by Tao Lin
“I’m going to my room,” said Calvin after a few seconds.
When Erin returned, five minutes later, Paul asked where she’d been.
“In the bathroom,” she said. “Where were you?”
“What do you mean? I’ve been right here.”
“I was in the bathroom. Sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“What do you mean ‘where were you?’ I was here when you left.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was trying to make a joke. It was . . . ‘in bad taste,’ I guess.”
“Don’t apologize about that,” said Paul.
After a few seconds Erin rolled over. “I misinterpreted what you said,” she said facing away. “I don’t want to do that in the future.”
“Stop apologizing,” said Paul.
“I’m not apologizing,” said Erin.
“Okay. Just stop talking about it.”
Erin went in the bathroom attached to the guest room, and when the shower turned on Paul immediately heard a quiet, soporific crying like something from nature. He saw Calvin and Maggie jogging into the room and covered himself with a blanket and they jumped on the bed, then repeatedly in place.
In Calvin’s SUV, that night, on the way to Target to buy hair dye, because Calvin wanted to dye and cut his hair “really weird,” and Maggie had earnestly said “I think I want to color my face too,” Erin asked if anyone wanted Xanax; everyone did, in different amounts, which she apportioned. To her right, gently isolated in a one-person seat, holding half a Xanax bar, which was guaranteed to have an effect on him within forty minutes, Paul felt a quaintly affecting comfort and a self-conscious, fleeting urge to ask someone a question or say something nice to someone.
He thought of how, from elementary through high school, if a girl had been nice to him at school or if he got a valuable baseball or Magic: The Gathering card or if he accomplished something in a video or computer game—if for whatever reason he felt significantly, temporarily happier—he would get an urge to talk to his mother and sometimes would go find her, at her makeup station in her bathroom, or outside watering plants, then reveal something about his life or ask her a question about her life, knowing he was making her happy, for a few minutes, before running back to the TV, Nintendo, or computer. Sometimes, half mock scolding, mostly as an amused observation of human nature (she’d also say she recognized the behavior in herself, that she was the same way, with certain people), Paul’s mother would tell Paul, who almost always answered her questions, her attempts at conversation, with “I don’t know” in a kind of vocal cursive, without disconnected syllables, that he shouldn’t only talk to her—to his “poor mother,” she’d say—when he felt like talking.
Gradually, after being the target a few times of a similar capriciousness, which he discerned as default behavior for most people, and not liking it, Paul learned to not be more generous or enthusiastic or attentive than he could sustain regardless of his mood and to not talk to people if his only reason to was because he felt lonely or bored.
In college, junior and senior year, when he’d deliberately remained friendless—after his first relationship ended—to focus on writing what became his first book, he would force himself to email his mother (his only regular communication, those two years, once every two to four days) even when he felt depressed and unmotivated. He would always feel better after emailing, knowing his mother would be happy and that, by mastering some part of himself, he’d successfully felt less depressed without bothering, impeding—or otherwise being a distraction in—anyone’s life.
Target was closed for an unknown reason. Paul was quiet during the ten-minute drive back to Calvin’s mansion, dimly remembering once sitting close with Erin in another back-seat, also at night, holding cups of hot tea for warmth. His memories had increasingly occurred to him without context, outside of linear time, like single poems on sheets of computer paper, instead of pages from a book with the page number and book title on top.
They used all their MDMA in Calvin’s basement while eating cake, ham, salad, cookies—the first time Paul had eaten food for comfort while on MDMA—then went upstairs to Calvin’s room, where Calvin and Maggie drank beer, which Paul and Erin, who had eaten only a little food, declined. Paul began recording, at some point, with his MacBook. “Isn’t it a thing?” he said after ingesting Codeine and Flexeril. “That people warn against? Combining drugs.”
“Yeah,” said Calvin, and laughed.
“I don’t think that’s true,” said Erin shyly.
“I’m on like eight things now,” said Paul.
Calvin asked if Erin wanted to smoke marijuana and she asked if Paul would be okay with that and Paul said yes, thinking he didn’t like that she had asked. While Erin and Calvin smoked in the bathroom, with the door closed so Calvin’s parents wouldn’t smell it, Paul and Maggie created a GIF of a baseball cap moving around on their heads. Maggie, when Paul said he wanted to smoke marijuana, said he shouldn’t because of his lung collapse history. Paul began coughing nonstop after smoking and repeatedly said his chest burned and fell, half deliberately, to the floor, grinning in a stereotypically marijuana-induced manner, he could feel, as he tried, with his MacBook, to find information on the internet about his situation.
“I feel like I’m unsarcastically viewing this as a major ordeal,” said Calvin.
“I’m just trying to Google ‘burned lung,’ I’m not doing anything to indicate what you said,” said Paul in an agitated voice while grinning. “I’m just idly looking up ‘burned lung’ variations on the internet.”
“I was also viewing this as major until Paul just said that,” said Erin.
Paul lay facedown, at some point, on one of the two beds in the room and heard Calvin say “what if he’s dead?” and imagined Erin shrugging. When he woke, four hours later, on his side, Erin was holding him from behind.
They spoke once—at a rest stop, when Paul said it was his turn to drive and Erin said she was okay with continuing—during the eight-hour drive to Brooklyn, arriving around midnight and sleeping until late in the afternoon, when Erin said she was buying groceries from LifeThyme and driving back to Baltimore. Paul asked if she wanted to “stay and eat dinner on Xanax” before leaving.
At Sel De Mer, that night, Erin said Paul had been ignoring her all weekend and that she felt depressed. Paul said he’d focused on doing what he wanted, on talking to Charles, instead of complaining that he was unhappy. Erin said Paul did complain, to Charles.
“I don’t remembering complaining to him,” said Paul.
“You said you don’t feel happy around me,” said Erin.
“I said I don’t feel happy no matter what. I also said I don’t feel interested in anyone except you.”
“You said you felt interested in other girls sexually.”
“That isn’t complaining,” said Paul. “We talked about a lot of things.” Charles had seemed to be having the same “relationship problems” with his girlfriend as before Mexico and had said he was planning a similar, solitary trip to Asia. Paul had suggested Charles write a novel called Mexico, plotted around his problems with Jehan, who was still in Mexico but had been active on the internet, regularly writing on Charles’ Facebook wall and, unless it had been a different Jehan, adding Paul on Goodreads.
• • •
After dinner, in Paul’s room, Erin asked if she was “going home now.” Paul lay unresponsive on his mattress facing away. Erin said she “wanted to buy groceries from LifeThyme before leaving.” Paul rolled onto his back and, with only the top half of his head visible, said “I think it would be better if you didn’t stay tonight” through the muzzle-y screen of his blanket. He felt “completely motionless,” he thought, on his mattress, with his eyes closed, as Erin gathered her belongings. He heard her say “I agree with what you said about how if it doesn’t work out then it doesn’t work out, but I wanted to say that I like knowing you and I hope it works out.”
Without knowing exactly why, but sensing, on som
e level, that his feeling was mostly vicarious—that he was experiencing what he suspected Erin would experience, in a few seconds, once she discerned his sincere lack of response—Paul felt a sympathetically cringing sensation that he wished Erin hadn’t said what she had said. Mechanically, with the lightness of bones that could move, he stood and hugged her briefly, without looking at her face.
Six hours later, when birds were chirping but it was still dark outside, Paul was sitting on his mattress watching what he’d recorded in Calvin’s room. He noticed that he hadn’t been in Calvin’s room—he didn’t remember where he’d gone, maybe downstairs to the kitchen—for a few minutes, during which Erin had spoken in a louder, more confident voice and openly debated if she wanted a beer. Maggie, Paul saw in the movie, had asked Erin if Paul drank alcohol and Erin had said “sometimes,” then Maggie had asked what kind and Erin had said “beer, and sometimes tequila,” in a subtly, complicatedly different voice like that of a shyer, less friendly version of herself. Hearing this, aware that Erin would normally attribute non-firsthand information, that she’d say she had read about him drinking tequila, Paul began crying a little.
He lay against a pile of blankets and pillows, away from his MacBook, unsure why he felt emotional. Gradually he realized he’d intuited her voice sounded different because she had probably assumed, to some degree, that only she knew—and only she would ever know—of the aberration in her behavior and, while saying “beer, and sometimes tequila,” maybe had distractedly felt an uncommon nearness to herself that Paul, knowing this in secret from her, had also felt.
Two months later, in mid-July, around a week after Paul turned 28, Calvin and Maggie were in Brooklyn for five days to act in a low-budget movie. They were no longer in a relationship. They met Paul and Erin on a Friday night at Sel De Mer, where Erin gave everyone Xanax and Calvin shared a marijuana cookie with everyone and Maggie, who hadn’t eaten meat in two years, ordered lobster. They confirmed to snort heroin in Paul’s room after dinner, then go to the Union Square theater to “group livetweet” whatever movie fit their schedule. They would sit separately during the movie and communicate only through tweets, in service of making the experience “more fun and interesting,” said Paul, who anticipated wanting to be alone in the theater.
At Paul’s apartment Maggie volunteered to help Paul juice fennel, celery, cucumber, lemon while Erin showered and Calvin did something in Paul’s room. Paul, who had been silent most of the night, partly because he and Erin ingested 2mg Xanax each before dinner, asked if Maggie had asked her brother about “the thing,” which he was surprised he remembered.
“Shit. Yeah. I forgot to tell you.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t remember,” said Maggie absently.
“Are you depressed about you and Calvin?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to talk to him. I feel really depressed.”
Paul organized three bags of heroin into four different-size piles—Maggie only wanted a little—while Erin bought tickets for X-Men: First Class at 12:35 a.m. Paul drew lines connecting three names to three lines of heroin and heard Calvin say “I think I just figured out I can be happy no matter what people around me are doing” to what seemed to be himself and earnestly thought “funny” in a monotone with a neutral expression, then snorted his heroin and showered and ingested 15mg Adderall, two Advil, half a marijuana cookie. Paul vomited on the street twice before they got in a taxi with Erin in the front passenger seat and Maggie in the backseat between Paul and Calvin, who was commenting on the taxi’s TV, which was talking about Shaquille O’Neal.
“You should tweet it, stop talking about it,” said Paul, and opened his door at a red light to vomit, but didn’t and received from someone a plastic bag, which he vomited in twice with an overall sensation of disconcern-based serenity. He tweeted “in cab to theater, ‘already’ vomited twice (jk re seeming to imply xmen will make me vomit)” and read a tweet that said “put hand through cab glass to pet Paul as he vomited into a bag, cabdriver looked at me in a sitcom-like way” and said “Erin, you forgot the hashtag” while staring at his own tweet. “I forgot the hashtag also. We’re all just going to keep forgetting it. What’re we going to do?”
“I recommend copy and pasting.” said Erin.
“We’re all just going to keep forgetting it,” said Paul “pessimistically,” he thought, and when he exited the taxi he walked into, instead of onto, the sidewalk and fell stumbling ahead in an uninhibited, loosely controlled, briefly uncontrolled manner reminiscent of childhood, when this partial to complete abandonment of body and/or limb (of rolling like a log on carpet, falling face-first onto beds, being dragged by an arm or both legs through houses or side yard, floating in swimming pools, lying upside down in headstands on sofas) was normal, allowing his unexpected momentum to naturally expend, falling horizontally for an amusingly far length. He imagined continuing forward in a pretending of momentum, transitioning into a jog, disappearing into the distance. He vomited on the street, then turned around and jogged to Maggie, who stood motionless with a preoccupied expression.
“I’m okay,” said Paul. “Where are they? Calvin, Erin.”
“Buying water,” said Maggie.
“How do you feel?”
“Floaty,” said Maggie with a neutral expression. “Good. How do you feel?”
“Good,” said Paul smiling. “I just used too much.”
When they entered the theater the movie had already begun. Paul sat in a stadium-seated area, above and behind everyone else in the front area. After a few minutes he went to Maggie, who was in an isolated seat, on the right side of the theater. Maggie pointed at Erin and Calvin, twenty feet away, talking to each other.
“We agreed to sit separately,” said Maggie.
“I want separately also,” said Paul.
“I feel upset,” said Maggie.
“I’m going to see what’s happening,” said Paul, and crossed an aisle, past five empty seats, to Erin, as Calvin left the theater. Erin said Calvin had wanted to share her phone. Paul said Calvin “should just go charge it for like ten minutes.”
“I know. That’s what I said. He’s doing that now.”
“Calvin went to charge his phone,” said Paul to Maggie, and returned to his seat. He tweeted “someone in my row is snoring #xmenlivetweet” and “kevin bacon had something like 10 hands #xmenlivetweet.” Maggie tweeted she wanted more heroin. Paul tweeted “i can hear someone snoring ~8 seats to my left #xmenlivetweet” and saw Maggie leave the theater and stared absently as Kevin Bacon talked to people. Kevin Bacon walked outside, where it was snowing, then he turned around and talked to the same people as before, who had followed him. Paul tried to remember why Kevin Bacon had gone outside. He read tweets from Maggie that said “feeling lonely #xmenlivetweet” and “i am in the bathroom contemplating chugging my beer,” which had no hashtag. Paul saw that Erin had left the theater. Paul cautiously entered the women’s bathroom, a few minutes later, hearing Maggie’s voice and movement noises from the handicapped stall.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Paul in a loud, authoritative voice, and the movement noises stopped.
“Yes?” said Erin after a pause.
“It’s me,” said Paul.
“Oh, shit,” said Maggie, and the door opened.
“I was scared,” said Erin, partly in view.
“You’re in the women’s bathroom,” said Maggie.
“Sorry,” said Paul grinning, and left and sat on the carpeted floor near an emergency exit and tweeted “where is everyone . . . i’m sitting in darkness near the women’s bathroom #xmenlivetweet” and that he was going to try to scare Erin and Maggie again. He read “just stood up, lost ‘all control’ of left leg and fell into an arcade game, making a loud noise and ‘yelping’ #xmenlivetweet” by Calvin. He read “someone just said ‘we did it!’ while seeming to float in an indoor ‘future area’ #xmenlivetweet” by Erin. He heard Maggie’s voice and walked quickly to her and Er
in and thrust his glass bottle of water at them but water didn’t leave the bottle until, as the bottle neared himself, some splashed onto his chin and neck. Calvin was sitting on the floor by the candy machines, smiling calmly at his phone. Erin gave Paul and Maggie tea-tree toothpicks. Paul went in the theater to his seat and tweeted “why is ‘beast’ flying a jet plane . . . #xmenlivetweet” and “is this world war 2, i don’t understand anything #xmenlivetweet” and “i’m going to stand to look at who has been snoring loudly for ~15 min. #xmenlivetweet” and “someone seems to be laying across 2 seats sleeping #xmenlivetweet.” He became aware of the tea-tree toothpick’s wiggling, outside his mouth, and of his intensely concentrating expression, as he worked on editing a tweet, a few minutes after credits had begun scrolling down the screen, when the white shape, of Erin in a white dress, in Paul’s peripheral vision, stopped enlarging, indicating an arrival.
In the lobby, by the bathrooms, Paul said he felt nauseated. “I feel,” said Erin, and was quiet for around five seconds. “Never mind.” Paul asked carefully, with vague aversion toward himself, if she usually thought of what to say before speaking, or would start talking without thinking. “I think at least fifty percent of it before talking, I think,” said Erin. “Why?”
Paul said it was annoying sometimes to wait for her to think, and they stopped talking—Calvin and Maggie were ahead, sometimes looking back—until they got on the L train, when Paul apologized for saying it was annoying and said he understood her behavior. Erin quietly said it was okay. Paul asked if she felt okay and she said she did, and asked if Paul did. Maggie jumped in front of them and posed with the sleeping, drooling, middle-aged man in an opposite seat. “I’m okay with everything,” said Paul distractedly, with some confusion, after moving his iPhone into position and photographing only the middle-aged man because Maggie had returned to her seat.
“Are you sure?” said Erin.