by Tao Lin
The transparency and total effort, with none spent on explanation or concealment or experimentation, of what the universe desired—to hug itself as carefully, as violently and patiently, as had been exactly decided upon, at some point, with gravity—was [something].
—until getting to “[something],” which he remembered using as a placeholder after trying combinations of synonyms for “affecting” and “confusing” and longer descriptions like “an actualized ideal, inside of which any combination of parts could never independently attain.” He stared at “[something]” and thought about saying “Klonopin” or “Xanax.” He thought about explaining the bracket usage. “The sentence I just read wasn’t supposed to be there,” he said. “I pasted it there by accident, I think. I’ll stop here, thank you.”
He sat next to Erin in the front row, then Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, a woman in her 60s, whose introduction included that she was married to Richard Tuttle—the artist Gabby said Daniel resembled—read poems for thirty minutes.
• • •
At a flea market, the next afternoon, after drinking the equivalent of six to eight cups of coffee—in the form of 24x condensed coffee, which they bought from Whole Foods and had never seen before, in containers reminiscent of toilet-cleaning liquid—they pretended to be Wall Street Journal reporters and recorded themselves interviewing strangers about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Erin meekly asked a large, young, thuggish-looking man and his smaller friend, both wearing backward caps, if they thought Darth Vader would “die in this one.” After a long pause the large man laughed and said “man, I don’t know,” and looked at his friend, who appeared expressionless, like he hadn’t heard anything that had been said.
“Darth Vader is Star Trek, not Harry Potter,” said Paul in a weak form of the “the voice,” feigning he was remembering this aloud.
“No, no,” said Erin grinning. “Really?”
“Star Wars,” said Paul laughing a little.
“Oh, I don’t know, never mind, never mind, I need to check my notes,” said Erin shaking her head and grinning as she and Paul walked away mumbling to each other, attempting to parody, Paul felt, a stereotypical comedy in which two high-level professionals are egregiously demoted into positions where they struggle to regain their jobs while nurturing between them an unlikely romance and mutually learning the true meaning in life. Erin said she felt “a strong need to be on more drugs.” Without MDMA it was difficult to use “the voice,” without which they felt uncomfortable talking to strangers, improvising, feigning behavior, trying to be witty.
• • •
After ingesting their remaining Xanax, and more condensed coffee, they decided to drive to New Orleans, an hour away, because their flight to New York, from Baton Rouge, wasn’t until the next morning. It became dark suddenly, it seemed, during the drive. Erin expressed concern about Paul’s driving speed in residential-seeming areas. Paul encouraged her to nap (they’d both said they were sleepy, due to Xanax) and said he would be careful and, a vague amount of time later, became aware of a car that was parked, for some reason, on the street. After a few seconds of vague, unexamined confusion Paul realized the car, in the near distance, was stopped at a red light and abruptly braked hard, then harder, curling his toes with a sensation of clenching a fist. The screeching noise and forward thrust startled Erin awake, but she remained silent, seeming mostly confused. Paul drove sheep-ishly into a shopping plaza and parked near the middle of the mostly empty parking lot and turned off the car.
“I started feeling anxious before like where were we going and we were going fast and it was dark and you were running into things a little bit and I was scared and anxious and afraid,” said Erin in one breath of wildly fluctuating volume and inflection and affect that seemed out of control and arbitrary, then in retrospect like she’d virtuosically sung a popular melody faster than anyone had ever considered trying.
“Sorry,” said Paul with a worried expression.
“And I felt scared,” said Erin with a slight tremble.
“Sorry,” said Paul. “I’m really sorry.” After he apologized more times they walked holding hands across the parking lot. Erin said she only felt slightly interrupted when she woke, that she had been like, “wait, I don’t care, right now, about dying, but in the future I might not want to die.” In a confused, intrigued voice Paul said “in . . . the future?”
“In the future I’ll—” said Erin.
“But if you’re dead you’ll be dead,” said Paul in a loud, murmurred, strangely incredulous voice that he felt aversion toward and confused by.
“What?”
“But if you’re dead you’ll die,” mumbled Paul in a quieter, slurred voice like a stroke victim.
“But I didn’t really want to die right then,” said Erin.
Around midnight, on the drive back to Baton Rouge, Erin said her father seemed to enjoy giving her Xanax and Adderall and that she used to get angry at him for smoking marijuana every night because it affected his memory and he would repeat himself—and, if stopped, would become defensive, argumentative—but now she didn’t try to change him anymore. Paul said his father’s default name for him, what he’d unconsciously say to get Paul’s attention or to reference Paul in conversation, was “baby” until high school, or maybe college, when it became “old baby”—in Taiwanese, where both words were one syllable—which was what he now called almost all people and animals, including Dudu, the toy poodle, Paul remembered, that his parents had bought sometime in the past year, after he visited in December.
Paul talked about the panicked-seeming, alienating emails his mother had sent him the past five months, beginning in June—when he had published nonfiction on the internet mentioning cocaine and Adderall—and increasing during his book tour, when more information connecting him and drugs (tweets soliciting drugs, a “contest” on his blog to discern from the livestreamed video what drug he was on during his San Francisco reading, the interview with Alethia on MDMA) got on the internet. The emails had seemed complicatedly, strategically composed (referencing movies, news articles, celebrities who’ve “ruined their lives,” etc.) to instill mostly fear and shame and a little guilt to reduce Paul’s drug use, for the exclusive benefit, Paul believed his mother believed, of Paul’s long-term happiness, which however Paul had repeatedly defined as “freedom” to do what he wanted and “trust,” from his friends and family, that he was doing what, based on everything he knew, would result in the happiest results for everyone involved, which was what she also wanted, he’d told her many times. Paul had stated ultimatums like “if you mention drugs one more time I’m not responding to your emails for the rest of the month,” which his mother had repeatedly agreed on and went against, saying she felt an obligation—that it was her duty—as a parent, to continue stating her disapproval. To an increasingly frustrated and, he sometimes suspected of himself, paranoid and distrustful Paul, the emails had begun, at some point, to tactically operate on, at the least, a base of reverse-reverse psychology, which was a cause of despair for Paul, who throughout had tried to stress—but seemed to have failed to convincingly convey—that their relationship would only worsen if they couldn’t communicate directly, without strategy or hyperbole or deception, while aware of himself often not communicating directly.
The emails during the book tour culminated maybe with a series of emails sent after Paul and Erin posted their “event coverage” of Caked Up! They’d pretended to be from jezebel.com and an uninhibited Paul, on MDMA, had loudly shouted at strangers, at one point, at a volume and with an amount of belligerence that was normal for most people but, for him, was done, he’d felt, for comic effect. Paul’s mother had emailed saying that the Paul in the video was not the Paul she knew and loved and that she was scared and, seeing what Paul “had turned into,” had cried. Paul stopped responding to her emails, at that point, and, at the moment, in the car with Erin, couldn’t remember offhand what he’d last said to her—either that he wasn�
�t responding to her emails until January, wasn’t responding to any emails mentioning drugs, or wasn’t responding until he believed she had internalized that their relationship would only deteriorate, causing them both to feel worse about everything and probably increase his drug use, if she continued mentioning drugs with intent to influence instead of learn or discuss, as friends, by asking questions. Paul vaguely remembered two or three emails asking when he was coming to Taiwan this year; he’d responded he didn’t want to due to all the emails and broken promises. Paul believed he was doing what was best for them both and that his mother believed she was doing what was best for only Paul and not herself. Paul didn’t want his mother to believe she had failed, as a parent, which he thought she must, on some level, if she was trying to change what she had created and raised, though maybe she was only focused on the task, not on her feelings.
Paul and Erin were walking near Bobst Library, a week and a half later, on a significantly colder night, in a sleet-like drizzle, when one of them said they wished it were warm and the other said they should fly somewhere warm. Las Vegas was the first suggestion. Paul said he wanted to lose all his money—around $1,200—while “peaking on MDMA” after eating at a buffet and relaxing in a hot tub.
In Think Coffee, an hour later, using Erin’s MacBook, they bought a package deal for two round-trip flights and a rental car and four nights at the Tropicana, leaving on November 26, in five days.
4
“This is what the universe created, after whatever billion years,” said Paul gesturing at MGM Grand and Excalibur and Luxor, around 9:30 p.m., on a walkway above the main street of casinos in Las Vegas, which was as cold or colder than New York City, they’d learned, with some amusement, upon arriving four hours ago.
“This is what we came into,” said Erin.
“Look, beautiful,” said Paul earnestly about the hundreds of red lights on the backs of cars, passing beneath the walk-way, into the distance, like rubies in a mining operation.
“Whoa. Pretty.”
“Life sometimes offers beautiful images,” said Paul in a voice like he was in fifth grade reading a textbook aloud.
“But they’re fleeting.”
“Yeah,” said Paul grinning.
“And you can’t do anything with them—”
“Yeah,” said Paul.
“—except look at them,” said Erin.
“Maybe we should get drunk,” said Paul, and they entered the casino at the end of the walkway, and Erin went to the bathroom. Paul sat at a slot machine and lost $20, then stared at two middle-aged men wearing backward caps, holding full glasses of golden beer, as they approached and passed with determined, unhappy expressions. When Erin returned, a few minutes later, she said “I think I feel depleted.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel kind of tired, depleted.”
“But you shouldn’t even have started feeling it yet.”
“Huh?” said Erin. “We had MDMA like twenty minutes ago.”
Erin laughed. “I forgot.”
“Jesus. You scared me.”
“Sorry,” said Erin grinning, and they sat on the floor of a carpeted hallway—darkly lit from an unseen source that cyclically pulsed from a near-ultraviolet purple to dark red—positioning Erin’s MacBook to record themselves talking about their relationship.
“You go,” said Paul smiling widely. “You go first.”
“Okay, um, well I felt like I first wanted to kiss you when I dropped you off at the airport,” said Erin quickly, with a stricken expression, as if confessing something intensely shameful.
“At the airport? After Denny’s?”
“Yeah,” said Erin. “I wanted to kiss you then.”
“I thought you were hugging me really hard.”
“Uh, I thought you were hugging me hard,” said Erin seeming frightened, then for around five seconds didn’t breathe. Paul laughed, in confusion. Erin said she felt a little nervous. Paul asked if she thought they were going to have sex, when they kissed, on his bed. Erin said no, that she just kept thinking things like “what’s happening?” and “are we really going to do it?” Paul said he thought yes, because they wouldn’t have been able to stop, except by finishing, because neither of them had said no to anything yet.
“We still haven’t,” said Paul. “Right?”
“Um,” said Erin. “Yeah, I think.”
“There was a period of like three days when I was really obsessed with you. But you weren’t responding to my email and I kind of lost the obsessive nature.”
“Whoa,” said Erin. “When?”
“After one of the first times we hung out. We were sending picture messages, then you stopped and didn’t email and I felt really depressed.”
“Damn. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“What was going on then?”
“I was kind of seeing Beau still then,” said Erin, and as the MDMA took effect Paul began using “the voice” sometimes, including when Erin asked him which of his previous girlfriends he felt closest to and he said “I’m not really sure” in an extreme parody of a stereotypical romantic comedy, and they laughed for maybe ten seconds. Paul had stopped using “the voice,” an hour later, when, during a silence, Erin asked what he was thinking and he said he was thinking why she hadn’t read or mentioned the first-person account of his life from April to July he had emailed her a few weeks ago, at her request, which had, to some degree, been obligatory, he knew. Erin said she felt strange reading about Paul’s romantic interest in other people while she was beginning a relationship with him. “Like, I felt jealous,” she said. “Of the Laura person, reading about her.”
“That makes sense,” said Paul earnestly.
“I also felt a little strange reading about your friendship with Daniel. I was like ‘whoa, they could hang out a lot, then just not anymore; damn, what if that happens with me?’ ”
“Daniel was really interested in how Kyle and I just stopped talking,” said Paul.
“Then you and Daniel stopped talking.”
“You don’t feel fine with that?”
“I do . . . I feel fine with that. I just think of all possible situations going into something . . . positive or negative. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” said Paul nodding. “When I first met Michelle I was telling her that I’ve had a lot of friends who I’ve just stopped talking to, and she said she was afraid I would do that to her.”
“That seems to be what happens with people.”
“You don’t have to read it at all,” said Paul.
“Okay,” said Erin.
“I trust whatever reasons you have . . . for doing anything,” said Paul, and wondered if he had felt this before, or if he already no longer felt it.
The next night, after buying watermelon and salad ingredients from Whole Foods, they couldn’t find a parking spot at the Tropicana, then found one in a different area and walked a different route toward their room. Paul noticed a MARRIAGE CHAPEL sign at the end of the hallway and, after a few seconds, as they approached it silently, said “we should get married.”
“I was going to say that,” said Erin.
“I would get married to you.”
“Me too,” said Erin. “To you.”
“Let’s get married.”
“Let’s do it tomorrow.”
“Okay,” said Paul. “I’m confirmed.”
In Whole Foods, the next afternoon, Erin emailed her manager at the used bookstore that she was quitting her job, then scrolled through photos of Elvis standing between grinning, newlywed couples. Elvis appeared more energetic and alive than the couples in almost every photo, including one in which the couple was partially blocked from view by an over-eager Elvis who seemed to have lunged toward the camera, displaying the knuckles side of a peace sign.
“I don’t get it, at all,” said Paul.
“It’s what people do. This is what people want.”
“It really seems insane,” said Pau
l.
“People are insane,” said Erin.
“We should get an Elvis wedding.”
“I’m fine with an Elvis wedding.”
“Actually, I don’t want an Elvis wedding,” said Paul. “It seems extremely stressful.” Erin made a next-day reservation for a “desk wedding.” They discussed if they wanted to be on MDMA during their marriage ceremony. Erin said they should save it for the day after tomorrow, their last in Las Vegas.
“We might be dead by then,” said Paul.
“They won’t let us get married if we’re on drugs,” said Erin.
“They’ll think we’re on drugs if we’re not on drugs. We’re normal when we’re on drugs.”
Erin laughed weakly.
“We’ll just—” said Paul. “We’ll figure it out.”
“We’re going to be driving after the wedding, let’s just do it after we drive,” said Erin a few minutes later in a slightly pleading tone.
“Okay, okay,” said Paul earnestly while nodding and patting her shoulder, then hugged her briefly.
Across the street from the marriage license office was a billboard that said MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE about used cars and used car parts. In the office, which was bright and quiet and arranged like a post office, while filling out forms, Paul said getting married was like getting a tattoo, in that he just wanted to pay money and receive a service, not make appointments and go places and talk to strangers and be asked to confirm his choice. Erin said she was thinking that also and had been “having the same feeling” as before she got tattoos. Paul noticed a sign that said intoxicated applicants would be TURNED AWAY and focused, as they approached the window, on appearing normal, but realized he didn’t know how.