Tao Lin - Taipei

“I feel irritated by all the stuff going on,” said Erin on a wide sidewalk parallel to a four-lane street, outside the area of closed-off streets, around twenty minutes later. “Or like I can’t concentrate on talking.” Paul had become quiet after 7-Eleven and had talked slowly and incoherently, he felt, on topics that didn’t interest him, with increasing calmness, and now felt peacefully catatonic, like a person in a photograph, except for a pressure to speak and a vague awareness that he couldn’t remember what Erin had last said.

“Do you feel anything from the MDMA?”

“Yeah,” said Paul in a bored voice.

“How do you feel?”

“About what?” said Paul.

“Do you feel happy? Or do you feel what?”

“Right now?” said Paul, as if stalling.

“Yeah,” said Erin.

“Yeah, happy,” said Paul looking down a little, aware his face hadn’t moved in a long time. “Physically uncomfortable a little. I want to poop.”

“You what? What was the last thing?”

“I want to poop,” mumbled Paul.

“I feel like I want to hit people, a little,” said Erin grinning.

“Let’s go in one of those places,” said Paul slowly, with a sensation of not being prepared to speak and not yet knowing what he was saying. He listened to what he’d said and pointed at a building that said PARTY WORLD and, seeing his arm, in his vision, sensed he hadn’t carried his MacBook in a long time and should offer to carry it soon.

“Yeah,” said Erin distractedly.

They walked silently for around forty seconds.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul honestly. “What are you?”

“I thought ‘I wonder what we’re going to do.’ Then I thought ‘we aren’t talking anymore — oh no, why aren’t we talking anymore.’ You’re not upset about anything?”

Paul shook his head repeatedly.

“Okay, okay,” said Erin.

“No,” thought Paul emotionlessly.

“People seem to be looking a lot, at the computer.”

“I haven’t. . noticed anyone,” said Paul.

“Oh,” said Erin uncertainly. “I haven’t—”

“I haven’t been looking at anyone.”

“I haven’t either, really, except sometimes if I look out somebody will be looking. I forgot we’re not in America.”

“I like how quiet it is,” said Paul.

“Me too,” said Erin.

“In New York it would be so loud.”

“Yeah. There would be, like, layers upon layers of noises.”

“I don’t like places. . where everyone working is a minority. . because I feel like there’s too many different. . I don’t know,” said Paul with a feeling like he unequivocally did not want to be talking about what he was talking about, but had accidentally focused on it, like a telescope a child had turned, away from a constellation, toward a wall.

“Like, visually?”

“Um, no,” said Paul. “Just that. . they know they’re minorities. .”

“That they, like, band together?”

“Um, no,” said Paul on a down escalator into the MRT station they exited around an hour ago.

“What are we doing?” said Erin in a quiet, confused voice. Paul felt his diagonal movement as a humorless, surreal activity — a deepening, forward and down.

“Minorities,” said Erin at a normal volume. “What were you saying?”

“Just that. . here, when you see someone, you don’t know. . that. . they live like two hours away and are um. . poor, or whatever,” said Paul very slowly, like he was improvising an erasure poem from a mental image of a page of text.

“Is this the mall? Thing?”

“No, bathroom,” mumbled Paul.

“Huh?” said Erin.

“Bathroom,” said Paul after a few seconds.

• • •

In the MRT station Paul said he tried masturbating and couldn’t and that he was worried he vomited some of his MDMA earlier, because he didn’t feel much. Erin said she felt like she was “feeling it a lot more” than Paul and laughed a little and said Paul should “go back and take more.”

“Really?” said Paul quietly.

“Yeah. Because I feel like if you were also feeling it. .”

“What,” said Paul.

“Now I feel myself being chill, or something. Or I don’t know. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought it seemed like you weren’t feeling anything.”

“Really?” said Paul with earnest wonderment.

“Yeah. Let’s just go back and do more, then come back.”

“All right,” said Paul in a voice as if reluctantly acquiescing.

“Do you want that?”

“Yeah. I’ll take two, you take one.”

“Okay,” said Erin.

“But. . now I’m going to have it stronger than you.”

“I’ll take one and a half,” said Erin.

After both ingesting two ecstasy and, almost idly, as sort of afterthoughts, because it had been very weak the past few times, a little LSD, they exited Paul’s room, and Erin went to the bathroom. Paul’s mother asked Paul what clothes he bought. Paul said he didn’t yet and his mother said he should buy thicker clothing and they discussed where, at this time, around 10:30 p.m., to find open stores. When Erin exited the bathroom Paul’s mother asked if she bought any clothes.

“No,” said Erin smiling. “Not yet.”

“Okay,” said Paul in Mandarin. “We’re going now.”

“Cell phone,” said Paul’s mother in Mandarin.

“I’ve got it,” said Paul in Mandarin.

“Bring a cell phone,” said Paul’s father in Mandarin from out of view, watching TV.

“Why are you bringing your computer?” said Paul’s mother in Mandarin.

“We, just,” said Paul in Mandarin.

“Oh, you’re going to record again,” said Paul’s mother in Mandarin in a slightly scolding voice, but without worry, it seemed, maybe because she could see that Paul was the same as last year. “The ‘video thing,’ isn’t it better?”

“What video thing?”

“I sent it to you. I bought it for you. For your birthday. Did you already sell it?”

“No. I have it in my room.”

“What’s it called?”

“Flip cam,” said Paul.

“Dad went to many different places asking which was the best. Why don’t you use it?”

“What are you all talking about?” said Paul’s father idly in Mandarin from out of view.

“My mom probably knows we’re on drugs, or something,” said Paul after they’d walked around two minutes without talking. “She sounded suspicious when she saw us recording. But she seemed okay with it. I searched my emails with her earlier and. . she said something like ‘it’s okay to experience new things but don’t overdo it,’ or like ‘it’s probably good for a writer to experiment,’ and she was talking about cocaine, I think.”

“I thought your mom was completely against drugs.”

“Me too,” said Paul. “I forgot an entire period of emails where she seemed okay with it. My brother, I think, told her, at one point, that I had too much self-control to become addicted to anything. My brother told her not to worry, I think. I don’t know.”

“I haven’t swallowed the LSD yet,” said Erin at a red light a few minutes later. “My throat won’t push it down to my stomach, it’s weird.” Paul distractedly pointed at a billboard of disabled people, then looked at Erin’s tattoo of an asterisk behind her earlobe as she looked at the billboard. “In Taiwan only disabled people, I think, can sell lottery tickets,” said Paul slowly while imagining being heard by thousands of readers of a future book, or book-like experience, in which Erin’s name had an asterisk by it, indicating the option of stopping the narrative to learn about Erin, in the form of a living footnote, currently pointing the MacBook at the three-lane street, on which hundreds of scooters and motorcycles passing, in layers, with more than one per lane, at different speeds, appeared like a stationary, patternless shuffling.