Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story

Love,

Mommy

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: Sally, I’m taking the next plane home.

SALLYSTAR: It’s not so bad. Don’t listen to Mommy. She’s trying to guilt you. I’m staying over at Eunhyun’s this whole week. I’m so busy studying for chem I don’t even have time to deal.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: If you can’t deal, then who’s taking care of mom? If we’re both out of the house he’ll start blaming her for EVERY LITTLE THING. He’ll say she drove us away and turned us both against him. She’s completely un-protected. You know she’ll never call the police or even Cousin Harold if he hits her.

SALLYSTAR: Don’t use that kind of language, please.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: What kind of language? That he HITS her.

SALLYSTAR: Stop it. Anyway, I still have dinner there every night so I know what’s going on. He hasn’t done anything major.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: Not to her, you mean. What about you?

SALLYSTAR: I’m okay. Chem is killing me.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: I know you’re lying to me, Sally. I’ll be on the next plane back and I’ll see what he’s done.

SALLYSTAR: Stay in Rome, Eunice! You deserve to have a good time after college. One of us should be happy. Anyway, next week I’m going to DC for that thing so I won’t even see him. Don’t worry about Mommy. Cousin Angela is staying over while I’m gone. She has job interviews in the city.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: What thing in DC? The march against the ARA?

SALLYSTAR: Yes. But don’t call it that. Some of the profs at school say we shouldn’t mention it on GlobalTeens because they monitor everything.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: Did Daddy call me a ghee jee beh?

SALLYSTAR: He had this crazy night where he thought you were sleeping with a black man. He said he had a dream about it. It’s like he can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality anymore.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: Did you tell Daddy I help out at the shelter in Rome? Don’t tell him it’s for trafficked Albanian women. Just say it’s for immigrants, okay?

SALLYSTAR: Why?

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: I want him to know I’m doing something good.

SALLYSTAR: I thought you didn’t care what he thinks. Anyway I’ve got to go scan texts for Euro Classics. Don’t worry, Eunice. Life only happens once. Enjoy it while you can! I’ll keep Mom safe. I’m praying for all of us.

SALLYSTAR: BTW, that pewter Cullo bathing suit is on sale at Padma. The one with the chest guards that you wanted.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD: I’m already bidding on it on AssLuxury. I’ll tell you if it goes over 100 yuan-pegged, and then you can buy it at Padma if it’s still on sale.

EUNI-TARD ABROAD TO GRILLBITCH:

Hi, Precious Pony.

I know you’re in Tahoe so I don’t want to bother you, but things have gotten really bad with my dad and I think I’m coming home. It’s like the further away I am from him, the more he thinks he can get away with. Going to Rome was SUCH a mistake. I don’t know if I can handle Fort Lee, but I was thinking of crashing in New York and going over there on weekends. Remember that girl you were friends with, the one with the really old-school perm, Joy Lee or something? Does she have a place for me to crash? I don’t really know anyone in NY, everyone’s in LA or abroad. I think I might have to stay over at that old guy Lenny’s house. He keeps sending me these long teens about how much he loves my freckles and how he’s going to cook me an eggplant.

I broke up with Ben. It was too much. He is so beautiful physically, so smart and such a rising star in Credit that I am completely intimidated by him. I can never reveal who I really am to him because he would just vomit. I know a part of him must be disgusted by my fat, fat body. And sometimes he just stares off into space when I treat him badly like “I think I’ve had enough of this crazy bitch.” It’s so sad. I’ve been crying for days now. Crying over my family and crying over Ben. God, I’m sorry, Precious Pony. I’m such a downer.

The weird thing is I’ve been thinking about Lenny, the old guy. I know he’s gross physically, but there’s something sweet about him, and honestly I need to be taken care of too. I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I’m not in love with him. Maybe that’s how Ben feels with me. I had this fantasy that I was having sex with Lenny and I tried to block out the grossness and just enjoy his very serious love for me. Have you ever done that, Pony? Am I selling myself short? When we were walking down this pretty street in Rome I noticed Lenny’s shirt was buttoned all wrong, and I just reached over and rebuttoned it. I just wanted to help him be less of a dork. Isn’t that a form of love too? And when he was talking to me at dinner, usually I listen to everything a guy says and try to prepare a response or at least to act a certain way, but with him I just stopped listening after a while and looked at the way his lips moved, the foam on his lips and on his dorky stubble, because he was so EARNEST in the way he needed to tell me things. And I thought, wow, you’re kind of beautiful, Lenny. You’re like what Prof Margaux in Assertiveness Class used to call “a real human being.” I don’t know. I keep going back and forth on him. Sometimes I’m like no way, it’s never going to work, I’m just not attracted to him. But then I think of him going down on me until he could barely breathe, the poor thing, and the way I could just close my eyes and pretend we were both other people. Oh God, listen to me. Anyway, I miss you so much, Pony. I really do. Come to New York please! I need all the love I can get these days.

Dear Diary,

God, I miss her. No messages from my Euny yet, no reply to my entreaty to move here and let me take care of her with garlicky carcasses of eggplant, with my grown man’s practiced affections, with what’s left of my bank account after Howard Shu docks me 239,000 yuan-pegged dollars. But I’m persevering. Every day I take out my handwritten checklist and remember that Point No. 3 implores me to Love Eunice until the dreaded “Dear Lenny” letter pops up on GlobalTeens and she runs off with some hot Credit or Media guy, some mindless jerk so taken with her looks he won’t even recognize how much this miniature woman in front of him is in need of consolation and repair. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger, the Abramovs keep leaving all these desolate messages on GlobalTeens with illiterate subject lines reading “me and momee sad” and “me worry” and “without son laif lonely,” reminding me that Point No. 5, Be Nice to Parents, has almost come due. I just need to feel a little more secure about myself and my life and especially my money-a sore subject with the thrifty Abramovs-before I head off to Long Island to visit them in their vibrant right-wing habitat.

Speaking of money, I went to my HSBC on East Broadway, where a pretty Dominican girl with a set of dying teeth gave me a rundown of how my financial instruments were performing. In a word, shittily.

My AmericanMorning portfolio, even though it had been pegged to the yuan, had lost 10 percent of its value because, unbeknownst to me, the idiot asset managers had stuck the failing ColgatePalmoliveYum!BrandsViacomCredit albatross into the mix, and my low-risk BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India, China]-A-BRAC High-Performing Nations Fund had registered only 3 percent growth because of the April unrest near Putingrad in Russia and the impact of America’s invasion of Venezuela on the Brazilian economy. “I feel like I’m going to shit a BRIC,” I told Maria Abriella, my account representative.