Tao Lin - Eeeee Eee Eeee

Andrew realizes he has been staring across Denny’s at a man’s profile. The man’s face is abnormally large. His head is too big and his neck is also very large. Andrew feels very depressed and a little angry. “Look at that guy.”

Steve looks. “We should invite him to eat with us, then putt-putt.”

“I hope a genie gives him three wishes,” Andrew says. Sara, What else? “And a lead pipe.”

“When I looked we made awkward eye contact. Now I’m enemies with him.”

“I can’t process what you just said,” Andrew says. “Just kidding. I processed it immediately and I think it’s funny.”

A different waitress brings their food. Her name is Bernadette. They eat for a while. They are eating. (“How do you have fun?”) Jawbreaker, You win, you lose, it’s the same old news . Octopus. Mark was sad about his Octopus. Steve stands. “Andrew,” he says. “Come here.”

“Wait.” Steve in Seattle, playing putt-putt in the rain, with a lead pipe. “What are you doing?”

Bernadette comes back. Steve sits. When Bernadette is gone Steve stands and walks out of the restaurant. Andrew sits very still then stands and leaves without looking at anyone. In the parking lot the waitress without a name and whose life may already be over chases them halfway to their car. Andrew almost runs her over on the way out. Killing rampage. Andrew laughs. Steve has his head outside the window. “Denny’s sucks,” he screams. His voice cracks.

“She was so depressed,” Andrew says. “I wanted to murder her with kindness and love.”

“I feel stupid,” Steve says. “I felt bad for her too. She was a bitch to us. I don’t know. I’m broke. I feel stupid. Did you hear what I yelled?”

“I want to be her. And come kill me. I feel like shit.”

“We should go back and apologize sincerely,” Steve says. “And then overturn a table.”

“And then run away with cunning and speed.”

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“I’d be overjoyed if someone did that at Domino’s. If we had tables.” Too cutting-edge for tables. “We don’t have tables.”

“That was fun,” Steve says. “I don’t feel stupid.”

“I know. I admit it was fun.”

“My plane is going to crash,” Steve says. “Remember when my mom died?”

“I hate the world,” Andrew says. “I’m putting my head out the window to scream ‘Fuck.’ ” He puts down the window, puts his head out, screams “Shit,” and puts the window back up.

“The world is stupid,” Steve says.

“I feel stupid.”

“This is stupid,” Steve says. “I don’t know what ‘this’ is.”

“I don’t know how to have fun.”

“My sister is more depressed than both of us,” Steve says.

“I feel terrible,” Andrew says.

Steve talks some more. While Steve is talking Andrew thinks about conveying that he had an image of Steve playing putt-putt with a lead pipe in the rain, alone, in Seattle, and that the reason Steve was doing that was because he was driving in the rain and listening to music and had felt very happy suddenly, parked the car, and broken into a putt-putt place to play putt-putt alone at around 3 a.m. The sentence is too long. He can’t keep it in his head. He feels tired. He feels bored. He wants to scream the word ‘shit’ at people while driving past them, then maybe follow them home and apologize sincerely before head butting them into a human-colored paste. He drops Steve off. On the way home Arby’s, Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Walgreen’s, Kmart, Starbucks, in a row. Andrew stares at that. He wants to subvert them somehow. He is against capitalism for some reason; something about how it directs human perception away from sentient beings and toward abstractions; he is also against being against things, because the binary nature of the universe is against being against things. Still, he wants to cause destruction to McDonald’s. It would be good to subvert all these places. Sara would agree. They’d go in Starbucks, wreak complex and profound havoc. People would scream and make faces of agony and intrigue. At home people would sit with Kleenex and contemplate what had happened, then quietly weep. He and Sara would run to his gigantic house, laughing complexly. The house is enormous. A mansion. No it isn’t. Just a large house. A mansion is a large house. Andrew’s parents live in a tower in Berlin. Andrew saw photos: eight towers, in a row. In one hundred years the Earth will resemble a metal ball with spikes. It will move shinily through the universe — confused, deadly. Grade-schooler, Why does the Earth look like a medieval weapon? When Andrew saw the tower photos he thought of them falling like dominoes. He works at Domino’s, a version of Pizza Hut. Something is wrong with his mom. Cancer or something. She won’t say what. She is a good person. The man with the enormous head is a good person. Is he? Everything is so good and sad somehow. Andrew is crying a little. It’s the music. He is listening to very depressing and catchy music. He should go back to Denny’s and throw a wad of cash at a customer’s face, and run away. Money won’t make that waitress happy. She needs romantic love. She’ll never get it. She was confused because of her life being already over. It is impossible to be happy. Michael Fisher sitting in the lobby reading the New Yorker . Andrew wants to destroy the world with a series of startling acts of kindness; each successive act more unheard-of than the previous. When Andrew gets home Sara will be there, laughing at the idea of living in a tree fort. They will swim. Why did he think that? Because of having no future.

Next afternoon, eating cereal. Staring at the Lucky Charms box. Andrew is eating Lucky Charms because he has given up on life. He should create Anathema Charms. One time Andrew’s mom came home with Lucky Charms instead of Cheerios. She was happy and held the Lucky Charms in her right hand, not in a grocery bag. When Andrew saw the Lucky Charms it made him happy. They were in the kitchen and were both very happy about the unhealthy change from Cheerios to Lucky Charms. Now Andrew just feels like Snoop Dog all the time. No he doesn’t. He hasn’t once felt like Snoop Dog. “That was Steve,” Andrew says out loud, for some reason. He feels nauseous. He’ll never see Sara again. What if Jhumpa Lahiri were in love with him? Would he spurn her? She lives on a diamond-studded cruise ship. Her Pulitzer Prize is afraid of her. Andrew grins. As a person, he is lonelier than Sara. She is shorter. Sara Tealsden. Thinking her last name makes Andrew feel miserable and good. Sara Tealsden. Andrew will cry. He should throw the Lucky Charms. Marshmallows, flying through the air. He does it. The box hits the refrigerator and falls to the ground. No marshmallows. No future.

He feeds his dogs, takes them out, brings them in; makes coffee, showers, drinks coffee.

He passes the piano room on the way to the computer room. There is fresh dog shit in the middle of the piano room. Clean it later. There’s also dog piss. Son of a bitch. Steve in Seattle, high-fiving his dad. Go back and apologize. And then overturn a table . Steve.

In the computer room Andrew stares at the table of contents of his story collection. His story-collection. Rejected by over thirty editors. Rejection is good. Putting others ahead of self, giving things away. Success, money, power, fame, happiness, friends; any kind of pleasure — giving it all away, in the pyramid scheme of life, with the knowledge that everything will be returned, and being satisfied with that knowledge; not with the actual return of things, but the idea of the return of things. There is no return of things. There is death. Martial arts, deer, death. Singapore, octopus, death. In each story the main character is depressed and lonely. Every story is twenty-pages and about pointlessness. He opens one of the stories. If he writes good and funny enough, Sara will materialize in the swimming pool. He stares at the story. Delete it. He needs coffee. He already had coffee. Move the story casually to the recycling bin. Empty the recycling bin with cunning and speed. Start a band. You win, you lose. It’s the same old news . Write a story about Steve. Killing rampage in a casino, with lead pipes. Compare and contrast Jhumpa Lahiri and Snoop Dog. It would be funny to kill someone with the Pulitzer Prize. Focus. Andrew has worked for maybe two hundred hours on this story. How did this happen? The story is incomprehensible; rejected over twenty times. He has e-mailed it to people. No one says anything. There is no communication. Stevie Smith, I was much farther out than you thought . Stevie’s oeuvre, sitting there someplace, confused. Music is better. You can’t lie in bed with an audio book and cry and feel miserable and good. Maybe you can. Jhumpa Lahiri will never go on a depressed killing rampage. Snoop Dog, maybe. Jhumpa Lahiri. The New Yorker . One of her stories is called “Sexy.” Sexy. Sara is sexy. Sara, laughing sexily.