Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 23

England hasn’t changed much. The Common might be a little greener than I left it. The butcher’s shop has closed down, Blockbuster Video gone up in its place. There are a few nominal additions to the graffiti on the walls outside my flat. As from Tuesday next the tube train drivers will be on strike. A bomb has exploded in Earls Court, no one hurt. Otherwise England is as England always was, an isolated little piece of island washed up on its own dank shore.

I have changed, though. At least, America has changed me. I’ve bought an Apple Mac with the remainder of my savings, and it’s beautiful. A mysterious grey sarcophagus with magic innards. I’ve also got a modem and a subscription to the WELL. England and England’s concerns matter less. I can now be in the same place as my fantasies. America. A few clicks of the keyboard, a tumble of lights, an instant’s wait, and the new frontier comes rushing in toward me.

No one here appears interested in my impending conquest of the digital frontier. After some dark muttering about anoraks and computers the subject is waved away. Meanwhile, my life is becoming very altered. Friends are beginning not to bother to call, knowing that I’ll either be online, or be wanting to talk about being online. They think I’m vacant, pretty vac-ant. But I don’t care.

Also, I’ve met someone. Not face to face, but as good as. It began a few days ago in an idle moment. This is how it happened. I posted a short provocation on the WELL – a small uncommitted riff about the media being our chief source of shared values, and he, this someone I’m talking about, replied with a long treatise, the gist of which was that the situation wasn’t so bad because it at least implied that there was a shared set of values. And so it went on. We e-mailed back and forth exchanging our armchair philosophies and cod theories. A strange textual flirtation started up but the stranger thing is, I don’t know anything about him, except that his handle is Macadamia. He’s my souvenir of San Francisco, my memento. And yet, it’s as though I’ve taken the first step in a series of irrevocable steps towards another life, as you do the moment you first meet a lover’s eyes.

Last night, I e-mailed Nancy.

>I’m very taken with a nut, I said.

And she e-mailed back

>It’s a newbie phase, sweetie. Bob was just the same.

I found a small part of myself hating her for that, but I woke up this morning with the usual pangs, missing America and wishing we were walking through Muir Woods together.

Observation: Why is it that technology designed to be used by women is white, while technology designed to be used by men is black? The washing machine vs the VCR. The tumble dryer vs the remote control. Computers, on the other hand, are grey, which must be one of the reasons they’re so intriguing.