Operating Systems

Paging Dr. Feelgood

What does it mean to be calculating?  It sounds like math, not my best subject.  Some people are so good at giving people what they want, it’s scary.  Everything is transactional, and those who calculate well—the players, the operators—tend to come out ahead and the apples fall.  The player knows what you lack way in advance of your lacking it.  You are thirsty, the player has a beverage.  There was that thing, the one that’s missing in your life.  You have an ache, a wound, an emptiness that must be filled.  You are Pavlov’s dog.  You need a treat, and when you get it, you wag your tail and roll over.

A player knows what you want.  An operator knows what you need.  This distinction must be made, because many of us are players one way or another.  Like, you said something witty and the girl on the app liked it.  Well played, player.  The player is playing checkers.  The operator isn’t just playing chess but manipulating human beings on the chessboard.  The player is a misdemeanor, the operator is the anatomy of the crime.  The player is Mickey Mouse.  The operator is Rembrandt with chiaroscuro, one of those late self-portraits at the Frick Museum, where you are staring and he is staring back.  He will outlast you.  The player is Monkees.  The operator is Beatles, especially the later albums.  The player manipulates Pavlov’s dog.  The operator herds Pavlov’s cat.  The operator can surprise you.  The operator can hide in plain sight.  He doesn’t have to be good looking or successful, and could even play on your sympathy, because he really deserves better.

The player shills.  The operator shares. The operator has original things to say, a few steps ahead of players, and for the people who speak from the heart and mean what they say, the operator is a fascinating creature.   You don’t know the operator like I do!  The operator suffers, in a unique way because the operator is not like the rest of us.  You live in a building that the operator has not designed with you in mind, yet the operator wants you to feel like you are at home. 

Your shrink has given up on you.  Your problems are so baroque, no combination of meds can really address them.  The DSMRIV has been exhausted, yet you are still fucked up.  But the operator knows.  He gets it.  He tells you not to worry.  He’ll take care of it.  The both of you have an understanding.  The rest of the world blows.  There is no you in Utopia, you say.  Yes, there is.  He points out that Utopia starts with U, and you both laugh.  Oh, operator.

The truth is, we all want to be operated on, especially when we need an operation.  If we were to go through life being un-manipulated, what would be the point?  Do we want a boring movie with flat characters and lame dialogue, or do we want to be engrossed, persuaded, seduced?  We do, and the problem is if we can see through the act and realize we are pawns.  The operator has other people to operate on, and if the operator loses interest in us, and someone else gets the magic, that’s where we feel that emptiness, even worse than the one we started out with. 

Do you want to see a good movie or do you want to see a halfway decent one?  Do you want to be enthralled, really engrossed in it?  You are The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  (You are not the man who almost shot him, or just daydreamed about it.)  You are not Single Indemnity.  You are Jimmy Stewart, afraid of heights, but you can’t look away.  You are a Hitchcock blonde, a femme fetale.  You are not a femme nice girl, unless that’s your cover.  But then the lights come up and the manipulator is elsewhere. Don’t you want to extend that feeling?  If you could know the manipulator, you could be satisfied forever. 

But we know that’s not possible.  Satisfaction ebbs and flows.  And the person responsible for it is the last person you want to mess with.  And yet that same person is throwing a raft.  You could be DiCaprio, about to drown, or you could blow that whistle, move on and have lots of babies and spill to Bill Paxton way, way later.  The operator isn’t the drowning sap but the one who plays him, who makes the movie and is king of the world, someone who wasn’t harmed in the making of this film.

Satisfaction is notable for its contrast with reality.  There are moments that you’re not satisfied, then, boom, here comes an operator.  The operator knows exactly how to alter your dopamine and serotonin levels so well, big pharma loses a customer.  

This is neither philo nor anti-operator, not really.  It’s just the way it is.  If you are currently under the spell of an operator, no information can break it.  But then why are you reading this? And if you are still reading, are you held aloft? Are you. transported?  Will you be sad when this is over?  Has this post put you in a pact where you must address something about the human condition that is not only accurate but devastating? 

Is it possible that I am the murderer I seek to find?  Do I stab myself in the eyes and become a complex?  I live in New York, where you can always find someone more something than you, and in this town, I have been in the presence of the gold standard of operators.  I’m just a little lamb lost in the woods, and the operator is the big, bad wolf.

I have a tender heart and I do many things with it.  But sometimes, opportunity knocks.  Sometimes, you get to hire someone to take 15 percent and that person will be your operator.  Or, if you get into a pickle, you pay a retainer to Bob Odenkirk who will be your proxy operator.   But sometimes you are on your own, with no hired help, and you have to live by your wits and figure it out. 

All bad poetry is sincere, said Oscar Wilde, one of the great ironists who blew his cover and admitted to the love that dare not speak its name and was sold up the river.  But when he had it, he left a good-looking portrait, not the one decaying in the attic.  We all prepare faces for the faces that we meet, and we would be lying if we said that we didn’t want to get something out of it. 

The player thinks this post is cool and wonders if he can pass off some of its lines as his own.  The operator realizes he is getting a boost from this just by sharing.  His numbers are exploding.  All he did was read it and it’s like someone else is fucking his way to the top for him.  The player could be the guy you’re cheating on.  The operator is the guy you’re cheating with.  There he is, reading Substack.  I wonder what he’ll do now.