Tao Lin - Taipei

“That might be porn. Erin and I made a porn.”

“What’s that?” said Maggie pointing at “ketamine.”

“A drug we used before going to Urban Outfitters.”

“It seems like you and Erin have a lot of fun together. Is that true?”

Paul said they saw each other once every ten days and usually started “fighting” after one or two days. Maggie asked what they fought about. Paul vaguely remembered when, on a large dose of Xanax, alone one night in his room, he fell on his way to his mattress to sleep — pulling down his high chair and causing his shoulder, he discovered upon waking eleven hours later, to bleed heavily from two places into a dark pile on his mattress — only slightly aware that this was unrelated to Maggie’s question. Paul remembered when he calculated three divided by two as three-fourths regarding an amount of heroin and vomited steadily eight to ten hours, beginning around noon. He and Erin, who’d been resilient, maybe from weeks of Percocet after her car accident, had snorted the miscalculated heroin upon waking and, after riding the L train, he’d begun vomiting — near Union Square on streets and sidewalks, in Pure Food and Wine’s bathroom, while walking thirteen blocks south, in Bobst Library’s bathrooms. When they left the library at night he stopped every ten to fifteen feet to vomit nothing and Erin began expressing a previously suppressed concern, insisting Paul drink water. Paul vomited repeatedly after each sip and sat — and, at one point, briefly, lay — on the sidewalk outside a New York University dorm by Washington Square Park, inaudibly mumbling that he was okay and, when Erin said she wanted to call an ambulance, barely perceptibly shaking his head no with a sensation of reluctantly imparting an ancient wisdom. In his room, an hour later, around 9:30 p.m., Erin wanted Paul, covered by his blanket on his mattress, to drink a glass of water and didn’t think he should be lying with eyes closed because people in his situation died by sleeping. After an increasingly tense exchange culminating with Paul “sarcastically,” he thought, chugging the large glass of water — in a display of functioning that probably seemed unlike that of a dying person — Erin, to some degree spitefully, Paul felt, had said she was driving home to Baltimore and, to Paul’s surprise, had left him to sleep alone.

“Just. . things,” said Paul, and laughed a little.

Maggie was staring at his MacBook’s screen.

“Different things,” said Paul.

“I’m just curious,” said Maggie in a frustrated voice.

“I know,” said Paul staring at the cursor on the screen, repeatedly disappearing and reappearing in the same place.

“Can I watch some of a movie?”

“Yeah,” said Paul. “Which one?”

“Your favorite one. Not the porn.”

Paul clicked a ninety-two-minute movie beginning in his parents’ apartment, when he and Erin had returned for ecstasy because he’d vomited his MDMA. Paul’s mother was talking about the Flip cam she’d bought for Paul’s birthday. Paul clicked near the end of the movie. Erin was describing, in “the voice,” which they hadn’t used in months, how salmonella was harvested, in the residential area behind McDonald’s. In the movie Paul said something inaudible and Erin said “Android? You’re bringing Android into this? Amateur.” Paul clicked elsewhere and the movie showed solid black as Erin said “and here we have the brainchild, really, of this whole operation.” When Paul described his time in Taiwan as “hellish,” a month or two ago, Erin had been surprised, because she’d enjoyed Taiwan, which had surprised Paul, who had cited “overdrive” and their excessive drug use before the trip as why it had, for him, been “hellish.” Descending to McDonald’s first floor, in the movie, Erin looked different than she did now, Paul thought, and for maybe the eighth time in the past month considered that she had subtly denser bones or unseen scar tissue now that her face had fully healed. Paul stopped the movie and the vanished image, of Erin and the Christmas tree, reappeared instantly in his memory, looking similar, being already memory-like, on the screen, from low resolution. Taipei seemed gothic and lunar, in the movies of that night, with the spare activity and structural density of a fully colonized moon that had been abandoned and was being recolonized; its science-fictional qualities seemed less advanced than ancient, haunted, of a future dark age.

Maggie was showing Paul emails from the punk singer, after showing him writing she’d emailed to a magazine, when Erin and Calvin returned. Calvin asked what they were looking at and Maggie, closing her MacBook, said she was showing Paul writing she’d emailed to a magazine.

“You guys are still awake?” said Erin. “What have you guys been doing?”

“What were you guys doing?” said Paul in a quiet monotone, mentally stressing “you.” Erin went in the bathroom and Paul heard the sink turn on and, when she exited, asked if she had smoked cigarettes. She said Calvin had but she hadn’t. Paul removed his contact lenses and washed his face, and said he was going to sleep and lay facing away from Erin, who asked if he’d set his alarm. Paul said he’d set it for 2:30 p.m. (they’d agreed to be extras, in the movie Calvin and Maggie were in, tomorrow at 4:30 p.m.) and Erin asked if he was upset about something.

“No, I want to sleep. I’m putting earplugs in.”

“If you’re upset, tell me now instead of later.”

“I want to sleep,” said Paul.

“You seem upset. Can you tell me why?”

Calvin and Maggie were unrolling their sleeping bags. Paul turned toward Erin, whose expression he couldn’t see without contact lenses, and loudly whispered “I feel upset you went outside for so long without talking to me first and that you kept asking me if I was okay when I told you I felt nauseated and that you keep asking me if I’m upset after I said I wasn’t” and turned away.

“So you are upset,” said Erin after a few seconds.

“I’m nauseated and want to sleep. I’m putting in earplugs.”

Erin put an arm around him, and he stood and turned off the room’s light and lay facing away. After a few minutes Erin squished an arm under his neck, wrapping it around his chest to hug him tightly with both arms. Paul thought of the monk-fish he’d shown her — the light-absorbing mass of it, a silhouette of itself, Wikipedia’s stock image for monkfish — and felt emotional, and committed to not moving, then woke to his alarm. He kept his eyes closed, feigning sleep. He could faintly hear Maggie saying his name. “Paul, your alarm,” said Maggie louder, and touched his arm.

He turned off the alarm and covered his head with his blanket, feeling tense and uncomfortable. He removed his earplugs, went in the bathroom, showered and moved quickly to his MacBook and looked at the internet sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing away from Erin, who was waking, it seemed. Paul could feel his left eyebrow twitching. Erin, after a few minutes, sat and said “has everyone showered?” in a voice that sounded loud and sleepy, as if contented. Paul, who felt an excruciating dread of being spoken to or looked at, was startled by how Erin was calmly, unself-consciously, nonchalantly directing attention toward herself. Paul emailed Erin while she showered and, after she blow-dried her hair, Calvin and Maggie left, saying they’d see Paul and Erin in an hour. Erin sat at the foot of the bed, facing away from Paul who lay on his back with his MacBook against his thighs, and they communicated by email (they’d agreed to type, not talk, whenever one of them, currently Paul, felt unable to speak in a friendly tone) for around fifty minutes, until Erin said “it seems like you don’t care about me” aloud.