Retrofaction
I made the decision on a Thursday morning. It wasn’t a particularly bad week — just more of the same. That was the core of the issue — boredom, a general exhaustion, and a lack of meaning. Every week was the same. I woke up in the dark, commuted for an hour, worked until it was time to commute back home for dinner and to prep myself for the next day of drudgery. I’m pretty sure people aren’t meant to live like that. I thought about quitting but I was making decent money, the work was easy, the benefits were good. The thought of searching for something new, going round after round through the superficial interview process — smiling and pretending to laugh at the interviewers dumb half-hearted jokes, all the paper work — all sounded like a nightmare.
It wasn’t that I hated the job. It was just that I didn’t give a shit about it and I felt that I ought to give a shit about what I did for most of my waking hours. I can’t imagine anyone would feel that the job itself was worth give a shit about. Does anyone, short of the shareholders, really care about the customer retention numbers of some business to business software most humans have never heard of?
Anyway, I found a discount coupon for a retro-faction service that was a 10 minute drive from my place. Since the technology was adopted by private companies the price had been dropping for years and it finally seemed to make sense for me. At first it was only being used in a clinical setting but now you could find these places all over. I’m not sure if most people know this, but It was developed originally as a technology to rehabilitate pedophiles. It was funny to watch all the reactions. It called into question all kinds of issues about sexual “preference” or “orientation” as an immutable identity. People worried, probably rightly so, that the religious-right would try to adopt the technology to “fix” gay people. Obviously that would be fucked up but, regardless of how the technology would be used, the conversation itself was uncomfortable because it seemed to place pedophiles in the spectrum of sexual orientations. Another subject that sparked anger, confusion, and division, where everyone is forced to take a strong stance about some issue they hadn’t previously given a moment’s thought… great.
I’m not sure what to think personally. If you look at the issue only as it relates to pedophiles it seems like an unquestionably good thing to change their “preferences”. I’m quite sure that no one chooses to be sexually attracted to children. Not only does that preclude them from finding a romantic partner in life but I have to imagine it’s an unfathomably lonely life full of shame and the constant struggle to not act on your urges. It basically seems way to shitty of a life for anyone to choose. So — if we could help these people have normal lives with a chance of normal relationships and keep more children safe in the process — why wouldn’t we want that!? But I also get why it sucks to start talking about various sexual orientations which we want to fully accept, the full spectrum of LBGTQ, in the same conversation as one of the most feared and despised groups of people. Anyway, that’s all to say that enough people thought it was a good idea that it stuck around.
As private companies developed the technology and prices stated dropping, people began using the service for all kinds of things. When it first started and it cost as much as most people’s house for a couple sessions. It was only for the richest people. There were rumors of rich people using it for all kinds of frivolous bullshit — to enjoy waterskiing or their wife’s dog more or something. When the price dropped closer to the price of a car, normal people started considering it for major life issues — to find peace with the loss of a loved one or to finally accept something about themselves that they had always hated. It was easier to retrofy yourself to prefer your big nose than it was than to get plastic surgery and deal with the bandages and the painful procedure. Plus, who knows if you’d like your new nose once you paid for it. Easier just to change your preferences to love the nose you had. Of course, there were still risks, but people seemed to find them easy enough to accept.
When the price dropped closer to a big night out on the town, regular people started to use it for the same frivolous things we had all heard about the rich people using it for. I’m sure some of the same people — we all know that people are hypocrites. Anyway, someone might want to be more excited about a physical attribute of their partner, or the apartment they were currently living in. Maybe even to like scary movies or mint ice cream because their life-partner or boss did. Not surprisingly, conspiracy theories soon bubbled up about the government making retro-faction available to everyone to keep the masses content and complacent — ‘what better way to shut people up and keep them sanguine and pliable?!’, It’s the real-life modern day Soma.’ I don’t know, I think it was just capitalism at work. Once it was privatized and a market existed for the service… all bets are off.
My first session was basically an intake interview. You have to sign a million liability forms when you walk in the door. The interview process feels like a legal formality more than a true assessment of anything. What preference do you want to change? Have you attempted to solve the problem prior to changing your view about it?
You also have to acknowledge that you understand the side effects and possible complications. A disinterested clerk reads you a pre-written statement:
Do you acknowledge that no preference is isolated from all other preferences. By changing one preference other aspects of personality may also be effected.
I do.
Do you acknowledge that altering preferences, even seemingly minor preferences, may have profound effects on your conception of self and on other’s perception of your personality.
I do.
What preference do you want to adjust?
I just wanted to wake up each day, reasonably happy, or at least content, with how I would be spending my time. I didn’t want to wake up dreading every hour and anxious to go back to the sweet release of sleep. I want to like my work.
They put me in a little metal box jammed inside an already tiny little room. Then they hooked me up to a machine that looked like a fancy version of one of those gaming headsets people used to used before everyone got the contact lenses or the implants. For most of the time, the headset just flashed with spots of light. The headphones fed me subtle prompts in a scratchy pre-recorded voice. Think about the best day of my life, or the person I loved the most. The lights would go nuts and the machine hovering above my head would hum and make strange clunking noises.
They also asked me to think about work. Imagine a typical day. Think about my driving route. Visualize the things on my desk. Visualize the task you dislike the most.
When I booked the appointment the original instructions said I needed to remove “preference related stimuli” from my life for a week surrounding the 5 sessions. I cashed in the rest of my year’s paid time off and took a staycation.
Other than the sessions I just hung out, watched movies, played with chat bots and game bots, and pretty much fucked off all week. After a couple days I was dreading going back more than I ever had.
The last session came and went and I didn’t feel any different. I wondered what how Monday would feel. I still dreaded the idea of going back to work. Maybe I had wasted my money or fallen for some kind of scam. I started wondering whether TK was the real deal. Honestly, I didn’t do much research after I found the coupon… maybe it was one of those fake retrofaction places you hear about getting busted from time to time.
—
Alarm clock… still fucking sucks. Radio jockeys on every FM station… still annoying. All the good parking spots… taken. Water cooler talk… still the absolute worst.
“How was vacation!?”
“It was ok.”
“OK!? Shit man, two weeks off a year… You gotta make it better than ok! Where’d you go?”
“Just stayed around here.”
“Seriously?! Fuck this place. Did you at least go check out some hot action at that new strip joint over off 57th?”
“No, I just hung out. Relaxed,” Long awkward pause, “Sorry, I gotta get back to work — lot of catch up.”
“See ya bro!”
Well, I hated that as much as I ever have.
Cubicles… still degrading. Project management software… still a pain in the ass. TP still single-ply.
TK had great reviews. They were rated the 3rd best retrofaction shop in the city. Somehow I still felt like blowing my brains out. Instead of going straight back to my desk, I took the long way around.
“Excuse me.”
How I never noticed her before?!
“I don’t mean to pry but… I saw you talking to Chad.”
I nodded. I felt that back-of-the-throat nervous constriction. Those eyes!
“This is weird, but… did he say anything about our client meeting this morning?”
“No, but he did manage to make me feel awkward, uncomfortable, and condescended-to in the 12 words we exchanged.”
She giggled a little and locked my stare. I flushed.
“So much toxic masculinity packed into so few words. It’s like … douche-haiku”
An actual laugh! My insides went warm and effervescent.
“I’m Michele.”
I put out my hand, “Keenan.”
“Good to meet you.”
“Well.. I gotta get back to it. See ya.”
She smiled and nodded and I walked away doing my very best not to look back or trip over myself.
I spent the rest of the day obsessing about how I would engineer another meeting with Michele. Maybe I should just walk over to her desk and give her my number? Ask for hers? Leave a note? I hate this shit. I never know the right thing.
I floated through the next morning. Maybe I was a little more obsessive about clothing choices and double checking the mirror for stray nose hairs, but I seemed to hover above myself instead of dreading each little task. As I brushed my teeth I transported myself forward in time, working out the witty things I was going to say, just at the right moments. I made my usual breakfast, berries, yoghurt, granola, on autopilot while I pictured her laugh lines and those bewitching green eyes. Behind the wheel I cringed as I caught myself playing out the details of our life together — from the tiny details of waking up next to her for the first morning after staying over to child birth — so cheesy! Who am I?!
It wasn’t until just before lunch that I realized I hadn’t spent one moment dreading my day. I even found that I had managed a little bit of motivation in my work. Somewhere beneath the semi mindless emails, I found a subtle desire to do a good job. Maybe I would be a little more impressive to her if I was the kind of person that gave a shit about my work.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What happened with that client meeting you were asking about?”
She gave a quizzical look for a moment.
“The one with Chad.”
“Oh! That’s right. I forgot I asked you about that.”
I raised my eyebrows, dipped my chin, and shrugged slightly in a look that asked, “Well…?”
“Oh, it’s seriously nothing. There was a just a weird exchange with the client and I was prying to see if he had mentioned anything. I was worried he might have shared with our boss.”
“I’d be surprised if that guy even registered whatever you’re talking about. I wouldn’t say that Mr. invite-our-60- year-old-boss-to-beerpong is the master of social subtlety.”
She giggled. I flushed.
“Have a good rest of your day.”
“You too.”
I always bailed quickly. I didn’t want to ruin anything slightly clever or interesting that came tumbling out of my mouth. After a week or two of these mini interactions, I got the sense it was time for a bigger move. Normally I would have overanalyzed and psyched myself out but somehow it came naturally. I blurted out an invitation and she accepted.
The date went well. We learned we both loved the same film directors and she understood my archaic old-man quotes from sitcoms we had both grown up with. We laughed together — easily and often. Her laugh opened new rooms in my heart that I didn’t know existed — big cavernous rooms filled with shimmering golden light. We’d laugh a carbonated holiness and the rooms would grow.
Every passing day Michelle became more and more a part of my life. We started staying over at each other’s places. We planned for the future — first dates, then trips, eventually, occasionally, we’d talk about a life together.
Months passed. The lust and passion eased into comfort. Dopamine into serotonin. I felt at ease in her presence. Comfortable in my skin for the first time I could remember. I was… happy.
At the same time, something else was happening. I was beginning to enjoy my work. Not just going to work. It took a few weeks to parse that out since I was obviously more excited to wake up and see Michelle again. But I was actually finding joy in solving the ever-changing and random puzzles my work presented. I still didn’t give a shit about shareholder value or key performance indicators my boss would present, but I saw each interaction as an intricate psychological riddle to dig in and solve.
Previously I thought of myself as an unnecessary middleman. I wasn’t doing much of the technical work, nor was I selling our product. I was the person that “managed the relationship”, which always felt to me like a bullshit role — so I acted as such. I put forward bullshit effort. But I was starting to see the nuances that were hanging up the process, the needs of the technical people whose work I was beginning to appreciate as actually creative and kind of interesting. The clients were mainly just looking for the best solutions for their own teams. They didn’t want to be assholes, they just didn’t understand the technical side and mostly weren’t good at asking for what they wanted.
I was finding that because I actually gave half a shit I was also getting to know the people behind the stupid titles. That alone made me care more. I still didn’t give two shits about Hytan corporation, or our client’s faceless businesses, but Sara at TK company, to pick one, was pretty rad and it felt worthwhile making her life a little easier. Plus, it was kind of fun playing psychological detective and trying to figure out each person and what they needed out of each interaction.
Michelle moved in and we felt the comforting weight of familiarity blanket our lives. Something had settled inside of me. But… as lovers become family, the prickly points of knowing another human well enter the equation. Things that were cute become annoying. We stop hiding the worst of our selves. I think every couple goes through it to some degree. I told myself it was a normal part of building a life with someone — Something I previously didn’t even know I wanted.
— -
“I just don’t want to feel like I have to force you to want to hang out with me.”
“Come on… Of COURSE I want to hang out with you! I love you.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes it feels like you love your work a little more.”
“That’s not fair! We all have to make a living!”
I couldn’t help going into defensive mode but of course I knew exactly what she was talking about.
“Right… because you’d get fired if you didn’t stare at your computer screen or your phone during dinner every night.”
“It’s not like I’m ignoring you to play video games and scroll. I…”
“Even when you’re not working, you’re thinking about it or rushing through whatever we’re doing to get back to work. Half the time it feels like I’m not even here.”
“Baby…”
“I’m just saying, something’s changed in the last few months. This doesn’t feel right.”
“What are you saying?!”
“I don’t know. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
“But…”
“No seriously, I can’t anymore right now.”
—
The building was exactly the same as I remembered it. I felt a little ashamed returning there as I’d completely blown off all their follow up surveys. They had followed up about 600 times and I never answered their calls or email. No one seemed to know or care.
It was the same waivers and forms.
Do you acknowledge that no preference is isolated from all other preferences. By changing one preference other aspects of personality may also be effected.
I do.
Do you acknowledge that altering preferences, even seemingly minor preferences, may have profound effects on your conception of self and on other’s perception of your personality.
I do.
What preference do you want to adjust?
I want to love my girlfriend more than my job. I want to WANT to be on a date with her, or just hanging out in the kitchen, and not be more interested in checking on my work emails.
—
I raced home. I couldn’t wait to tell Michelle what I’d done. I had made a real tangible step towards fixing something in our relationship that was causing problems. I was proud and felt that she would be too. I imagined her grateful loving smile and our embrace. I envisioned the makeup sex and the cuddling, laughing about how frustrated we had been.
Her car wasn’t there. My stomach inverted on itself and I somehow already knew. The house felt huge and hollow and strangely silent. There were books missing from the shelf. The whirling abyss in my gut widened.
There was a note on the table.
Before I even picked dup the note, the first thought that entered my head was the recent FDA regulation that had been all over the news. Retroaction sites were no longer allowed to take a patient more than once every 6 months and at least a year between sessions to reverse a previous procedure.
Maybe I could find an underground place that didn’t share records? Or maybe if I drove across town it would be soon enough?