October 29, 1994 Parties in New York are not about fun. They are about fear: fear that you are not talking enough or saying the right thing; fear that the fine stranger who could make you rich or famous or happy is on the sofa when you are at the buffet table, or at the buffet table when you are on the sofa; fear that a much better party is underway somewhere else entirely, where the human Gods of Manhattan shake with laughter at your absence. New York, at the end of the twentieth century, was the brightest spot in one of history's brightest eras - or perhaps just its most well-lit - and this subtle terror was the cost of admission. It was a perennial feeling of lost opportunity, or at least lost opportunism. At the corner of Washington and Desbrosses Street, in the fashionable neighborhood of Tribeca, a young woman stood and looked up at a lighted window. There was a party going on inside, and she wondered if her clothes were nice enough, and clean enough, to go unnoticed in the crowd. She had been wearing them for nearly two weeks. Standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the window radiating music and light, she was thinking about food. There might be food at the party, and she was terribly hungry. She rang the bell, and when the door buzzed open, she went inside.

Beck, "Loser," 1994

Tonight, in this loft, nearly 500 people had gathered to chat and drink and listen to a tape of popular songs carefully selected to show off the mixer's good taste. Perhaps half of them knew the occasion for the party; half of that half knew the host, and most of them not well enough to seek him out for a greeting. Their sheer numbers thrilled him anyway: he had gone through at round of terror earlier that evening at the thought no one might show up. At around 5 o'clock, he had gone through his address book and telephoned to invite nearly everyone in it. He had even called to invite his dentist, and when the dentist turned out to be of town, he invited the hygenist. The new girl picking hors d'oeuvres off the buffet table could be his hygenist, for all he knew. She was a pretty girl, even with her mouth full of food. Her hair was dark, and her eyes dark, too: she looked like a black and white photograph, even in full color and in real life. She had a certain bravado about her. It was a false bravado. He had no way of knowing how terrified she was of being exposed as a party crasher, and how determined to eat as much as she could before that could happen. Holding a full plate, she sat down on a couch, where a large woman in a yellow dress was already holding court.

Gemma Guimard, stretched out luxuriously on the couch, was hard at work. She was always popular at parties. As soon as someone mentioned she was a clairvoyant, she was surrounded by people wanting free samples. The trick was to offer just enough ethereal vision to turn them into paying customers, preferably high-paying customers, since Gemma had run up some hefty credit-card bills. She would see into the future, but only for a fee. At this party, she could have met several people who would have given her their money and, at least temporarily, their trust. But she was engrossed in the conversation around her, which had begun with a discussion of the new 1994 Beaujolais and circled around to another article in that week's Newsweek. "So what do you think of this World Wide Web?" asked a man seated on the coffee table. "I don't think anything will ever come of it," said Gemma, smiling, her head as clear as a bell.

Is she really a psychic?

Where have most of his works appeared?

Beside her, the new girl had finished everything on her plate, and she made her way back to the buffet table. Several women wearing oversize hats were standing in front of the fresh plates. She had to reach around them, awkwardly, but not awkwardly enough to delay eating again. "Nobody here but bores," said one of them. "But pretty bores," said another. "Every boutique clerk and hair-salon shampoo girl in the city." "I'm a journalist!" said a jumpy blond man suddenly "Really?" said the first woman. "Who do you write for?" "Well, on occasion, the New York Times." It had been one occasion, actually, a letter to the editor during high school, urging the earliest possible adoption of the metric system. "What's your name?" someone asked. "Jason," he said. "Jason Jellyman."

No one was familiar with his name or his journalism work, but he waved that off. "Newspapers are going to hell, anyway," he said. "They're all going to be put out of business by the Internet. Just ask this guy here." He signaled a large, pink man standing uncomfortably alone. "Hey," he said. "You, there." Jason had the bright ability to shake 150 hands in a room of 100 people, but he had never developed a system for remembering their names. "What was that thing you were telling me about?" "The World Wide Web," said Frederic Baby, in his soft, high voice. "Oh, that's spaceman stuff," said one of the ladies. Everyone seemed to agree, and the members of the circle began to drift away. A dark-haired girl, apparently eavesdropping, left with a large plate of hors d'oeuvres. Frederic Baby was standing alone again, this time in the middle of the room.

Is his name really Frederic Baby?

What is he pondering?

Over by the window, the new girl sat with her plate full of food, her back to the skyline, and looked out at the room. No one was looking at her, which, now that she was no longer hungry, annoyed her. She was a flamboyant girl, an actress, and used to being looked at. That hadn't been going so well lately. Failure was like a little man who tailed her down streets and through subway stations, who would have ridden in her bicycle basket if she'd had a bicycle. "I can't stand it," she said aloud. She realized, suddenly, that there was someone beside her at the window. It was a young man, looking off into the distance. He didn't seem to have heard her; he seemed to be pondering a grave question. "How are the Yankees doing this year?" she asked. "The Yankees?" "You're wearing a Yankees cap," she said. He sighed. She sighed, too. These days, she couldn't even capture the attentions of one man, let alone the many millions she craved. At this point, even being discovered and being thrown out of a party would have been preferable to being ignored. The man looked, exasperated, into the distance, until the new girl got up and went away.

With her meal finished - by this time, someone had cleaned off the buffet table - the dark-haired girl made one more trip around the room, then joined the line at the loft's only bathroom. Getting back to her shared room at the Brooklyn YWCA was going to require an hour's chilly walk. In front of her in line was a woman whose face she couldn't see. "It's impossible to find someone," the woman was saying, "No one wants to be a celebrity inside a little computer box." "It's embarassing," said a hat woman in front of her. "All those lonely people typing dirty words to each other on America Online. That's why they call it "'Loser Link."" "Maybe I could get a convict," said the first woman. "Someone who would do it from inside jail walls." "I'll do it," said the new girl, straightening up.

Newsweek October 31, 1994, pg. 60

The women looked at her with great suspicion. "Do you know what we're talking about?" asked the first. "The World Wide Web," said the actress. "There was a great piece on it in Newsweek this week. It's going to put newspapers out of business." Both laughed at her. "Well, she's one of them," said the hat lady. "You understand the Internet?" the first woman asked. "I'm an expert," said the actress, with full bravado again.

She left the party with a business card giving the address to turn up at on Monday morning, and enough confidence to spend $1.25 of her dwindling reserves on a subway token for the trip back to Brooklyn. Riding across the East River, she watched a subway train stretch grandly along one of the other bridges, its windows lit like a string of pearls. Maybe I'll make something of myself in this city. I want to, she decided. I really do. I want to make all my lies come true.

Who is this girl, anyway?

Library of Congress Copyright TXu 875-975

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