Steve Jobs’s first girlfriend, Chrisann Brennan, dated him off and on throughout their teens and early twenties, and now she’s written a tell-all memoir called The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs. With a title like that, it is perhaps unsurprising that the New York Post has picked up an exclusive excerpt.
Reading this excerpt is like hearing a Sex and the City voice-over but in the voice of one of your parents’ oversharing friends from college. Its phrases and symbolism are somehow both dated and queasy-making. You know, like an extended flower metaphor. And do you hate the word lovemaking? Great, we have so much in common. You’re about to read a lot about lovemaking.
Even after swapping rooms in this way, Steve and I still shared nights of lovemaking so profound that, astonishingly, some fifteen years later, he called me out of the blue to thank me for them. He was married at the time of his call and all I could think of was, Whoa … men … are … really … different. Imagine if I had called him to say such a thing.
We remembered different things. Mainly I recalled how awful he was becoming and how I was starting to flounder. But he was right: our lovemaking had been sublime. At the time of Steve’s phone call, I found that as I listened I was as awed by the memory as by his strange need to risk an expression of such intimacy. After I hung up I stood still and thought, Maybe Steve thinks that love has its own laws and imperative. But why call now?
Who was this mysterious figure, this man so many have pondered? No way to discuss him other than through simile. He was a man of many different powers, a figure of multiplicity, a man for whom a simple adjective does not suffice. For example:
- ‘’Steve often said that he had a strong sense of having had a past life as a World War II pilot.‘ ’
- ‘ ’Apple was taking off and Steve wasn’t in an airplane, he was in a rocket ship blasting out beyond the atmosphere of what anyone imagined possible.‘ ’
- ‘ ’Steve selected the bedroom in the front of the house. It was like him to want to position himself as the captain of the ship — in front.‘ ’
- ‘ ’… we could barely sustain a sense of emotional intimacy, much less build on it. It was like a game of Snakes and Ladders, with Steve as the game master.‘ ’
- ‘ ’Steve was assuming the role of my spiritual master once again and I felt uneasy about it.‘ ’
- ‘ ’It was that Pygmalion thing again.‘ ’
- ‘ ’I would wake up to find Steve gently ecstatic, speaking to me in symbolic language with the Zen master’s distinct speech pattern.‘ ’
- ‘ ’So when my friend Ellen offered to help me get a waitressing job at a restaurant in Palo Alto, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to be around others, to make money, and to wash Steve and Daniel out of my hair on a regular basis.‘ ’
Have you ever dated someone who was such a ship captain? Was your prom date totally the game master of your Snakes and Ladders relationship? Did your college boyfriend constantly Zen master you? And who is your WWII airline pilot that got away …