“Yeah, but the default world just assumes you’re gonna abandon everyone besides your partner. It’s so sick! That just really upsets me sometimes. I get so many messages from people who’ve been so burned by our societal expectations about romance. Cheating. Messy divorces. People who just couldn’t be each other’s everything and are really upset about it. It’s so weird to me, but I get it. They just haven’t heard of anything different.”
“They’ve never heard of just sleeping with whoever you want?”
“You’re funny.” Audrey smiled, but didn’t laugh. “I mean they’ve never heard it can work and can be good and satisfying and sustainable and long lasting and nurturing and have room for friendship and children and careers and everything people need.”
Did it work for Henry?
Jhanvi kept her face neutral. “It’s good they have you to tell them.”
“Hey, give me a minute.” Audrey slipped through the sliding door and into the back of the room. “Don’t mind me,” she said, her voice muffled. “Just getting dressed.”
She poked her head back through the doorway. “Hey, you’re into makeup and stuff, right? Or is that rude?”
“Umm, yeah,” Jhanvi said.
“Cool,” Audrey said. “Have you seen my corner?”
She slid the door open and emerged in jeans and a relishcolored tank top that showed off her tattooed biceps. Behind her was a king-sized bed and long racks of clothes along one wall. The doors folded inward, banging into a dresser. Jhanvi followed Audrey to the corner with a vanity, complete with lights and a mirror. Audrey sat down on a swiveling stool and Jhanvi crouched by her side. Audrey pulled open a drawer, revealing dozens of jars of foundation. Another drawer had a hundred lipsticks. A third had eye and lip pencils. Everything was stuck with printed labels and stacked in trays from the Container Store.
“I’m a little type A,” she said. “So I organized everything by parts of the face. Here’s the primers, the foundations.” She went on opening and closing drawers, revealing every single thing a person could need. Jhanvi’s eyes got wider and wider. Her own experiments with cosmetics had consisted primarily of trying to find drugstore-brand foundations that actually matched her skin tone.
“We’re a similar shade,” Audrey said, holding up one arm. “I’m pretty tanned. We should hang out sometime. Most people around here aren’t that interested in makeup.”
“Uhh, yeah,” Jhanvi said. “This is insane.”
“It’s my hobby. I got into it like two years ago—I was appearing on TV, and they did me up, and I was like … wow. Made me really regret all the videos I did without it. I’ve kinda been deleting some of my old content because of that.”
