Taipei (22 page)

“Are you on birth control right now?”

“No. I haven’t had my period but I’ve also taken three pregnancy tests, I’m not pregnant.”

“When did you take three pregnancy tests?”

“Periodically. One time I didn’t have my period for a year and a half. I feel like I should get on birth control. Because I have my period when I’m on it.”

“Isn’t it healthier to not be on it?”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m not on it.”

“It seems fine,” said Paul vaguely.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” said Paul trying to remember something he wanted to say on the topic of friends. “It . . . doesn’t matter to me if I come in you or somewhere else.”

“Okay,” said Erin.

“Um,” said Paul distractedly.

“This is probably the most that a guy has come in me without being on it. But I figure if anything happens we’re probably similarly . . . minded.” Erin looked at Paul with an ironic expression and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Because you want to have kids,” she said in a mock-serious voice. “Soon. Right?”

Paul nodded, aware he probably appeared confused.

“That was our goal in getting married,” said Erin.

Paul patted her thigh twice and grinned a little.

“We’re not in sin anymore,” said Erin completing the joke, mostly to herself, it seemed.

“I’ve always, um, felt like . . .” said Paul quietly.

“Huh?” said Erin staring at his blank expression.

“Weird about friends,” murmured Paul. “I never hang out with other people if I’m in a relationship.”

Erin nodded rapidly, seeming a little anxious.

“We’re here,” said Paul, and they exited the train as it said
XIMEN STATION
(and something about Chiang Kai-shek) in Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, English in a female, robot voice. Paul sneezed and looked at his hands rubbing
the front of his shirt, aware of Erin also looking, both with neutral expressions. “Um,” said Paul on an up escalator to another train platform. “How did you deal with Harris having that many friends?”

“I would hang out with them. Harris and I were similar in the way we would joke about things, and I liked that his friends seemed to like me . . . or, like, they laughed at me, and him, when we were together. But it was weird because it was obvious that I never became friends with any of them. What problems . . . do you have?”

“With friends?”

“Girlfriends. The same question you asked me.”

“With . . . who?”

“Uh, with Michelle,” said Erin.

“Just . . . her friends,” said Paul on an up escalator to the station’s main floor. “She would want to hang out with friends. And I wouldn’t want to . . .”

“Is there anything about her? Like, as a person.”

“I feel like we weren’t perfectly—we weren’t, um, optimally excited by each other.”

“How? How?”

“Just, like, she didn’t like the same things that I liked . . . as much.”

“Oh,” said Erin. “Like
On the Road
things?”

“Yeah,” Paul said, who hadn’t liked
On the Road
as much as Michelle, who had rated one of his favorite books,
Chilly Scenes of Winter
, which she’d said she “liked,” two out of five stars on Goodreads, after their relationship had ended. “And then, uh, I felt like maybe she . . . had a slightly neurotic aversion toward blow jobs, I feel,” said Paul.

“Seriously? I wouldn’t expect that.”

“She would do it, but not as much as I would to her, I think,” said Paul as they reached street level, at an intersection,
where two corner buildings seemed armored with layers of billboards and lighted signs and, near the top of one, like a face, a giant screen, showing a movie preview. On a plaza was a donation bucket decorated like a Christmas tree and a grand piano without a player. “Sometimes she would joke about how it was ‘degrading,’ but I feel like she wasn’t completely joking.”

They entered the area blocked off to cars.

“So maybe I wasn’t satisfied with that,” said Paul.

“What other things sexually?”

“Sexually?”

“About her, or about anybody.”

“Uh, I don’t have that many sexual complaints. What about you?”

“With Kent it got really boring and routine.”

“How?”

“It was just the same thing. He would go down on me, then we would have missionary style, and that’s it . . . that’s, like, it. Harris, similarly, we never really gave each other oral sex, toward the middle and end. But I really like that, both ways. And it also became sort of the same thing with him, where we would do missionary. Then I would . . .”

“Then you would . . .”

“ . . . like, finger myself,” said Erin at a lower pitch with a complicated expression that Paul saw peripherally.

“You would finger yourself? While he was doing it?”

“Yeah,” said Erin.

“Did you like that?”

“It was okay. Seemed business-oriented. So we could both . . .”

Paul made a noise indicating he understood.

“How do you feel about . . .”

“What?” said Paul, dimly aware and liking that they’d
remained focused on their conversation instead of acknowledging their new, intense environment, which was bright and chaotic and crowded but, without vehicles, relatively quiet, more calming than stressful. Paul felt like he and Erin—and their conversation—were in the backseat of a soundproofed, window-tinted limousine.

“How we have sex?”

“Seems fine,” said Paul.

“Do you have any critiques? Any.”

“Critiques,” said Paul. “Um, no.”

“Really? You can say.”

“Critiques,” said Paul.

“Or anything. Any thoughts.”

“Um, no. I don’t think it’s that big of a thing for me: sex.”

“Yeah,” said Erin vaguely.

“What do you have about that—with me?”

“I have none for you,” said Erin.

“Are you sure? You can say it.”

“No, you’re good at everything—”

“Really?”

“—and you keep it interesting,” said Erin.

“Really?”

“And I have orgasms . . . regularly.”

Paul made a quiet noise of acknowledgment.

“Everything’s good,” said Erin.

Paul repeated the noise.

“But I also don’t feel like it’s a big thing. Do you feel thirsty?”

“We’ll get something,” said Paul nodding distractedly. “What else?”

“Hm. For sex?”

“Anything,” said Paul.

“Anything,” said Erin in a child-like voice.

“Um,” said Paul, and from somewhere behind them someone began playing piano. Paul instantly felt a sheen of wetness to his now “horizontally seeking,” it seemed, eyeballs. In the movie of his life, he knew, now would be the moment—like when a character quotes Coleridge in
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
as the screen shows blurry, colorful, festive images of people outside at night—to feel that the world was “beautiful and sad,” which he felt self-consciously and briefly, exerting effort to focus instead on the conversation, which was producing its own, unmediated emotions. “Um,” he said shifting his MacBook.

“I can hold,” said Erin taking the MacBook.

“What else for you?”

“Nothing,” said Erin.

“What other questions do you have?”

“I was mainly wondering about the sexual stuff. I like asking questions like this, though.”

“Ask me,” said Paul mock pleading.

“Do you usually ask questions like this?”

“Um, no. I think it’s—some of it’s—because we’re on drugs.”

“Oh yeah,” said Erin.

“But we also ask questions at other times.”

“Yeah,” said Erin. “What do you feel about the drugs thing? In terms of your life, long term.”

“Um. I think it’s sustainable, as long as I’m healthy. Or I think if I’m really healthy I’ll be better off than someone who isn’t healthy and doesn’t do drugs. And doing drugs encourages me to be healthy, which increases productivity, which seems good. What do you think?”

“I feel like this is the most drugs I’ve ever done in a period in life,” said Erin. “But it’s also the healthiest I’ve been, in life. I think similarly about it.”

“In some relationships I would use food to console myself.”

“Me too,” said Erin. “Big-time.”

“There’s not that, with us, so that’s good.”

“Yeah,” said Erin. “I’ve done that a lot.”

“Me too. Eating a ton of shitty food. Being excited with the other person about food . . . seems depressing. We also don’t drink alcohol, which seems good.”

“Yeah,” said Erin. “I did the food thing with Harris. And Beau. When you and I had started hanging out, but not romantically or something, I was eating sushi and Beau got something fried and was like ‘don’t you just want to eat unhealthy things together and bond over that?’ ”

“None of your boyfriends cared about you eating a lot?”

“Kent wanted me to, like, gain some weight. Harris . . . quietly resented my body, I think, or something. He was really skinny. And I gained like five or ten pounds in the course of dating him. And—”

“What did he resent?”

“Just that—”

“Was he skinnier than me?”

“Maybe . . . yeah. Or, like, less muscular. He was maybe a little bit taller but really small.”

“What did he resent?”

“I think ‘resent’ isn’t the right word. I think . . . no, he did resent it because I weighed more than him and I think he didn’t like that he had to put up with it, instead of being with a naturally smaller body.”

“Then wouldn’t he care if you ate a lot?”

“Yeah, but we never stopped eating a lot.”

“Oh,” said Paul.

“Or maybe he would care, but not that much. I don’t know. What is my body . . . do you have problems with my body?”

“No . . . what problems?”

“Or, do you like it?”

“Yeah,” said Paul at a higher pitch than normal.

“If you don’t you can . . . something,” said Erin lightly.

“No, yeah, I do,” said Paul. “What would your ideal body be?”

“For me?”

“For a boyfriend,” said Paul.

“I don’t think I’ve thought that. Just, like, skinny and healthy looking. Like, I’ve never minded if . . . hm.”

“Not ‘minded.’ ‘Ideal.’ ”

“Oh. Then yeah.”

“What,” said Paul.

“I guess weigh a little more than me. Enough to not be self-conscious about it. Or just not care. I don’t know. What about—”

“I think my ideal is, like, the same, I think, or—”

“Really?” said Erin.

“Yeah,” said Paul, who was an inch taller than Erin and weighed a little less.

“Oh,” said Erin anxiously.

“Or, like—” said Paul.

“The same,” said Erin.

“But I think overall it doesn’t matter that much.”

“Yeah,” said Erin.

“Because Michelle . . .”

“She seemed really skinny,” said Erin.

“I think what matters to me most, in terms of that, is just that things aren’t getting worse.”

“Yeah,” said Erin. “Me too.”

“I think I can get fixated on that neurotically.”

“I do with myself definitely,” said Erin. “You mean for yourself?”

“No,” said Paul. “Other people.”

“How do you mean?”

“I can become fixated on it.”

“On, like, in what way?”

“On what the other person weighs.”

“Oh,” said Erin.

“I feel like it’s neurotic to some degree,” said Paul.

“I don’t care that much,” said Erin ambiguously.

“If they weighed the ideal I would find some other neurotic thing to focus on.”

“You would find something else to focus on?”

“Yeah,” said Paul.

“Like body-wise, or something else–wise?”

“Something else–wise.”

“Oh,” said Erin.

“It’s not a solution, or something, to find someone with the ideal . . . but focusing on not getting worse seems fine to me.”

“Yeah,” said Erin.

“Yeah,” said Paul slowly.

“Yeah,” said Erin. “That seems like . . .”

“You have to focus on something, and—”

“7-Eleven,” said Erin pointing.

“Huh?” said Paul, distracted from the conversation for the first time since he heard the piano, and couldn’t remember what he’d wanted to say. He followed Erin into 7-Eleven, feeling imponderable to himself, like his brain was of him, external as a color, shooting away from its source.

“I feel irritated by all the stuff going on,” said Erin on a wide sidewalk parallel to a four-lane street, outside the area of closed-off streets, around twenty minutes later. “Or like I can’t concentrate on talking.” Paul had become quiet after 7-Eleven and had talked slowly and incoherently, he felt, on topics that didn’t interest him, with increasing calmness, and now felt peacefully catatonic, like a person in a photograph,
except for a pressure to speak and a vague awareness that he couldn’t remember what Erin had last said.

“Do you feel anything from the MDMA?”

“Yeah,” said Paul in a bored voice.

“How do you feel?”

“About what?” said Paul.

“Do you feel happy? Or do you feel what?”

“Right now?” said Paul, as if stalling.

“Yeah,” said Erin.

“Yeah, happy,” said Paul looking down a little, aware his face hadn’t moved in a long time. “Physically uncomfortable a little. I want to poop.”

“You what? What was the last thing?”

“I want to poop,” mumbled Paul.

“I feel like I want to hit people, a little,” said Erin grinning.

“Let’s go in one of those places,” said Paul slowly, with a sensation of not being prepared to speak and not yet knowing what he was saying. He listened to what he’d said and pointed at a building that said
PARTY WORLD
and, seeing his arm, in his vision, sensed he hadn’t carried his MacBook in a long time and should offer to carry it soon.

“Yeah,” said Erin distractedly.

They walked silently for around forty seconds.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I don’t know,” said Paul honestly. “What are you?”

“I thought ‘I wonder what we’re going to do.’ Then I thought ‘we aren’t talking anymore—oh no, why aren’t we talking anymore.’ You’re not upset about anything?”

Paul shook his head repeatedly.

“Okay, okay,” said Erin.

“No,” thought Paul emotionlessly.