Pee On Water

THE JON LENNIN XPERIENCE

Jason still read actual books. He was skeptical of internet stars. Someone’s cat would suddenly be famous, and Jason wouldn’t understand how. His cell phone was basic. His sister was into reality video games and it was all she talked about. She didn’t call them games, she called them Xperiences.

“I got to a funny part in ‘Dating Kanye,’” she told Jason. “I was tired and snuggling on him, and he asked me which I liked better, dinner or lunch? Well, I was exhausted and happy and I didn’t say anything, just snuggled, so he Tweeted the question and immediately got 400 responses!”

Jason liked old things. Baseball, newspapers, rock and roll. He liked going to the post office. For his birthday, his sister got him an unreleased Beatles Xperience and it stayed in his sock drawer, a computer chip in a ziplock bag. They lived together off her money. In high school, she had serendipitously created the popular phone app Fun Face.

After Fun Face was sold, they moved away from their parents and for two years tried different cities until settling in a lonely loft space in Brooklyn that Jason thought was ruining his life. He took history classes at the New School and played chess in the park against men he was afraid of. His sister ran around museums and had boyfriends and practiced her lousy pool game in bars. After ‘Fun Face,’ no one could tell her what to do. She could buy herself into anything.

Jason was older than his sister, but it no longer felt like an advantage. Somehow he had fallen distractedly behind. The few relationships he had were brief and he’d never been able to give a girl an orgasm. He had even read articles on how. It was a major character flaw of his, he felt. It made him nervous about the rest of his life. Guys in jumpsuits did cool routines in the subway and Jason was paralyzed over whether to give them money.

Sometimes he went out to bars with an acquaintance from his class, but the music was so processed. “It sounds like a baby swallowed a synthesizer!” he said, but Blake did not react. Jason watched people play laser pool. All the girls he met were strangers.

While Jason lifted weights in his room, his sister virtually dated the rap star Kanye West. Other girls across the country were doing the same. Jason walked into the kitchen/dining room/rec room (it was all one crazy mess), and saw his sister talking to Kanye at a restaurant.

“Hi, Jason!” she said, in a voice he’d heard around all her boyfriends. She wore the tight gloves with sensors.

“Hey.”

“Move in closer so you can be here.”

Kanye was huge on the wall. His sister was there too. The scene did look very real, but dreamy like a Pixar movie. Some spaghetti sauce had even stained the white tablecloth where they were eating.

“Can you taste that?” asked Jason. His sister’s spaghetti played in spirals around her fork and spoon.

“No, not really.”

Kanye looked at his sister with dewy, rendered eyes.

Jason got a job scanning old newspaper articles into computers at a library. His time split nicely between history classes and this newspaper job, and though he still didn’t have any good friends, the city bummed him out less. He spent his free time in Central Park, feeling good about trees, feeling left out by trees, watching people play frisbee. His sister was having trouble with Kanye and often he came home to them fighting in Kanye’s flashy apartment. One night, Kanye had left and Jason’s sister remained, wandering. She shut the game off with her foot. “He’s being an idiot. It keeps ending. Every way I try it. I keep resetting to earlier levels, but it doesn’t matter.” She looked helpless and wild.

“I bet that’s just how the game ends. With the relationship over,” Jason said. “They don’t want girls to spend the rest of their lives in this game.” Did they?

“I know. Maybe. I hadn’t felt like that about someone in a long time.” She took a computer chip out of the game machine. “This is him.”

“You should date someone where you can taste the food.”

She gradually let go of Kanye. She and Jason ordered pizzas and played cards. The loft no longer felt like a trap to Jason. The ceilings were high with possibility, the extra air gave him ideas. On paper, he drew out the brief timeline of his life. He wrote letters to old high school friends.

His sister was pretty and social; it wasn’t long before she had a new boyfriend. Ryan was an amateur boxer/website creator. They hung out in the living room playing boxing Xperiences. Then she was never around, always at Ryan’s, and the loft again greeted Jason in an empty way. He was putting away laundry when he found the ziplock bag and examined the computer chip. Video games had gotten so small. He set it on the kitchen table and stared at it while he ate his meals. He used it to reflect dizzy spots of sun. He pretended it could blow up the world.

Jason was reluctant. The bag was labeled Jon Lennin Xperience in smudged marker. Why had they spelled John wrong? Was it mistranslated? He held the chip up to one eye. It looked like a bad little space town. It took him awhile to fit it in the game machine. He switched it on and held the controller.

It was a scene of buildings. It seemed irrelevant. The buildings were computer generated with the same strange glow from the Kanye game. A flock of birds flew by and it was stunning. The buildings were so real (each brick!). Light refracted off water-droplets clinging to a window’s screen. Then, the scene dissolved into rolling grassy fields, ancient Japanese cities. An instrumental Beatles medley played and Jason felt moved in an embarrassing, immediate way. Giraffes swayed in a jungle. The Beatles ran through the scenes and it really looked like them. Alive like them.

For a while, he only watched the intro. He’d shut off the game at the menu screen and leave for Manhattan with a good feeling in his face. A person heat. He didn’t tell his sister. He’d found an easier way to exist and it wasn’t illegal.

He wrote his parents an enthusiastic postcard but didn’t mention John Lennon. Jon Lennon. Jon Lennin. Maybe that was a copyright issue. He’d always loved the Beatles, it was the first music he’d heard. It was family car music. He’d never had to grow out of it. He could play ‘Norwegian Wood’ on the guitar and ‘Blackbird.’

He memorized the opening sequence: the sudden descent of the birds, the wink Ringo gave before diving into a glimmering pool. (And the alternate version: George sharing an ice cream with Paul.) One day lingering at the menu screen, Jason just went for it.

Sometimes he was Jon looking out at the world, sometimes he was behind glass at the recording studio. He was Ringo once, searching a mansion for his missing drumstick. He saw Paul naked in the shower laughing. He spoke into the controller and usually people responded. He was the car driving them down the street.

He learned to use his sister’s video guitar and the sensey-gloves and wore her dimension glasses. It was insane. Jason would pause the game to eat quick meals of anything then rush back to the game.

They jammed on expensive guitars on someone’s balcony.

“Hey Jon! Check this out,” Paul played a predictable riff.

Jason played it back and made it better.

Occasionally, he could switch point-of-view by pressing the select button, but usually he was locked. There was no manual, but pressing A and B simultaneously brought up a hints screen that occasionally had background or tutorials. There were levels. He could save his progress. Some of the levels were so long he forgot he was in one.

One night, instead of showing up to his concert, Jason dragged Jon to a dock and watched boats. The wind swept Jon’s hair across his glasses. Jason pressed Y + L to search his pockets. A box showed up at the side of the scene that taught Jason to smoke with the X and Y buttons. A pretty girl walked over to him and was rude. Jason carefully climbed Jon down the dock into the water. The sensey gloves were heavy as he swam Jon around. It felt odd. When he dragged Jon back on the dock, there was a small crowd and he was surprised to have passed the level.

Jason’s sister was glad he was finally playing. “Great graphics,” she said, stopping by for clothes. She gave him a mysterious look. “Hey, I met this girl I want to set you up with!”

“I don’t know. Maybe in a few months.”

She laughed at him and went back to her boyfriend. Jason was Jon, looking at everything he saw.

It felt good to sing with the band. The lyrics were already memorized. He sang them while a little dot ran the score, marking his pitch. He skipped his New School classes. He scanned newspaper in a haze.

Jon spent whole days with photographers and was interviewed. He went sailing with George and his family. There were button combinations for everything. Jason opened a beer, made the peace sign, cleaned his glasses. He drove cars, restrung guitars, dined with celebrities. Jason helped Jon eat the food and then paused it to eat a rushed meal of rice and ketchup.

When the next level started, Yoko was already in the picture. Everything was going so fast! Jason hadn’t even met Cynthia, Lennin’s first wife (though once Julian had called on the phone and he hadn’t known what to say). He’d been waiting so long for a real girlfriend, what a loss not to see it evolve! Devastated, he skipped Jon’s recording session. He wandered around Jon’s New York ignoring people. He took Jon into a restaurant and ate plates and plates of meaningless food. When he took Jon back to his apartment, the door was open and Yoko walked out in his old bathrobe. “The first man, my strength.”

She had rearranged everything in a far more suiting way.

Her cheeks were enormous and warm. She nestled against him and he carried her to the couch.

“I moved the couch to where it could see better,” she said.

“I know. I saw. I love it. I love you.”

He had never said that before.

Yoko lay naked on the bed. Jason put on one of her albums and she laughed. Her laugh was like something he’d heard at the zoo once that had made him want to go back. They kissed and Yoko ran her hands over his back. “Love man, sexy Jon, double love.” He tried it back, this poem language, it made her laugh. He put a hand on her butt and she didn’t stop him. As she teased him and spread her legs, Jason realized he’d have to get her off to get to the next level.

He tried to get a tutorial, but there was none.

“What’s wrong, Jon?”

He paused it.

He looked out his huge windows at the rooftops below, the city across the river, the clouds in the weather. The video game was stupid. He turned away from it and did some stretches. He tried to lift weights, but he had gotten bad again. He went off to his room for no reason.

His bed was the same bed he’d had growing up. It was unmade. On his dresser, an old corded landline phone sat next to a box TV. His sister called it “The Museum.” There were some old cassettes and a lava lamp too. He pushed back all the books in his bookcase. Normally, video games didn’t need you to do this. He had played some growing up and none were anything like this. But he was good at the Xperience. His quick learning of button combinations had helped him. He was at level 22. He was a good Jon.

He unpaused the game. He slid on the gloves and spoke into the controller. “You look very beautiful, Yoko.” She curled around to kiss him and he kissed back. He moved his glove down and stroked her belly and her thighs. “You look like a mermaid,” he said, “an actual mermaid, with legs.” She laughed and the A button activated Jon’s fingers.

The view scrolled to Yoko’s vagina. He could tilt the controller and see her face, but it was blurry. The vagina looked very real. All the flaps made Jason nervous. He pressed Y + X and Yoko made a low noise. He reached up toward her breast, but could not reach. He continued pressing Y + X and watched Jon’s hands move on Yoko. It was going good. She wiggled closer and he pressed up + AA and she yelled “Ow!” Jason quickly turned off the game. He was trapped again in the huge apartment. He threw down the sweaty sensey gloves. Painted pipes wound above him. He got his keys and left.

He took off jogging, but felt awkward. People stared. They could tell he was a bad runner. He ran past them. He was hungry. He ate a hotdog at a stand. Food! Wind! After his sister ended it with Kanye, she’d felt a new appreciation of actual life. He felt that and cursed the game, but he loved the game. It wasn’t a stupid game. It wasn’t a game at all.

The park was crowded in a good way. He took his phone out and called his sister. She answered immediately.

“Hey!!! I was just talking about you!”

“Why?”

“I’m out with Ryan and Jessica! Jessica is the girl I want you to meet.”

He could hear laughter in the background, probably Jessica’s, he thought.

He met up with them in the Lower East Side. His sister’s boyfriend shook his hand as if there were something deep and understood between them. Jessica wasn’t bad looking. His sister got up to give Jason her seat so he could sit next to Jessica. She laughed when he sat down.

Jason ate his food eagerly, “like a homeless person!” they teased him. His sister told glorified versions of stories from their childhood. The famous one with Jason climbing a huge tree, refusing to come down, and his sister trying to saw through it. Jessica was half-Jewish half-Muslim and she talked about why that was complicated. His sister made bad jokes and they all took turns making fun of her. Jason felt relieved to be around people.

He and Jessica had a good laugh over Fun Face and the young cult surrounding it. Jessica was smarter than he had originally thought. She had studied all over the world. It turned out they had been to the same hostel in Berlin. They talked about all the dog shit in Berlin. Her eyelids fluttered when she laughed, and he decided he liked it. They talked about old musicians no one knew about. She knew who Leadbelly was, which impressed him. Talking with her invigorated him and he itched to run home and play the Xperience.

Jessica bumped into him as they walked out and he could tell by his sister’s lit-up face he was supposed to hold Jessica’s hand or something, get her number. And he would have, normally, a few months ago, but he had the eerie feeling that Yoko was waiting for him, at home in the loft, and she was an icon, who knew him! who loved him! and he began to feel unsure about wasting his whole night with Jessica, who wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be around next week, next month, another time. Thinking about the Xperience he felt so bold that he kissed this Jessica, full on, in front of his sister and her boyfriend, then blushing, ran from the kiss and ducked into the subway.

At the loft he threw his sweatshirt on the floor. He took off his jeans. He pulled down his boxers. Wearing only socks, he walked over to the game. He was a famous musician. He probably had a great body. He started from an earlier level. He was in Paris with the band. He was cold and put his clothes back on. He listened to Ringo talk to Mick Jagger, but Jason was thinking about how once on TV he’d seen a big fish that looked like Yoko, this feminine catfish. He wouldn’t try to explain it.

When he got Yoko on the bed, they kissed and rolled around and Jason got Jon’s hand going. He did the button combination for smoking and Yoko liked that. He mumbled nonsense into the controller. He did the button combinations Jon used on his guitars. Yoko was making noise. He started whispering to her about the catfish. He couldn’t help it. She laughed. His hands hurt. He wanted to put his face in it but he couldn’t. It was wide open. It was beautiful. Was it from a photograph? He watched it as he touched it. He kept at his button combinations. He did the one for rewinding a record, the one for waving goodbye. He was afraid he was going to break the controller. He wasn’t afraid of anything. His gloved hand touched her thighs, he reached her breast. She was loud. He was pretty sure people could hear from the street. The controller was warm and everything narrowed onto Yoko. Then she let out an amazing sound, like a trumpet dying. The wall fluctuated color. Yoko whispered something in lazy Japanese and the game announced completion of the level.

Jason stared long in the mirror at Jon. He was growing a beard and it was going well. He knew all the combinations, he could rub his eyes, tuck his hair under his ears. His sister kept calling him, but he could tell he couldn’t stop now. He made pancakes in the kitchen with Yoko. Sean had showed up in level 25. Jason was a father.

They were living post-Beatles, in a long level of daily life. Loving Yoko, feeding Sean. Jason felt fully immersed. He wrote songs that were not part of the level. He had Jon-thoughts about love and humans. He had them even on pause, while getting ready for bed. He had it matched up. He would get Jon into bed and press sleep and then he’d get himself into bed. In the morning, there was Yoko and Sean waiting on the wall.

In the end he had to kill Jon. Of course he didn’t want to! It was deranged, unfair. Level 27 started off not as Jon, in a tiny bedroom. There was no mirror for Jason to see who he was stuck in. There was a gun under the bed. The door was locked until he picked up the gun. The window was locked. This character’s only control was pulling the trigger.

He reset it back a level. He got Yoko off (it was easy now) and laced his shoes. He’d forgotten to put on pants and Yoko laughed. “Let’s just stay here!” Jason said.

“No,” she insisted, “we have to go to the studio!”

It always went like that. If he dawdled too long the game would freeze and he would have to shut it off and reset it.

Jason paced in the small room. There were loads of Beatles records, but no way to play them. Who was this asshole? Even in this tense situation, Jason marveled at the Xperience. There were cat scratches on the bedposts and real wood grain on the floor. Jason walked up to the desk, but all his fingers could do was pull a trigger. If he held the gun he could walk out the door, but once he got to the hallway, he felt nervous and walked back into the room. He fired the gun and it went off, shot a bullet in the wall and he watched the huge puff of plaster. He tried to shoot his foot, but it would only shoot the floor around his foot.

He shot up the roof, but there was no sky. He shot the records and the pillow. The gun was unlimited. Eventually, a nondescript woman opened the door. “Are you missing your map?” she asked mechanically. Time hadn’t been spent on her face. Her eyes were dots. Her mouth, a slot. “It’s right here,” she said, picking a paper from the floor and handing it to him. “Here,” she said and left.

Jason looked at the map. He could not stop this. He walked into the hallway and out the door. He had never played a more twisted game. There was a yellow line he followed. Why couldn’t he stay as Jon? He’d rather get shot then shoot. He’d definitely rather that. He considered quitting. He was at the very end, and the end was so fucked up, it wasn’t like being a soundman for one level, for a concert level, this was chilly and dark. He thought about Jessica and all the other warm-blooded girls, the people on the street hearing Yoko’s orgasms. He followed the yellow line.

It was so unrealistic, the gun in clear sight. This wasn’t how it had been. He wanted a cigarette, in the game, but he wasn’t Jon. He was some freak who only had one control. He considered stopping the game to get an actual cigarette. Nonsense. He approached Central Park. He followed the line. He got to the point. He waited. He shot at cars and trees and no one did anything. An unlimited gun! Glass broke like how glass did, car tires ran flat when he hit them. A tree just took the bullets, absorbed them, did nothing.

Jon and Yoko got out of a limo and Jason put the gun on them. The gun traced them shakily. A vibration in his gloves made him twitch, the wall brightened white and he shot Yoko, it was a mistake! the whole thing was wrong! but the bullet ran through her not touching. Jon was stalled in place and Jason’s face got hot, why was this his responsibility, this stupid world! The glove shook, the wall went white. He shot Lennin and he fell. There was blood and Yoko screamed and Jason pressed select select select and switched to Yoko whose view was dripping tears, and select into Jon whose view was pavement, and the medley started up again, the view soared away, he felt such disappointment, he was being forced out of the experience! But the medley continued, and won him over. Screen shots from the game flashed on the wall, and it was nice sort of, it was sad, and then there were all the names of strangers who had made the game, loads and loads of Asian people, a few Americans too, the meaningless names of animators, assistants, advisors, interns, actors, researchers, archivists, singers, fabricators, programmers, designers, musicians, producers, lawyers. It kept going. It reached the end. It was around 9:00.