Work Text:
Still, I have to say:
I hate your good reasons.
STEPHEN DUNN, to a terrorist
Sean is twenty-five minutes late, for a start. As if he’s the one who doesn’t live in New York. Eduardo may know Sean in name only, but he knows enough to contest him. He’s read up. Napster co-founder parties up in girl’s North Carolina home; Plaxo poos Parker on suspected drug charge; Parker says dismissal from Case Equity is "unwarranted"; Internet pirate goes for broke after RIAA lawsuit and Moritz P.I. tag. So he’s not unaware. Eduardo's head is a crank, and Sean Parker scrolls in a language of infinite trenchant headlines.
He can’t dislike Sean, not yet, but he can dislike the idea of him. The principality of Sean Parker, self-venerated prophet of social media, intellectualizing lothario of the thirty-and-under set. It doesn’t have to be applied to know that it doesn’t work. It has to speak for Eduardo’s, whatever, resolve, that he’s even here. Whoever Sean Parker is, with Mark beside him, in an uptown too-cool restaurant, miles away from Kirkland House, Eduardo is at least open. Thirty-five minutes, now. He knows what counts.
Sean takes forever to arrive, too. Forty-five minutes, by the time Sean finally walks into the restaurant, walking like he owns Tribeca, like he was personally responsible for the fusion minimalist interior. Fifty minutes, by the time Sean finally sees them. Fifty-two, by the time Sean takes his seat at their table, all smiles and circumstance, nothing more, nothing less. As if the reservation, them being there, all of it, has all come as a very pleasant surprise. You don’t mind if I join you, right? Since we’re all here.
Sean Parker? Speaks for himself.
Sean approaches Eduardo in California. Here, Sean’s the host who’s already won over everybody else at the party, and Eduardo is the frowny-faced plus one who can’t admit he’s actually having a good time. Eduardo is in this as nothing less than Mark’s partner. Sean, of course, is only in this for Mark. Facebook was founded upon the tenet of exclusivity, after all. In any configuration, the singling-out is due par.
“I know you see it,” Sean says conversationally. Eduardo can’t stand the shrug of Sean’s shoulders, his try me posture, the hem of his t-shirt creased above his belt. Sean’s calculated nonchalance. “You can afford to ride the F train for some meeting in the back office of a Shakey’s Pizza, right? You can afford to be right.”
What comes to Eduardo’s mind first is window of opportunity. Maybe it’s because he’s been looking out of one, literally, nursing his own cliche. Maybe it’s because Sean, physically, has leaned in.
“It would cost much less,” Sean says, “you know.”
“I agreed with the name change,” Eduardo says shortly. Because it’s not about the name, obviously it’s not. “I don’t have to like you to agree with it. And I don’t have to agree with your—”
“Interrupting?” Sean suggests.
“Usurping,” Eduardo says, “what is supposed to be my responsibility in this company. My sole responsibility.” He pauses. “I don’t have to agree with you about anything at all.”
“More important people than you would say it’s much advised.”
This is what nausea feels like. The lurch only comes after the snap. “What the fuck would you know, Sean?” Eduardo asks, and then after a beat, “What have you been telling Mark?”
“Oh, whatever important people know is important to know,” Sean sing-songs. “It’s always so good to share.” The smile he gives Eduardo is an upturned kind of pity. Oh, you kids. “Mark wants to take Facebook places, and I know where to go.”
“Yeah. I don’t see how two big-time company burn-outs serve as much of an endorsement for what you know.”
“Hey, I got out when I was up,” Sean says, maybe too quickly. “When it was time to move on, I moved on. That’s all there is to it.”
“You’re shooting the shit in a house that I paid for, Sean,” Eduardo says. “I don’t care how vested your interest in the company is, but I do actually care about making returns.”
“Uh-huh.” Sean shifts his posture, gleaming anew. “Tell me, Eduardo,” he says. “What are you really protecting here? The plan or the person?”
Eduardo isn’t sure if Sean is pretending to be interested in interpersonal dynamics, or if he’s only been pretending not to be until now. It’s annoying either way.
“You’re not Mark's friend,” Eduardo says.
A cartoon bubble of a laugh splits Sean’s mouth open. “Sure, whatever.” You kids these days. “For real, man. Does that matter?”
“Not that anyone needs to hear it,” Eduardo says, “and not like I care one shit, but what do you think?”
“I,” Sean says, “don’t think friendship can be used as an accurate measure of contribution.”
“Friends or not, you’re not supposed to be here.”
“And you’re in New York,” Sean points out. “Friends or not. The least you can do is shit where you live.”
“Why don’t you go back to New York,” Eduardo says, “and fuck yourself.”
“Aw, come on, Eduardo,” Sean says, nasal, not bothered at all. “You don’t want to be wearing some knock-off Zegna suit that reeks of subway piss for the rest of the summer. Trust me. How long are you going to keep punching at the ceiling before you realize it's just not going to break?”
“I. Am Mark’s partner in this.” Eduardo’s voice pitches sickeningly at Mark’s name. He needs a drink. “We,” he insists, “are partners.”
“Right.” Sean’s smile is a joke withholding its own punchline. Waiting, just waiting, for Eduardo to fill it in. “Exactly.”
Eduardo spits his words and Sean throws them back, salt-stung affectations intended to injure. The deliveries are always more impetuous than deliberated, and so what, because it hardly matters here. They are on a larger playing field, but this is only the little league, Eduardo knows; the way they behave, it’s nothing more than you’d expect from kids, with all the flippant barbs and low digs, but they are still kids, really. And kids always think they know best, even at the expense of another.
They really shouldn’t be permitted to negotiate their own futures, not like this. Not for how much Sean claims to know, definitely not for Mark’s contemptuous unprofessionalism, and maybe, maybe, not even for Eduardo's own discretion—no. None of them are old enough to know any better. So they regress. They speak at each other, they get their points across; they ultimately retain nothing from each other, and they run through the fray again. It works for them. Enough of that, the infuriating back and forth, and Eduardo can almost pretend it will change anything.
It always rains when he’s back—not back, here, back is—in New York. Away from here. Eduardo takes up Mark’s room, as usual; he sweeps and shakes out Mark’s unused sheets to the sound of underage co-eds until Sean comes in without knocking and that’s the end of it for now.
Sean grins at Eduardo’s wresting fists and starts it off. He needs no more introductions. "Dusting off the old marriage bed, Heathcliff? ‘Cause Cathy’s bonny eye is—you know—” He motions to the doorknob. “—otherwise occupied." As in, he has no time for you.
"Do you enjoy being a channel for other people’s aggression, Sean?" Eduardo baits. He walks around the bed and leans against Mark’s wardrobe, Mark’s room, why is Sean in it now. "Or are you just used to it?"
"Why do you think I’m still here?"
"Because you’re only going to leave in the same way you came—fashionably fucking late."
Sean replies with a sighing tch, and of course it’s mocking. "To speak of who’s late on the uptake."
"And you do speak. Out of your fucking turn."
"At least I make up my mind when I've got a good thing going."
"Yeah, you do make for it."
"Sore. If I’m the Suez Canal—" Sean sidles up to him, his cologne an invisible rope, pulling tighter. "—then you’re just my Great Bitter Lake."
Eduardo has to laugh, coughs it out of him like an illness. "You're so fucking self-centered."
"Not any more than anyone else I haven't heard of." Sean’s fingers insinuate themselves inside the band of Eduardo’s pants. His nails catch at the tucked hems of Eduardo’s shirt, claws them slowly out. "I'm a good guy, really. Just exercising my right to some legedermain and very enterprising chutzpah. It's not my fault if people want to cling to their insecurities and call me dangerous."
Sean smooths his hands up Eduardo's sides, stopping at the carriage of his ribs, holds him like a girl. Eduardo's palms press flat against the painted wood doors behind him. Sean moves in, presses him.
"What are you doing,” Eduardo says, to Sean, maybe, but it’s more to himself. "And stop doing it."
"I’m way ahead of you, man.” Sean eases the zipper down with an accompanying jingle of a laugh. Eduardo lets him unbutton the fly. "I’m way ahead of you."
Sean’s hands snare around leather and tug.
"Look at my face, Eduardo." This close Sean’s smile is overcrowded and crooked, and Eduardo exhales, drops his shoulders, tries to look at him differently. "And tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about."
The tongue of Eduardo’s belt licks silent.
The ruined zip line—ruined when Eduardo wasn’t there—is now drawn taut over the pool in an eight person tug-of-war. A miscellaneous crowd of underage girls and Stanford crashers watch under the awning, and Eduardo watches them through the glass. He must be a pathetic sight—a crumpled suit languishing in the darkness of the kitchenette; still only on his second beer of the night, because he can forget altogether that there’s a bottle in his hand.
He wonders how real the pride is—he sees the happiness before him like a projection, more than he actually feels it. Maybe it’s just the jet lag. All the cross-state travel, and the failed meetings, and now the world is always three hours faster, and he’s never early enough.
The front door slides open, then, and Sean stumbles inside like a proudly unwelcome visitor, the damp of his trousers slapping sour on the floor tiles. He’s laughing into his phone, walking right past Eduardo and into the adjoining room, where Mark is wired in and dead to the physical world. Sean lingers there, leaning close enough to the doorway that Eduardo can hear the buzzing voice of the receiving caller, but he can’t bother to make out what Sean’s saying, above the rain outside, the unceasing click-click-tap of Mark’s untrimmed fingernails on the keyboard.
He watches Mark, watches Sean watching Mark, the tilt of his head, the appraising leer he wears into the backlight of his cell phone. He’s still gesticulating, something about William Randolph Hearst, magnates and Eisenhower and Finnegan’s Wake, drowning out the keys. Suddenly he hears Sean saying “sui generis” under his breath, and he decides to hate Sean, then, hate him with all the self-righteous indignation of a child.
He can’t take him.
Sean claps his phone closed and goes over to Mark, leans in and clasps an easy, assured arm around his shoulder. Mark visibly recoils at the contact, but where he would normally have shrugged it off, he’s wired in, now, and absorbed enough to allow it, so Sean tightens the gaps. The jut of Sean’s elbow aligns with Mark’s neck; the unafraid skin on skin, the knob of his wrist brushing Mark’s hair, the too-expensive leather of his watch strap, glass flashing its reflection at Mark’s computer screen—and it’s all just there. He’s just there.
Their backs are an oracle. Eduardo doesn’t want what it means. He stands up, turns, and doesn’t stay to hear the end of it.
When he walks out of the Facebook offices, Eduardo doesn’t think twice. He doesn’t think about Sean, doesn’t think about the defensive, incriminating polish in Mark’s eyes, doesn’t think about the high-definition numbers, the wall-to-wall glass screens, the memory foam seat-backs. He doesn’t let himself think about anything at all. And he doesn’t let go.
He doesn’t let anything go.
He just leaves.
The suit’s up and over with. Eduardo doesn't need to work anymore, but he does. He got more than he asked for—and somehow, at the same time, much, much less.
Sean was dismissed some time during the deposition, which never came up during it. He’d have felt more vindicated if Sean was formally charged, if this wasn't just a formality to maintain the company’s repute. He hears enough; Sean's not the president of Facebook in title anymore, but he still assumes it in position.
These aren’t his days to account for anymore. Now Eduardo is his own, and he lives vicariously through a dull notion of his won wealth: single-serving takeouts, shrink wrapped croque monsieurs, disposable chopsticks, tinfoil cartons with cardboard lids. He could afford to have all his meals from one Michelin Star restaurant to another; he doesn't. He buys in whims and transits.
He doesn't even bother leasing a car; just cabs everywhere, and then there are flights, and trains, and in-transits, and more cabs. He travels from New York to San Francisco to Boston, in hotels near his offices or in beds at the Phoenix, where he's still welcomed. He staves off the Florida visits—at least, at least until the seasonal holidays. He dreads the coming back, is always looking for the go. His apartment never stays warm.
Once, he attends an informal entrepreneurial round-table. There are other economists, tech execs, a variety of internet entrepreneurs. Sean is there, of course, and Hoffman, and moderators of Techonomy. He doesn't know who invited K-Brooks and Ternovskiy, but they keep to themselves, engaging in stilted, animated conversation. A pencil-skirted PA is in stead as Mark's avatar, which is typical; Eduardo is about as keen on these events as Mark would be, but he's polite enough to keep up appearances. He has little else to care about.
Sean-a-thon kicks in after the appetizers. Nothing Eduardo hasn’t heard before, years before; in other words: the antiquation of physical communication, how the postal service will be made redundant by online networking and the expedience of electronic correspondence. Reruns.
"Time is a frill of association. Relationships aren’t defined by the absences in between. There’s no romance in waiting for answers, waiting for a reply, waiting for—evidence of your existence. But now—we have a world of time without waiting. We can live and relive ourselves in perpetuity—these encapsulations of us, of other people—it’s a party in perpetuity where everyone’s always hitting it off with one another. And this nexus of social media as best we can construct it now—is Facebook."
Sean looks over at Eduardo at this point, suggesting. Like the name and all it represents between them has distilled to nothing more than a private in-joke.
"We live for now, and for what’s to be. This is our technological decade. Wuthering Heights was a bust. Now, we have efficiency. Easily retrievable data. And the ability to make instantaneous connections without any cloying interdependency. Without any devils on our backs."
Sean raises his glass. "Intimacy. At our convenience." He drinks.
The guests concur with chinks of expensive wine and laughs of approval. Eduardo deadens his eyes and talks over the rise of discussion. "So, social networks are, what. Self-services."
Sean looks straight at him and knows. "Hey, the queen is dead, Eduardo," he says matter-of-factly. "But her mirror’s still being polished and everyone’s jostling for makeup space. The least we can bring to the fairy tale table is make the mirror bigger."
"You’re just building upon the idea of self-congratulation," Eduardo admonishes. "I mean—yeah, the internet is a huge platform and everyone can get to know everyone now, and everyone’s friends, or whatever, but they wouldn’t put themselves out there in the first place if they weren’t motivated by their own sense of self-worth." He’s babbling, he’s babbling now. "If they weren’t—"
"Everyone wants to be paid in attention."
"What you’re saying, is that we’re all—willingly or unwillingly—part of some self-created social conglomerate that is compounded by—" Eduardo almost forgets what he was going to say. "—selfishness."
Sean claps like he’s won. "Good morning, starshine, the Earth says hello." And he looks almost—approving, and this is the first time Eduardo can remember having it directed at him. "Welcome to the real world, Eduardo. If Dr. Kübler-Ross could join us, she’d congratulate you too."
He has Sean’s e-mail address because Sean starts first. As was. Sean has his e-mail address because he’s never narrowed his Facebook profile’s search visibility. He knows Sean is ever only on war dial—he’s seen Sean’s phone alerts, 79 missed calls, 113 messages—but he’s easily contactable online, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
Their not-acquaintanceship translates over to the virtual reality with a fair amount of accuracy. The e-mails never mature into tentative stations for emotional affiliation, and in between the attached e-book of The Hero With a Thousand Faces, or links to Economist articles discussing the latest big-company bailouts, it's still the same game: I hate you for being; I hate you for hanging on. It’s a game.
Sean also likes to relate whatever farce-fueled entanglements he’s had with any number of Silicon Valley VC execs he’s set to exact revenge on for that particular week. It’s the kind of self-righteously baseless paranoia usually seen in propaganda cartoons, and Eduardo’s replies are usually diffusive, because really, it does get old, but they're worded sharply enough to encourage the childish, jibing thread of correspondence. Still works.
from sean parker, part II
to Eduardo Saverin
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 09:01 PM
subject (no subject)
okay okay so the silent treatment proliferates tenfold over the infobahn. i get it. you are still clawing at the last vestiges of your self-respect and conceiving elaborate toni braxton music video fantasies where you’re anguishing upon the walls of your grand plaza hotel room in your underwear. life is bigger than the swimming pool you’re trying to drown yourself in, eduardo. try to imagine all of the future’s possibilities. maybe you are DEMONSTRABLY FINE. maybe i am not a fuckover. maybe we could be in the same room and, HORROR, allude to more than your curly-haired internet pirate of a psychological block.
from Eduardo Saverin
to sean parker, part II
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 10:15 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
And why that prospect would be irresistible to me is -- ?
from sean parker, part II
to Eduardo Saverin
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 10:18 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
you could actually get to know me better. hoo-ra
from Eduardo Saverin
to sean parker, part II
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 10:43 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
That would take some time. I can spend mine on better.
from sean parker, part II
to Eduardo Saverin
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 10:45 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
and BTW i missed my flight to send that e-mail, which was meticulously worded for maximum clout. so. recognize.
from Eduardo Saverin
to sean parker, part II
date Mon, November 24, 2006 at 10:52 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
Wasn’t worth it. You should have tried harder.
from sean parker, part II
to Eduardo Saverin
date Mon, March 24, 2006 at 10:54 PM
subject RE: (no subject)
ooooooh look who’s talking.
Eduardo is often drunk. There are business galas, and plus ones, but regular programming resumes, and alcohol and traitorous feelings are always scheduled for primetime syndication. He’s not lonely; he’s just alone.
He tends to plot Euler diagrams of what went wrong: different schematics on separate sheets of hotel monogrammed paper, wobbly fountain pen circles, circles and more circles overlapping and enclosing, his handwriting cramped and small within the bisections, the ink running together beyond legibility. He draws out squares of opposition sometimes, for a change of pace, but he can never decide who the real asshole is. Fucking kids.
Winding up, he gets to the better scotch eventually, the Black Bowmore 1964 that cost more than a few Prada three-pieces but tastes infinitely better, like replaceable commodities he can walk away from and never miss, and he lets himself come to conclusions. There was no competition, not really. No contests. Sean was circumstantial to Facebook as Dustin and Chris were, the interns, Peter Thiel. He was circumstantial. Mark had always acted for himself, and as an extension of himself, he acted in the interest of Facebook. He didn’t act in the name of anyone else. He didn’t say so. He didn’t say anything. Not that he had to.
And the numbers can speak for Mark now. A hundred-strong staff full of fanatical conviction multiplied by the support of seven-figure investments, a billion-dollar valuation grapevine. One million users. Eduardo can only speak for himself—Eduardo Saverin, heart-strung expendable, a point zero three per cent vantage, out of office and in the Phoenix, back in Boston and away from Mark and away and out and apparently not enough of a difference. Yeah. It’s easier to confine the mess within cold, unambiguous numbers, explain it in elementary terms like choice and either-or. He can almost justify it that way.
It takes time to move beyond binary code. Eduardo has to feel outside of himself, has to hover over the bed of unconsciousness before he starts to try, to grope for a settlement that really matters. Then will he start to write a defense, a case—An Argument For Sean Parker:
— He knows what he’s doing.
— He doesn't care.
Still. They're not excuses.
Sean sends Eduardo a dinner invite between New York and San Francisco; he only goes because it’s at his own convenience, because he doesn’t have to take a red-eye or leave of absence, because he doesn't care enough.
He arrives at a mammoth town house in the West Village that serves to accommodate rather than to feel at home in; for all the shelves of exotic tea blends and reggae LPs, however, Sean’s neglected to buy a shoe cabinet, so everyone’s animal-skin wingtips and five-inch Louboutins end up scattered across the front hall like maggots.
It’s a gathering of like minds, similarly prodigal Forbes candidates, the movers and millionaires club. There are musicians, fashionably quirky experimentalists, Sean’s celebrity friends. Eduardo recognizes few of them and does not care about most. There's the nascent discussion of Founders Fund, naturally, the beginnings of Spotify, and considering the company, pretentious hyperbole: deconstructions of Bataille, the Czech New Wave. Eduardo doesn’t wonder why Sean bothers with these things. It only looks like generosity.
He lingers on after the guests peter out, because the wall-to-wall carpeting is surprisingly comfortable and he's not angry enough tonight for a storm. Now, with Sean within shouting distance, his lungs fuck it and deflate. Now, every opportunity to stay in one position for extended period of time, he will take. He will stew.
"Shouldn’t you know better by now than to back yourself into a corner?" Sean asks.
Sean's been draped over the chaise-longue for the night's entertainments, but now he joins Eduardo on the floor and offers him the half-bottle of wine left, Romanée Conti shipped in from Burgundy. It's not what Eduardo is used to, but he takes it.
"You’re like a vacuum-sucked version of yourself today. I’d almost hazard to assume that you’ve moved on from your idée fixe of a former business partner." Sean grins sidelong at him. "Exorcised your ghost."
"If there’s anything that’s been proven by past experience—" Eduardo’s eyes are steady, relentless over the mouth of the bottle. "—it’ll be in my better interest to move—not move on. Move ahead."
"And to move ahead?"
"I shouldn’t go for what I want. But what I deserve."
Sean smirks triumphant. "You get it. You get it."
On a thought, Eduardo makes to kick him, draws his leg back, and Sean flinches predictably. He laughs at Sean’s ruffled affront, laughs high-pitched and dragged through crushed grapes, laughs.
Sean is already restarting his grin and standing to full height. His shoulders are slightly gathered, however, and wary. "I redrew the blueprints of disruptive technology, Eduardo. You're not going to hate me for that."
"You're not an architect, Sean."
"I don't need a license to start my own practice, Eduardo."
"It's much advised."
"You’ve always known what I meant.” Sean reigns in, wraps his hand around Eduardo's and twists the bottle out of his grasp. "And I know. People can do a lot of stupid things for attention." He throws his head up as he drinks the wine down. "At its lowest denominator, all anyone wants is to be validated.” Again, and his neck works a swallow. "—ah. But you need something to show for it. Nothing, and you're left out. So it goes."
"What are you—are you trying to provoke me?"
"I like to think we've reached a point where we don't have to try anything each other."
Eduardo pinches his brows, closes his eyes and restrains. "Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to—fuck it. I'm tired. I'm not going to say anything.”
"Hey. I was just trying to help." Sean puts his hands up in mock-surrender: nope, not me. "It wasn’t anything personal."
Sometimes Eduardo wants to put his hands on Sean, equidistant apart with Sean’s neck flanked between them. He wants to hold Sean only to keep him still, and he wants to press down, down until he can look down on Sean, not on Sean’s terms, never, but on Sean’s level. He wants to lay Palo Alto to waste from the mantelpiece of Sean’s shoulders, align Sean’s heart beneath his and weigh it down sinking. He wants to sit on Sean’s legs and bear down upon him, deflate Sean’s gall just to feel it decline. He wants to take back all Sean took from him. He wants to suck the me out of Sean’s mouth and blow Sean back up with no. Fuck no. No no no no no no no.
Because none of this is really about you. This has never, never, been about you.
You just happened to be there.
And I am definitely, now, in a position to hate you, to hate the motherless fuck out of you, for just, being, there.
He never makes the right moves.
Eduardo never gives Sean anything he would want to keep, and he has never wanted anything Sean had anyway. Not really. Isn’t sure what Sean ever has and not just obtained, for a time, and kept stealing back. There aren’t any complications of esteem between them, at least because no one's in a position to take.
Sean will still mention Mark, and the details will be just vague enough to arouse Eduardo’s hateful, gutter-headed speculation—but he can't let it matter. It doesn't, anymore.
It's easier this way.
Hoshigatta
Posted Thu 16 Jun 2011 02:48AM EDT
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