by Tao Lin
“No,” said Erin carrying the MacBook toward the front door.
“Why would being squished feel good?” said Paul absently.
“Hm,” said Erin. “Do you have m—”
“Raarrr!” screamed Paul with his mouth open.
“Jesus,” said Erin grinning.
“Does it smell?” said Paul about his breath.
“Maybe like coffee a little bit. But it’s okay.”
Paul jogged to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and tongue, rinsed his mouth, jogged to the front door. Erin asked if he had her “ID thing”—he did—then touched his arm and quickly said “do you feel okay?” in a high-pitched voice. Paul, who’d begun to feel the MDMA, looked at Erin’s hand and imagined feeling utter disbelief, increasing to uncontrollable rage, that she would touch his arm, at a time like this. “Yeah,” he said with a neutral expression. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” said Erin. “Wait, is my—”
“Smells vaguely of barbecue, but it’s good,” said Paul, and patted her shoulder.
“Vaguely of barbecue,” said Erin grinning.
In the mirror-walled elevator they stared at themselves on the screen of Paul’s MacBook, which Erin held waist level. Paul moved in a parody of a robot and lightly slapped Erin twice. Erin slapped Paul once and, after exiting the elevator, yawned audibly, as they approached an atrium of spiral staircases and a gigantic Christmas tree.
“Look,” said Paul with a fish-like expression.
Erin laughed loudly. “Jesus,” she said.
“You made a Jack Nicholson facial expression.”
“Really?” said Erin, and laughed.
“Your eyebrows went,” said Paul demonstrating.
“Whoa,” said Erin loudly. “I made a soundboard laugh.”
“Oh,” said Paul. “Oh,” he said quietly, and moved toward a potted plant and, before reaching it, jumped in place, slightly confused by his own behavior. Erin said she thought Paul was going to “jump on.” There was a suctioned, whooshing noise as they exited automatically opening doors onto a wide sidewalk. Paul turned left—into Erin, who almost dropped the MacBook—and sustained an uninhibited, yelping noise for three or four seconds, imagining himself as a butler in a Disney movie in comically prolonged recovery from almost dropping an elaborately layered tray of desserts and drinks. Paul had an urge to practice the noise repeatedly, with increasing frustration, trying to perfect it—cut-scene to him in a straitjacket.
“Jesus,” said Erin grinning. “Should I get dramatic shots of the street?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Dramatic ass shots,” said Erin.
“It’s your night,” said Paul in vague reference to the Cinderella archetype of a beautiful, oppressed, sympathetic character that experiences a hectic reversal of fortune. “I keep thinking ‘this is our night’ for some reason,” he said a few minutes later, and his eyes felt shiny, and he thought of shyness, acceptance. “I wonder what it’s going to be like for us, for our twenty days here,” he said as they crossed a street. “What are we going to . . . do?”
“What if we get divorced by then?”
“It seems possible,” said Paul. “Twenty-eight days.”
“Twenty-eight days,” said Erin grinning. “Twenty-day immersion technique.”
“Have you ever spent twenty straight days—”
“Yeah,” said Erin.
“You have?”
“With Jennika. This summer, in Seattle.”
“I mean with a boyfriend,” said Paul, and imagined himself becoming physically faceted by rapidly facing different directions, in 15-degree movements, advancing blurrily ahead as a barely visible, wave-like curvature.
“Oh. Yeah. Probably.”
“Who?”
“First boyfriend. Kent.”
“Sleeping together?” said Paul suppressing an urge to scream it in mock disbelief. Erin said they were together “like every day” in the beginning and that “it seemed okay.” Paul asked what she meant by “okay” and visualized “it seemed” darkening and “okay” brightening colorfully. He mock studied “okay,” which suddenly enlarged and disappeared by “flying” through him, it seemed. Paul felt vaguely, uncertainly amused. Erin was explaining that she and Kent didn’t fight until she used his computer to write a paper and saw a folder of naked girlfriend pictures, which Kent said were from so long ago he couldn’t remember and that the girl lived in Poland and he didn’t talk to her anymore, all of which were lies.
“How do you feel about our fights so far?”
“I feel . . . they seem to be okay,” said Erin descending stairs into a powerfully air-conditioned MRT station, marbled and quiet and clean, with the austere plainness of an established museum. “I still feel the same amount of interest toward you. But I think I worry more. I worry like ‘he might actually have a reaction toward this so I’ll think about it more.’ Or something. How do you think about them?”
“They seem fine,” said Paul.
“Is . . . this how it usually goes?”
“Yeah,” said Paul with the word extended.
“Like the fights are similar?”
“Um, yeah . . . I don’t have the kind of fight where it’s, like, ‘fighting,’ ” said Paul as they passed a bakery where he photographed and ate a crispy, red-bean-paste-filled croissant last year. “Like, yelling at each other and trying to ‘win,’ or something. Or, like, forgetting about it.”
“Or like what?”
“Like ‘winning.’ I don’t have that kind of fight.”
“Oh,” said Erin.
“Ever,” said Paul quietly.
Erin said with Kent she had the kind of fight where it turned into “proving a point,” then escalated into yelling. Paul asked if she fought with Harris, her second boyfriend.
“No,” said Erin.
“You have a curling effect,” said Paul touching her hair. “I like it. Is that what you’re going for?”
“Yeah,” said Erin smiling endearingly.
“You didn’t fight with the second one at all?”
“We had fights like you and I, like discussion-style things,” said Erin. “I don’t think we ever yelled at each other. Except, did we ever, no—no, we never yelled.”
“How do you feel about me compared to your other boyfriends?”
“I like you more,” said Erin.
“Than all of them?”
“Yeah,” said Erin.
“I like you—”
“You—” said Erin.
“—more also,” said Paul.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Paul.
“Sweet,” said Erin. “You seem to encompass major things of what I want, in ways I feel like only segments of other people . . . have.” She patted Paul’s chest and said “I like you” as they approached an intersection of corridors, wide as four-lane streets, where last year, leaning against a pillar in the left corridor, Paul read the last few pages of Kōbō Abe’s The Face of Another, which ended with the narrator, hiding behind a pillar, about to attack his “imposter.” Paul realized they were walking the wrong direction, and they turned around.
“What do you think your parents think about me?”
“They . . . like you,” said Paul, and laughed quietly.
“Do they usually act like . . . the way they did?”
“Yeah,” said Paul uncertainly. “I think they’re always focused on me, not the other person. But, yeah.”
“I wondered about that.”
“My mom’s probably thinking about drugs a lot,” said Paul, and Erin laughed and hiccupped, it seemed, at the same time. Paul said “I mean worried about drugs.”
“Is she addicted? Do you think?”
“Yeah,” said Paul grinning.
Erin said she’d noticed that Paul sometimes sounded “really angry” when talking to his mother in Mandarin. Paul said he didn’t feel angry, that he had gotten into a habit, from being a spoiled child, of talking to her like that and that it
used to be “way worse.” Until he was 7 or 8 his voice, incomprehensible to anyone outside his family, had been a harmonica-like, almost electronic, squealing-bleating noise, which wholly outsourced the task of articulation, in the form of deciphering, to the listener. Paul’s brother would tell him to “stop screaming” or “stop whining.” Paul’s mother, the listener probably 95 percent of the time, a shy and anxious person herself, probably had strongly encouraged and liked how unrestrained and unself-conscious Paul had been.
“I was surprised,” said Erin. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”
“I really don’t like it,” said Paul.
“It’s interesting,” said Erin stepping onto a down escalator.
“I’m embarrassed about it.”
“I do it with my parents,” said Erin smiling.
“What have you read by Kōbō Abe?”
“Just The Woman in the Dunes.”
“What else do you think about me?” said Paul, and laughed sarcastically, which Erin also did, then both abruptly stopped and hugged and, stepping off the escalator, approached one of eight automated turnstiles. Paul said “just hold it to the thing” about Erin’s MRT card, then in a deeper voice than normal “wait, wait” and, after a pause, that he was “going to poop.”
Paul could see himself, after exiting the bathroom, shakily enlarging on the screen of his MacBook, which Erin pointed at him, as he maneuvered toward it in a flighty zigzag, perpendicularly against people walking to and from turnstiles, escalators. “I just vomited, like, water,” he said.
“Oh my god. Really? Are you sick?”
“No, I’m just getting the feeling of a lot of emptiness.”
“Oh. I was going to go poop but the—”
“Go, go,” said Paul.
“—like the thing, or, okay,” said Erin.
“Wikipedia? What?”
“The thing in the floor? I wasn’t sure how to use it.”
“You went in there?” said Paul.
“It’s just, like, a hole in the floor, interesting.”
“What if I couldn’t find you?”
“Huh?” said Erin with a confused expression.
“What if I couldn’t find you? You went in the bathroom?”
“I just went in for a second, with the intention of—”
“Go, go,” said Paul patting Erin’s shoulder, and she went. Paul set his MacBook on the floor. His legs moved in and out of view for a few minutes. “Hello?” he said in Mandarin into his iPhone. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving now, okay, bye.” Erin was skipping toward him and, it seemed, flapping her arms. Paul said his mother called to remind them they can’t eat or drink on the train. Erin smiled and said “oh, helpful” sincerely and they passed turnstiles, descended two floors, waited two minutes, sat in a train. Paul asked what Erin hadn’t liked about her other boyfriends.
“Like, things that have just bothered me?”
“Let’s just talk about . . . Harris,” said Paul.
“Okay. Um, bothered me that he, like, had a lot of friends and a big social life. And didn’t seem to be okay with how I just had him and one other friend. He’d be like ‘you need to focus on me less and get more friends.’ I felt bothered that that was constant. And I didn’t like it that sometimes he seemed to make insensitive comments. There was one incident where I had to get a . . . surgery-type thing on my, like, cervix . . . thing.”
“What was it?”
“To remove precancerous cells, or something.”
“Whoa,” said Paul.
“They had to, like, burn—”
“Is that normal?”
“Yeah, relatively, but I couldn’t do anything for three weeks, then finally when we did . . . this weird-looking thing came out? And, I don’t know, I felt really self-conscious, and the first thing he was just like ‘ew’ and, like, backed away from me and I was like ‘I can’t help it.’ I don’t know. It bothered me at the time but now . . . I don’t know.”
“Are you on birth control right now?”
“No. I haven’t had my period but I’ve also taken three pregnancy tests, I’m not pregnant.”
“When did you take three pregnancy tests?”
“Periodically. One time I didn’t have my period for a year and a half. I feel like I should get on birth control. Because I have my period when I’m on it.”
“Isn’t it healthier to not be on it?”
“Yeah. That’s why I’m not on it.”
“It seems fine,” said Paul vaguely.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” said Paul trying to remember something he wanted to say on the topic of friends. “It . . . doesn’t matter to me if I come in you or somewhere else.”
“Okay,” said Erin.
“Um,” said Paul distractedly.
“This is probably the most that a guy has come in me without being on it. But I figure if anything happens we’re probably similarly . . . minded.” Erin looked at Paul with an ironic expression and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because you want to have kids,” she said in a mock-serious voice. “Soon. Right?”
Paul nodded, aware he probably appeared confused.
“That was our goal in getting married,” said Erin.
Paul patted her thigh twice and grinned a little.
“We’re not in sin anymore,” said Erin completing the joke, mostly to herself, it seemed.
“I’ve always, um, felt like . . .” said Paul quietly.
“Huh?” said Erin staring at his blank expression.
“Weird about friends,” murmured Paul. “I never hang out with other people if I’m in a relationship.”
Erin nodded rapidly, seeming a little anxious.
“We’re here,” said Paul, and they exited the train as it said XIMEN STATION (and something about Chiang Kai-shek) in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, English in a female, robot voice. Paul sneezed and looked at his hands rubbing the front of his shirt, aware of Erin also looking, both with neutral expressions. “Um,” said Paul on an up escalator to another train platform. “How did you deal with Harris having that many friends?”
“I would hang out with them. Harris and I were similar in the way we would joke about things, and I liked that his friends seemed to like me . . . or, like, they laughed at me, and him, when we were together. But it was weird because it was obvious that I never became friends with any of them. What problems . . . do you have?”
“With friends?”
“Girlfriends. The same question you asked me.”
“With . . . who?”
“Uh, with Michelle,” said Erin.
“Just . . . her friends,” said Paul on an up escalator to the station’s main floor. “She would want to hang out with friends. And I wouldn’t want to . . .”
“Is there anything about her? Like, as a person.”
“I feel like we weren’t perfectly—we weren’t, um, optimally excited by each other.”
“How? How?”
“Just, like, she didn’t like the same things that I liked . . . as much.”
“Oh,” said Erin. “Like On the Road things?”
“Yeah,” Paul said, who hadn’t liked On the Road as much as Michelle, who had rated one of his favorite books, Chilly Scenes of Winter, which she’d said she “liked,” two out of five stars on Goodreads, after their relationship had ended. “And then, uh, I felt like maybe she . . . had a slightly neurotic aversion toward blow jobs, I feel,” said Paul.
“Seriously? I wouldn’t expect that.”
“She would do it, but not as much as I would to her, I think,” said Paul as they reached street level, at an intersection, where two corner buildings seemed armored with layers of billboards and lighted signs and, near the top of one, like a face, a giant screen, showing a movie preview. On a plaza was a donation bucket decorated like a Christmas tree and a grand piano without a player. “Sometimes she would joke about how it was ‘degrading,’ but I feel like she wasn’t completely joking.”
&nbs
p; They entered the area blocked off to cars.
“So maybe I wasn’t satisfied with that,” said Paul.
“What other things sexually?”
“Sexually?”
“About her, or about anybody.”
“Uh, I don’t have that many sexual complaints. What about you?”
“With Kent it got really boring and routine.”
“How?”
“It was just the same thing. He would go down on me, then we would have missionary style, and that’s it . . . that’s, like, it. Harris, similarly, we never really gave each other oral sex, toward the middle and end. But I really like that, both ways. And it also became sort of the same thing with him, where we would do missionary. Then I would . . .”
“Then you would . . .”
“ . . . like, finger myself,” said Erin at a lower pitch with a complicated expression that Paul saw peripherally.
“You would finger yourself? While he was doing it?”
“Yeah,” said Erin.
“Did you like that?”
“It was okay. Seemed business-oriented. So we could both . . .”
Paul made a noise indicating he understood.
“How do you feel about . . .”
“What?” said Paul, dimly aware and liking that they’d remained focused on their conversation instead of acknowledging their new, intense environment, which was bright and chaotic and crowded but, without vehicles, relatively quiet, more calming than stressful. Paul felt like he and Erin—and their conversation—were in the backseat of a soundproofed, window-tinted limousine.
“How we have sex?”
“Seems fine,” said Paul.
“Do you have any critiques? Any.”
“Critiques,” said Paul. “Um, no.”
“Really? You can say.”
“Critiques,” said Paul.
“Or anything. Any thoughts.”
“Um, no. I don’t think it’s that big of a thing for me: sex.”
“Yeah,” said Erin vaguely.
“What do you have about that—with me?”
“I have none for you,” said Erin.
“Are you sure? You can say it.”
“No, you’re good at everything—”
“Really?”