Rachel Glaser: Pee On Water

After Fun Face was sold, they moved away from their parents and for two years tried different cities until settling in a lonely loft space in Brooklyn that Jason thought was ruining his life. He took history classes at the New School and played chess in the park against men he was afraid of. His sister ran around museums and had boyfriends and practiced her lousy pool game in bars. After ‘Fun Face,’ no one could tell her what to do. She could buy herself into anything.

Jason was older than his sister, but it no longer felt like an advantage. Somehow he had fallen distractedly behind. The few relationships he had were brief and he’d never been able to give a girl an orgasm. He had even read articles on how. It was a major character flaw of his, he felt. It made him nervous about the rest of his life. Guys in jumpsuits did cool routines in the subway and Jason was paralyzed over whether to give them money.

Sometimes he went out to bars with an acquaintance from his class, but the music was so processed. “It sounds like a baby swallowed a synthesizer!” he said, but Blake did not react. Jason watched people play laser pool. All the girls he met were strangers.

While Jason lifted weights in his room, his sister virtually dated the rap star Kanye West. Other girls across the country were doing the same. Jason walked into the kitchen/dining room/rec room (it was all one crazy mess), and saw his sister talking to Kanye at a restaurant.

“Hi, Jason!” she said, in a voice he’d heard around all her boyfriends. She wore the tight gloves with sensors.

“Hey.”

“Move in closer so you can be here.”

Kanye was huge on the wall. His sister was there too. The scene did look very real, but dreamy like a Pixar movie. Some spaghetti sauce had even stained the white tablecloth where they were eating.

“Can you taste that?” asked Jason. His sister’s spaghetti played in spirals around her fork and spoon.

“No, not really.”

Kanye looked at his sister with dewy, rendered eyes.

Jason got a job scanning old newspaper articles into computers at a library. His time split nicely between history classes and this newspaper job, and though he still didn’t have any good friends, the city bummed him out less. He spent his free time in Central Park, feeling good about trees, feeling left out by trees, watching people play frisbee. His sister was having trouble with Kanye and often he came home to them fighting in Kanye’s flashy apartment. One night, Kanye had left and Jason’s sister remained, wandering. She shut the game off with her foot. “He’s being an idiot. It keeps ending. Every way I try it. I keep resetting to earlier levels, but it doesn’t matter.” She looked helpless and wild.

“I bet that’s just how the game ends. With the relationship over,” Jason said. “They don’t want girls to spend the rest of their lives in this game.” Did they ?

“I know. Maybe. I hadn’t felt like that about someone in a long time.” She took a computer chip out of the game machine. “This is him.”

“You should date someone where you can taste the food.”

She gradually let go of Kanye. She and Jason ordered pizzas and played cards. The loft no longer felt like a trap to Jason. The ceilings were high with possibility, the extra air gave him ideas. On paper, he drew out the brief timeline of his life. He wrote letters to old high school friends.

His sister was pretty and social; it wasn’t long before she had a new boyfriend. Ryan was an amateur boxer/website creator. They hung out in the living room playing boxing Xperiences. Then she was never around, always at Ryan’s, and the loft again greeted Jason in an empty way. He was putting away laundry when he found the ziplock bag and examined the computer chip. Video games had gotten so small. He set it on the kitchen table and stared at it while he ate his meals. He used it to reflect dizzy spots of sun. He pretended it could blow up the world.

Jason was reluctant. The bag was labeled Jon Lennin Xperience in smudged marker. Why had they spelled John wrong? Was it mistranslated? He held the chip up to one eye. It looked like a bad little space town. It took him awhile to fit it in the game machine. He switched it on and held the controller.

It was a scene of buildings. It seemed irrelevant. The buildings were computer generated with the same strange glow from the Kanye game. A flock of birds flew by and it was stunning. The buildings were so real (each brick!). Light refracted off water-droplets clinging to a window’s screen. Then, the scene dissolved into rolling grassy fields, ancient Japanese cities. An instrumental Beatles medley played and Jason felt moved in an embarrassing, immediate way. Giraffes swayed in a jungle. The Beatles ran through the scenes and it really looked like them. Alive like them.

For a while, he only watched the intro. He’d shut off the game at the menu screen and leave for Manhattan with a good feeling in his face. A person heat. He didn’t tell his sister. He’d found an easier way to exist and it wasn’t illegal.

He wrote his parents an enthusiastic postcard but didn’t mention John Lennon. Jon Lennon. Jon Lennin. Maybe that was a copyright issue. He’d always loved the Beatles, it was the first music he’d heard. It was family car music. He’d never had to grow out of it. He could play ‘Norwegian Wood’ on the guitar and ‘Blackbird.’

He memorized the opening sequence: the sudden descent of the birds, the wink Ringo gave before diving into a glimmering pool. (And the alternate version: George sharing an ice cream with Paul.) One day lingering at the menu screen, Jason just went for it.

Sometimes he was Jon looking out at the world, sometimes he was behind glass at the recording studio. He was Ringo once, searching a mansion for his missing drumstick. He saw Paul naked in the shower laughing. He spoke into the controller and usually people responded. He was the car driving them down the street.

He learned to use his sister’s video guitar and the sensey-gloves and wore her dimension glasses. It was insane. Jason would pause the game to eat quick meals of anything then rush back to the game.

They jammed on expensive guitars on someone’s balcony.

“Hey Jon! Check this out,” Paul played a predictable riff.

Jason played it back and made it better.

Occasionally, he could switch point-of-view by pressing the select button, but usually he was locked. There was no manual, but pressing A and B simultaneously brought up a hints screen that occasionally had background or tutorials. There were levels. He could save his progress. Some of the levels were so long he forgot he was in one.

One night, instead of showing up to his concert, Jason dragged Jon to a dock and watched boats. The wind swept Jon’s hair across his glasses. Jason pressed Y + L to search his pockets. A box showed up at the side of the scene that taught Jason to smoke with the X and Y buttons. A pretty girl walked over to him and was rude. Jason carefully climbed Jon down the dock into the water. The sensey gloves were heavy as he swam Jon around. It felt odd. When he dragged Jon back on the dock, there was a small crowd and he was surprised to have passed the level.

Jason’s sister was glad he was finally playing. “Great graphics,” she said, stopping by for clothes. She gave him a mysterious look. “Hey, I met this girl I want to set you up with!”

“I don’t know. Maybe in a few months.”

She laughed at him and went back to her boyfriend. Jason was Jon, looking at everything he saw.

It felt good to sing with the band. The lyrics were already memorized. He sang them while a little dot ran the score, marking his pitch. He skipped his New School classes. He scanned newspaper in a haze.