He shrugged.
"The funny thing is, that's the question I want you to ask. Because it's tied up with what we did yesterday, and that's really what I came here to talk to you about."
"So talk," he said, wondering what she could have to say about it beyond the fact that it had been hideous, and demeaning to both of them.
"It was the worst sexual experience I ever had," she said. "And you bear zero percent responsibility for that. Please don't interrupt. There are things you don't know about.
"I know you don't think much of my profession—I really don't want you to interrupt, or I'll never get all this out; if you disagree you can tell me when I'm through.
"You'd be a pretty strange lifeguard if you were a fan of the trans-tapes, or if you didn't feel superior to the kind of people who buy them. You're young, fairly well-educated and fairly articulate, you've got a good body and an attractive face and the opposite sex neither terrifies nor intimidates you. You are out on the end of all the bell-curves, demographically. You are not my audience, and people who aren't my audience tend to look down on my audience, and usually on me and my kind, too. And I don't blame them. Me and my kind have taken what might have been a great art-form and turned it into something so exploitative that even Hollywood and Sixth Avenue gag at it.
"You know as well as I do that there are many, many people growing up now who wouldn't know an honest, genuine, self-originated emotion if it kicked them in the behind. If you take their Transers away from them they're practically zombies.
"For a long time I've flattered myself that I'm a little better than the industry in general. There are some tapes I've made that will back me up on that. Things I've taken a chance on, things that try to be more complex than the LCD would dictate. Not my bread-and-butter tapes. Those are as simpleheaded as the worst hack travelogue. But I've tried to be like the laborers in other artistic sweatshops of the past. Those few who managed to turn out something with some merit, like some directors of Hollywood westerns which were never meant to be anything but crowd pleasers and who still produced some works of art, or a handful of television producers who... none of this is familiar to you, is it? Sorry, I didn't mean to get academic. I've made a study of it, of art in the mass culture.
"All those old art-forms had undergrounds, independents who struggled along with no financing and produced things of varying quality but with some vision, no matter how weird. Trans-tapes are more expensive than films or television but there is an underground. It's just so far under it practically never comes to light. Believe it or not, it's possible to produce great art in emotional recording. I could name names, but you will not have heard of any of them. And I'm not talking about the people who make tapes about how it feels to kill somebody; that's another underground entirely.
"But things are getting tight. It used to be that we could make a good living and still stay away from the sex tapes. Let me add that I don't feel contempt for the people who make sex tapes. Given the state of our audience, it has become necessary that many of them have their well-worn jerk-off cassette, so when they get horny they know what to do with it. Most of them wouldn't have the vaguest notion otherwise. I just didn't want to make them myself. It's axiomatic in the trade that love is the one emotion that cannot be recorded, and if I can't have—"
"I'm sorry," Cooper said, "but I have to interrupt there. I've never heard that. In fact, I've heard just the opposite."
"You've been listening to our commercials," she reproved. "Get that shit out of your head, Cooper.
It's pure hype." She rubbed her forehead, and sighed. "Oh, all right. I wasn't precise enough. I can make a tape of how I love my mother or my father or anybody I'm already in love with. It's not easy to do—it's the less subtle emotions that are more readily transed. But nobody has ever recorded the process of falling in love. It's sort of a Heisenberg Principle of transing, and nobody's sure if the limitation is in the equipment or in the person being recorded, but it exists, and there are some very good reasons to think nobody will ever succeed in recording that kind of love."
"I don't see why not," Cooper confessed. "It's supposed to be very intense, isn't it? And you said the strong emotions are the easiest to tape."
"That's true. But... well, try to visualize it. I've got my job because I'm better at ignoring all the hardware involved in transing. It's because of my sidekick; I mean, if I can learn to forget I'm operating that I can ignore anything. That's why the nets scour the trauma wards of hospitals looking for potential stars. It's like... well, in the early days of sex research they had people fuck in laboratories, with wires taped to them. A lot of people just couldn't do it. They were too selfconscious.
Hook most people up to a transcorder and what you get is 'Oh, how interesting it is to be making a tape, look at all those people watching me, look at all those cameras, how interesting, now I have to forget about them, I must forget about them I just must forget—' "
Cooper held up his hand, nodding. He was recalling seeing her burst from the water that first day in the Bubble, and his feelings as he watched her.
"So the essence of making a tape," she went on, "is the ability to ignore the fact that you're making one. To react just as you would have reacted if you weren't doing it. It calls for some of the qualities of an actor, but most actors can't do it. They think too much about the process. They can't be natural about it. That's my talent: to feel natural in unnatural circumstances.
"But there are limits. You can fuck up a storm while transing, and the tape will record how good everything feels and how goddam happy you are to be fucking. But it all falls apart when the machine is confronted with that moment of first falling in love. Either that, or the person being recorded just can't get into the frame of mind to fall in love while transing. The distraction of the transer itself makes that emotional state impossible.
"But I really got off on a tangent there. I'd appreciate it if you'd just hear me out until I've said what I have to say." She rubbed her forehead again, and looked away from him.
"We were talking economics. You have to make what sells. My sales have been dropping off. I've specialized in what we call 'elbow-rubbers.' 'You, too, can go to fancy places with fancy people.
You, too, can be important, recognized, appreciated.' " She made a face. "I also do the sort of thing we've been making in the Bubble. Sensuals, short of sex. Those, frankly, are not selling so well anymore. The snob-tapes still do well, but everybody makes those. What you're marketing there is your celebrity, and mine is falling off. The competition has been intense.
"That's why I... well, it was Markham who talked me into it. I've been on the verge of going into heavy-breathers." She lifted her eyes. "I assume you know what those are."
Cooper nodded, remembering what Anna-Louise had said. So even Galloway could not stay out of it.
She sighed deeply, but no longer looked away from him.
"Anyway, I wanted to make something just a little bit better than the old tired in-and-outers. You know: 'Door-to-door salesman enters living room; "I'd like to show you my samples, ma'am."
Woman rips open nightgown; "Take a look at these samples, buster." Fade to bed.' I thought that for my first sex-tape I'd try for something more erotic than salacious. I wanted a romantic situation, and if I couldn't get some love in it at least I'd try for affection. It would be with a handsome guy I met unexpectedly. He'd have some aura of romance about him. Maybe there'd be an argument at first, but the irresistible attraction would bring us together in spite of it, and we'd make love and part on a slightly tragic note since we'd be from different worlds and it could never..."