The True Love Experiment

Some bloke on a podcast once philosophized that the perfect day comprises ten hours of caffeine and four hours of alcohol. I might agree with the caffeine bit, but the mediocre beer in front of me feels more like liquid sadness than escape. Oddly fitting for the day I’ve had.

“Pivoting over to reality television might be fun,” my mate Ash says distractedly, eyes glued to the basketball game on the TV above the bar. “It’s sort of like what you do now, just sexier.”

“Ash,” I say, grimacing as I rub my temples, “I make short docuseries on marine mammals.”

“And dating shows are short docuseries on land mammals.” He grins at his own cheekiness, looking at me and nodding. “Am I right?”

I groan, and we fall silent again, turning our attention back up to where the Warriors are obliterating the Clippers.

Rarely have I had such a horrendous day at work. Having started from the bottom in the shark tank of big Hollywood, I know I have it good working for San Diego’s comparably tiny production company North Star Media. There are the obvious frustrations that accompany working in a small shop—limited budgets, the uphill battle of distribution, and the simple fact of being 120 miles away from Los Angeles among them—but I also have autonomy in my projects.

Or did, until today, when my boss, one Blaine Harrison Byron—a man whose office decor includes a huge slab of graffitied concrete, a life-sized statue of a naked woman, and the newest addition, a gleaming saddle—told me the company was making a major pivot from socially conscious programming to reality television. Is it possible for a man named Blaine Harrison Byron to not be a giant, pretentious wanker?

(I see the fair point to be made—that a man named Connor Fredrick Prince III should not be so quick to cast stones—but I didn’t just sideswipe the lives of my entire staff on a whim, so I’m standing firm.)

“Let’s talk it out,” Ash says when a commercial for Jack in the Box comes on. “What’d your boss say, specifically?”

I close my eyes, working to recall Blaine’s exact wording. “He said we’re too small to be socially conscious.”

“Out loud?”

“Out loud,” I confirm. “He said that people don’t want to sit down after a hard day’s work and feel bad about the ziplocked sandwich they took for lunch, or how much water is wasted to make the electricity to charge their iPhone.”

Ash’s jaw drops. “Wow.”

“He said he wants me to go after the female demographic.” I sip my beer and set it down, staring at the table. “He said Bravo was the number one rated cable network in prime time among women ages eighteen to forty-nine because of their two top reality franchises, and that demographic spends the most. Ergo, the executives are going after premium ad revenue. They’ve already got one of my colleagues, Trent, working on some mash-up of The Amazing Race and American Gladiators they’re calling Smash Course. And they want me to spearhead a reality dating show.”

“So, like, women competing to get some oiled-up hunk to choose them,” Ash says.

“Right.”

“Half-naked Gen Zers locked in a big house together trying to get laid.”

“Yes, but—”

“Hot women marrying some average dude they’ve never seen.”

“Ash, there is no bloody way I am doing that.”

He laughs. “Put your British manners away. Pretend you’re American.” When he sets his beer down again, I notice his shirt is misbuttoned. Ashkan Maleki can be counted on to be untied, unzipped, or otherwise disheveled at least fifty percent of the time. It’s endearing, but I have no idea how he survives in a room full of unfiltered six-year-olds every day. “Every job has downsides. We just have to keep at it.”

I met Ash when my daughter, Stevie, was in first grade and he took over her class halfway through the year. It also turned out we went to the same gym and kept running into each other. We immediately hit it off, but hanging out felt a little like secretly dating my kid’s teacher. Thankfully, when the school year ended, Stevie moved on to another grade and my friendship with Ash stuck.

“You love being a teacher,” I say.

“Most days. The kids are great,” he clarifies. “It’s their parents who are a mess.”

I give him a humorously dark look.

Ash grins as he pops a fry into his mouth. “Nah, you and Nat were fine. I got the usual kid gossip from Stevie but nothing too bad.” He leans in and lowers his voice. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff kids tell me. Some of these parents are nuts. I had one physically threaten me when their son lost the school spelling bee. They were worried about his academic career.”

“What career? He’s six.”

“The word was thwart.”

“I can barely spell that now.”

“Exactly.” His attention is drawn to the TV again when the crowd around us collectively curses at something happening in the game, and my work malaise returns.

When Natalia and I divorced eight years ago, we agreed on shared custody of our daughter. This means Stevie, now ten years old, spends the weekdays at her mum’s place and the weekends and most school holidays at mine. It’s usually not a problem, but because of this evening’s disaster meeting with Blaine, I missed my pickup window. At some point, I’d done the Southern California mental calculation of:

(time of day) x (motorway construction)^{It’s Friday}

and told Nat to just carry on the evening without me.

She had to take Stevie to run errands and wouldn’t be home for a few hours. Now not only is my career in the toilet, I’m missing out on time with my favorite girl, too.

Restless, I glance around the bar, my eyes wandering back to the two women I saw earlier. One of them’s got her back to me, but the other, the one I made eye contact with shortly after I got here, is so gorgeous I can’t stop stealing looks at her. Petite and willowy, with inky black hair that gleams in the light above their table, she’s in a formfitting black dress, legs crossed and one thin, spiked heel resting on the leg of her barstool. Everything about her screams cool, which is an odd way for a grown man to describe another adult but it’s true. She’s animated while she speaks, making her friend laugh often. I should stop staring, but it’s nice to be distracted by a beautiful woman rather than obsessing about work.

If I were wired differently, maybe I’d walk over and see if we could distract each other somewhere else for the night. But I’m jerked from my daydreaming when Ash’s hand absently paws at my collar in reaction to something on the screen.

“What the— Ash.”

“Get it… Get it!” he shouts. His expression crashes. “Noooo.”

He slumps back into his chair.

“I just lost five bucks.” He reaches into his pocket for his phone.

“Five whole American dollars?” I ask, grinning. “You’d better watch that gambling habit.”

“I don’t know how she does it, but Ella is a shark and never loses.”

“You lost to your wife?”

He looks up from where he’s typing her a message. “I’m considering taking her to Vegas.”

“Definitely do it before the baby is born—pregnant ladies love smoky casinos.”

He ignores this and slides his phone onto the table. “Let’s get back to your job crisis so I can go home. I know this will hurt your do-gooder soul, but I think you need to bite the bullet and do the reality show Blaine wants. Spend the rest of the year making candy, or whatever he called it, and if it’s successful, you’ll have leverage to make what you want after that.”

I begin to protest, and he holds up a hand.

“I know you hate this. I know your work matters to you. Thanks to you I haven’t thrown away a gum wrapper or used a plastic water bottle in two years. I’m going to be using cloth diapers, man.”

“I must be a lot of fun at parties.”

Ash steeples his fingers under his chin. “I say this because I know how much you want to stick to your principles here. You want to make stuff that matters. But I also know you can’t lose this job. You only missed a few hours with Stevie tonight. Imagine what you’d miss if you had to move back to LA.”

I turn my gaze down to my beer. The thought alone makes my stomach twist. “Yeah.”

“So do it and move on.”

“I’m not sure it’s that easy.”

“Come on. We’re smart guys. Bounce some sexy show ideas off me.”

I press my fingers to my temples, trying to will a million-dollar idea into existence. “That’s the problem, I don’t have any. I’m certain the world doesn’t need another one of these things.”

“Well, while the world may not need another, it certainly wants it: Ella watches every single one. What you need is a new angle.” He turns to glance around the bar, and when he does, I see the dry cleaning tag still attached to his collar. Has it been like this all day? With a sigh, I reach over and pluck it off. “Huh,” he says, examining it before placing it on the table and looking back to the TV.

I follow his attention to where the game has finished and the nightly news is on. It’s too loud in the bar to hear the voiceover, but the captions inform me that GeneticAlly, the biggest dating app in the world right now, has been bought by Roche Pharmaceuticals.

“Holy shit,” Ash murmurs, then narrows his eyes to read something on the screen. “That is an absurd amount of money.”

My jaw is on the floor. “No kidding.” Remembering something, I look over at Ash. “GeneticAlly—isn’t that how you and Ella met?”

He nods. “We’re a Gold Match.”

A couple to our right has just taken their seats. The vibe between them is heavy with disappointment. A bad first date. They glance at each other only when they think the other isn’t looking, and an accidental brush of hands leads to bursting apologies but no shy smiles. No spark. It’s presumptuous of me, but I could walk over there right now and tell them they’ve got no chemistry, no chance. Couldn’t we all? I’m not overly familiar with GeneticAlly, but I know they developed a system that matches people for compatibility based on signatures in their DNA. I’d give this couple a zero.

Lifting my chin, I say to Ash, “Think they’re a Gold Match?”

He glances over and watches for a handful of seconds before raising his drink to his lips. “Nope. No way.”

I look back up at the TV and an idea tickles the edge of my brain. I’ll have to make a few calls. Maybe having time to kill will be a good thing after all.