Dating : The Statement of Solidarity

Parking lots had to be under the ground, so to hide the unexcited and stationary parts of life, let alone an nearly empty parking lot with only a custodian’s office on the corner. If the custodian decorated a bit, the office could look like a set on Harry Potter with all the crooked brooms and magic cleaning portions, but those who cleaned up for others never had time for magic.

Magic only happened when John Paul Jay(JPJ) pulled up in his newly purchased Audi Q8 for his first day of work since lock-down. It was a 1440 dollars job that made sure the four cycles of the Audi logo added up to 1440 (4×360) degrees.

JPJ’s day was only on the rise starting from the ground floor of the parking lot. His walk towards the elevator and the rather mindless ‘Good Morning!’ to the custodian already radiated too much outstanding positivity. So much so, his words fueled his walks into ballet movements. From the onset, the ground seemed too hot for his heels, and who needed the heels to drag the movement down when we could just use the front paws to walk?

The nimble movements were suspended by the closed cubicle of an early-2000s model elevator. Without much cleaning since its first installation, even the dust in the elevator smells. JPJ already forgot the love-and-hate relationship that he had with this part of his day in these two short months — this physical overcoming of hardship accompanied by the elevation of his status until he hit the 24th floor.

The 24th floor was almost the peak of the building. If anything, no buildings in this part of the town needed to be this tall, but future-proofed, and the offices on the 24th were a bit more expensive than offices on the 23rd floor (well, because it was on the 24th). The future orientation of the building wasn’t because the design looked straight out of Blade Runner, but rather, the owner, who had the building since the construction in 1996, realized that the real estate bubble of LA wasn’t a bubble, but more like pieces of bubble gum layered on top. Anyone who tried to poke-opened the bubble only got stuck with the layers of gums, along with sweats, tears, blood, mortgages, and finally ownership. This building then was more than just a phallic erection that only lasted in the 90s for Karens, but it withstood the test of time and was now serving one of the fastest-growing marketing agencies of the decade of 2020s.

JPJ got the call from his boss Karen Breidenstein for an emergency meeting in person around 12 hours ago, when he was taking his iconic LA 2-hrs road trips, which he fancied with multiple romantic interests (sometimes two-in-one), but that time he was alone. There were quite a few stops. He started by getting pink lemonade at Coffee Stop, then got California Rolls at Sushi Stop, sneered at the gamers in Game Stop, petted some breed animals at Pet Stop, and lastly finished it off with the weird conclusion that when girls say ‘stop it!’, they don’t mean it. They just mean let’s get some food, drinks, games, and some other objects of affection(so not you), so romance is still possible.

Only the light in the conference room was on, so JPJ traversed in the dark and reached his phone for flashlight purposes. He didn’t head where the light was in the conference room, but instead headed straight towards the coffee-making machine in the kitchen, without really thinking through the fact that no one had cleaned it since a couple of months ago. However, it was 6:30 in the morning, and no one cared about germs this early. He made some coffee and it was full of flavor. After injected caffeine and whatever dust particles were left in the machine, he was ready for the talk.

Karen was sitting patiently at the center seat of that conference table, flipping through a magazine. She didn’t look up when JPJ entered the room but merely told him to have a seat. He did and stared at Karen with the sort of eyes that your pet dog has when you wake him up for no reason.

“Hi. Karen.”

“Oh. Call me K. Bre.” Now she looked up with a reprimanding look like someone stepped on her toes.

“Ohh.” JPJ thought about why the name-change and realized that not only the connotation of Karen had changed, but it had extra effects on K. Bre as a white middle-aged woman who prided on her progressivism, inclusiveness, and most importantly environmental-conscious Tesla. She could not give off any “Karen” vibes to potential clients and employees.

“You know why you are here?” K. Bre. said it in a commercial voice, which entailed opened up your jaw when you pronounced the vowels, and enunciated every word like a call-to-action, “YOU ARE BORN to DO THIS JOB that I am GOING to GIVE to you.”

JPJ couldn’t process the depth of her emotion but still felt the sparks in her voice that dragged him out of his slumbered-6:15-morning face to the kind of hopeful face in every commercial.

“THIS ASSIGNMENT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.”

A normal person would probably slap Karen’s face for her weird build-up for no reason, but the core of marketing is to believe that everything is at stake. The suspense is not there in real life solely because you do not see the POWER OF YOUR OWN DECISION! If you don’t buy this Auto Insurance, you will crash your car tomorrow. If you don’t try this workout routine, you are going to gain 10 pounds in a day. If you didn’t send your aging mother to the nursing home because of that commercial, well, she might still be alive today. Clearly it can go both ways. But ARE you going to be CHEAP just to save a few BUCKS? You can PREVENT your life from FALLING apart, so are you going to RUIN it for EVERYONE? Needless to say, the only moral position is the one that is convenient for the product, but the marketing staff only sell stuff because they believe in it. Only entry-level rookies have to live with moral ambiguity and made-beliefs on certain products, rather than someone who is BORN TO DO THIS JOB.

Since JPJ was born for this job, he believed K. Bre’s words.

So what was the job?

K. Bre. dry-coughed a bit; considering her age, it was probably not a setup.

“You are going to be in charge of the statement of solidarity for Black Lives Matter for Baget’s CEO(the Target of this alternate universe).”

It was perhaps one of the biggest gigs of the company, now it had fallen on the shoulder of this 24-year-old who just got out of college a year and a half ago.

If you have been living under a rock, a lot of Baget stores around the countries had been looted during BLM protests. If it wasn’t clear, the lootings weren’t going to be stopped with guns of the government. When the spirits were high, only certain rhetoric could mitigate the voices of dissents, namely rhetoric that matched the passions of the protests but had a clear goal of saving Baget in mind — A statement that resonated love and passion for EVERYBODY.

JPJ was dumbfounded by the task at hand, but why him? The Marketing Agency(TMA) may be a bit towards the aging population with Karen pulling the average up, but people who worked here were mostly still in their 30s.

30s are like the new 20s since most people barely get over their loans for a fresh start. It ensues with undying passion since 30-year-olds haven’t been completely fed up with the bullshit that the world throws at them. Guess what is the most common age to get divorced? Yes, you guessed it: 30 years old. The passion can run so high that divorces can be worth it for another round of debts with all the potential litigation. However, people need fresh starts, so who is there to blame? 30-year-olds still have the passion to look at the world with a set of fresh eyes. Maybe a bit creepy when 30 years-old divorced men looked at barely legals, but the rest is just fair game. The point is that if there is a task to be done, any tasks, one probably should choose a 30-year-old over a 20-year-old, especially with the stake of the job. There is also something a 30-year-old has — lived experience. In this specific case, lived experience is more than a loaded word. If one needs to perform compassion that resonates with angry folks on the street, the person probably needs some experience of being African American, of being freshly divorced(so the passion is still high and can be channeled to the right cause), and of living in general, rather than this white kid who never needed to issue a sincere apology in his life.

“Why don’t you give the job to Jamal. He could probably issue a better stat-.” JPJ finally said something after some considerations.

Jamal finally got his divorce paper processed during quarantine, right before his 34th birthday, and more importantly, he got the right skin tone for the job.

K. Bre. was unmoved, and she interrupted JPJ before he finished his sentence: “You know he was only in charge of Black-owned clients. Jamal was also protesting. I am not saying that it is bad to be protesting, I support the movement completely. I take responsibility, so I am going to support Jamal by not troubling him with this heavy workload, even though it means that we might not do as well a job.”

Tears were gleaming in K. Bre.’s eyes, and she was responsible for all the tears, all of them.

The only other two African Americans at TMA were all interns and were not qualified for the statement of solidarity.

“You grew up in a black town, so you can relate, right? Just think of all your black friends and what you can do for them.” K. Bre. continued cautiously with some deliberations for each word, as the tears streamed down mid-sentence.

JPJ grew up in the chocolate side of Sacramento and went to a public school district that had 90% African Americans. His parents endowed certain progressive values so much, after reading Owen Brown(John Brown’s dad)’s diary on raising the only non-racist white person(John Brown) in America, they decided to emulate the process. Early contact with people of color was decorated with Sunday services at Black church and it lasted all the way until high school. Though JPJ still stayed in the same school district and also had the honors to continue “experiencing” black lives, his parents realized that Howard university was probably not the way to go and paid his enough outside tutors and parental support to still get a quality education at a failed public school. JPJ thus took the only rationing spot of some Ivy league school to that specific school district, which he might not be able to do in a better school district. This also meant some black kids who needed that spot were probably hustling on the street right now. Obviously, in Jeffery Paige Jay(JPJ’s dad)’s words, ‘It was all you, son. You worked hard and you deserved it.” Anyway, JPJ sure acted as he did.

He walked away from that meeting which was too shady for a Zoom call with a task at hand. He had 2 days to write the statement.

He thought about all his childhood black friends and re-watched the George Floyd video until he was kind of numb of it for 6 hours straight right after the meeting. After re-living childhood experiences with a certain sensibility of being the token white friend who did all the talking with the cops, he stuffed down some gravy with barbecue meat for the first time since he turned Vegan.

The gravy was a bit too heavy, so he fell asleep on the couch to feel the emotional depth of the black experiences. He was the brave one for violating his moral code.