Later that afternoon while Marin and I were drawing pictures of our favorite scenes from Grease 3, I overheard Bethany on the phone with one of the MILFs discussing that morning’s episode of The Dr. Frank Show.
“I’d totally pay to have my brain scanned at iLoveULab,” Bethany was saying. “And Grant’s, too! That Dr. Kate is a genius!”
“What?” I interrupted. “The iLoveULab doctor was on TV?”
“Yes! Dr. Kate!”
Lest this sound too coincidental, it should be noted that Bethany had been chatting for well over an hour already, narrating the moment-by-moment details of an afternoon spent flitting around the brownstone to keep a watchful eye on the housekeeper.
“Dr. Kate?” I asked.
“Dr. Kate! The one who devised the Signs…”
So it’s a fact that Bethany had discussed Dr. Kate’s brilliance in my presence many times before, but my brain had never been trained to pick up on the name Dr. Kate until I got her e-mail.
“Oh Christ, again with the Signs,” I rebuffed. “I don’t want to hear about the Signs….”
But my sister had already moved on. “She doesn’t believe in Dr. Kate,” she said to the MILF on the phone, shaking her head with pity. Then to me: “Dr. Kate just wrote a new book all about brain chemicals and love.”
“Dr. Katherine Seamon?” I asked, still refusing to believe that we could possibly be talking about the same person.
“Yes, that’s her,” Bethany replied. “Dr. Kate is a real scientist, you know. She’s just opened up these labs where couples can get their brains scanned for compatibility, or singles can get scanned to be matched up with their ideal partners….”
“I think she wants to hire me for one of those labs.” Then I explained the e-mail.
Needless to say, Bethany (and the MILF on the line) freaked out. “Dr. Kate is OTB, Jess! OTB!”
“Why would she e-mail me? You think she’d have someone else do the hiring for her.”
“Oh! She’s famous for her micromanagerial skills,” Bethany said, then paused to hear what the phone MILF was saying. “Um-hm. Right! She never delegates what she can do herself.”
Later, I’d find out that Dr. Kate was quite the go-getter. Like me, she was a psychology major at Columbia. Unlike me, she got a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. And then also unlike me, she went on to Wharton business school to learn how she could make tons of money off all her neuroscientific knowledge. And somehow, when not stockpiling these impressive credentials, she managed to find time to wed, divorce, and remarry, all before the age of thirty. Of all these experiences, the termination of her starter marriage was the most crucial to the development of iLoveULab.
Three summers ago, I listened to nearly five hundred New Yorkers who were lured by a simple sandwich board urging them to TELL US A STORY. Day in and day out I listened. To kinetic, coked-up i-bankers sniffing and riffing on their multiorgasmic sexual conquests. To wrinkly, humpbacked old biddies waxing rhapsodic about VJ Day. To label-obsessed, overdressed foreign tourists complaining about the fat and stupid Americans who had the audacity to crash their vacations. To pouty-lipped, liquid-limbed thirteen-year-olds. To aromatic cabbies. To hipsters who looked homeless, and vice versa. To the hundreds of unique but ordinary everyday citizens who believed their stories were stories that needed to be told. And more important, needed to be heard.
I had taken the job because it earned me three credits toward my major, offered free room and board, and provided the scintillating promise of sweating with and for my hot, married Spanish grad student partner for eight hours at a stretch. (A lust that fizzled as soon as I discovered that the hot, married Spanish grad student partner had no problemo engaging in adulterous behavior with yours truly.) I don’t know what historians hope to learn from these tapes about urban life shortly after the turn of the new century, but working for the CU Storytellers Project confirmed my suspicions that narcissism comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, sexual orientations, and footwear. But never, never did I believe that this experience would lead to a job as a professional matchmaker with a television love doctor.
Yes, much like the Other Jessica Darling might substitute “actress” for “porn star,” “interpersonal social networking provider” is one of the postmillennial euphemisms for “matchmaking,” which means that I, Jessica Darling, have an interview for a job with a highfalutin Internet dating service.
(I’ll stop now because it’s time for me to meet Dr. Kate. This will also provide a moment for you to process and appreciate the irony.)
forty
The interview is over now, and it isn’t giving too much away to say that I totally had this job before I walked in the door.
Dr. Kate had asked me to meet her in her suite at the W Hotel in Times Square. I thought it was an odd choice, but it turns out that she always stays at the W because she has a lucrative deal to develop products exclusively for the chain. The Dr. Kate Rescue Kit, for example, is a discreet black leather case no bigger than a cell phone. This cheeky little item contains a pack of gum, a mini mirror, two condoms, massage oil/lubricant, and a one-day Fun Pass MetroCard for a quick getaway. It sells for forty-five dollars at the hotel store, or online.
Dr. Kate is a genius.
Whenever I step through the doors of one of these sleek, ultra-modern boutique hotels, I start to feel a little woozy, if not wobbly-legged drunk. It’s all such a scene, even at two P.M. Which I guess is the whole point of the dim lighting, the seductive French electro-pop over the sound system, the scent of lemon sage spa products in the air, the “floating” sinks in the bathroom designed to inspire gravity-defying wonder. By the time I went through the glassed-in urban waterfall, passed by the wall of rainbow lit stalactites, and was whisked up in the elevator to the hotel’s white-on-white lobby, I already felt like I’d had a one-night stand. All I needed was a cigarette and one of the famously soft waffleknit robes.
Even the “welcome attendants” are uniformed in matching black couture, looking less like desk clerks and bellhops than an alien race from the Planet Sexxxy who have party-crashed our puny, prudish planet to conquer human beings through their irresistible, intergalactic powers of multiorgasmic mind-body control. (Or perhaps they’re all members of that UK economist’s supermodel human species from the future….)
One of these Sexxxtraterrestrials directed me to Dr. Kate’s suite on the fifty-sixth floor, where—as she had warned via a follow-up e-mail—there would be a very large, very intimidating sentinel at the entry. The security guard was also dressed in black, but easily weighed as much as three or four of the sylph-like space creatures put together. With his headset, dark FBI sunglasses, and clipboard in hand, he looked just like any velvet rope bouncer, which gave the whole endeavor even more of a clubby feel.
“I have a…uh…two o’clock interview with…uh…Dr. Kate,” I stammered. “Uh, I mean Dr. Katherine Seamon. For iLoveULab…” The guard’s towering presence made me nervous; I felt like I was lying about my interview and would have failed a polygraph.
“Name?” he asked in a bored yet imposing voice. He wore a dagger pendant on a chain around his neck. Though the charm was no more than an inch in length, I did not doubt that he could use it to gut me in an instant, if need be.
“Jessica Darling,” I said, reaching into my bag for my wallet to get my driver’s license, cursing myself for not having it in my front pocket like one of Hope’s MetroCards.
“Like the one on the billboard?” The guard cracked a smile—literally, because his two front teeth were fractured in jagged diagonals, which I imagine came from a punch in the face on one of his less upscale assignments.
“Like the one on the billboard,” I deadpanned. “Only I need a job.”
This made the guard laugh, a deep basso laugh. I’d won him over. He checked my license, then spoke into his headset. “A Ms. Jessica Darling to see you?” He looked at me then, smiled, and nodded. “Okay. The doctor can see you
now.” He opened the door and ushered me inside.
forty-one
Dr. Kate’s penthouse had sweeping panoramic views of Broadway, and from this top-of-the-world vantage point, the Other Jessica Darling’s billboard shrunk down to the size of a postcard. The suite was less distractingly sexy than the lobby, though the large living-room area still resembled an after-hours lounge more than a place to conduct business. There, perched on the edge of a low, square, suede love seat with her legs angled and crossed at the ankles, was Dr. Kate. I was quite surprised to find her alone in this humongous living space, without the entourage of payrolled hangers-on that I had assumed would lamprey upon such a successful impresario.
I’d never seen her on TV, but I knew what she looked like from her various author photos. In the prominently positioned glamour shot on the home page of the iLoveULab website, she presented herself as a blown-out blonde with china-doll eyes and overindulged lips. From the neck up, in fact, Dr. Kate’s picture didn’t look that different from the Other Jessica Darling’s. There was such a disconnect between her academic background and her pornified photo that I assumed that the digital image had been highly enhanced for promotional purposes. Surely she’d be much plainer and less plastic in person. I mean, was it really necessary for a neuroscientist/C.E.O. to look like a porn star?
I saw for myself that Dr. Kate was even more flawlessly Photo-Shopped in real life. She was wearing something that resembled a traditional lab coat, only it was black and tight and had a slight sheen, and it was unbuttoned to reveal a black, white, and red python-print dress. She resembled a curvaceous, credulity-busting scientist in the Bond Girl tradition, the kind who saves the world from thermonuclear apocalypse and still makes it on time for her next Brazilian wax. This, apparently, is her signature look.
“You must be Jessica,” she said, without getting up, but extending her hand. Her nails weren’t long, but all squared off and expertly painted in the vampy, nearly black color I’d noticed on chic women around the city. My fingernails had been quickly and unevenly snipped with a pair of toenail clippers. Some nails were roundish, others were squarish, and one or two were cut so low that neither term applied. All had been unevenly painted in a clear ninety-nine-cent polish about one minute before I walked out the door. It’s fortunate for me that fingernails are not the windows to the soul.
“When I read about your work,” she said in a confident, TV-ready tone, “I thought you sounded perfect for iLoveULab.”
“Well, thank you,” I said, dipping my head in a gesture of false modesty, but also to avert my eyes from her artificially inflated lips. They looked like Novocain feels. “And I’m so glad to meet you and find out more about iLoveULab.”
“I’m so thrilled about this new venture,” she began, gesturing toward the suede cube chair on the opposite side of the slick black coffee table. “iLoveULab International is the first networking service to use state-of-the-art brain-imaging technology to pair up life partners who are matched from the inside out….”
Dr. Kate must know that her company’s name, though perfectly in keeping with others in the matchmaking game, has cheese-ass connotations, and could be a turnoff for the more serious-minded employees she courts. She was quick to put a smarty-pants spin on what many might perceive to be a shallow endeavor beneath her highly educated pedigree.
Maybe iLoveULab International has defied Silicon Alley odds and hasn’t hemorrhaged money like so many new media start-ups before it. It’s possible that in your second or third or tenth rereading of this notebook, iLoveULab has entered the pantheon of successful Fortune 500–type companies. Perhaps iLoveULab’s motto (“We’ve got love on the brain”) has become a multigenerational catchphrase with the timelessness of “Just do it!” Perhaps the iLoveULab logo (a cartoonish red heart inside a medical textbook illustration of the brain) has been canonized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and no longer brings to mind a drugstore clearance bin on February 15.
“What do you know about the brain in love?” Dr. Kate asked. Her brisk, no-nonsense demeanor was, again, totally at odds with her bimbocious appearance.
“Well,” I began, “I know a growing body of research shows that falling in and out of love is the result of various chemical reactions in the brain.”
“Go on,” she said.
I was glad to have read up on this research before the interview. “Certain regions of the brain get flooded with different hormones depending on the stage of the relationship.”
“Go on,” she said.
“And MRI machines can take pictures of people’s brains as these chemical reactions occur.”
I must say that I was even impressing myself.
“And how is that information useful?”
“Well, I’m assuming that if some hormones are more active than others, it can affect your personality, and your approach to relationships. A brain scan can tell you what romantic type you are, which gives you a better shot at selecting complementary partners.”
Dr. Kate was pleased with my answers. “Exactly,” she said. “iLoveULab uses the latest advances in technology to create a MindLoveMap of the brain, which serves as a guide to matching couples who will fall—and stay—in love.”
Dr. Kate went on to explain that each iLoveULab client is put into one of four main MindLove categories, determined by what the MRI scan reveals as the prominent chemical system in the brain. Everyone falls into a primary category but manifests secondary or tertiary characteristics from the others. They are:
The Connector
Chemical influence: Serotonin, the mood-regulating neurotransmitter
Strengths: Well-organized, calm, considerate, gets along well with others
Challenges: Habitual, nonchalant, overly concerned with popular opinion
The Commander
Chemical influence: Testosterone, the male sex hormone
Strengths: Logical, success-oriented, bold, decisive
Challenges: Domineering, self-absorbed, uncompromising
The Creator
Chemical influence: Dopamine, the pleasure-seeking neurotransmitter
Strengths: Spontaneous, lively, theatrical, thrill-seeking
Challenges: Moody, addictive, takes unnecessary risks
The Communicator
Chemical influence: Estrogen, the female sex hormone
Strengths: Verbal, multitasking, insightful, innovative
Challenges: Overemotional, irrational, hypersensitive to criticism
“This is such a radical approach to matchmaking,” Dr. Kate said. “Our clients will appreciate how our systematic, scientific approach removes most of the guesswork from dating. Life is too complicated to wait for a serendipitous love connection. It might have worked for the boomers, but it doesn’t work for the millennials.”
I shook my head no.
“And affluent singles won’t hesitate to pay fifteen thousand dollars for our MindLoveMapping services.”
“Fifteen thousand dollars?!” I blurted
“Yes,” she said, stiffly uncrossing and recrossing her legs. “But is that such a price to pay for lifelong love?”
I closed my mouth and shook my head. Of course not.
“Still, I recognize that our services might be cost prohibitive to some.”
Dr. Kate went on to explain that at the onset, a greater portion of iLoveULab’s revenue—and the bulk of its Dating Base, as it’s called—will be made up of the thousands of customers who forgo the MindLoveMap brain scan and pay the more modest sum of five hundred dollars to fill out a Chemical Quiz—250 questions painstakingly designed to determine the client’s hormonal report without having to get inside the claustrophobic and costly MRI machine. For example, if you can quickly find the pattern in a random group of numbers, you’ve got a lot of testosterone. You’re a Commander. Or if you can easily determine from a photo whether a person’s smile is sincere or not, your brain is high in estrogen. You’re a Communicator. And so on.
“It’s not as a
ccurate as the MRI MindLoveMap,” Dr. Kate pointed out. “But it’s an affordable option for most customers, and it’s still better than the personality-based questionnaires offered on inferior sites.” She wrinkled her tiny, upturned nose as if falling for someone’s sensitivity or sense of humor was akin to falling for his bed-wetting habit or penchant for pedophilia.
I wrinkled my nose right back at her. Mirroring her gesture was a shamelessly obvious maneuver, but I was, after all, on a job interview. And I really needed, and maybe even really wanted, this job. A job I felt in no way qualified to have, since I had no idea what I’d be doing.
“What would my position entail?” I asked.
“Well, at first, a lot of reading, scoring, and categorizing the Chemical Quizzes as they arrive via e-mail, then entering them in the iLoveULab Dating Base.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“It is,” she said, her eyes ablaze. “Eventually I would have you work as a liaison between the MRI technicians and our clients, analyzing the MindLoveMaps themselves….”
As Dr. Kate spoke, I started thinking about how you already disliked the sound of this job, just based on my early descriptions of the e-mail from Dr. Kate. This additional information would only make you hate it even more.
You dispute any empirical data that explain the origins of human emotions. You dismiss the science that proves that passion is no different from hunger or thirst or sleep or any other biological drive. You want to believe that love is this ineffable thing that can’t be quantified.
No wonder, then, that you were deeply offended when I suggested that we both take the Chemical Quiz that Dr. Kate had sent for my perusal last week.