Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

by Gary Shteyngart

  “Ant?”

  “Yeah, like the ant that saves too much and the grasshopper that spends too much? Like on the ARA signs? Chinese and Latino? So fucking racist.”

  “Leonard, it’s time to stop dating all these Asian and white-trash girls with serious problems,” Grace said. “You’re not doing them any favors, you know.”

  “You’re really hurting me, Grace,” I whispered. “How can you judge her so quickly? How can you judge us?”

  And right away Grace softened. The Christianity and goodwill kicked in. She teared up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, it’s the times we live in. I’m becoming so harsh. Maybe I can hang out with her? Maybe I can be like a big sister?” I considered turning indignant, but then I considered who Grace was, the oldest of a brood of five well-adjusted kids, the inheritor of a set of doctor parents from Seoul whose immigrant anxieties and sense of Wisconsin alienation were high, but who nonetheless dispensed love and encouragement in the manner of the kindest, most progressive native-born. How could she even begin to understand Eunice? How could she comprehend what it was like between the two of us?

  I hugged Grace for a few beats and kissed one warm cheek. When I looked back, I noticed that Eunice was staring at us, her lower face covered with that amphibian smile, the grin without qualities, the grin that cut me in the softness around my heart.

  “Well, that’s about it for the republic,” Hartford was saying on his Antillean stream, his young friend toweling a spent geyser of semen off his back. “Yibbity-yibbity, that’s all, folks.”

  We crossed back to Manhattan in silence. The National Guard checkpoints were practically abandoned, most of the troops likely ordered up to Central Park to quell the insurrection. Back in my apartment, I was on my knees and crying again. She was threatening to move back to Fort Lee again.

  “Your friends are awful,” she was saying. “They’re so full of themselves.”

  “What did they do to you? You barely said a word to them all night!”

  “I was the youngest person there. They were all ten years older than me. What did I have to say to them? They all work in Media. They’re all funny and successful.”

  “First of all, they’re not. And, second of all, you’re still young, Eunice! You’ll work in Media someday. Or Retail. And I thought you liked Grace. You were getting along so well. I saw you looking at AssLuxury together and talking about Soon-Dooboo.”

  “I hated her the most,” Eunice Park hissed. “She’s exactly who her parents want her to be and she’s so fucking proud of it. Oh, and forget about meeting my family. You’ll never meet them, Lenny. How can I trust you with them? You’ve blown it.”

  I lay in my bed alone; Eunice again in the living room with her äppärät, with her teening and shopping, as the night turned black around us, as I realized, with a quiet gnawing pain, that when you took away my 239,000 yuan-pegged dollars, when you took away the complicated love of my parents and the mercurial comforts of my friends, when you took away my smelly books, I had nothing but the woman in the next room.

  My mind was full of sickening Jewish worry, the pogrom within and the pogrom without. I declined to think of Fabrizia, Nettie, or the otter. I stayed in the moment. I tried to find out what was happening in Central Park to the Low Net Worth protesters. Some of the rich young Media people on Central Park West and Fifth Avenue were streaming from balconies and rooftops, and a few had broken through the National Guard cordons and were emoting from deep within the park itself. I looked past their angry and excited faces screeching about their parents and lovers and weight gain, trying to catch sight of the helicopters floating behind them, firing into the green heart of the city. I thought of Cedar Hill—the new ground zero of my life with Eunice Park—and considered the fact that it was now covered in blood. Then I felt guilty for thinking about my own life with such Media obsessiveness, so readily forgetting the ranks of the new dead. Grace was right. The times we live in.

  But one thing I knew: I would never follow Nettie’s advice. I would never visit those poor people in Tompkins Square Park. Who knew what would happen to them? If the National Guard shot people in Central Park, why wouldn’t they shoot them downtown? “Safety first,” as they say around Post-Human Services. Our lives are worth more than the lives of others.

  An armada of helicopters flew north. The whole building shook with their ferocity, china jiggling in the neighbor’s kitchen cabinet, little children crying. That seemed to scare Eunice, and soon she was in bed next to me, trying to find a comforting fit with my larger body, pressing so deeply into me that it hurt. I felt scared, not because of the military operation outside (in the end, they would never hurt people with my assets), but because I knew that I could never leave her. No matter how she treated me. No matter how bad she made me feel. Because in her anger and anxiety there was familiarity and relief. Because I understood those greenhorn southern-Californian immigrant families better than I could Grace’s right-hearted Midwestern kin, the craving for money and respect, the mixture of entitlement and self-loathing, the hunger to be attractive, noticed, and admired. Because after Vishnu told me that Grace was pregnant (“ha-huh,” he laughed awkwardly while bearing the news) I realized that the last door had closed for me. Because, unlike the slick and sly Amy Greenberg, Eunice had no idea what the hell she was doing. And neither did I.

  Sorry, diary, I’m such an emotional wreck today. Bad night’s sleep. Even my best ear plugs can’t help against the sound of rotor blades outside and Eunice mumbling loud Korean deprecations in her sleep, continuing her never-ending conversation with her appa, her father, the miscreant who is responsible for most of her pain, but without whose angry lashings I probably would never have fallen in love with her, or she with me.

  But I realize that I’m also leaving some things out, diary. Let me describe some of the beautiful moments, at least before the LNWI riots started and the checkpoints went up by the F train.

  We go to midtown Korean restaurants and feast on rice cakes swaddled in chili paste, squid drowning in garlic, frightening fish bellies bursting with salty roe, and the ever-present little plates of cabbages and preserved turnips and seaweed and chunks of delectable dried beef. We eat in the Asian fashion, eyes on our food, hearty slurps of tofu stew and little belches indicating our involvement with the meal, my hand reaching for a glass of alcoholic soju, hers for a dainty cup of barley tea. A peaceful family. No need for words. We love each other and feed each other. She calls me kokiri and kisses my nose. I call her malishka, or “little one” in Russian, a dangerous word only because it once spilled out of my parents’ mouths, back when I was under three feet tall and their love for me was simple and true.

  And the warmth of a Korean restaurant, the endless procession of plates, as if the meal cannot end until the whole world is eaten, the shouting and laughter after the meal is done, the unchecked inebriation of the older men, the giggly chatter of the younger women, and everywhere the ties of the family. It’s no wonder for me that Jews and Koreans jump so easily into romantic relations. We were stewed in different pots, to be sure, but both pots are burbling with familial warmth and the easiness, nosiness, and neuroticism that such proximity creates.

  While we were lunching at one of the louder places on 32nd Street, Eunice saw a man eating by himself and sipping a Coca-Cola. “It’s so sad,” Eunice said, “to see a Korean man without a wife or girlfriend to tell him not to drink that junk.” She lifted up her cup of barley tea as if to show him a healthier alternative.

  “I don’t think he’s Korean,” I said to Eunice. “My äppärät says he’s from Shanghai.”

  “Oh,” she said, losing interest as soon as her bloodlines to the solitary Asian Coca-Cola drinker were cut.

  When we were walking home, our stomachs filled with garlic and chili, the summer heat without and the pepper heat within covering our bodies with a lovely sheen, I started to ponder what Eunice had said. It was sad, according to her, that the Asian man did not have a wife or girlfr
iend to tell him not to drink the Coca-Cola. A grown man had to be told how to behave. He needed the presence of a girlfriend or wife to curb his basest instincts. What monstrous disregard for individuality! As if all of us didn’t lust, on occasion, for a drop of artificially sweetened liquid to fall upon our tongues.

  But then I started thinking about it from Eunice’s point of view. The family was eternal. The bonds of kinship could never be broken. You watched out for others of your kind and they watched out for you. Perhaps it was I who had been remiss, in not caring enough for Eunice, in not correcting her when she ordered garlicky sweet-potato fries or drank a milkshake without the requisite vitamin boost. Wasn’t it just yesterday, after I had commented on our age difference, that she had said, quite seriously, “You can’t die before me, Lenny.” And then, after a moment’s consideration: “Please promise me that you’ll always take care of yourself, even when I’m not around to tell you what to do.”

  And so, walking down the street, our breath ponderous with kimchi and fizzy OB beer, I began to reconsider our relationship. I started to see it Eunice’s way. We now had obligations to each other. Our families had failed us, and now we had to form an equally strong and enduring connection to each other. Any gap between us was a failure. Success would come when neither of us knew where one ended and the other began.

  With that in mind, I crawled on top of her when we had reached home and pressed myself against her pubic bone with great urgency. “Lenny,” she said. She was breathing very quickly. I’d known her for a month, and we had still not consummated our relationship. What I had seen as a sign of great patience and traditional morality on my part I now saw as a failure to connect.

  “Eunice,” I said. “My love.” But that sounded too small. “My life,” I said. Eunice’s legs were spread, and she was trying to accommodate me. “You are my life.”

  “What?”

  “You are—”

  “Shhh,” she said, rubbing my pale shoulders. “Shush, Lenny. Be quiet, my sweet, sweet tuna-brain.”

  I pressed myself inside her all the more, trying to wend my way into a place from which I would never depart. When I arrived there, when her muscles tensed and clasped me, when her collarbone jutted out, when the spectacular late-June twilight detonated across my simple bedroom and she groaned with what I hoped was pleasure, I saw that there were at least two truths to my life. The truth of my existence and the truth of my demise. With my mind’s eye floating over my bald spot and, beneath that, the thick tendrils of Eunice’s mane spilling over three supportive pillows, I saw her strong, vital legs with their half-moon calves and between them the chalky white bulk of me moored, righted, held in place for life. I saw the tanned, boyish body beneath me, and the new summertime freckles, and the alert nipples that formed tight brown capsules between my fingers, and felt the melody of her garlicky, sweet, slightly turned breath—and I began, with the kind of insistence that brings out heart attacks in men six years older than myself, to plunge in and out of Eunice’s tightness, a desperate animal growl filtering out of my lungs. Eunice’s eyes, wet and compassionate, watched me do what I needed to do. Unlike others of her generation, she was not completely steeped in pornography, and so the instinct for sex came from somewhere else inside her; it spoke of the need for warmth instead of debasement. She lifted up her head, enveloping me with her own heat, and bit the soft protuberance of my lower lip. “Don’t leave me, Lenny,” she whispered into my ear. “Don’t please ever leave me.”

  THE QUIET AMERICAN

  FROM THE GLOBALTEENS ACCOUNT OF EUNICE PARK

  JULY 2

  CHUNG.WON.PARK TO EUNI-TARD:

  Eunhee,

  We terrible worry right now because it sound like bad political situation in Manhattan. You should move back to Fort Lee and be family. This is more important than study for LSAT even. Remember we are old people and we see history. Daddy and I live through bad time in Korea when many people die on street, student young people like you and Sally. Make sure you no political. Make sure Sally no political. Some time she talk. We want come see you Tuesday coming up. Reverend Suk he was teacher to our Reverend Cho bring his special sinners crusade to madison square garden from Korea and we think all family should go and pray and we go to dinner later and meet this meeguk boy you say just Roommate. I am dissapoint you lie to me that you live with Joy Lee but I thank Jesu that you and Sally alive and safe. Even Daddy is so quiet now because he is Grateful and on his knee before God. This is difficult time. We come to America and now what happen to America? We worry. What it was all for? When we first come, before you were born, it was not so easy. You dont know how Daddy struggle for patient, even poor Mexican who has no insurance and he pay fifty dollar a hundred dollar. Even now he struggle. Maybe we make big mistake.

  So please, make time for us Tuesday. Dress nice, nothing cheap or like “ho” but I always trust how you wear. Daddy say now there is road block on GW bridge and also holland tunnel. So how people from New Jersey suppose come?

  Love you,

  Mommy

  EUNI-TARD: Sally, are you okay?

  SALLYSTAR: Yeah. You? This is insane. We’ve been “advised” not to leave the campus. Some of the Midwestern first years are freaking out. I’m putting together an info session to help everyone deal.

  EUNI-TARD: I do not want you doing ANYTHING Political! Do you hear me? This is the one time I think mom’s like 100 percent right. Please, Sally, just promise me.

  SALLYSTAR: Okay.

  EUNI-TARD: This is SERIOUS. I am your older sister, Sally.

  SALLYSTAR: I said OKAY.

  SALLYSTAR: Eunice, why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?

  EUNI-TARD: Because I have to be a “roll model” according to mom.

  SALLYSTAR: That’s not funny. It’s like you’re not even my sister if you can’t tell me these things.

  EUNI-TARD: Well, it’s not like we’re a normal family, right? We’re a special family. Ha ha. Anyway, he’s not really my bf. It’s not like we’re getting married. I told mom he’s my roommate.

  SALLYSTAR: What’s he like? Is he muh-shee-suh?

  EUNI-TARD: Does that matter? I mean, it’s not really about looks with this guy. He’s not Korean either, just so you know and can get judge-mental on me.

  SALLYSTAR: I guess as long as he treats you well.

  EUNI-TARD: Ugh, I don’t want to be having this conversation.

  SALLYSTAR: Is he coming to the crusade on Tuesday?

  EUNI-TARD: Yes. So please act brain-smart. Do you know anything about Classics? I mean like texts?

  SALLYSTAR: I just scanned Euro Classics but I don’t remember a thing there were so many text pages. Something by this guy Grayham Green about a Vietnamese girl called Phuong, like the girl who worked at Lee’s Banh Mi in Gardena. Why do we have to impress him?

  EUNI-TARD: We don’t. I just want him to know we’re a smart family.

  SALLYSTAR: I’m sure mom will act nice and then say really mean things behind his back.

  EUNI-TARD: They’ll just sit there and dad will drink and make those throat-clearing noises.

  SALLYSTAR: Muhuuhuhuhuhmm.

  EUNI-TARD: Hah! I love it when you imitate dad. I miss you.

  SALLYSTAR: Why don’t you come to dinner with Uncle Joon Friday? Maybe sans boyfriend.

  EUNI-TARD: I like that “sans.” That’s brain-smart. I don’t really want to see Uncle Joon. He’s a fucking deadbeat.

  SALLYSTAR: That’s mean.

  EUNI-TARD: He yelled at me last Thanksgiving when he visited from Korea because mom and I got a turkey that’s too large. And his wife went shopping in Topanga and she bought Dad a pair of pliers for, like, sixteen bucks, not even yuan-pegged, and kept saying “Oh, make sure your dad knows this gift from me.” Do you know how much money dad’s given that idiot husband of hers and she bought him some pliers in return?

  SALLYSTAR: They’re family. And their taxi business isn’t doing good. It’s the thought that counts.

  E
UNI-TARD: They’re the only people in Korea not making any money these days. Retards.

  SALLYSTAR: Why are you so angry all the time? What’s your bf’s name?

  EUNI-TARD: I’m just an angry person by nature. And I hate it when people take advantage of other people. His name is Lenny. I told you he’s really not my bf.

  SALLYSTAR: Did he graduate your year from college?

  EUNI-TARD: Um, he’s 15 years older.

  SALLYSTAR: Oh, Eunice.

  EUNI-TARD: Whatever. He’s smart. And he takes care of me. And if you and mom are going to hate him then it’s only going to make me like him more.

  SALLYSTAR: I’m not going to hate him. Is he Christian or Catholic?

  EUNI-TARD: Neither! He’s circumcised. Ha ha.

  SALLYSTAR: I don’t get it.

  EUNI-TARD: He’s Jewish. I call him kokiri. You’ll see why!

  SALLYSTAR: That’s interesting, I guess.

  EUNI-TARD: What have you been eating?

  SALLYSTAR: Just some mangoes with this fresh Greek yogurt they got at the cafeteria now.

  EUNI-TARD: For lunch? Are you snacking?

  SALLYSTAR: I had an avocado.

  EUNI-TARD: They’re good for you but they’re fatty.

  SALLYSTAR: OK. Thanks.

  EUNI-TARD: Lenny says things to me that are so sweet but they don’t make me vomit. Not like some Media or Credit guy who just wants to get laid and move on. Lenny cares. And he’s there for me every day.

  SALLYSTAR: I didn’t say anything, Eunice. You don’t have to defend him. Just make sure he takes off his shoes if he ever comes to the house.

  EUNI-TARD: Ha ha. I know. White people are sick that way. They could have just stepped in poo or a homeless person.

  SALLYSTAR: SICK!

  EUNI-TARD: Lenny says I don’t have any control over my emotions, because that’s what dad is like. He says I crave negative attention.