Authors: Anita Claire
Thinking about my conversation with Juliette, I try to approach David on what’s going on with our relationship.
As we go into my room to get ready for bed, I start off with, “David, I’m concerned, we’ve been together for four months, but we’re like an old married couple. We never really do anything together, we just parallel play. We play the same games at the same time and sleep in the same bed.”
He knits his brow, then responds, “Well it’s not like I want to be over at your place every night. I’ve turned into a homeless person living out of my car.”
Surprised by this comment, I respond, “I’ve never asked you to stay every night. Once we started going out you came over here every night and stayed.”
He frowns, then continues, “That’s because you never want to go to my place.”
“That’s because your place is a complete pig sty. When was the last time you washed your sheets? When was the last time you guys cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, or washed any dishes? I already told you, I’m not the maid and I’m not staying in that dirty place,” I respond realizing that I lost my thread.
His jaw is now clenched and his hands are by his side in tight fists as I can feel either anger or frustration rolling off of him. Finally he spits out, “I thought you were happy when I showed up.”
“Yeah, I like you, I am happy when you show up. We’ve fallen into this really bad place, we’re parallel dating.”
He looks confused. “Parallel dating?”
“David, when we first started out we were playing games and having sex all the time. Now we play the same games at the same time. We never do anything else, get together with anyone else, or talk about anything other than games. You spend the night, but we hardly ever have sex. We sleep in the same bed.”
“Did you think I could keep that schedule up?”
“You’re twenty-six years old.”
“I also work a fifty hour work week.”
“And stay up to all hours gaming.”
“I thought you liked the gaming.”
“I do like gaming. I also like sex, friendship, and communication. After four months we should be interacting more, not less. It’s like you found a girlfriend and had sex for awhile, and now you show up, but you’re really not here.
David glares at me, turns, and storms out of my room, then out of my apartment. I’m not sure if this is for good or for the night. I’m not even sure if I still want to go out with him, or if I want to break up. I only know that I want more than what we currently have. I sit down on my bed perplexed. This conversation certainly did not go well. I run it through my head as I contemplate how I could have handled it better.
He’s gone for about five minutes and I’m still staring at my bedroom door when Kristi stands in the doorway and says, “Hita, do you want to talk?”
I feel numb as I say, “Talk about what?”
She folds her arms over her chest and in a soft voice says, “Talk about what I overheard?”
“I don’t know what to say. Could I have handled the situation better? Did I say something wrong? Did we break up, or does he need some space?”
“Which do you want?” she questions.
I shake my head as I contemplate that question. “Either to break up, or for him to have some space to get in touch with his emotions and come back more engaged.”
Kristi snorts. “Guys don’t take off to get in touch with their emotions. Guys take off to get away from a woman who’s making them feel emotions. He’s headed home to play some shoot it up game. The last thing he’ll do is have a conversation with his roommate or call his mom and ask her to explain what happened.”
I now snort. “Yeah, you’re right, I can’t see David talking about emotions with anyone.”
“Which one is it, break up, or let him emotionally cave for a bit? Maybe after this argument he’ll clean his place.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think our problems are as simple as his dirty apartment. Things have stalled between us. Nothing bad, but nothing good either. He’s a nice sweet guy, our relationship just turned sterile.”
“That happens. That’s why you have ex-boyfriends.”
Shaking my head again, I feel a tear well up in my eye. “I talked to Juliette about my issues with David. She said I should talk to him. You see what talking did?”
“Yeah, I guess you need to see what he does next.”
“Yeah, I wonder what he’ll do.”
Kristi looks at me and frowns. “I see one of three things happening. He’ll either come back and try to work things out, he’ll come back and pretend that nothing happened, or he won’t come back.”
“Is that what happened with you and Tim?”
“Sort of, Tim came back as if nothing happened. Until the next conversation came up, when I told him accept all of me or none of me.”
“And?”
“Well it’s not like we’re going out anymore.”
“Yeah, breaking up is hard.”
She shrugs. “It’s life, you need to kiss a lot of frogs before you realize you’re actually kissing a prince.”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”
“I think my saying is more realistic.”
Savi was supportive on our call, telling me, “If you feel lonely and the two of you are not communicating, then the right thing to do is to talk to him. He now has a choice—to work it out or to break up. You’ll see how committed he is to your relationship.”
It’s the first time in well over a year we don’t talk about Arav. After I hang up, I wonder if everything is still good with the two of them.
***
At lunch Megan sits down at the table with a big smile on her face. Kami looks at her and says, “Something good must have happened, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this happy.”
“Oh, this is a wonderful day. By the look of your glum faces I assume you haven’t heard the news?”
“What news?” I ask.
“Give us a hint, I have no idea what the news could possibly be,” Caroline pipes in.
Megan gets all excited, “Terri turned in her letter of resignation. It turns out she got a job at some company in San Francisco. HR has already escorted her to the door.”
Juliette and I make eye contact. Both of us have a huge smile on our face. Juliette innocently says, “This is so perfect. My friend Isabelle is doing a similar job at another company. She’s been talking about making a move. I think I’ll submit her résumé to Sid and HR.”
“What a great idea. I think Isabelle will be perfect,” I reply.
On the way back from lunch, Juliette says to me, “Damn, it took Terri long enough to get a new job, I was wondering if this plan was ever going to work.”
“Yeah, I’m sure happy not to have to waste any more of my time sending out her dumb ass résumé.”
***
Three days later, David shows back up at my place. After greeting him at my door with a big smile, he looks kind of sheepish as he starts off with, “Are you doing better tonight?”
Surprised, I ask, “Doing better? What are you talking about?”
Nervously, he replies, “You seemed out of sorts the other night. I figured I should give you some space.”
“David, I wasn’t out of sorts. You and I have issues. We inhabit the same space, but we’re not having a relationship. Playing the same game and sleeping in the same bed is not a relationship.” Pointing my fingers back and forth between us, I explain, “We need to interact, we need to change what we’re doing.”
He gives me a blank look. It finally hits me. He really never got past the preschool stage of parallel play. Or maybe he doesn’t want more than to parallel play. He was happy where we were. We had enough interaction for him. I’m the only one who’s unhappy. I guess parallel play is what he does with his friends.
Shaking my head I tell him, “I think you like the idea of a girlfriend, but you really don’t want the responsibility of a relationship.”
Looking at his confused face, I walk over and kiss him on the cheek as I head to my room to go to sleep. I’m not sure what he is going to do next. I figure if he comes to bed, then we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves. If he leaves, I guess we’ve broken up. As I sit down on my bed wondering what he will do next, I feel numb. As I hear my front door close, I feel relieved.
Lying back on my bed, I stare at the designs in the popcorn ceiling. My entire body is wrapped in a layer of sadness. I feel tears leak out of my eyes and pool in my ears. My chest starts to feel so heavy I’m surprised I still can breathe. I hope Kristi doesn’t feel any need to check up on me. I want to wallow in my sadness, disappointment, and grief. David’s such a sweet guy; I hoped our relationship would have worked, but I have no desire to chase after him. I want him to want us enough that he’s willing to try.
In the morning I stare at myself in my bathroom mirror. I wonder how my face can look the same while my soul feels shriveled and defeated. I force myself to shake off my lethargy and head to work.
Before stopping at my desk, I decide to stop at Sid’s office—luckily he’s in. Handing him a print out of Isabelle’s résumé, I tell him, “I understand Terri resigned. This is the résumé of another friend from college. She’s really smart, easy to work with, and has a great attitude. She’s been doing a similar job as Terri, but she’s much more geeked out on analysis. She’s used her position to uncover a lot of different possible efficiencies in her current company’s processes.”
He quickly looks over her résumé, “Why is she interested in leaving her current company?”
“It’s really old school; they’re not open to analysis from a junior person. She’d rather work someplace younger and more vibrant.”
He nods his head slowly. I then walk over to the new director of marketing, giving her Isabelle’s résumé, and the same line. I talk to our recruiter in HR, and hand her the résumé.
She tells me, “Can you send it to me via e-mail?” Then she says with a chuckle, “I see you’re on the fast track for finder’s fees.”
At my company you get a finder’s fee if they hire someone you recommend. I split Juliette’s finder’s fee with her. If they hire Isabelle, it will be a three way split.
***
It only takes a couple of days for my company to call Isabelle and ask her to come in for an interview. Beforehand, the three of us meet up at Juliette’s place.
The first thing out of Isabelle’s mouth is, “I don’t even know what your company does.”
Juliette and I give each other the eye, as we smirk, “Big data solutions for companies and governments.”
“What does that even mean?” Isabelle asks in confusion.
Juliette answers, “Companies and governments are storing all this information on users. Not really on people, just on their movement through their website, where they go on the website, and what other sites they visit. It’s lots and lots of information that means nothing. Managers can’t make decisions from it, and marketing organizations can’t sell any more from it. They’re saving all this data hoping that someday it will make sense.”
I continue with, “Our founder developed some algorithms that can be used to look at site data and figure out where people are on a site, how long they spend on a page, and where they go next. He created an API and a user interface, so it’s real easy for someone in IT to hook these algorithms up to their data. Our company also created visual reports that make it easy for managers to identify trends, so they can see what’s happening and to be able to make decisions from the data.”
“Oh, like the data I gathered on our non-revenue cost of engineering related to sales at my company, and then all the charts and venn diagrams I created to visually highlight to my management what the actual cost and profit was by product?” Isabelle says as she processes what we’ve been telling her.
Juliette nods as she answers, “Same identical thing, your data sets have about a thousand variables, while the data sets we’re dealing with have a terabyte, or even a petabyte of data. It’s too much information for a person to analyze, and the variables are too large and random for traditional computer analysis.”
“That’s what you do, website analytics?” Isabelle asks.
“That was the first application,” I explain. “Now we have additional applications having to do with buying patterns and website patterns. Once you can identify what people are doing on a website, and where they’re going, the next thing is to figure out what you want to lead them to do next. For instance, if someone’s looking at cars, do they want to buy a car, have they already bought a car, or are they trading in a car? Each of those are very different scenarios. How do you identify where someone is in the cycle? Based on that, what options do you show them to sell more?
“Oh, I get it, if they bought a car, you don’t want to show them cars anymore, you might want to show them accessories, or trips they can take in a car,” Isabelle says.
“Precisely,” I respond.
Juliette and I then work with Isabelle on the best way to present her current situation. After a couple of hours I don’t know if we’ve hurt or helped since we’ve made her so nervous by wordsmithing her every thought.
After Isabelle’s day of interviews, Juliette and I check in with all the people she spoke to, casually asking them what they thought and making sure to put in a good word for her.
The following week at ping pong, Colin comments, “I hear another of your friends is joining us.”
I joke back, “It’s a take over from the bottom. Before you know it, all my friends will work here.” I chuckle to myself. We’re the princess mafia.
***
It’s fun having Isabelle at work, we don’t have any reason to interact with her during the day, though she does manage to wind her way over to our area to get either Juliette or me to explain what everyone is talking about. The acronyms feel so commonplace to me; I forget how daunting they can be to someone new. She also manages to join our lunch group. There are now seven women who eat lunch together. I guess seven is a lucky number for me.