Tao Lin - Taipei

Paul walked directly to a two-seat sofa (golden brown and deeply padded as the upturned paw of an enormous stuffed animal) and lay on it, on his side, facing the room, and closed his eyes. After a blip of surprise, which disintegrated in some chemical system of Klonopin and Valium and alcohol instead of articulating into what would’ve startled Paul awake — that he’d fluently, with precision and total calm, entered a room of dozens of people and lain facing outward on a sofa — was asleep. When he woke, an unknown amount of time later— between five and forty minutes, or longer — he observed neutrally that, though he was drooling a little and probably the only non-dancing person in the room, no one was looking at him, then moved toward the room’s iPod with the goal-oriented, zombie-like calmness of a person who has woken at night thirsty and is walking to his refrigerator and changed the music to “Today” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Every person, it seemed, stopped dancing and appeared earnestly annoyed but — as if to avoid encouraging the behavior — didn’t look at Paul or say anything and, when the music was changed back, resumed dancing, like nothing had happened.

In early June, after four more parties, two at which he similarly slept on sofas after walking mutely through rooms without looking at anyone, Paul began attending fewer social gatherings and ingesting more drugs, mostly with Daniel and Fran, or only Daniel, or sometimes alone, which seemed classically “not a good sign,” he sometimes thought, initially with mild amusement, then as a neutral observation, finally as a meaningless placeholder. Due to his staggered benzodiazepine usage and lack of obligations or long-term projects and that he sometimes ingested Seroquel and slept twelve to sixteen hours (always waking, it seemed, at night, uncomfortable and disoriented and unsure what to do, usually returning to sleep) he had gradually become unaware of day-to-day or week-to-week changes in his life — and, when he thought of himself in terms of months and years, he still viewed himself as in an “interim period,” which by definition, he felt, would end when his book tour began — so he viewed the trend, of fewer people and more drugs, as he might view a new waiter at Taco Chulo: “there, at some point,” separate from him, not of his concern, beyond his ability or desire to track or control.

When he wanted to know what happened two days ago, or five hours ago, especially chronologically, he would sense an impasse, in the form of a toll, which hadn’t been there before, payable by an amount of effort (not unlike that required in problem solving or essay writing) he increasingly felt unmotivated to exert. There were times when his memory, like an external hard drive that had been taken from him and hidden inside an unwieldy series of cardboard boxes, or placed at the end of a long and dark and messy corridor, required much more effort than he felt motivated to exert simply to locate, after which, he knew, more effort would be required to gain access. After two to five hours with no memory, some days, he would begin to view concrete reality as his memory — a place to explore idly, without concern, but somewhat pointlessly, aware that his actual existence was elsewhere, that he was, in a way, hiding here, away from where things actually happened, then were stored here, in his memory.

Having repeatedly learned from literature, poetry, philosophy, popular culture, his own experiences, most movies he’d seen, especially ones he liked, that it was desirable to “live in the present,” “not dwell on the past,” etc., he mostly viewed these new obstacles to his memory as friendly and, sometimes, momentarily believing in their viability as a form of Zen, exciting or at least interesting. Whenever he wanted to access his memory (usually to analyze or calmly replay a troubling or pleasant social interaction) and sensed the impasse, which he almost always did, to some degree, or that his memory was currently missing, as was increasingly the case, he would allow himself to stop wanting, with an ease, not unlike dropping a leaf or stick while outdoors, he hadn’t felt before — and, partly because he’d quickly forget what he’d wanted, without a sensation of loss or worry, only an acknowledgment of a different distribution of consciousness than if he’d focused on assembling and sustaining a memory — and passively continue with his ongoing sensory perception of concrete reality.

In mid-June, one dark and rainy afternoon, Paul woke and rolled onto his side and opened his MacBook sideways. At some point, maybe twenty minutes after he’d begun refreshing Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Gmail in a continuous cycle — with an ongoing, affectless, humorless realization that his day “was over”—he noticed with confusion, having thought it was a.m., that it was 4:46 p.m. He slept until 8:30 p.m. and “worked on things” in the library until midnight and was two blocks from his room, carrying a mango and two cucumbers and a banana in a plastic bag, when Daniel texted “come hang out, Mitch bought a lot of coke.”

Daniel and Mitch were outside a bar, discussing where to use the cocaine. Paul said Daniel looked “really tired” and asked if he needed some eggplant, in reference to a joke they had that Daniel was heavily dependent on eggplant and almost always suffering its withdrawal symptoms, which could be horrific. Daniel said he stayed up last night with Fran, currently sleeping, to celebrate, by eating brunch and buying drugs, that she’d quit her job she got three days ago waitressing in a Polish restaurant.

They crossed the street to Mitch’s friend Harry’s apartment, where Harry, whom Mitch had earlier given some cocaine for his birthday, was repeatedly trying to hug more than one person at a time while shouting what one would normally speak. Paul walked aimlessly, into a kitchen, where he stood in darkness at the sink peeling and eating his mango. He washed his hands and walked through the apartment’s main room — two desktop computers and speakers on a corner table, four large windows overlooking Graham Avenue, ten to fifteen people hugging and shouting, two mediumsize dogs — into an institutionally bright hallway, where he heard Daniel in a bathroom whose door wasn’t fully closed. “It’s me,” said Paul, and pushed the door, against resistance, which relented when he said “it’s Paul,” revealing a vaguely familiar girl, who appeared extremely tired, sitting on a bathtub’s outer edge, looking at Daniel and Mitch huddled on the floor around a toilet-seat lid with cocaine on it.

“You’re doing it without me,” said Paul in an exaggerated monotone.

“We thought you left,” said Daniel.

“I wouldn’t just leave,” said Paul.

“Out of anyone I know you’re probably most likely to just leave,” said Daniel crushing cocaine with his debit card.

Paul looked at the girl, who shrugged.

Mitch, who was allergic to Harry’s dogs, sneezed.

“Jesus, be careful,” said Daniel quietly.

“He’s sharing it with us,” said Paul. “And all you can do is berate him.”

“Bro,” said Daniel, and seemed to grin at Paul a little.

At Legion, twenty minutes later, Paul was sitting alone on a padded seat, staring at an area of torsos that were beginning to seem face-like. He texted Daniel that he was going to Khim’s to “stock up on eggplant” and walked six blocks to the large deli below Harry’s apartment, feeling energetic and calm, listening to Rilo Kiley through earphones at a medium volume. He paid for an organic beef patty, two kombuchas, five bananas, alfalfa sprouts, arugula, hempseed oil, a red onion, ginger, toilet paper and carried two paper bags reinforced with plastic bags toward Legion. Harry approached on the sidewalk with a panic-like expression of uncommitted confusion and, staring ahead, passed with a sweating forehead like the person in Go who is abandoned by a friend in an alleyway outside a rave while — due to too much ecstasy — foaming at the mouth.