Tao Lin - Taipei

Paul realized after they left that he’d gotten what from elementary school through college he often most wanted — unambiguous indications of secure, mutual friendships — but was no longer important to him.

The book party, like algae, feeling its way elsewhere, moved slowly but persistently from the bookstore’s basement to its first floor, to the sidewalk outside, converging finally with other groups at a corner bar, where Paul failed more than five times to recognize or remember the faces or names of recent to long-term acquaintances — and twice introduced people he’d already introduced to each other, including Daniel and Frederick, both of whom however either feigned having not met or had actually forgotten — but due to 2mg Klonopin remained poised, with a peaceful sensation of faultlessness, physiologically calm but mentally stimulated, throughout the night, as if beta testing the event by acting like an exaggerated version of himself, for others to practice against, before the real Paul, the only person without practice, was inserted for the actual event. Fran left for her apartment, which she shared with a low-level cocaine dealer majoring in something art related at Columbia, to prepare a kind of pasta, “with a lot of things in it,” that was her specialty, it seemed. Paul and Daniel arrived ninety minutes later and Fran served a giant platter of cheese-covered, lasagna-like pasta — attractively browned in a mottled pattern of variations of crispiness — in small, colorful plastic bowls with buttered toast on which were thin slices of raw garlic. They ate all of it, then arranged themselves on Fran’s three-seat sofa and watched Drugstore Cowboy on Daniel’s MacBook. Paul was unable to discern the movie as coherent — he kept thinking the same scene, in a motel room, was replaying with minor variations — but was aware of sometimes commenting on the sound track, including that it was “really weird” and “unexpected.”

Before becoming unconscious Paul was aware of a man wearing a cowboy hat being carried out of a drugstore by four people and of himself thinking that, if the people dragging the man were invisible, the man would look like he was gliding feetfirst on a horizontal waterslide, steadily ahead, with out-of-control limbs and a crazed, antagonistic expression, as if by experimentally self-directed telekinesis.

• • •

A week later Paul had organized plans to see Trash Humpers and was waiting for Fran and Daniel at the theater. He had first asked Laura, who seemed to be in a relationship with her ex-boyfriend — pictures had appeared on Facebook in which they looked happily reunited in what seemed to be a faux-expensive hotel — to see the movie and she’d said she wanted to but not tonight. Fran gave Paul six 10mg Adderall for her and Daniel’s tickets and a disoriented-seeming Daniel, who had no money left, asked if Paul had any snacks. Paul gave Daniel a sugar-free Red Bull he got from a Red Bull — shaped car parked outside the library and Daniel drank it in one motion with a neutral expression.

“Fran said she’ll pay you back if you give me one of the Adderall she gave you,” whispered Daniel a few minutes into the movie. “I don’t think I can stay awake without it.” In the movie costumed actors made noises in parking lots and inside houses while destroying and/or “humping” inanimate objects. Paul woke, at one point, to Fran laughing loudly when no one else in the small, sold-out theater was laughing. When Paul wasn’t asleep he felt distracted by a feeling that Daniel had eerily turned his head 90 degrees and was staring at him, but each time he looked Daniel was either asleep or looking at the screen. The last ten minutes of the movie Paul was peripherally aware of Daniel’s unsupported head continually lolling in place and twitching to attention in a manner reminiscent of a middle/high school student struggling and repeatedly failing to remain awake in a morning class. Daniel seemed fully alert seconds after the movie ended. Paul asked how he slept despite Adderall and Red Bull.

“Susie-Q,” said Daniel with a smirk-like grin indicating both earnest disapproval and a kind of fondness toward Seroquel and its intense, often uncomfortable tranquilizing effects — as if, believing Susie-Q wasn’t malicious, he could forgive her every time she induced twelve hours of sleep followed by twelve to twenty-four hours of feeling lost and irritable, therefore she functioned, if inadvertently, as a teacher of forgiveness and acceptance and empathy, for which he was grateful.

They were the last three people, after the movie, to leave the theater. They stood on the sidewalk, unsure what to do next. Fran had planned to go to Coney Island tonight and stay until morning for her birthday, which was today — she’d created a Facebook listing, which Paul remembered seeing — but none of her friends wanted to go, because she didn’t have any, she said. Paul said he also had no friends and that they should celebrate by “eating a lot of food.”

At Lovin’ Cup, a bar-restaurant with live music, Fran and Daniel ordered drinks, went outside to smoke. Paul laid the side of his head on his arms, on the table, and closed his eyes. He didn’t feel connected by a traceable series of linked events to a source that had purposefully conveyed him, from elsewhere, into this world. He felt like a digression that had forgotten from what it digressed and was continuing ahead in a confused, choiceless searching. Fran and Daniel returned and ordered enchiladas, nachos. Paul ordered tequila, a salad, waffles with ice cream on top.

When the food arrived Paul ordered tater tots and more tequila. They ate silently in the loud bar. Paul felt he would need to scream, or exert an effort that would feel like he was screaming, to be heard. He was aware of Fran, to his left, quietly eating with her mouth near her plate, as if to hide something, or probably to reduce the distance to her enchiladas, which in Paul’s peripheral vision appeared shapeless, almost invisible. After Fran left to “do homework,” she said, Paul and Daniel decided to try watching Drugstore Cowboy again, in Paul’s room.

On the walk to Daniel’s apartment, to get Drugstore Cowboy , dozens of elderly, similarly dressed Asian men were standing in a loosely organized row, like a string of Christmas lights, seeming bored but alert, on a wide sidewalk, across from Bar Matchless. Daniel asked one of them what movie they were in and the Asian man seemed confused, then said “Martin Scorsese” without an accent when Daniel asked again.

Around forty minutes later Paul said “that looks like the group of Asians. . we saw earlier,” realizing with amazement as he saw Bar Matchless that they had unwittingly walked to the same place.

Daniel’s two suitemates were seated at a round, thin, foldable table on chairs Paul immediately viewed as “found on the street,” talking to each other, it seemed, after returning from a concert. Except for a broom and what Daniel confirmed — grimly, Paul felt — was a giant plastic eggplant of unknown origin, there was nothing else in the common room.

Daniel’s room had a dresser, mattress pad, wood chair, tiny desk. Within arm’s reach, outside his window, was a brick wall covered with gradients of gray ash. Daniel showed Paul, who felt self-conscious and crowded, standing in place, a candle shaped like a lightbulb and said it was from his sister. Paul stared at it, unable to comprehend, in a way that made the behavior seem unreal, exactly why Daniel was showing it to him, with a feeling that he’d misheard, or not heard, something Daniel said a few seconds or minutes ago.

Paul woke sitting on his mattress with his back against a wall, beside Daniel, who seemed asleep and was also sitting. The room was palely lit by a cloudy, faintly pink morning. Paul’s MacBook, in front of them, showed Drugstore Cowboy ’s menu screen. Paul shifted a little — his right leg was numb — and Daniel began talking in a clear voice, as if he’d been awake a few minutes already. Daniel wanted to ingest Adder-all instead of sleep. Paul, who couldn’t remember if they’d watched the movie, distractedly asked what they would do “all day.”