Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story

Amy Greenberg: “Remember Jeremy Block, the guy I broke up with last Passover?” A stream of a naked, masturbating guy who resembled Noah was projected next to Amy’s äppärät, and she scowled at the Image of his generous penis, her pretty post-bulimic face betraying the beginnings of a muzzle. “Remember how I couldn’t count on that jerk-off when there was, like, trouble in the world? Remember how he wouldn’t explain anything to me, even though he worked for LandOLakes? Remember how he made me weigh myself every morning? Remember how he…” Big pause, and then a bright, smiley face. “… didn’ respect the muffintop?”

CrisisNet: RUBENSTEIN BLAMES CENTRAL PARK RIOT LEADER FORMER BUS DRIVER AZIZ JAMIE TOMPKINS FOR RIOTS. QUOTE: “ARA REPORTS IDENTIFIED ‘AZIZ’ AS HAVING TRAINED WITH HEZBOLLAH FORCES IN SOUTHERN LEBANON.” QUOTE: “WE ARE DEALING WITH FRONTLINE ISLAMOFASCIST TERRORISM.” QUOTE: “NOW IS THE TIME FOR SPENDING, SAVING, AND UNITY. ONE PARTY, ONE NATION, ONE GOD.”

Vishnu had gone to get us more beer, and Eunice and Grace were doing AssLuxury together. Grace said something that made Eunice smile, and then they talked back and forth, Grace’s eyes on Eunice, Eunice’s eyes mostly on her äppärät, but occasionally, shyly, on Grace. I though I heard some words in Korean-“Soon-Dooboo” (however it’s spelled) is a tofu stew that Grace had ordered a lot on 32nd Street. I wanted to join their conversation, but Grace gently pushed me away. Eunice was FACing a little with three of the other Asian girls in the room, and her FUCKABILITY, I noticed with pride and a little worry, was 795, although her PERSONALITY just 500 (maybe she wasn’t extro enough). But one very young Filipina Mediawhore in a suburban cardigan, big clunky orthopedic-type shoes, and Onionskin jeans streamed quietly by the jukebox rated several points higher on the FUCKABILITY. “That girl has the perfect body,” I heard Eunice saying to Grace. “God, I hate twenty-one-year-olds.”

I looked sadly at my own rankings. Most of the men tonight were wearing cool Mr. Rogers-like V-neck sweaters and were appraising me coldly at best. Someone had written about my stubble, “That dude next to the cute Asian spermbank has like pubic hair growing out of his chin,” and I was ranked fortieth out of the forty-three guys in the room. Did Eunice care? I noticed that when I put my arm around her my MALE HOTNESS shot up by a hundred points, and I ranked a respectable thirty out of forty-three men. But what did that say about me? That I needed Eunice just to be acknowledged in the greater world? For one thing, I resolved to shave my stubble tomorrow. It only worked for a certain kind of very attractive guy.

Amy Greenberg, pointing to the little flaps of skin hanging between her armpits and breasts: “I’ve got wings! Thirty-four and I’ve got wings like an angel. I can’t believe any guy would want to feel me up with all this bra goo ! Look at me! Look at me!”

Noah Weinberg: “Thirty-three casualties in the Low Net Worth riots as of nine-oh-four p.m. EST. And the Guard is still shooting up in Central Park. But we’ve lost four hundred National Guardsmen in Ciudad Bolívar alone in the last two months. That’s the Rubenstein strategy: The more Americans die, the less anyone cares. Redefine the normative down. Start digging the graves.”

Amy Greenberg: “Let me break down what I’m wearing. The shoes are from Padma, the blouse is a Marla Hammond original, and the nippleless bra is a Saaami Wing Concealer-my mother got it for me on sale at the United Nations Retail Corridor.”

Noah Weinberg: “And I’m not even talking about the LIBOR rate here. I’m talking-” He stopped and looked around. A trio of Staten Island girls were lustily humming a song whose only discernible lyric was “Mmmmmmm…” Noah started to say something, but in the end all he said was “You know what, patos ? I-I have nothing more to say to any of you.”

Amy Greenberg: “I just want to say, my mom is freaking amazing . When I was breaking up with Jeremy Block, she just like made me see through all his bullshit. We looked at his rankings together and we were like, who cares about his big dick and the fact that he can bone all night. He made me give him a rim job for his thirtieth birthday, and then he wouldn’t kiss me afterwards. That really says a lot about a guy, when he won’t kiss his girlfriend after she’s licked out his junk. My mom, she’s so cute, she was like ‘You deserve so much better, Aimeleh. Be your own pimp, girl!’”

Grace took me aside. “Hey,” she said. “I think Eunice has some real problems.”

“Duh,” I said. “Her father’s a dickhead.”

“I know this kind of girl,” Grace was saying. “It’s the worst kind of combination of abuse and privilege, and growing up in this, like, greenhorn southern-Californian Asian upper-middle-class ghetto, where everyone is so shallow and money-craven. I mean even shallower than Noah’s girlfriends. At least Amy Green berg knows exactly what she’s doing.”

“But I love her,” I said, quietly. “And I think she shops just because our society is telling Asian people to shop. You know, like it says on the Credit Poles. I actually heard one guy yelling to Eunice, ‘Hey, ant, buy something or go back to China!’”

“Ant?”

“Yeah, like the ant that saves too much and the grasshopper that spends too much? Like on the ARA signs? Chinese and Latino? So fucking racist.”

“Leonard, it’s time to stop dating all these Asian and white-trash girls with serious problems,” Grace said. “You’re not doing them any favors, you know.”

“You’re really hurting me, Grace,” I whispered. “How can you judge her so quickly? How can you judge us ?”

And right away Grace softened. The Christianity and goodwill kicked in. She teared up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, it’s the times we live in. I’m becoming so harsh. Maybe I can hang out with her? Maybe I can be like a big sister?” I considered turning indignant, but then I considered who Grace was, the oldest of a brood of five well-adjusted kids, the inheritor of a set of doctor parents from Seoul whose immigrant anxieties and sense of Wisconsin alienation were high, but who nonetheless dispensed love and encouragement in the manner of the kindest, most progressive native-born. How could she even begin to understand Eunice? How could she comprehend what it was like between the two of us?

I hugged Grace for a few beats and kissed one warm cheek. When I looked back, I noticed that Eunice was staring at us, her lower face covered with that amphibian smile, the grin without qualities, the grin that cut me in the softness around my heart.

“Well, that’s about it for the republic,” Hartford was saying on his Antillean stream, his young friend toweling a spent geyser of semen off his back. “Yibbity-yibbity, that’s all, folks.”

We crossed back to Manhattan in silence. The National Guard checkpoints were practically abandoned, most of the troops likely ordered up to Central Park to quell the insurrection. Back in my apartment, I was on my knees and crying again. She was threatening to move back to Fort Lee again.

“Your friends are awful,” she was saying. “They’re so full of themselves.”

“What did they do to you? You barely said a word to them all night!”

“I was the youngest person there. They were all ten years older than me. What did I have to say to them? They all work in Media. They’re all funny and successful.”

“First of all, they’re not. And, second of all, you’re still young, Eunice! You’ll work in Media someday. Or Retail. And I thought you liked Grace. You were getting along so well. I saw you looking at AssLuxury together and talking about Soon-Dooboo.”