Lara Vapnyar - Still Here

“That’s right,” Sergey said, “I remember. And what about his first attempt to ski?”

Yeah, yeah, very funny, Vadik thought.

Downhill skiing was the other thing all middle-class Americans were supposed to enjoy. Vadik thought that he knew how to ski, because he had been an expert cross-country skier since he was a child and he could manage the steepest hills. So one day he just went to Shawnee Mountain (it was the cheapest and the closest), presented a half-off coupon, paid for his “after dusk” lift ticket, put on his rented boots, strapped on his rented skis, and took the lift to the top. This is spectacular! he thought, taking in the view of pink clouds at sunset. Within seconds, he made the rather painful discovery that he had no idea how to slow down or control his direction. He was zipping downward, gaining terrifying speed, sure that he would die and horrified that he would die a stupid, embarrassing death like this. Fortunately, he soon crashed into a snowboarder and managed to fall on the icy snow with most of his bones intact. He did break his wrist though. He had to abandon the skis and hobble all the way down in his ski boots, howling from the pain like some wounded wolf.

“Adaptation is a painstaking process,” Sergey had told him as he drove him to the hospital. “You keep trying to fit in right away and end up breaking your bones.”

And now Sergey was laughing at his haplessness. He could afford to laugh. He was a man who had finally made it.

The party went on for a while, each of them taking one of his things, stroking it, fondling it, telling yet another episode from the life of poor dear Vadik.

Am I the only one who thinks that this sounds like a memorial service? Vadik wondered. All these speeches, all these fond memories, all these jokes, as if he weren’t there. It was a relief when they all finally left. Drunk, wobbly, carrying their loot. Bob with his racket. Regina cradling a small potted orchid. Vica and Sergey hauling the rug and two garbage bags filled with everything from kitchen utensils to half-used shampoos.

I might be a loser in their eyes, Vadik thought, but none of the winners could resist my free offerings.

He didn’t feel sad though. Not at all. He felt better than he had felt in years. He thought about how much he had always liked leaving. Fitting in was humiliating and painful, but leaving was great, leaving was liberating. Perhaps he was really made for the road, perhaps it was a mistake to try to stop, to try to fit in. Perhaps what he was was a perpetual nomad.

He closed the door behind them and found himself alone in his thoroughly empty apartment. With the curtains gone, his denuded place was fully exposed to the passersby, their legs and feet fully exposed to him. Vadik took out his laptop and sat down in the middle of the bare floor. There was one more thing he needed to do before his departure. He had decided to delete all of his social media accounts. What he needed was to pull himself together, and how could you possibly do that if you had pieces of your soul scattered all over virtual space?

The first account he had ever created was on LiveJournal. He was surprised to find that it still existed. Reading his old entries was as embarrassing as listening to stories of his immigrant mishaps, like the one with the tennis racket. His entries were mostly about his adventures, some real, but most made up. There was the story of his meeting Rachel, told with light self-deprecating humor. It generated plenty of comments. Most of them from people eager to boast that the same thing had happen to them. Then there were his dating profiles on Match4U and Hello, Love! He actually had four different profiles on Hello, Love! He would tweak and change his profile every couple of months, when the existing ones failed to attract the women he thought he deserved. It made his skin crawl when he saw what a fake, cutesy mask he chose to present to the world.

He was equally disgusted with his tweets. Quotes from Sartre? Was he fucking kidding?

Still, his Facebook was the worst. When he first started Facebook, he browsed through the posts of his friends and acquaintances and came to the conclusion that the main purpose of Facebook was to boast of nonexistent happiness and barely existent achievements. Just look at the photos of Vica and Sergey’s 2010 ski trip to Vermont. All beaming smiles, bursting with happiness. Vadik happened to know that this was a particularly miserable trip, because the weather was awful, Eric had an ear infection, Sergey had the stomach flu, and he and Vica had fought the whole time. And so Vadik followed suit and started covering up his own misery, only posting optimistic photos. It was only when he was going through an especially hard breakup that he realized how cruel this strategy was. He would turn to Facebook in search of some friendly warmth and be hit with this obnoxious parade of happiness that only made his pain stronger by contrast.

Yep, he had to delete all of that shit!

All the social media giants reacted to Vadik’s decision with displeasure.

“Hopefully this is just hypothetical!” Tumblr responded, when Vadik typed in “how to remove my account.” They tried to be good sports and sound humorous, but Vadik felt the pleading desperation as he followed the necessary steps, all boasting countless warnings about how much he would lose.

“You must have found your soul mate,” Hello, Love! said in a mocking tone.

Twitter refused to use the words remove, or cancel, or delete. What you could do was to deactivate, which sounded less permanent and less scary.

Facebook’s tactic was to hide the instructions. Vadik had to browse for a long time until he finally found a way. Apparently you couldn’t delete your account, but you could ask nicely, and the Facebook team was willing to do it for you. The tone was slightly threatening:

“If you don’t think you’ll use Facebook again, you can request to have your account permanently deleted. Please keep in mind that you won’t be able to reactivate your account or retrieve anything you’ve added.”

Vadik shook his head at Facebook’s self-importance and proceeded to follow the suggested steps for all of the sites.

When all of that was done, Vadik shut his laptop and got off the floor.

Now that his virtual self was in the virtual grave, he was ready to go on living.

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Lynn Nesbit, a super-agent and super-woman, who inspires borderline-crazy admiration in me. To Lynn’s wonderful assistant, Hannah Davey, whose very voice gives me hope and whose edits are very much appreciated.

To my fantastic editor, Alexis Washam. I still can’t believe how lucky I got with her.

To the entire terrific team at Hogarth, Lindsay Sagnette, Rachel Rokicki, Kevin Callahan, Sarah Grimm, Annsley Rosner, Kayleigh George, and Sarah Bedingfield.

To the brilliant Deborah Treisman, whose support has helped sustain me through my entire career.

To my supremely talented colleagues at Columbia’s MFA department, whose mere presence at the same program inspires me. Special thanks to Binnie Kirshenbaum, Victor LaValle, June Folley, Stacy Pies, Steven Hutkins, and Mark Mirsky for their support and encouragement.

To my amazing students, who made me discover so many unexpected aspects of writing.

To my extraordinary American professors, Nancy Miller, Louis Menand, Andre Aciman, Lawrence Weschler, Mary Ann Caws, and Elizabeth Beaujour, whose insights I still remember and shamelessly use.

To my excellent Russian linguistics professors, who taught me how speech recognition works.

To the MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ledig House residencies for providing me with such divine escapes and inspiration.