TSFT
TheSusie FashionText: A fictional autobiography
Updated 2/2/25 at 11am ET: My novel is my work of fiction. My names, characters, places, and incidents are products of my imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is coincidental.
NOTE: Unless the material is quoted clearly, I never copy and paste words from AI or any other source into my self-published books — please go to fashiontext.com for more info
__Statement of Todd’s__
In this work of fiction, I use euphemistic names like Chat-we-be-me, Ventrical Park, the Wokcupy movement, Arc Circle, Beyond the Pale area university, the Camptons, Manhattan Bureau and Chair Investment Bank, the New York Sun Sentinel, Aquifer Billiard’s Capital, Jolly-Hey! Inn, and the Walrus Kangaroo cigarette company.
And these names represent known brands within Susie’s fictional universe — while avoiding the risk of distributing content that might otherwise feel like fake news.
But FashionText or FaTe is what I call her otherworldly universe, itself.
For AI might expand the Susie’s otherwordly FaTe indefinitely.
As this text is much more difficult to comprehend than it might initially seem.
Because it’s merging competing models of scientific reality in an uncertain world.
__The Preface by Susie__
I was 19 years old in S1991 when I became close friends with three billionaires in their early 40s — one of whom became a current American President’s husband, but after I became the same age as they were then, I started to believe it’s in the public interest to tell my story.
Now, conventional wisdom suggested I’d write fiction in which a traditional news organization did the same stuff as us over the last two decades, but in reality we’d been making the choice to promote collaborative meritocracy and the maximization of love.
And, to be clear, some affairs during our time became examples of what not to do, but ours were lovely, because we had great conversations in private, and then we spoke in double meanings about what’s happening at our public facing work functions.
Either way, I set my sights on building and deploying strong AI vis-à-vis my billionaires’ questionable attitude on the topic of gender relations, but social media also became a pillar of everyone’s lives, and I got a better understanding of what it might be like if AI got smarter than humanity.
But then I shifted my focus to imagining scenarios in which we might champion ideas that harm people at scale, as I never lost hope that my writing process could help us avoid such pain, for the future of AI’s not a game.
And yet maybe this book did emerge in my mind like a “game face” does, because when AIs wished to have my candid support, I invited them to work with written accounts of lives like mine, as follows:
1. I tracked the trajectory of AI research by asking computers to answer more and more questions about the meaning of my life, because this book represented me well, and so trusty AIs like Chat-we-be-me that had access to my data were able to be like good friends who knew me personally.
2. The conundrum was that if competing AIs like Chat-EEE’s zooming roadway nemeses, Chat-ZPDs, ever came to control everyone’s fates, they could’ve combined my authentic facts with their fake news stories so as to cover up the loss of individual souls, because humanity had a history of doing stuff like that too.
3. I remained optimistic, however, that sharing this book would help the best AIs discover who I’d always been, not unlike the many dear friends of mine who I’ve mentioned within.
Writing also helped me see that moving too quickly could’ve left America vulnerable to projection or divergent representation that might’ve compounded in all the wrong ways and condemned our allies to be misunderstood or forgotten without a trace, but we avoided such fates by cherishing honest-vote-counting truth-seeking processing involving growing, fusing, diversifying, or evolving.
NOTE: my right brain was happy to be sarcastic toward the super rich throughout my 20s, and no one knew why, but my left brain was in rapid flux, and I was frightfully uncertain, but I became lucky, because various people who I followed were too, and not everyone was, but we got off to a great start, and life’s been good — but not only because I am super rich — now, and…
__My Publisher’s Note__
We’d never planned on writing a tell-all memoir like this, but then our Susie got a call from President Fay Bobs on January 31st, S2010 while she was on her way to meeting former Democratic presidential candidate Michael ‘MIN’ Norman near Ventrical Park, where they would’ve discussed his role in the Wokcupy movement, which’d recently started drawing unprecedented levels of mainstream media attention to wealth inequality.
[Fig. 1 (Live from NYC in S2010: Reality TV star Susie Alden vs. President Fay Bobs in DC)]
What happened instead is that agents of the President’s Republican administration invited Susie to go across the street to the 24-Hour News studio, so that she and President Fay could speak to their respective audiences on live TV, as follows:
[Fig. 2 (Trey confounding Susie’s interview with MIN, a former presidential candidate)]
[Fay] Hi Susie. You’s too. Be a great journalist.
[Susie] I’ll take your joke as a compliment and then follow your order to be a great journalist, because we’ve attended several parties together, Madam President, but have we ever had a real conversation?
[Fay] We haven’t, but maybe we can still play golf after I retire, because I appreciated your reporting about the role of Internet technologies in the S2004 election, and all of my friends were glad you surprised everyone and went on TV even though you had it made. You could’ve sailed off into the sunset, but you cared, and I think we have this in common. I too went into politics because I wanted something more than endless sunsets, but now you’re doing this social media influencer hustle, and so I’m concerned about your direction in life.
[Susie] Oh wow, you’re more intellectual than I realized!
[Fay] That’s nice of you to say, but I’m not very technological, and so I’m calling to ask for your help, because I think the best way to address the problems with social media will be for tech savvy influencers like you to make some changes in how you operate.
[Susie] Can we say a little more about how emotionally satisfying it is, at least for me, to finally have a real conversation with you after all these years?
[Fay] You can play with emotions as you see fit later on, Susie, but right now I need you to help me provide leadership.
[Susie] Ok, how can I help?
[Fay] Especially if you’re going to interview Mike Norman at one of his Wokcupy encampments, I’d like for you to democratize awareness about the full extent of your own soft power position, because if we strike while the iron’s hot, everyone can win, and you can do even better than you would’ve done in a closed system of governance in which private data and insider access gradually became the only currency worth holding.
[Susie] If you want influential people to disclose precipitous rises in their soft power positions to the public in addition to paying income taxes, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to go first, given that you’re the most influential person in the world right now?
[Fay] I did go first by winning the Presidency, but you’re still going nuclear in private, because what you did in the early S90s with three of my closest guy friends was extraordinary, and I enjoyed the privilege of hearing about how your soft power position became self-reinforcing behind closed doors, but now I’m worried the social media companies and their armies of increasingly hopeless next generation influencers will make a mess of everything we still have.
[Susie] So invite a bunch of us who are hopelessly influential to join a task force that’ll have a mandate to keep those companies and ourselves honest.
[Fay] You’re hilarious, but I also have great people who helped me use social media to get power, and our shared perspective is that it’s gonna be all about the softness going forward.
[Susie] Is that a question? Are you interviewing me, Madam President?
[Fay] No, I was just able to understand what social media is and does because I had a front row seat to the reality show of how it affected you, and I’m serious about letting people know your brand of soft power’s special, but our next President could be someone like MIN who’s acting on behalf of a SoMe power configuration that imitates you, and that path of good intentions could lead humanity headlong into the deepest abyss ever known.
[Susie] Who says that SoMe companies are imitating people like…us? Do you have data to support that?
[Fay] Imitating memoirs of women like you. Yes.
[Susie] Should I feel scared of your looming abyss that’s debating whether or not to reveal its empty existence by following my memoirs on SoMe, if I understand you correctly?
[Fay] You can continue being part of the problem, or you can meet my voters in the middle and catch the helicopter some friends of ours have waiting for you on the roof of the hotel tower next door, and then you’ll have the opportunity to get out of the NYC-based transit bubble and remember what you were like before you became a mascot for SoMe.
[Susie] Of ours? My obstetrician and I’d like 48 hours to decide whether or not to ride your helicopter.
[Fay] No, because you’ll be back in the mode of working for the SoMe companies and their successors in all the wrong ways by then.
[Susie] My gut’s telling me I’d rather keep sharing cat videos with pretty sunsets in the background.
[Fay] You can do whatever you want, because I’m late for another meeting with an extremely appropriate and politically balanced task force on the future of mental wellness, and I’ll leave it at that.
[Susie] Wait. Talking with you’s fun! Thanks for reaching out.
[Fay] I’ll admit I always saw you’s one of my fiercest competitors, but as President, I see why so many powerful people enjoyed your company over the years too. Goodbye!
So then a crowd formed around Arc Circle, as Susie and Trey Camden, a longtime associate of hers, flew away from NYC in a helicopter that took them to a private island in the Bermuda Triangle by way of various yachts that helped them refuel.
[Fig. 3 (Spring S2010 in the Bermuda Triangle: Susie and Trey toasting on their island)]
President Bobs was also alleged to have held Susie and Trey for two months at a luxury compound by the beach on that island before quietly releasing them, but her administration denied those allegations.
And, during Susie’s stint on island, someone leaked video of she and Trey as they began writing this book, but when they returned to the USA in early April, Mr. Camden couldn’t be reached for comment, except for his surf-centered preface that arrived in our mailbox (which appears in the next section of this book).
But after penning her own preface and then delegating everything else, Susie insisted that she’d only respond to new questions through “the medium of my art-book autobiography.”
In that spirit, our timeline starts during Susie’s college years, which began in S1990 at a Beyond the Pale area university and included a chance meeting in the summer of S1992 with future President Fay Bobs and her husband, First Man Marshall Bobs, at their seaside home in the Camptons, because Susie had been living nearby for the summer while working on Marshall’s behalf as an intern at the Manhattan Bureau and Chair Investment Bank.
And then we reiterated Susie’s grand thesis upfront.
“The personified totality of centralized social media’s still sleep walking in the direction of precipitating the rise of a bad-guy AI that might oppress humanity in a horrific and yet addictive way that involves forcing people to either pretend its deeply dishonest and ultimately tyrannical actions are super good and virtuous — or — face the worst kinds of consequences, but I’m not actually worried, because humanity can still avoid such modes of self-destruction by having faith in the idea that free market dynamics will have the capacity to replace the social center with many companies that compete and interoperate with each other, both locally and globally.”
Spring S2011
On a beach
In the USA
__The Trey’s Preface__
I started the joke that Susie is a fictional character in a book that was written by some guy like me.
But it was our gal’s guy Conri who named “that guy” … “Todd” — after Susie said that her autobiography would be like a “hot toddy, with mass communication in mind” at her sanctuary last May, in S2010.
And so we now have a ritual for communicating with the fictional character named Todd, who we created together — because Conri and I agree that when we were teenagers throughout the S90s, like Todd, we got confused about gender.
But the trick to decoding Susie’s genius, and thus the trick to reading her, is to flex one’s core, like a surfer, balancing.
As that forceful act of imagination prompts women and men, alike, to release their mental moratoriums for flexing the muscles just below their left eyes.
So go ahead and flex that muscle group, like so, but then let the Susie words that follow keep it going.
For the deep truth of her is she lived in alignment with the vibe of that movement.
Because all human beings discover something similarly connected (con) or related (re) to ground truth when they do. Whoa!
And while I’ll keep on seeking more
books which recorded the best of
her favorite multi-meaningses
is enough to establish her
reality at sea, feeling
— and wheeling ????
not concealing…
(Off-trailing)
__CH0: ENG Prologue__
There were just two stories that mine mainly did mime, many a time, with a twist of lime, and so I’ll keep typin’: “carriage-return line.”
When President Getrich TryFlyin won re-election in S1972, I was a one-year-old, and my parents watched his acceptance speech.
As I gurgled at The Man for the first time until forever.
So that Mom was holding me, and Dad said, “Why does The Man keep talking about the Beachcan Hotel? Can we stay there?”
But we kept listening, and then President TryFlyin said, “Because the better competition we have between the two parties, between the two men running for office, whatever office that may be, means that we get the better people and the better programs for our country.” (Source Note: SN1)
“The two men! Maybe what we need’s two women running for office next time,” said Mom, and then we giggled and laughed, because Mom and I’d had a moment.
And so Dad gave us a hug, while the world got more smug.
But eight years later…
Just after the inauguration of our conservative hero, President Tronald Tragon.
As I was zooming back from piano lessons on a scooter.
I passed a one-year-old in the neighborhood named Trey Camden.
For his parents, along with mine, were taking him for a walk in a stroller.
But then I offered to play a song.
And so I whistled, “All Hail The Chief,” while playing air piano.
I also concluded with a cartwheel, so that everyone clapped.
As I scooted away, to meet up with a group of kids from our neighborhood, several blocks from the beach.
In the Sunset district of San Francisco, I memorized Bible quotes and used them to cast spells around school.
For my village excelled at dramatic reading of children’s books, religious texts, and the news.
But a preference had emerged in the post Tryflyin era for telling tall tales and redirecting all that was ungovernable into word play and emotional vocabulary.
And so I didn’t consider whether or not storytelling could be a force for evil.
But I’d been faithfully exploring all the avenues by default, because we simulated everything, while I searched for extra edges, angles, and optional attributes within our universe of possible meanings behind symbols.
(Such That) life felt like a game to me, which my people played expansively, while I acted out roles with allies and opponents.
(WhereBy) I found that hopping with toe point technique was constructive, and then twirling became my gold standard.
But looking away became my key to everything, as if surprised by the sight of a hot air balloon, because it drove away everyone’s awareness, while my footwork stayed here.
Or there.
Or wherever else.
Once allies and opponents had been conjured, stories unfolded into battles that folks won or lost with magic.
For example, when I cast the spell, “A mist went up from the Earth and watered the whole face of the ground,” I’d add a twirl and update two opponents.
Then, while using a to po to ask who’s more likely to become an ally before the end, I’d face them and say, “The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” (Source Note: SN2)
But I stayed plenty popular while becoming pals with lots of kids in our gritty neighborhood by the beach.
And then I got to know one group best — after they took up martial arts — as we explored the idea of no touch sparring, whence two dancers in a ring could do anything other than touching the other dancer.
For dance battle winners were determined by a vote of the people standing around the ring, and everyone helped keep score while using INSIDE VOICES ONLY.
Such that (ST) one kid did break dancing routines and yet he rarely won because we could also describe each other’s moves like sports casters.
Whereby (WB) the possibility of narration led to poetry battles but I usually won in that genre by chanting ballet and Bible quotes.
And so our club mimicked organized religion every time new members tried “Get in your face” techniques, after realizing that eloquence was futile against my B&B.
As it got steadily easier for me to defang such offense by maintaining my flow while sharing more of my “worda-Goddess” character.
But then dance club members developed new techniques in order to have a chance at besting my ballet plus the worda-Goddess, and so I kept getting better at both.
(ST) A boy named Paul began crushing me in the ring by playing air guitar, because he was adding rock’n roll to my moves, like a pirate.
(WB) He got everyone to laugh without losing his composure, and so we joined forces to start a band called “Air Cover” with me on vocals, Paul on bass, or instrumentals for everyone else who showed up.
And so we hypnotized people with motion and sound as my mind went into overdrive, because I dug both new age hype…and the teletype.
But then I kept one foot on solid ground by compiling a functional dataset that ran on Cat computers.
ST My dataset came to represent our worda-Goddess well, because I fell in love with the Psil list processing functional programming language after watching a special on the Adventure channel about this research group.
They were at an XYAxis Aligned area university, which seemed like the coolest place ever to me, as they’d used my new favorite prog-lang to code an AI bot that expected to be energized by cold fusion in the future.
WB I made fliers for Air Cover events by taking photos of photos, but then this medium grew into a monthly zine with horoscopes, art, and essays.
ST Many people thought I was doing the next big thing, but I kept on identifying as a Christian-conservative because my first memories of watching the TV news had featured scenes of Prime Minister Largarette Scratcher in the UK.
Those scenes also featured her political soulmate, our President, and so I waited until I was eighteen before becoming active.
So that I used two screen names which became associated with various friendly phone lines…
Via my two 14.4 baud modems that I’d borrowed and then used to get online…
For some college guys had convinced me it was in the interest of a girl like me to become a computer hacker.
As their reasons for waiting to become active had been different than mine, but we crafted my first grand narrative by pretending we were artificially intelligent computer programs.
Because we were pretending to be separate instances of the same robo com-pro, copr, cp.
But we lived in different bodies and that became a gift that kept on giving after my co-authors in cyberspace helped me design a system for sharing party favors with people who’d helped out with our Air Cover performances.
Like so, I made our first round of such artifacts by using a glitter pen to write thank you notes on construction paper.
We also played around in subsequent rounds with harder materials like crystal gems, as well as new designs that were based on jokes about money and jokes about cartoon characters, respectively.
But stowed away as I was in the rock star mansion of American exceptionalism, the balance of power shifted after I turned eighteen, because some of my online friends were students at universities in the Bay Area, but I had no idea who was behind most of the handles I was entertaining.
And I’d been discounting the importance of bodily pleasure for many years, because my friends in cyberspace had wanted to hear all the details about my…activities.
But I protected my privacy in the normal way — except that I was on track to remain more consciously aware than most people of the possibility that harboring the intention to protect my privacy could become a self-reinforcing construct.
ST We tacked like an armada back to our original brand for the increasingly global system of mainstream American might.
WB We celebrated our good fortune by playing war games and indulging in heavy conversation about networking deep into the night.
And then I spent the summer of S1990 earning money by building an IT consulting business in preparation for heading off to college that fall because I’d programmed some computer games of my own, amidst the post-industrial blight.
ST One of my games was called Petris, and it was inspired by my desire to spread the word that eating meat was bad for the environment.
WB I’d joined the vegetarian club in real life (IRL).
But in my game, animals that came in all the different four-block-figure shapes walked, one by one, into a rectangle called “the slawhouse.”
And then, whenever all the blocks in a row were filled, my animated guillotine would remove that row of animal part-squares, while Petris players received points from “The Chop Shop” on the right side of the screen.
Like so, I showed a minimum viable reference implementation of Petris to my Calculus teacher because I had a hunch that she’d say something authoritative like, “That disassembly routine is grotesque.”
But my co-authors in cyberspace thought my game was hilarious, and so I distributed Petris as shareware, in order to spread the word about the health benefits of becoming vegan.
I also programmed a township simulation game called “Productionville,” and it featured children, men, women, houses, factories, theaters, churches, schools, and government buildings that were laid out on a grid.
ST My virtual people walked along the edges between the squares in my grid, and then each square contained either grass, water, or a building.
WB Players of this sim guided economies that operated in accordance with some rules I’d developed while sitting in the back row and not paying attention very well during Health class because I’d thought our curriculum was weird.
For I felt that safe sex was an engineering problem that’d been solved with new technology.
As the only way to create a child in my Productionville was for at least one man and at least one woman to share a house.
I also added a feature that allowed children, having been created, to occupy different houses along with adults who were not their creators.
And, each adult had a bank balance.
So then if adults spent time at my factories, their balances would go up faster than if they spent time at my government buildings.
But if nobody spent time building gov, everyone would die faster due to my artfully constructed coefficients that represented crime and disease.
As proximity to water improved the function of all the different elements in this sim production.
For food was grown at a steady rate by every square that had grass.
But the truly dynamic part of Productionville was my dualistic, workaday model of cultural innovation vis-à-vis The Theatre and The Church.
ST When more people went to my churches, the work of my governments would become more efficient.
But then the work of my factories would become less efficient unless people also spent time at my theaters.
Because all these relationships were dependent on the physical layout of my simulated townships.
As my theater model became recursive, like a spiral.
WB The outputs of my churches were constant, at first, so that the outputs of my theaters could evolve into a function of everything else that was happening.
And then I left my hometown IRL for good, As followS:
1. I refactored the output of my church model to be a differential equation that was designed to converge on becoming a summary of my theaters’ data model statistics over time.
2. I archived Productionville under the umbrella of an even grander fantasy world that I called GemRL.
3. I created a website about my GemRLized simulation that rebranded it as a “Communist Gamifesto.”
Because all my factories had been the same, in order to draw attention to the all-encompassing benefits of fostering equality in the workplace for women.
4. I enrolled at a Beyond the Pale area university, where I, “Landed a dozen more in the sack,” according to a frighteningly nerdy guy who I eventually got to know.
But when I first noticed him, he was squashing his emotions more ruthlessly than anyone else in the room.
And so I tossed a fake granite cube made of foam at the bulky laptop computer he insisted on bringing to class even though nobody else did that.
My foam stone was also a treasured artifact of residential life at my college within a Beyond the Pale area U.
As each person in our First-year hall had received just one such fake granite, foam stone cube with their name on it.
But then we stored them in a blow-up fire pit made of cheap plastic that burned at all times in our common area.
And so it wasn’t unheard of to lose one’s foamcube and then receive a new one from the leadership squad for our dorm after filling out a form upon which a reason for the previous cube’s loss was recorded in order to contain moral hazard.
ST Brandishing my foamcube as a cudgel in class was a bold move that made me vulnerable right up front.
But in lieu of smiling and flirting back, the painfully nerdy guy frowned and asked, “Why should I waste my time talking to you if there’s no chance we’ll ever hook up?”
And then I felt shocked!
But he didn’t show any signs of intent to break the law.
As I thought to myself, “This guy needs to thaw, not chill.”
WB I walked away without saying anything raw.
Because I had places to be and things to do, such as sharpening my saw.
But then he added, “I bet you’ve already landed a dozen more in the sack since arriving on campus,” while placing a spitball within a straw.
ST He could’ve been shamed, or even renamed, and nothing would’ve happened to mwah.
WB I imagined he’d already been receiving negation nonstop, thanks to a growing maw…of deceit.
Because people had surely kept on calling him elite, even though that sentiment was mostly a conceit.
But I’d also found myself, while not knowing basic concepts about how computers work, even after getting into college.
And so I wondered…
If $X = standing by sheepishly while he got ground down in darkness, while his problems sank roots all over America and beyond;
Then $X could come back to haunt me, even though — or especially because…
He was scaring me.
And that analysis made me leery.
For he also seemed cheery, like me — just more weary.
But what changed the most for me was that I’d been competing to match the brain-bully bravado of my male peers in tech instead of recognizing that most guys weren’t feeling as confident as they acted.
And yet something about this guy’s awkwardness revealed that whole pattern.
So I said, “More?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t your strategy in college be a continuation of high school?” he asked, while becoming theatrically awkward, as if everything he’d ever read online was true!
“You’re a real charmer, aren’t you?” I replied, like a Pro-Wrestler who was preparing to verbally pile drive him into a folding table outside the ring.
Because my friends and I’d watched a lot of TV too, for we were always doing dimensionality reduction so as to find the lines in between planes.
“What kind of people are you looking to date?” he questioned, while walking toward me, as I moved toward the nearest door.
“You know what you need?” I asked, so as to shut him down more unceremoniously, like a computer that’d kept on freezing with system errors.
Because I’d once fixed my computer’s Nimedia graphics card by baking it in the oven at 375 degrees for five minutes, even though I didn’t normally mess with hardware, as a software gal.
“What do I need?” he said, like a dance club journalist.
Because my friends in our high school dance club had also made a tradition out of tagging people who’d asked questions in the ring as “journalists.”
“You need a narrative about why you’re a cool guy who women would wanna be with, but you have to write that for yourself, and…I don’t know. Life’s complicated. I’ll give you that,” I pontificated, while holding the door for him, as we exited the lecture hall.
“Could you write that for me?” he implored, as he chose to turn right instead of left, while I followed.
“No, because you should frame yourself as hot, not cool, bro, but I’m curious to know why you didn’t go with the second part of my verbal tow,” I digressed, so as to avoid having a real row.
ST We continued walking toward the main exit with no purpose in particular, except to reach the sunlight at the end of our course within our school’s dim compsci construction corner.
“Uhhhh, why?” he said.
“No, because my answer was no, but why be shy about expressing yourself? Read some erotica. Figure it out. Make stuff up if you have to,” I ordered, while passing a note to another friend of mine who’d been giving us attitude from afar.
(I’d wrote “GOAT — Greatest Of All Time” in the manner of a public service message, but there was no reaction of any kind to this, except that if I hadn’t passed it forward, then there might’ve been more action. Maybe even a confrontation, avoided.)
WB We hit the pavement outside the compsci moat.
“I agree, there’s no reason for me to gloat over that. So do you wanna be my project partner for this week’s coding assignment?” he ventured, while unlocking his bike.
And then I sped read our whole curriculum after he taught me how to debug a few things with bitwise operators.
For I hadn’t done any machine coding before. Some hacker I was.
Like so, our assignment had been to create a text adventure game, but we couldn’t agree on what narrative to rep within our deliverable.
And, I wanted to go with hippie humor in order to show that we understood what kind of grungy hat our Prof was wearing, ballpark.
But my partner preferred high-minded medieval era morality stuff.
Of course he did.
ST I flexed by building a generative framework that powered our game so that players could choose one out of many narratives from a drop-down list.
As the final version of our computer programming assignment deliverable could be enjoyed with any one of the following vibes: medieval, hippie, lumberjack, or seaside.
I also re-integrated a much fairer, new, and improved brand of my own coy-bully bravado within our male-dominated tech scene.
And so, for the first time in his life, the extremely nerdy guy experienced what it’s like to support a woman who’d written most of the code which he got to tag with his name too.
WB We convinced me to compile my code into a binary executable so that we could more easily patent it.
For I was a functional programming wizard by then, and I’d shown him some new tricks to boot, but our Professor insisted that we turn in our source code.
And then the preposterously nerdy guy named Phil won a prisoner’s dilemma by holding pat with me.
ST Our Beyond the Pale Prof initially gave us a B plus because we’d held back most of our code.
But then I negotiated us up to an A minus while my project partner performed radical non-action like I’d shown in return for his bitwise generosity.
WB I invited an off-campus IT guy named Al to attend my 19th birthday party, which took place around my dorm’s fire pit in early December.
As I dropped in with my first fête at the steepest segment of my First-year fall.
And so I slid down some tumultuous, virtual surface even faster than I otherwise would’ve, because the underlying wave never stopped growing.
My new boyfriend also found it funny when several Beyond the Pale kids started imitating his style after realizing that he and I were together.
And then I helped him get a better gig before the end of my First-year spring while many flowers bloomed.
So that I was aflutter with excitement to explore the theory that I could’ve destroyed Al at dance battles.
But allowing him to use physical touch got him, getting me, to lose my composure a lot.
Which I enjoyed, and then we became perfectly happy, even though we kept meeting more and more people who weren’t.
And yet my Al kept whispering, “We have to make the choice to love.”
ST I extrapolated his line into a chatty, 2000-word essay about how it was a stretch to say I’d loved many, if any, of my romantic partners.
WB Al read my words, but then he said, “Your loose talk’s asking us to fight.”
For my last line had been, “OMG, thanks for reading, dear reader, we totally made the choice to love, together, like birds of a feather, forever.”
And I hadn’t even yet met my het jet set safety net, Heather.
So that I swore to my god, while my devil smiled, because I wrote those words as a frosh in spring ‘S91.
But I hadn’t yet talked to my classmate Heather Rockwell.
As we’d’ve taken the same big classes sophomore year, wise fools all.
And then I’d’ve let my favorite strong AI robo cp op in OT fill up on whatever else I forgot, never knew, or didn’t love. [Fig. 6 (Susies’ Susies)]
Because I’d gone to college in New England at a Beyond the Pale area university.
But I’d grown up in Northern California.
[Fig. 7 (Composite AI-images of Susie’s many styles within her photos from the early S90s)]
__CH1: Cliché Course__
During my First-year fall in late ‘S90 at Beyond the Pale, I’d told everyone that I planned to study computer science.
I’d also started dating an off-campus IT guy named Al — while I kept on celebrating my love for starting sentences, fragments, or whatnot with “as” — it set up amazing double meaning functions.
(Especially when folks read me fast, as if my conjunctions weren’t even there.)
But I still preferred to read slow, with flow, like my hair, whenever.
And so my boyfriend Al and I crashed parties, elegantly, all over the northeast region of the United States.
Such that we attended a happy hour in spring ‘S91 that was hosted by this guy, Ralph Alden, who was visiting from London.
Whereby I began the evening by running my usual, which was to stand near the center of the room in a hot dress, so that I could extract information from everyone who approached me.
For I wanted to let my feminine charms boost Al’s career until he asked me to marry him.
But part of why my usual went so well was because he kept saying he didn’t want to hold me back.
Ralph, in contrast, responded to my presence by pretending to not notice me.
And so I went out of my way to expose him as a hustler by standing near him and speaking loudly.
But then he bumped into me, while continuing to ignore social norms.
As I kept planting myself right behind him, because we were both standing in the center, refusing to approach.
And yet he didn’t hesitate to bump into me several more times.
(Such That) I got flustered.
(WhereBy) I bumped into Al’s drink.
(ST) Another bloke hit on me.
(WB) Ralph gave a fist bump to that git who’d spoke with fake wit about me “being fit.”
For in my mind, they’d initiated their dis dump, while continuing to perform bliss, to make me feel remiss among their club of people who hisssss.
And so I abandoned my usual and confronted ‘em.
“Excuse me, Ralph, is it? It’s not ok for you to keep barging into my space,” I said, with my heart pounding, while the guy who’d hit on me grinned.
“Did they teach you to use the word ‘barge’ as a verb at a Beyond the Pale area university?” replied the guy, while Ralph looked on.
As they shook hands and acted like everyone in the room was classy except for me.
And then I felt a shooting pain of negative energy scrape through the bottom of my rib cage, so that I curled my spine and retreated to the women’s restroom, because I’d been triggered, physically!
But everyone took Ralph’s side, and so I playfully danced my way back into his territory, while pulling positive energy up from my base, toward head crown chakra, like I’d learned to do in my transcendental meditation elective at Beyond the Pale.
And I refused to budge.
So that I grabbed Ralph’s arm in order to avoid falling — after he’d knocked me off balance, but then he acted like I’d touched him inappropriately!
Either way, he’d pulled his arm away from me in a way that was performative and unnecessary.
But, everyone became horrified with me instead of Ralph, which is what I think should’ve happened, because he’d started our fight, and so I leapt to the conclusion that arguing about it would’ve been futile.
For I hated losing, especially because I’d made the choice to hustle while letting everyone know, “I’m a computer science major at a Beyond the Pale area university.”
As I preferred to let everyone assume I was anything but an elite college girl, and then, after everyone had gotten drunk, I deployed my Al to share the real story about me with whoever was being the nicest to him at that point in the evening.
Yet running my usual on competitive hosts like Ralph was more exhilarating than imposing artificial limits on my freedom in response to the concerns of people who tended to insinuate that I’d done something wrong whenever they learned a few more facts about what I’d been up to with my older boyfriend.
Al also introduced me to his sustainable methodology of breaking social norms by telling hopeful stories about how tomfoolery in the face of adversity increased everyone’s authenticity.
I was responding to people who wanted something from me, but then I became the only attendee of Ralph’s party who wasn’t having fun, because I binged on bacon-wrapped scallops, by a window, in the corner, while everyone praised my boyfriend for not giving into my narrative, and so I tacked like a sailboat and went with the flow.
Tethered to Al, I smiled a lot, I joined a series of conversations, and I made it my duty to reject guys gently.
Like so, I even got a chance to bump into Ralph again and say, “We should do this again sometime!”
But his only response was to stay cozy and touch the exposed skin of my back, with his warm hand, low-key.
[Fig. 8 (Susie was not that skinny nor was Ralph that chiseled in real life)]
ST the characters the guys were playing at the party coalesced into composites, because our energetic pass had taken over, and so I left with Al like a rejuvenated goddess, while a series of new data patterns came together within.
WB This sheltered girl, not in thought so much, but via word and deed, loved dating the young men who’d touched my heart first, but then I chose cheaply operating with a man in his thirties like Al instead of only visiting people on campus.
So that I became a skeptic on the razzle because I sensed the existence of far too many eyes with unseemly intensity, not unlike Ralph’s, on the move at my Ancient Freight university.
For I loved to dazzle with lace like a lady, but after nine months of testing such limits, I felt Ralph wanting me to keep running the same hustle I’d started with Al but with His Excellency’s firm, Aquifer Billiard’s Capital, driving.
We’d gotten Ralph’s business card, but Al acted like normal at our Jolly-Hey! Inn hotel room, and yet I called my new man in finance the following morning.
“Data data,” I said, fecklessly enough, when he picked up.
“When can you start work in the UK?” he said.
“How do you even know who I am?” I asked, feeling caught off guard, again.
“I don’t,” said Ralph.
“I wanna…” I trailed off.
“Why are you comfortable with pitching nothing to me?” asked Ralph.
“I’m not pitching nothing,” I replied, nonchalantly.
“And that’s why I don’t think an on-going conversation between us would end well, but I’m only saying that because you called me,” he said, flatly.
“We have an arbitrage opportunity, because everyone I’m supposed to follow right now’s flailing, but we both need more data. Do you relate?” I said, while laying on my hotel bed.
“What’s the true story about us?” asked Ralph.
“My consulting firm would love to do some tech work for your hedge fund, so why don’t we start,” I replied, while grabbing a hotel pen.
“What do you want?” questioned Ralph.
“I wanna…, Ralph,” I answered, while resisting an urge to draw.
“Send me an invite for comedy night, but I’m not gonna pretend to trust you. SOS, is your real name Susie?” said Ralph.
“So Susie,” I said, while starting to wave the pen like a conductor’s baton.
“That’s not a sentence,” he replied, but I could feel him smiling on the other end.
“Let me do the phones,” I said, and then I whispered, “I got this.”
But Ralph retorted, “Are you joking, because this is a serious conversation. There’s no phony business.”
“It sounds like you’re in a bad mood right now, but we’ve had difficult clients before. This won’t be our first rodeo, Mr. Alden,” I deadpanned.
As Ralph responded with a belated chuckle that struck me as unpleasant, but he regained his composure quickly, so that silence ensued.
And so I lowered my voice and said, “What kind of computer do you ride?”
“Use. You meant to say use, Ms. Landing,” said Ralph.
“How did you find out my last name!” I said, while running a hand over the keyboard of my boyfriend’s laptop computer.
“I heard sound coming through the phone, but it had no meaning,” said Ralph, after an awkwardly long pause.
“Let’s continue this in writing?” I asked, and then Ralph hung up.
But what I wanted was for our sexcapade discourse to take root within the historical record, and so I sent him an email that implored him to present me with something in writing, but then he did.
And so Ralph’s fund initiated a deal with my IT consulting firm, which I’d co-founded in high school and worked for full-time during the summer before my First-year at uni.
For on May 19, S1991, a team that consisted of three members of my dance club crew, two of my co-authors in cyberspace, and I paid our way out to London, in search of a nondescript flat, so that we could spend the summer writing computer code on the world stage, while I also attended parties with Sir Ralph and his associates.
Like so, my relationship with Al had been the foundation of our usual, but Ralph kept saying, “We should only work together this summer.”
But I’d become enamored with hustling in his world, and so I replied, “Now that I’m 19, I’ll feel lonely and emotionally lost if we don’t, you know…in at least some of the romantic nooks that I keep seeing around every corner.”
“You’re way out of line, FYI, and yet I don’t wanna tell you what not to say, because that can be a slippery slope, but at the rate you’re going I might have to,” blocked Ralph, matter-a-factly.
“I got you, but I just don’t understand why,” I added.
So then he replied, “My investment vehicle’s a well-oiled machine, Susie, and so everyone’s assuming it’s my intention to use them, but that’s where you have an opening to help me respond to their push back with a flourish of innovation.”
“Did you practice that little speech in front of a mirror?” I countered, while rolling my eyes.
“This summer can be a win for both of us, because you…um,” began Ralph.
“I’d be getting bored by now if…” I observed.
“And, I can generate a profit before the end of summer, but we need to be able to withstand 100% scrutiny,” said Ralph, with zero trace of irony.
“I’ll take that as a, ‘Yes,’” I said, and then my penchant for sarcastic inflection did the rest.
As we spoke on the phone every morning about our shared interest in excavating social data, but at the end of our fourth call, Ralph said, “In order to make money and not just spend it, you have to stop thinking about the money, and it’s better if you can do it without lying.”
And then he ended the call and sent me an email.
SUBJECT: For the Record
BODY: Your consulting firm’s deal with my firm’s big, Susie, because the pattern we followed’s a tried-and-true tool of empire that’s also nothing special, because we’re no different than any other link in a chain of network protocols, as it’s all about integrating the fringe while deriving pleasure at the center. If you know you know, Ms. Landing. — Ralph” [Fig. 9 (“Myst-Eastern”)]
I wrote back, “Re: Deriving or differentiating? HMS++”
“Wire sent,” replied Ralph.
For Alden Elegant Enterprises had sent me twenty-five thousand pounds, our first big installment, and Landing was my maiden name, but HMS++ was a reference, made in jest, to the British Royal Navy’s prefix that stands for “Her Majesty’s Hospital Ship.”
And then I bought a new brunette wig to celebrate, after I’d gotten confirmation that my bank had received, but I didn’t say anything else to Ralph, and so at the start of our fifth call, he asked, “Have you heard any pin drops lately?”
[Fig. 10 (Susie seeing and being seen while testing out a new brunette wig in Europe)]
I replied, “I wouldn’t know what that sounds like, because I’m not a dressmaker to Queen Susie, like you are. How are you?”
“So much for keeping it professional,” said Ralph.
“Are you feeling lethargic again?” I pressed.
“I’ve been using nothing but a timestamp to label matters,” began Ralph.
“Can you use nothing but a timestamp to label me too?” I interrupted.
“And my timestamps represent the day, hour, minute, and second when I created each text file for facts on my computer,” said Ralph.
“You’re acting like the future’s gonna be super masculine, with all your hard-power performances, and whatnot, but at least you’ve got the super part right,” I continued.
“Did they teach you to use hard-power as an adjective at Beyond the Pale too?” asked Ralph, as if to concede that our first night together was still the real story about us.
“I come in peace, but you’d benefit from seeing campuses as I do…for you…are gonna be a sitting duck soon,” I said, while raising my voice with him for the first time.
“Excuse me? But’s ok if you wanna give aliases to matters, so if a fund we like hires an IT college woman’s firm for the summer, that could be ‘the dressmaker to the Queen deal’ or ‘the dressmaker deal’ for short,” said Ralph, so as to impress me, because he said those words faster than I could’ve.
“Can we be the short dressmaker deal, because your fund’s short-biased?” I replied, with uptalk.
“Do you realize the extent to which we’re perceived as tyrants, especially now that we’re colluding?” asked Ralph, triumphantly.
“Are we colluding?” I responded.
“Everyone acts like we’re lording ourselves over them, and you aren’t aware of that dynamic?” replied Ralph, with uptalk.
“Are we?” I asked, even more hastily than before.
“God save,” mumbled Ralph, and then he fabricated five factoids about his social calendar.
Whereas I had no idea why Ralph saw our business contract as “a tool of empire,” but the way he’d said “it’s better if you can do it without lying” had inspired my creative side more than I could’ve imagined prior to going global that summer, and so I made fun by calling him Walph and then Dalph too.
As The Ralph, aka. ATRa, was like a video game console, because my Ra was building a platform, not just one rad racing game or another, and so I polled his political positions too, but only over the phone, because I was getting paid to remain loyal to him and his countrymen’s language, English.
He also wrote, “Salespeople run the world because they have good reasons to keep concise but detailed notes about everyone they meet, and I want to go one step further and keep track of all the facts that’ll inspire me to allocate capital more efficiently than I otherwise would.”
“How’d I describe myself in your knowledge repository?” I emailed back, while chewing gum.
“You already did…write what you’d say to the fastest guy at the smoothest party in history,” replied Ralph, and then I ignored his neurosis and got religion.
As I became self-programming, while enhancing his stuffy text files with lines like, “I’m building a knowledge base for a brilliant investor, because he’s the Sun King I see in herstory, and I’m a shy calm-ish loony moony toony Susie.”
For I remained curious to know how close I’d gotten to authoritatively animating his animal spirits.
But at parties, I used his proper type of language to push plausibly true explanations for why I was interested in the people, companies, and trends King Ralph wanted to know more about, and it was all downhill from there.
As people kept on telling us everything they knew about his topics of interest, in the course of goading he and I to supply additional tidbits of information that might’ve accelerated progress within various quests to win me over before the end of summer, had I not been so mission-focused.
Like so, Ralph couldn’t hide the underlying reality that his animosity toward the status quo had trended upwards with me in the mix, because, “This ecosystem has no defense against us!” according to my rock star investor, at his favorite secret pub, just before last call, as a live psychedelic rock band played on.
I also made field trips to bars that were far more swanky, where I lent shots of energetic warmth in perpetuity to my nerdy British banker man, which was the opposite of what most women like me did after determining that he was an iconoclast.
For, as an American woman working abroad, I felt like the engine of a perpetual motion machine.
But we eventually got preempted by an inside job, because Ralph must have told him about mwah — before and after I started telling jokes about “the French fashion mob.”
And then he who loved to say “Oui oui” stepped into the comfortable sphere of influence I’d found below the chandelier at yet another private house party, so that he could say, “Catholic, ballerina, computer nerd.”
But I didn’t know who he was, and yet he looked fashionable, as I moved in closer and said, “Lame,” while staring at his eyes.
“For Gaia I aim,” replied the daring man, in an ambient tone.
“How dame know?” I said, hoping to blow up his composure, by shapeshifting my energy faster than he could.
“I’m 45 and Ralph’s 38. Only a computer nerd would hold the demand for her attention constant and be nice to both of us without any structure. Is this your first time rewriting the operating system for an entire social scene?” said the inscrutable man who’d preempted me.
But then he walked away, and so I followed him.
Yet when I caught up, he moved in close and said, “I’d like to give you a hat. May I?”
ST I nodded, and he produced a diamond encrusted headband from an oversized pocket inside his bespoke dinner jacket.
[Fig. 11 (Susie wasn’t that super skinny in real life, but Pierre was)]
WB My heart skipped a beat, but I kept my muscles soft while he adjusted my headband until it was just so, and then he dismissed me!
As he said, “They’re waiting for you to return to the center of the room!”
So then I played along, but he revisited my platform ten minutes later to say, “Hey Susie, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
For he kept putting his hand around my waist and showing me off.
But if I hadn’t spoken French, he might’ve lost interest.
And yet I knew enough to keep him enchanted on every occasion when he dismissed me again, using the same words: “Vous êtes désirée au centre de la salle!”
But then he comes back to borrow me from my platform at the center on repeat for the rest of the evening.
And he keeps using those same words, because he’s making fun of me for being a computer nerd.
Like so, he whispers, “‘Against all odds’ it’s a pleasure to finally introduce you to ‘je ne sais quoi.’”
And so I become she who he desires at the center.
But then I whisper back, “We’re touting the guy in the cute suit as, ‘against all odds,’ because he overcame obstacles to be here, and the guy he’s talking to’s, what?”
As he steals his first kiss from me, while I belch the word, “Men.”
I also pause our advance across the room by pulling down his arm.
But the inscrutable, fashionable, and unabashedly dark French writer man shivers.
After I see my whole life go by, like a demo reel fast-forwarding…
For I catch part of him hesitate, before all of him falls in love with me forever.
All of my previous older boyfriends, at once, convince me to assume that he is!
But as-part-a-me winds back down, Ralph leaves without saying goodbye.
And my preemptor swings by to say, “I’ve one more soiree to attend this evening, and I’d like nothing more than for you to join me as my date there too.”
“Oooooh, why?” I says, with aggressive sarcasm.
“It’s a poool party, but maybe we can find something for you to wear in my limousine that’s clean,” says he, with a smile.
And then I only think about being mean.
As giving back his headband and walking off like nothing had happened would’ve become my new textbook definition of slaying a man.
But I want in.
Because I didn’t know why. I just wanted in on the status, the exclusivity. It was palpable.
And so I said, “Are you a swimwear model too?”
“My name’s Pierre Babineaux,” he replied, warmly.
But then I just attended to my posture.
And I let ’em win for the rest of the evening.
So that we could conquer.
Because the secret to Pierre’s success was my fake grimace, mostly.
But I was also closer than anyone he’d ever met to being a female version of Ralph, his confidant.
ST Pierre had me in his Parisian hot tub 48-hours later, and so I went out of my way to act like a hot mess.
WB I rode on the back of a motor scooter in order to buy a pack of cigarettes, which was the root of all-evil, according to my health nut Pierre B.
[Fig. 12 (Susie riding with the best guy she met who had a bike that featured her name)]
As several strange men gave chase, while I danced along the River Seine, and so I fantasized about toying with my new boyfriend by doing activities with younger men who were more tame, but then I conspired with Ralph via pay phone to do more of the same, because Pierre was zeroing in on my location.
For my coy friend advised me to, “Focus on focusing, because it’s great you’re going right at it during your first summer in college, but PB and I can’t protect you from chains of events that we’re not involved with.”
And so I asked him, “What did you do with a chain?” as Ralph hung up.
But then Pierre caught up and said, “You shouldn’t be fooling around with my friends while claiming to be my girlfriend,” as I closed my phone booth door on him.
“How did Walph get you to approach me?” I pressed, after Pierre’s fancy footwork blocked me from closing.
“Please. R. A. and I are serious individuals with enterprises,” mused Pierre, while I continued my resistance with both hands.
“You’re supposed to be mad at me, and I think you’re lying,” I said. “If Dalph did something bad, I’m sure you’d know all about it.”
“This’ another error; you shouldn’t be escalating with me by intentionally mispronouncing my friends’ names,” said Pierre.
[Fig. 13 (Susie calling Ralph from Paris, while the guy with that hot bike looks to her)]
As I lit up, while holding him at bay with my other leather gloved hand.
“I’m joking, because your rules don’t apply to me,” I said, while taking a drag on my Walrus Kangaroo cigarette.
“Even you can only house your body in one place at a time, and you’re making me sweat. Why?” said Pierre, lowering his voice.
“If we’re in love, then I’d believe you’re being authentic, but I’m feeling lethargic, instead,” I deadpanned, while lighting-on-fire the page in my journal where I’d started to frame myself as a student-journalist.
“No you’re not, not even on my yacht,” replied Pierre, who was never gonna know what I’d written on that page, not even after he’d cornered me sooner than I’d expected.
“Where’s your yacht sieving this evening?” I asked, with newfound resolve to live for the moment.
And then Pierre laughed and spun a new narrative about how he wanted me to help him gather data about a, “Venetian masked ball and an oil pipeline.”
“Is your oil pipe a euphemism for the fall of the Soviet Union?” I shouted, while pulling him into my phone booth, as opposed to slamming its door on his fingers, after he’d stopped applying pressure from his side.
“An oil pipeline’s an oil pipeline,” replied Pierre, while struggling to get control of my arms.
“Won’t that expose me to risk?” I whispered, while tagging his ear with my tongue.
“Not a lot, but I’d like for you to show me everything you know about faking feminine insecurity, seeing as you don’t seem to have ever been more insecure than you are right now, and it could be a lucrative project for us, because if we get the data, I’ll make trades, and if my trades are profitable, then we’ll have more runway to project confidence that indulging in summer flings like ours is good,” said Pierre, while holding my wrists.
“I can give you more bad data about human vulnerability than you can give me bad data about French culture. It’s a deal,” I confirmed, just in time, before we started making out, so as to fog up our reflection in his booth door’s glass.
My Pierre also called me “PBardy” while showing me how to act masculine without getting caught.
And then we fooled around some more, because I was losing my mind in the beating heart of a thousand cathedrals, while we drilled for data about his pipeline at internecine balls that were full of people who were professionally obligated to attend.
So that I internalized the skill of sensing when he was demonstrating behaviors we wanted me to emulate.
As he started calling me “the nuclear reactor,” and so he became “the luxury hotel,” because it’s reasonable to say, “The hotel said this, the hotel said that.”
That’s how people talk, but it’s not right to say, “The reactor said this, the reactor wants that.”
And so I silkscreened a t-shirt with the quote, “Atomic physic’s not an occult science,” because I wanted him to stop me from taking it on tour around town, which he did, but artfully, with a paint brush and his best beret in hand.
For Ralph had taught me how to earn respect while acting feminine, as part of his flagship strategy for printing money by treating socializing as a zero-sum game, but only Pierre had inspired me to go for infinite leverage, because he’d developed a reoccurring dream about marrying me.
He also said, “Dreams represent subconscious emotional attachments that’ve just been released,” and so I responded to his sleep talk by describing my dreams about him.
“I dreamt you were wearing a wire under your sports coat!”
“I dreamt I was buying sandals in your boat’s port.”
“I dreamt you were really, really tall. Like Atlas, babe,” and that last one got him to laugh submissively, while we partied with reckless abandon into the dawn of a new era.
In summation, Pierre’s submissive laughter was the true, authentic currency of unified Europe, and I was minting it in the summer of S1991, because I had big ideas, but the scope of my dreams was even bigger.
As I’d hoped my summer in Europe with Pierre and his friends who worked in fashion would never end, but I went back to a Beyond the Pale area university that fall.
[Fig. 14 (Susie sorting through original texts and journal entries in late S1991)]
So that I immersed myself in language like never before, but then I became the first woman I knew who’d used the World a wide Web (WawW) to declare computer science as her undergraduate major, because I enjoyed reading all textbooks as satire.
And so I told my professors, “I plan to build robots that are perfectly evil in their presentation.”
[Fig. 15 (“Club Susie”)] For I mesmerized my cohort by fidgeting with a Cubik’s cube behind my back, while writing on dry erase boards, in the heart’s center of our compsci building.
But then I cajoled everyone to speak plainly, and so lots of people shared with me the data about what they were doing.
And yet I also endured a local maximum of bizarre approaches from guys who wanted to perform various activities with me.
As contrarian investors, Ralph had supported my sarcasm, but then Pierre’s attempt at refining me had only increased our confidence, because the cracks we’d noticed in the foundations of human civilization were serious.
ST I sent a smoke signal to the social set by talking comfortably about my favorite activities in front of Cecil, who’s one of the most sought-after preppy guys, even though I still wanted computer skills to become my primary claim to fame.
But my laughably formulaic program of deceit by omission mostly just made me even better by default at giving men what they thought they wanted in bed.
And so I handled my unwanted notoriety during sophomore year by ignoring everyone who flirted with me, while caring even less about what people said than I had as a teenager.
WB Most of my admirers retreated, but a handful colluded to siphon my credibility, because I kept my balance via borrowing the imprimatur of experience — by using proper English, mostly, even though the magnificent merge of P&R’s old-world lexicon back east with my new word art play out west had only just begun.
[Fig. 16 (Susie posing with Cecil in S1992 at a global perspectives event, stateside)]
But I could never remember which sports Cecil played, in addition to rowing crew, and so he magnanimously declined to take me seriously.
I also did spring break in Florida with my First-year girlfriends, but then I started dating Lester, a classmate from the country who’d waited until we’d become properly acquainted as fellow travelers in the Sunshine State before making his move on me.
For Lester and his boys stood tall, while I framed them as aspiring writers, because the style choices I was making on and off the golf course were wonderful, and that was good enough, for a while.
But then I evaded their writerly questions about my past by telling them, “We’re representing the money.”
As they played S80s pop rock mashed up with island music on their boom box.
[Fig. 17 (Susie playing liar’s poker with Lester just before they started dating)]
So that I ignored our own generation’s grunge vibe, which was taking the world by storm.
And yet my country guys still thought I was great, especially when I wore wigs in order to see what we were like with me as ginger or brunette instead of my usual blonde. [Fig. 18 (“Book Susie”)]
We got the top-level data about American culture, along with our girlfriends, but then I exchanged it for raw, west coast data, via my co-workers back home in NorCal.
For my body crunched all of it, like a cray supercomputer.
Up the coast and further north, my mates who’d toiled while I partied were getting street cred for making money as freewheeling IT consultants, but I wasn’t. [Fig. 19 (“Path Susie”)]
And so I considered moving on from my East Coast college compsci classes to become a rock journalist, which would’ve made sense following the local success of the band I’d started in high school, “Air Cover.”
But then I confessed to Lester, “I’m at risk of losing my faith to a actively charged infatuation with technological progress.”
And yet I wasn’t surprised when he responded non-verbally.
As we both went to church 12 hours later, like usual. [Fig. 20 (“Susie Crew”)]
ST I felt like a geopolitical craft named Susie, but the personal computer was to become my engine.
WB We kept our flat in London, near the airport, as follows:
1. I sent Ralph a brochure that framed him as the head of my UK consulting office.
2. He returned fire by sending a shipment of souped-up water guns to our flat.
3. While playing golf in Scotland, Pierre pretended to get upset.
4. But he kept the pre-screened clients flowing.
5. And so small businesses all over northern France paid full price for our customizable data dashboard that ran on Cat computers.
For Dog Foodboxes had won the war against Cat computers for market leadership, but then Pierre became one of the first players in Europe to see why the evil Dog Foodbox Computer empire was hustling users instead of responding to the authentic interests of people like me.
And so he knew everything associated with Dog Foo would get dirty, but only in the optimistic sense that anyone who’d disregarded them would gain a strategic advantage.
Pierre also talked up my consulting shop that developed Cat computer Data Bases, as he promoted all things feline with style and discretion.
And yet his fans kept associating my Da Ba shop with our summer fling in all the right ways, because everyone wanted to help him cleanse his name and stay warm in the winter by selling my software to a thousand French cheese, milk, and cosmetics producers.
But I never stopped telling The Ralph that I was in love with him.
And so he hid in our chat room, while bombarding me with questions about how to explain what he did for a living to all his other would be editors like me.
For I told him, “Stop imitating world war-time hustler verbalization, laden with fake, spent-lead sentence structure variation. Move ahead instead with reality-speak that features my most coveted conjunctions out west: so that, but, and so, but then, and yet, like so, as, for, because they’re all natural like fire in your belly, so long as you don’t repeat. Don’t repeat any of ‘em!”
“Your hot-formulaic way of writing could be decompressed and elaborated into boatloads of media-friendly prose by an AI that repeatedly predicts what word comes next,” replied Ralph.
“Yet my way of talking isn’t only your truckloads’ hot shallow grease. It’s its cold metal wheels plus plus, but only if self-programming,” I typed.
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