by Tao Lin
At dinner, refraining from rice, Li told his mom and dad, who’d returned from China that day, that starch fed a species of bacteria called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Due to his damaged, varyingly permeable gut barrier, the bacterium reached places in his body where it hadn’t adapted over millions of years to be. His body attacked the microbes and also itself because three types of collagen (I, III, IV) and a complex of glycoproteins made by some humans resembled something in Klebsiella p.
* * *
—
The next day, Li’s pain seemed slightly improved. At dinner, Li’s mom’s hand went to her jaw and she winced. Li asked if her jaw hurt again.
Touching her temple, she said sometimes it hurt up to there and that some mornings her jaw felt like it was going to fall off, which worried Li, who said she should see her dentist because maybe despite the safety measures—coating her mouth in chlorella, suctioning fumes and fragments—mercury had gotten into her gums. “We can go together when you feel better,” she said.
It was January 27, and Li had four weeks left in Taiwan. Continuing to avoid rice, he hurt slightly less each of the next three days, during which he said variations of, “If we didn’t see the rehab doctor, I would’ve kept getting treatments that misattributed the pain, which would’ve kept increasing, because I would’ve kept eating more rice, steamed and sweetened and fermented, to comfort myself and aid sleep,” to his parents four times. It seemed important to remember.
On his fifth day without starch, Li searched Wikipedia’s AS page for “starch.” It wasn’t there. Neither were “diet,” “heal,” “natural,” or “Ebringer.” Li’s mom canceled the Chinese medicine appointment and went to get the orthotic from the chiropractor.
She told the chiropractor that Li had improved, and the chiropractor was surprised—after two sessions? She said Li had “AS” and had stopped eating starches, and the chiropractor said, “Ankylosing spondylitis,” indicating he knew of the disease.
* * *
—
On a train two days later, on the way to a hospital to confirm whether he had AS, Li saw someone wearing a brand of jeans called “Upset.” Li’s mom said maybe the person equated “up” with good.
They got off the train. It was a rare cloudless day. Li could almost walk at a normal speed. He’d run out of cannabis the previous day after being nearly continuously stoned through the five weeks of increasing pain. He started to feel depressed.
His upper and lower teeth didn’t fit snugly, in part because many were missing, and so he was always releasing adrenaline and cortisol, making it hard to sleep or relax, he told his mom. There was a treatment called orthotropics, he said, which widened degenerate jaws, creating larger airways, instead of extracting teeth and root-destroyingly prising the rest into alignment with braces and headgear, as in orthodontics, which he, Mike, and most of their peers had gotten.
“Is your tooth still black?” said Li’s mom.
“Yes. But the black part hasn’t gotten bigger.”
“That’s good,” said Li’s mom.
Li said when he was stoned he felt his mouth more and it felt numb, crowded, and sore. He considered saying that when he was stoned and alone he unconsciously stuck his tongue out a little because his mouth was unnaturally small. Instead, he said something he’d said in an email once: stoned in 4K the past two years, he’d often cried while recalling times he’d been mean to his mom and other people.
He felt better after near-monologuing on degeneration and cannabis.
* * *
—
At the hospital, a doctor asked five questions, diagnosed Li with AS, and ordered a confirmation X-ray.
Walking to radiology, Li’s mom said Auntie was coming to the hospital for the results of an ultrasound she’d gotten after noticing blood in her urine, and that Thin Uncle might be coming too, due to chest pain.
Sensing things as somewhat zany, Li began to view life as literature. Life was an extremely long novel, and novels were like dreams, he thought with a gladdening sensation of the mystery, which he hadn’t felt in weeks, except sometimes while stoned in bed. Ten millennia of civilization, placing people in high-rises with TVs, computers, walls, and pain, had made the mystery easy to forget. Li suspected that the more he recovered, shedding layers of pain and culture, the closer he’d feel to it.
After getting X-rayed, Li saw Auntie and his mom. The three of them walked through the hospital.
In a sunny hallway, a motorized wheelchair approached Auntie, quiet and fast.
“Li!” said Li’s mom to Auntie, who almost always looked down when walking.
Auntie saw and eluded the wheelchair.
“I called Auntie Li,” said Li’s mom, laughing.
“I heard,” said Li, smiling a little.
The doctor looked at Li’s X-rays, said he had AS, and prescribed a painkiller and an anti-inflammatant.
“He doesn’t want medication,” said Li’s mom.
“It was pointless for him to have come, then,” said the doctor.
* * *
—
On the train home, standing above his seated mom, Li felt alone and doomed, unable to sustain eye contact with her for more than two seconds. It seemed impossible, like doing a split. He hadn’t been good at eye contact, maybe especially with his mom, since middle school.
He sat beside her. Beneath AS were darker problems, he thought, looking outside at the sky’s steady blue light.
Thyroid
Four days later, twenty tabs of LSD arrived. On LSD at dinner, Li recorded himself telling his parents about the Younger Dryas, a period of time from 12,800 to 11,600 years ago that began and ended with global cataclysms, destroying, he’d read in books by Graham Hancock, at least one advanced civilization.
“People were as advanced as we were in the eighteenth century,” said Li, and smiled at his mom, holding eye contact with startling, slightly nervous confidence; on LSD, he could be garrulous and extroverted, sharing thoughts, looking at eyes.
He couldn’t remember his mom’s pre-surgery eyes. She’d looked perpetually surprised in Barcelona and Florida but had started to appear normal when he got to Taiwan for his current visit.
“The same as we were in like 1780,” he said, sounding somewhat accusatory, as, to his rhetorical detriment, he usually did when telling his parents paradigm-changing information.
“Oh,” said Li’s mom.
“They had ships and had mapped the planet and were destroyed by pieces of a comet.”
“Whole world all destroyed,” said Li’s mom.
“It hit mostly in North America, and there was almost no sunlight for a long time,” said Li, looking at his dad, who seemed preoccupied, eating and watching TV.
News was showing security footage of an arcade machine playing itself—metal claw descending to prizes, stuffed pig slipping away. They’d seen the segment earlier that day.
“And then, why were there people again?” said Li’s mom.
“Because some survived,” said Li. “They lived in caves and underground.” He said most people blamed aborigines for extincting mammoths, camels, lions, giant beavers, and thirty-some other New World megafauna, but it was the comet. Every June and November, Earth risked another history-resetting impact by traversing the comet’s pieces—the Taurid meteor storm.
“Modern people look down on aborigines,” said Li’s mom, quoting Li.
“Yes,” said Li, wondering what his parents understood or thought about there having been an earlier, deep stumble into history, with its own technologies, deities, drugs, novels, and types of pets. To Li, it seemed surprising and illuminating, showing that history, instead of being linear and unstoppable, was possibly a frequently interrupted thing, requiring two or five or more tries.
“It’s good that you have diverse interests,” said Li’s mo
m.
Li said his interests were similar in terms of being examples of dominant models being wrong in ways that distorted and simplified and disenchanted reality. With the waning of pain, his attention was drifting back to these interests.
* * *
—
The next morning, Li got an email from his agent saying he’d gained Li a contract for his in-progress novel and proposed nonfiction book. Outlining the latter, Li cast ideas, scenes, stories, goals, and emotions into the future, creating a long, 4D bubble, a new phase, suctioning him ahead. After a few days, he began to feel like the five weeks of pain hadn’t happened to him, but to someone in a movie he’d seen.
On his sixth day of outlining his nonfiction book, which he wanted to be about, besides psychedelics, his increasing interests in history and nature, Li went into the kitchen for green tea and saw his dad turned toward him from the sofa, saying, “Mom’s weight has been dropping. Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Li. His dad, seeming rattled, blamed fermented vegetables. Li said his mom, who was out with Auntie and Thin Uncle, would benefit from more, not less, fermented vegetables. His dad told him to research “sudden weight loss” online.
Li entered and exited his room, aimless with worry. Back in his room, he typed “sudden weight loss.” Google suggested “in dogs,” “in cats,” “diabetes,” “in elderly,” “symptoms,” “and hair loss,” “in teenager,” “without trying,” and “in horses.” He typed “in women” and clicked “10 reasons why unexplained weight loss is a serious problem.”
One was diabetes, two was depression, three was excessive thyroid.
* * *
—
That night, after Chinese New Year dinner with relatives at a Japanese restaurant, Li and his parents and Auntie stood waiting for the train. Auntie told Li it was good he cared so much for his parents. She’d heard Li discussing thyroid with his mom.
Li’s mom said it’d be good if Auntie’s children cared about her as much, and Auntie agreed. Auntie lived with one of her two sons, her son’s wife, and their three children in a small apartment. Her husband had died unexpectedly in 2001 at age fifty-eight.
The previous year, Li’s mom had emailed Li asking him to please consider getting a pneumonia vaccine due to his weak heart and lungs. Li had sent her four articles, including “UK Scraps Pneumonia Vaccines Because They Don’t Work,” and said there were safer ways to increase immunity than with shots containing aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, neomycin, MSG, polysorbate 80, and other adjuvants, preservatives, stabilizers, and surfactants.
He’d expected a government-and-corporation-trusting reply. Instead, she’d said the flu shot might have killed Auntie’s husband, who’d gotten it one day without telling anyone. Rashes had appeared on his neck and face. Auntie had driven him to a hospital. He’d died a day and a half later.
The train arrived to the remixed beginning of the Chopin nocturne. Li’s parents got on. Auntie tried to crowd aboard as the train and platform doors closed. A panicked-looking Li’s mom pushed her off.
Li and Auntie were alone on the platform.
“I’m very healthy,” said Auntie.
“That’s good,” said Li.
“I go to sleep and don’t wake until morning.”
“My mom has problems sleeping,” said Li.
“I don’t. I close my eyes and it’s morning.”
“Do you get up to pee?” said Li.
“No. I’ve always slept well. I eat well and I sleep well.”
Li said he and his mom had to pee many times a night. He said they were damaged from living in the States. His mom, doing all the cleaning, laundry, insect control, and yard work, had inhaled Windex, Dawn, Tide, Clorox, Raid, and/or Roundup daily.
“I feel strong and great,” said Auntie. “I’m very healthy.”
Li thought of breast cancer, which Auntie had gotten two years after her husband died. Her left breast had been removed. She’d continued working, running a night market stand with games for children, until she was jailed for a night because games with prizes were illegal. Since then, Li’s mom, who often said Auntie’s life was hard due to lack of schooling, had given her money monthly.
“You’ve always slept well?” said Li.
“Right,” said Auntie. “I don’t dream, either.”
“Hm. Has my mom always not slept well?”
“She’s never slept well,” said Auntie after a moment. “I’ve always been healthier than her. My hands are warm. Hers are cold.” She held Li’s hand with both her hands.
Li felt surprised by how cold his hand felt. His mom had told him many times that Auntie’s hands were warmer than hers, but he’d always viewed her as exaggerating.
Li asked about Auntie’s eldest brother, who’d died in 1989 at age forty-nine. Auntie said he’d sprayed DDT on his banana, guava, and orange plants, as Li knew from his mom. Auntie mimed spraying, showing that DDT had fallen onto her brother, who for years had said a fishbone was stuck in his throat. When he learned it was thyroid cancer, he could no longer talk. In the hospital, he’d written notes, begging people to let him die.
Auntie mimed begging. As the train entered the station, she said she was grateful that Li had taught them about organic food.
* * *
—
Li and his mom researched natural thyroid that night. They found WP Thyroid, which didn’t require a prescription but entailed making a wire transfer to an individual, which seemed dubious to Li’s mom. They found Thyro-Gold—desiccated thyroid glands from grass-fed New Zealand cows—which also didn’t require a prescription, but which required that one learn one’s dose by tracking temperature and weight daily over weeks. They decided to keep looking.
“It’s good we’re researching carefully,” said Li’s mom.
Li agreed it was good, unlike her strategy.
“Huh?” said Li’s mom. “What’s my strategy?”
“Nexium. You didn’t research Nexium.”
“Oh,” said Li’s mom. “Right.”
“You didn’t even ask me about it. Can you ask me in the future?”
“Of course,” said Li’s mom.
“If you ask, we can research together.”
“I will,” said Li’s mom.
Around midnight in the park by their building, Li biked in circles around a synthetic hill with a glass pyramid on its flat concrete top, listening to Chopin’s funeral march through earphones. He teared as the dulcet, transportive part of the piece began. Biking home, he felt emotional in a hollow-yet-substantial, sponge-shaped way.
Prison
Two days later, Li and his parents went to a hot-pot restaurant for lunch with Li’s dad’s sisters.
Li’s dad, who was three years older and younger than his sisters, said Dudu, who was at home, had refused her chicken earlier because she’d misheard “three” as “four” when he said three people were going to lunch.
“She can understand you,” said Li’s dad’s older sister.
“Yes,” said Li’s dad, looking at a menu.
“Yes,” said Li’s mom.
“Du doesn’t want these,” said Li’s dad about dinner-set extras—rice, dessert, beverage.
“You called me Du,” said Li.
His dad ignored him.
“Dad called me Du,” said Li to his mom, who always acknowledged her nomenclatural mistakes.
“His brain is a little broken,” she said.
Li’s dad’s younger sister said she hadn’t known Li was in Taiwan.
“He’s been here two weeks,” said Li’s dad.
“Two months,” said Li’s mom.
“You’ve been here two months?” said Li’s dad.
“Doesn’t know about his own child,” said Li’s mom.
Li’s dad’s older sister said Li
should get a divorce.
“I know,” said Li. “I want to. I will once I’m back in New York.” He and his wife had been separated for five years, during which he’d been in one half-year relationship, which had ended thirty-eight months earlier. He’d been celibate for thirty months. It was part of his recovery from everything.
“You don’t have money now, but when you do she’ll want half,” said Li’s dad.
“She won’t,” said Li. “She’s not like that.”
Li’s dad’s older sister said something implying it was common knowledge that all of Li’s girlfriends had “run away,” and Li didn’t correct her.
In four of his five relationships, he’d gotten depressed, leading, through general negativity and his blaming habit, to complaints, causing everything he thought or said to seem like a veiled or open insult, as in his parents’ relationship. His last relationship had arguably been an improvement—the complaints had been more mutual—but it had still felt dysfunctional.
When the bill arrived, Li’s dad said Li was paying, and his sisters laughed. His younger sister said, “Li doesn’t make money.”
“She doesn’t know I make money,” said Li quietly to his dad as they stood to leave the restaurant.
It was his nineteenth day without starches. Pain had kept decreasing a little each day. He could almost touch his toes.
* * *
—