Tao Lin - Taipei

“What have you read by Kōbō Abe?”

“Just The Woman in the Dunes .”

“What else do you think about me?” said Paul, and laughed sarcastically, which Erin also did, then both abruptly stopped and hugged and, stepping off the escalator, approached one of eight automated turnstiles. Paul said “just hold it to the thing” about Erin’s MRT card, then in a deeper voice than normal “wait, wait” and, after a pause, that he was “going to poop.”

Paul could see himself, after exiting the bathroom, shakily enlarging on the screen of his MacBook, which Erin pointed at him, as he maneuvered toward it in a flighty zigzag, perpendicularly against people walking to and from turnstiles, escalators. “I just vomited, like, water,” he said.

“Oh my god. Really? Are you sick?”

“No, I’m just getting the feeling of a lot of emptiness.”

“Oh. I was going to go poop but the—”

“Go, go,” said Paul.

“—like the thing, or, okay,” said Erin.

“Wikipedia? What?”

“The thing in the floor? I wasn’t sure how to use it.”

“You went in there?” said Paul.

“It’s just, like, a hole in the floor, interesting.”

“What if I couldn’t find you?”

“Huh?” said Erin with a confused expression.

“What if I couldn’t find you? You went in the bathroom?”

“I just went in for a second, with the intention of—”

“Go, go,” said Paul patting Erin’s shoulder, and she went. Paul set his MacBook on the floor. His legs moved in and out of view for a few minutes. “Hello?” he said in Mandarin into his iPhone. “Okay, okay, we’re leaving now, okay, bye.” Erin was skipping toward him and, it seemed, flapping her arms. Paul said his mother called to remind them they can’t eat or drink on the train. Erin smiled and said “oh, helpful” sincerely and they passed turnstiles, descended two floors, waited two minutes, sat in a train. Paul asked what Erin hadn’t liked about her other boyfriends.

“Like, things that have just bothered me?”

“Let’s just talk about. . Harris,” said Paul.

“Okay. Um, bothered me that he, like, had a lot of friends and a big social life. And didn’t seem to be okay with how I just had him and one other friend. He’d be like ‘you need to focus on me less and get more friends.’ I felt bothered that that was constant. And I didn’t like it that sometimes he seemed to make insensitive comments. There was one incident where I had to get a. . surgery-type thing on my, like, cervix. . thing.”

“What was it?”

“To remove precancerous cells, or something.”

“Whoa,” said Paul.

“They had to, like, burn—”

“Is that normal?”

“Yeah, relatively, but I couldn’t do anything for three weeks, then finally when we did. . this weird-looking thing came out? And, I don’t know, I felt really self-conscious, and the first thing he was just like ‘ew’ and, like, backed away from me and I was like ‘I can’t help it.’ I don’t know. It bothered me at the time but now. . I don’t know.”

“Are you on birth control right now?”

“No. I haven’t had my period but I’ve also taken three pregnancy tests, I’m not pregnant.”

“When did you take three pregnancy tests?”

“Periodically. One time I didn’t have my period for a year and a half. I feel like I should get on birth control. Because I have my period when I’m on it.”

“Isn’t it healthier to not be on it?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m not on it.”

“It seems fine,” said Paul vaguely.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” said Paul trying to remember something he wanted to say on the topic of friends. “It. . doesn’t matter to me if I come in you or somewhere else.”

“Okay,” said Erin.

“Um,” said Paul distractedly.

“This is probably the most that a guy has come in me without being on it. But I figure if anything happens we’re probably similarly. . minded.” Erin looked at Paul with an ironic expression and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because you want to have kids,” she said in a mock-serious voice. “Soon. Right?”

Paul nodded, aware he probably appeared confused.

“That was our goal in getting married,” said Erin.

Paul patted her thigh twice and grinned a little.

“We’re not in sin anymore,” said Erin completing the joke, mostly to herself, it seemed.

“I’ve always, um, felt like. .” said Paul quietly.

“Huh?” said Erin staring at his blank expression.

“Weird about friends,” murmured Paul. “I never hang out with other people if I’m in a relationship.”

Erin nodded rapidly, seeming a little anxious.

“We’re here,” said Paul, and they exited the train as it said XIMEN STATION (and something about Chiang Kai-shek) in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, English in a female, robot voice. Paul sneezed and looked at his hands rubbing the front of his shirt, aware of Erin also looking, both with neutral expressions. “Um,” said Paul on an up escalator to another train platform. “How did you deal with Harris having that many friends?”

“I would hang out with them. Harris and I were similar in the way we would joke about things, and I liked that his friends seemed to like me. . or, like, they laughed at me, and him, when we were together. But it was weird because it was obvious that I never became friends with any of them. What problems. . do you have?”

“With friends?”

“Girlfriends. The same question you asked me.”

“With. . who?”

“Uh, with Michelle,” said Erin.

“Just. . her friends,” said Paul on an up escalator to the station’s main floor. “She would want to hang out with friends. And I wouldn’t want to. .”

“Is there anything about her? Like, as a person.”

“I feel like we weren’t perfectly — we weren’t, um, optimally excited by each other.”

“How? How?”

“Just, like, she didn’t like the same things that I liked. . as much.”

“Oh,” said Erin. “Like On the Road things?”

“Yeah,” Paul said, who hadn’t liked On the Road as much as Michelle, who had rated one of his favorite books, Chilly Scenes of Winter , which she’d said she “liked,” two out of five stars on Goodreads, after their relationship had ended. “And then, uh, I felt like maybe she. . had a slightly neurotic aversion toward blow jobs, I feel,” said Paul.

“Seriously? I wouldn’t expect that.”

“She would do it, but not as much as I would to her, I think,” said Paul as they reached street level, at an intersection, where two corner buildings seemed armored with layers of billboards and lighted signs and, near the top of one, like a face, a giant screen, showing a movie preview. On a plaza was a donation bucket decorated like a Christmas tree and a grand piano without a player. “Sometimes she would joke about how it was ‘degrading,’ but I feel like she wasn’t completely joking.”

They entered the area blocked off to cars.

“So maybe I wasn’t satisfied with that,” said Paul.

“What other things sexually?”

“Sexually?”

“About her, or about anybody.”

“Uh, I don’t have that many sexual complaints. What about you?”

“With Kent it got really boring and routine.”

“How?”

“It was just the same thing. He would go down on me, then we would have missionary style, and that’s it. . that’s, like, it. Harris, similarly, we never really gave each other oral sex, toward the middle and end. But I really like that, both ways. And it also became sort of the same thing with him, where we would do missionary. Then I would. .”

“Then you would. .”