by Tao Lin
Greg said his name, but in an unaccompanied sort of voice—a voice de-personed early-on, in the brain. The new kid kept looking at him. Greg wondered if he had answered, or just mouthed something, no sound coming out. His heart was beating fast. The question stayed in his head—who are you? “I’m Greg,” he said, but his voice seemed now so loud and melodramatic that he felt only Greglike, not truly Greg. He felt Greggy; and he felt dizzy and hollow and aloft, like an attic—a family of owls inside and hoo’ing, or else outside and flapping—mauling—at the roof. The new kid said, “You had TB!” and made a face. Greg felt that he was blushing hard and that Rachel was looking at him and he turned away, looked out his window. Down the road, someone was walking a dog, and above that was the low, thin, whiteblue moon—slit and off-color as something about to be sealed shut from the other side.
They drove off. Toilet paper caught against Greg’s window, rippled there like a flag, and then rushed off and away. All the strange and giant things began to float by, outside, in the night, and from another car, someone stuck their head out their window and screamed, “Faggot Ali!” Someone else screamed, “Muhammad Ali!” And someone else, “Muhammad Ali Baba! Ahhh! Ahhhhrrrrr!”
Sincerity
Once, while having sex with his girlfriend Alicia, the theme from Star Wars had gone into Aaron’s head and he had suddenly and loudly begun to hum it, which he could not, then, sustain, as he had started to laugh.
He laughed and laughed.
And things changed after that.
Sex became a precarious thing. Often, it could not happen. Songs or tunes, little ditties—tom-tom drum beats, kazoo-y cartoon music—would automatically go into both their heads. The required focus and grave seriousness of sex, that inner, outer-spacey concentration toward some black and scrappy source, some vague but findable piece of lust—it could not happen anymore. Only songs could happen. And there were other changes. Their quarrels—they had always fought—took on a tone of mocking and farce. Sometimes, now, fighting with Alicia, both of them yelling—shrieking at times, and crying, even, like babies!—something in Aaron would scald white and clean, like a flash pasteurization, and he would tickle her until she fell down giggling. Or he would just start laughing, then have to chase down and tickle her, to sort of convince her—delude her—of his otherwise unacceptable behavior. And Alicia, too, underwent change, having once, during a fight, opened a drawer and taken from it a glass of water—she had premeditated it!—and, after telling Aaron, sincerely, that he was an asshole, grinned and poured the water on his head.
This new flippancy, though, was not strictly joke-y and fun. There was something, Aaron felt, murderous to it. In each moment of laughter or play there was a small probability of manslaughter, a percentage chance of violence and jail-time. Alicia sometimes went too far, Aaron felt. She cut him once with a fork. Another time, Aaron daydreamed for a very long time about setting a death-trap for Alicia; a spiked pit, perhaps, in some parking lot—a death pit!
In this way, then—unable to assimilate these feelings of assassination, farce, song, and play—they became a bit reckless. They grew daring and confused. Though their fights increased noticeably in frequency and lies when they spent more than one consecutive night together, and though, Aaron knew, they did not really love each other, not anymore, maybe not ever (they had become like siblings now, except that they lacked the responsibility of family, that kind of forced love, and so were less siblings than just sort of moody, interdepartmental co-workers)—though, in other words, they really should not have been getting an apartment together, they went ahead and got an apartment together, signed a two-year lease, as, in addition to their new brazenness, they were not—and had never been—energetic people, but were, to be honest, needy people; prone to disillusionment, lazy about new things, and very much fearful of loneliness, desperation, meaninglessness, and dating. They needed each other, they knew, needed the vague momentum of two, the mild tyranny and oppression of it—that second brain like an orbital satellite and remote control to the first brain—to let them know what, at any given moment, was the point in life; and also to argue with and complain to.
Their new apartment was sunny and spacey in an atomic-bombed way. It had wood floors. It was on the edge of a massive, abandoned, wasp-infested shopping center plaza, a few miles from the university. It was a dry place, with no cockroaches or mildew, but many spiders and moths and silverfish—bugs that were better than other people’s bugs, Aaron liked to say, were wittier and more role-playing; sometimes, on the weekends, two large spiders would walk out into the center of the bedroom and stay there for hours, like henchmen; then when no one was looking, usually during the night, they would hurry away, like lovers.
In bed, they watched a moth walk experimentally across the floor, taking small, tottering steps.
“How funny,” Alicia said. “So funny.”
“It’s like a little … brown bear,” Aaron said. “A tiny one, because of the fuzziness.”
“I can see that,” Alicia said. “That’s kind of scary. I imagine it turning into a bear.”
The moth walked slowly out of view, behind a desk, then—back in view, going faster now—into the bathroom, where it lifted and flew noisily around, steady and aimed, and fulfilled, Aaron thought distractedly, as a miniature blow-dryer. They were talking now about spring break. Someone had brought up what to do over spring break. Who, though? This seemed to matter. Aaron had a feeling that, depending on who had brought it up, he should be either apprehensive or relieved.
“Maybe we should go to London,” Alicia said.
“London has no literary value,” Aaron said. Though his face was turned away, he sort of forced a grin anyway. He hated it when people got so inured that they went around being sarcastic without ever changing their facial expression. It was inhuman. It was so cheaply disenchanted. There was no compassion to going around meanly making jokes in people’s faces. Though, Aaron didn’t like it when comedians laughed at their own jokes. It was too … human, or something.
“They have Stonehedge. Stone … thing,” Alicia was saying. “Stonehenge. I have this fantasy … of living inside of Stonehenge. I know it’s not a house.” They didn’t say anything for a while. “You have no literary value,” Alicia then said.
“You have no face value,” Aaron said. He laughed. “I didn’t mean anything by that. Why did I say that?”
“Face value,” Alicia said.
“Because your face is ugly. That’s why I said it.” Aaron rolled over, grinning, and looked at Alicia. “Really, though. It’s because of the idiom or whatever. What’s the face value of this rare coin I found in my backyard? See.” He looked at her a moment more—looked at her face; her two eyes, black and incremental as a Japanese animation, her nose and mouth like well-made trinkets; how could anything true and complex ever be expressed?—and then rolled her carefully over and held her, loosely, like a thing that needed comfort, but also needed air. Alicia didn’t say anything. It was only October, Aaron knew. They probably shouldn’t have been talking about spring break. It was elliptic, foreboding talk. It assumed certain things about winter break.
“Who started talking about spring break first?” Aaron said. “A minute ago.”
“What,” Alicia said. She had a habit of automatically saying ‘what.’ Sometimes she’d say ‘what’ and then respond immediately after—cynically, without any visible shame. But it was a good way to buy time, Aaron had to admit, a cautious, maybe even considerate, thing to do. Probably it started that way, as a conversational strategy, but now just continued as a thing of her identity—a crucial part of her identity! Aaron felt some contempt for her. He felt bigoted and tired. He wasn’t going to repeat his question.
“What,” Alicia said again, after a while.
“ ‘What’ what,” Aaron said.
They didn’t talk for a long time, did not move, just lay in bed. Eventually, then, they made it somehow into the kitchen, and from there, affected no doubt
by sunlight, they became a bit zealous and drove to a movie theatre and watched two movies, then ate dinner, slowly and dully, without drinking any water—feeling sort of shadowy and eradicated after the movies—and were now back in bed. Neither of them had spoken for a long time. Aaron was feeling very complacent, falling asleep a little. There were times when he stopped thinking—his cares and concerns left him, in a faraway smoke; a smoke he could see, in the distance—and everything around him stayed the same, so that he then just sort of passed, one-dimensionally—time-wise—through it all, feeling honest and fine and worriless.
“Do you want to know what I’m thinking about?” Alicia said. But Aaron had fallen asleep. Alicia waited a minute, then woke Aaron and repeated herself.
“What are you thinking about?” Aaron really wanted to know. Sleep had made him curious about Alicia. He had forgotten her, and would now relearn her. He felt grateful and intimate.
“I’ve been worried,” Alicia said. “Can’t you tell?”
Aaron now wondered why she hadn’t asked what he was thinking about. It seemed maybe hypocritical, what was happening right now, seemed almost—somehow—adulterous. “My sister hates me,” Alicia said; she and her sister had been close until Alicia left for college; now Alicia was worried; she felt guilty, and urgent, as time was running out, she felt, for reconciliation—and then there were some intricacies that Aaron had never fully understood. He had heard this talk before. He began to wonder if they ever resolved that thing with the face value; and there was something about spring break. What was that? Aaron realized that he wasn’t listening to Alicia at all, was not even trying. He could hear her voice, but was somehow able to process it not as language but as sound. He laughed. “Wait,” he said, interrupting her, “what are you saying right now? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.” He laughed again. “Can you start over, please?”
“Should I make her a card? What should I write on it, though,” Alicia said. Aaron was losing concentration again—so fast, he thought factually—was thinking about a story he had been working on, but then Alicia’s voice became suddenly very loud. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” she said. “You can’t just phase out like that. That’s so rude. Do you know how rude that is?”
“I know,” Aaron said. “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I know it’s really rude. I really am sorry.” He was. But should he be apologizing this vehemently? It felt mindless and insincere. “You do it too,” he said. He didn’t know this for a fact, but it was a good, vague thing to say, probably. There was a long moment of silence, and then he tickled her; she tensed and got quickly out of bed.
She walked to the bathroom door, slowly turned around, came back to the bed, and lay down.
“I’m going to sleep,” she said, but then got out of bed again, left the room, and came back with a steak knife, held by her head, like to attack. She walked to Aaron and stabbed him in the chest. The blade was flimsy, Aaron saw. Plastic. He laughed. “I’m serious,” Alicia said. She was grinning. “I’m kind of angry.” She threw the knife across the room, where it fell on a shirt, from which a silverfish darted out, stopped, and then glided slowly into the bathroom.
Alicia lay down facing away. “Did you like that?” she said. “It wasn’t just for fun.” She pulled the covers up, tight, to her chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll get over this,” she said. “I’m just sleepy. I’m just worried about my sister. Nothing’s wrong.” Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video. This seemed right. That’s exactly, literally, right, Aaron thought, already mocking himself. He could not sleep and began to worry about his parents. They were always yelling at each other, about the stock market. They stayed home every day and had no friends. Actually, they did go to the movies every week; they did that. Still, there was something disastrous about them; that they had only each other, as they were immigrants and so had no relatives nearby; or that they didn’t seem to have any hobbies, or interests, even. They were incomprehensible to Aaron. He was, though, writing a story about them, whatever that meant.
He had an idea one day, to switch into Alicia’s writing workshop. He would surprise her or something. He was lazy to do the official switching, so one day he just affected an air of having switched—something of ironic efficacy, of recent bureaucratic struggle overcome, he guessed—and then went in, a little blank in the face, prepared to blame the registrar. But no one said anything, not even Alicia.
“Aaron, yay,” she had said, actually; but that was all.
A few weeks later, they were discussing Aaron’s story; not the one about his parents—he was still working on that one, as it had changed on him, taken on a made-for-TV movie tone, which a story could do—but a different one; not a serious story, but one that Aaron was proud of. He had worked very hard on making it impervious to criticism.
“This has no literary value,” Alicia said, after some generic praise from the class.
“You have no literary value,” Aaron said. “You as a person.”
“That’s so good,” someone said softly.
“You’re quoting me,” Alicia said. “Everyone; he just quoted me.” She had been depressed lately, she had been telling Aaron once or twice per week. (“You’re not depressed,” Aaron would say. “If you’re depressed so am I. We both are.”) She was thinking about quitting school, moving back home, up north. She worried about her parents and mildly retarded brother; and her sister, who had stayed home, seven years now, rather than go to college.
“You’re quoting me,” Aaron said. It was his word against hers, he knew, though probably they shouldn’t be quarrelling in class like this. But he was grinning, so probably it wasn’t quarrelling—probably the grinning made it okay.
“College … has no literary value,” someone said. The class was an incisive one, though in a meek and circuitous way, as they were shy people, really—fearful, above all, Aaron knew, of the stupid remark, the trite sentiment; always coming in late to avoid small talk; the dreaded small talk!—though, depending on mood, and on drugs, no doubt, they could get a bit wild, as they all had good senses of humor and playful spirits (after reading D.H. Lawrence’s The Blind Man the previous week, they had laughed and laughed at D.H.’s use of a mollusk simile; the lawyer who was like a mollusk whose shell is broken).
“What about community college?” the teacher said. “I think those have literary value.”
“Community colleges with minority make-ups have literary value,” Aaron said. He remembered something; a few days ago he had joked about community colleges—condescendingly, Alicia had thought; and then they fought—had said something about the vague leper colonies of them. “Community colleges on the west coast have beach value.”
“Littoral value,” Alicia said slowly. Aaron looked at her.
“Well then, what’s more important,” the teacher said. “Literary value, or beach value? Compare and contrast. Two pages, choose your own font, due next week.” The teacher claimed to believe that no one would write anything of importance between the ages of fifteen and forty. He was not very attentive in class—sometimes letting discussion dwindle into woozy, melancholy, time-distorting silences; sometimes getting up casually to use the restroom, like a student!—but was really good at taking sarcasm to the next level, which the class found idiosyncratic and refreshing and really liked, a lot.
They drove two hours to visit Aaron’s parents one day.
Aaron’s mother was sitting in the living room, blushing, crying a little. The TV was on. Aaron’s father was in the computer room. He said that Aaron’s mother had just lost $20,000 by shorting the wrong stock. He was hunched close to the computer, and did not look angry, but nervous, or else giddy—it was hard to tell.
“They always fight about the same things,” Aaron said in bed. “They’re not in
love. Not even close. Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. All I know is I’m worried about them. All I know’s I have this image of a swamp and it’s rising up and moving into me, like a fog. I read about swamp-fogs. Swamp gas. They rise up and move and people think they’re spaceships. Will-o’-the-wisp. That sounds like a toilet paper for elves. Upper class elves.” He felt excited. Being with Alicia in a large house in his childhood bed excited him for some reason. He really was worried, though.
“Your dad on the computer, he was like a mad-scientist,” Alicia said.
“They have money but never spend it. All they do is lose it in the stock market.” Aaron laughed. “They’re so bad at the stock market. What is the stock market anyway? A computer or what? It’s like an idea or something. It’s probably an entire country. Some tiny country between Mongolia and China, with a rainbow-colored force-field around it.” He thought about that and felt a bit nostalgic. He kind of wanted to move to that place. “And what’s gravity? No one knows. No one cares. Why is there gravity? That’s so weird. That’s like, why are there things? That’s so depressing, that that question even exists. But sincere, I think. I mean I don’t feel fake at all, asking that. Finally, I don’t feel fake!” He had talked too long, he knew. He wouldn’t talk anymore. Alicia would talk. Or she wouldn’t. Aaron had the feeling that she was devoting little to no attention to him while worrying secretly and intensely about other things. “Are you thinking about your sister?”
“You and I always fight about the same things too,” Alicia said.
“We’re working on it though,” Aaron said. They were. They had even come up with a plan, that whenever one of them started to get angry, the other would let them know—show them how useless it was—and then they would hold each other. “We have the plan.” He laughed. Actually, he had come up with the plan; it had been his idea!