Taipei (18 page)

The emails during the book tour culminated maybe with a series of emails sent after Paul and Erin posted their “event coverage” of
Caked Up!
They’d pretended to be from
jezebel.com
and an uninhibited Paul, on MDMA, had loudly shouted at strangers, at one point, at a volume and with an amount of belligerence that was normal for most people but, for him, was done, he’d felt, for comic effect. Paul’s mother had emailed saying that the Paul in the video was not the Paul she knew and loved and that she was scared and, seeing what Paul “had turned into,” had cried. Paul stopped responding to her emails, at that point, and, at the moment, in the car with Erin, couldn’t remember offhand what he’d last said to her—either that he wasn’t responding to her emails until
January, wasn’t responding to any emails mentioning drugs, or wasn’t responding until he believed she had internalized that their relationship would only deteriorate, causing them both to feel worse about everything and probably increase his drug use, if she continued mentioning drugs with intent to influence instead of learn or discuss, as friends, by asking questions. Paul vaguely remembered two or three emails asking when he was coming to Taiwan this year; he’d responded he didn’t want to due to all the emails and broken promises. Paul believed he was doing what was best for them both and that his mother believed she was doing what was best for only Paul and not herself. Paul didn’t want his mother to believe she had failed, as a parent, which he thought she must, on some level, if she was trying to change what she had created and raised, though maybe she was only focused on the task, not on her feelings.

Paul and Erin were walking near Bobst Library, a week and a half later, on a significantly colder night, in a sleet-like drizzle, when one of them said they wished it were warm and the other said they should fly somewhere warm. Las Vegas was the first suggestion. Paul said he wanted to lose all his money—around $1,200—while “peaking on MDMA” after eating at a buffet and relaxing in a hot tub.

In Think Coffee, an hour later, using Erin’s MacBook, they bought a package deal for two round-trip flights and a rental car and four nights at the Tropicana, leaving on November 26, in five days.

4

“This is what the universe created, after whatever billion years,” said Paul gesturing at MGM Grand and Excalibur and Luxor, around 9:30 p.m., on a walkway above the main street of casinos in Las Vegas, which was as cold or colder than New York City, they’d learned, with some amusement, upon arriving four hours ago.

“This is what we came into,” said Erin.

“Look, beautiful,” said Paul earnestly about the hundreds of red lights on the backs of cars, passing beneath the walk-way, into the distance, like rubies in a mining operation.

“Whoa. Pretty.”

“Life sometimes offers beautiful images,” said Paul in a voice like he was in fifth grade reading a textbook aloud.

“But they’re fleeting.”

“Yeah,” said Paul grinning.

“And you can’t do anything with them—”

“Yeah,” said Paul.

“—except look at them,” said Erin.

“Maybe we should get drunk,” said Paul, and they entered the casino at the end of the walkway, and Erin went to the bathroom. Paul sat at a slot machine and lost $20, then stared at two middle-aged men wearing backward caps, holding full glasses of golden beer, as they approached and passed with determined, unhappy expressions. When Erin returned, a few minutes later, she said “I think I feel depleted.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel kind of tired, depleted.”

“But you shouldn’t even have started feeling it yet.”

“Huh?” said Erin. “We had MDMA like twenty minutes ago.”

Erin laughed. “I forgot.”

“Jesus. You scared me.”

“Sorry,” said Erin grinning, and they sat on the floor of a carpeted hallway—darkly lit from an unseen source that cyclically pulsed from a near-ultraviolet purple to dark red—positioning Erin’s MacBook to record themselves talking about their relationship.

“You go,” said Paul smiling widely. “You go first.”

“Okay, um, well I felt like I first wanted to kiss you when I dropped you off at the airport,” said Erin quickly, with a stricken expression, as if confessing something intensely shameful.

“At the airport? After Denny’s?”

“Yeah,” said Erin. “I wanted to kiss you then.”

“I thought you were hugging me really hard.”

“Uh, I thought you were hugging me hard,” said Erin seeming frightened, then for around five seconds didn’t breathe. Paul laughed, in confusion. Erin said she felt a little nervous. Paul asked if she thought they were going to have sex, when they kissed, on his bed. Erin said no, that she just kept thinking things like “what’s happening?” and “are we really going to do it?” Paul said he thought yes, because they wouldn’t have been able to stop, except by finishing, because neither of them had said no to anything yet.

“We still haven’t,” said Paul. “Right?”

“Um,” said Erin. “Yeah, I think.”

“There was a period of like three days when I was really obsessed with you. But you weren’t responding to my email and I kind of lost the obsessive nature.”

“Whoa,” said Erin. “When?”

“After one of the first times we hung out. We were sending picture messages, then you stopped and didn’t email and I felt really depressed.”

“Damn. Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“What was going on then?”

“I was kind of seeing Beau still then,” said Erin, and as the MDMA took effect Paul began using “the voice” sometimes, including when Erin asked him which of his previous girlfriends he felt closest to and he said “I’m not really sure” in an extreme parody of a stereotypical romantic comedy, and they laughed for maybe ten seconds. Paul had stopped using “the voice,” an hour later, when, during a silence, Erin asked what he was thinking and he said he was thinking why she hadn’t read or mentioned the first-person account of his life from April to July he had emailed her a few weeks ago, at her request, which had, to some degree, been obligatory, he
knew. Erin said she felt strange reading about Paul’s romantic interest in other people while she was beginning a relationship with him. “Like, I felt jealous,” she said. “Of the Laura person, reading about her.”

“That makes sense,” said Paul earnestly.

“I also felt a little strange reading about your friendship with Daniel. I was like ‘whoa, they could hang out a lot, then just not anymore; damn, what if that happens with me?’ ”

“Daniel was really interested in how Kyle and I just stopped talking,” said Paul.

“Then you and Daniel stopped talking.”

“You don’t feel fine with that?”

“I do . . . I feel fine with that. I just think of all possible situations going into something . . . positive or negative. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” said Paul nodding. “When I first met Michelle I was telling her that I’ve had a lot of friends who I’ve just stopped talking to, and she said she was afraid I would do that to her.”

“That seems to be what happens with people.”

“You don’t have to read it at all,” said Paul.

“Okay,” said Erin.

“I trust whatever reasons you have . . . for doing anything,” said Paul, and wondered if he had felt this before, or if he already no longer felt it.

The next night, after buying watermelon and salad ingredients from Whole Foods, they couldn’t find a parking spot at the Tropicana, then found one in a different area and walked a different route toward their room. Paul noticed a
MARRIAGE CHAPEL
sign at the end of the hallway and, after a few seconds, as they approached it silently, said “we should get married.”

“I was going to say that,” said Erin.

“I would get married to you.”

“Me too,” said Erin. “To you.”

“Let’s get married.”

“Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Paul. “I’m confirmed.”

In Whole Foods, the next afternoon, Erin emailed her manager at the used bookstore that she was quitting her job, then scrolled through photos of Elvis standing between grinning, newlywed couples. Elvis appeared more energetic and alive than the couples in almost every photo, including one in which the couple was partially blocked from view by an over-eager Elvis who seemed to have lunged toward the camera, displaying the knuckles side of a peace sign.

“I don’t get it, at all,” said Paul.

“It’s what people do. This is what people want.”

“It really seems insane,” said Paul.

“People are insane,” said Erin.

“We should get an Elvis wedding.”

“I’m fine with an Elvis wedding.”

“Actually, I don’t want an Elvis wedding,” said Paul. “It seems extremely stressful.” Erin made a next-day reservation for a “desk wedding.” They discussed if they wanted to be on MDMA during their marriage ceremony. Erin said they should save it for the day after tomorrow, their last in Las Vegas.

“We might be dead by then,” said Paul.

“They won’t let us get married if we’re on drugs,” said Erin.

“They’ll think we’re on drugs if we’re not on drugs. We’re normal when we’re on drugs.”

Erin laughed weakly.

“We’ll just—” said Paul. “We’ll figure it out.”

“We’re going to be driving after the wedding, let’s just do it after we drive,” said Erin a few minutes later in a slightly pleading tone.

“Okay, okay,” said Paul earnestly while nodding and patting her shoulder, then hugged her briefly.

Across the street from the marriage license office was a billboard that said
MAKING THE RIGHT CHOICE
about used cars and used car parts. In the office, which was bright and quiet and arranged like a post office, while filling out forms, Paul said getting married was like getting a tattoo, in that he just wanted to pay money and receive a service, not make appointments and go places and talk to strangers and be asked to confirm his choice. Erin said she was thinking that also and had been “having the same feeling” as before she got tattoos. Paul noticed a sign that said intoxicated applicants would be
TURNED AWAY
and focused, as they approached the window, on appearing normal, but realized he didn’t know how.

“Look at the helpers,” he said pointing at six to ten clips, each clasping an impressive seeming amount of paper, magnetized to the side of a cabinet. “I want one.”

“Me too,” said Erin grinning. “Which one do you want?”

“Any of them,” said Paul after a few seconds.

“I want the curvy one,” said Erin.

Paul stared at the identical, brown clips.

“The guy with the stripes,” said Erin. “My own ‘underling.’ ”

“I’m talking about the plastic paper holder things,” said Paul.

 • • •

Walking to their rental car they saw a shiny building and an abandoned building side by side, in the near distance. Paul expressed amazement at this second, also obvious, though maybe less egregious metaphor—the first being the used car billboard—and said their marriage would resemble the abandoned building in five years. After a pause, which functioned unintentionally for comic effect, he said “or, like, five days.”

Erin laughed. “Five months, maybe,” she said earnestly.

“Yeah,” said Paul thinking that of the fives—hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades—months was, by far, most likely. “We’ll be that tree,” he said pointing at a tree that appeared healthy and, he thought, dignified.

“The apartments for rent,” said Erin.

“The tree,” said Paul.

“Yeah, the tree.”

“The tree seems good.”

“Nature. Natural.”

“Jesus, look,” said Paul pointing at an eerie building far in the distance, thin and black, like a cursor on the screen of a computer that had become unresponsive. He imagined building-size letters suddenly appearing, left to right, in a rush—
wpkjgijfhtetiukgcnlm
—across the desert.

The marriage chapel was less than a mile away in a building containing four to six businesses. Paul sat on a two-seat sofa, in a sort of hallway, while Erin used the bathroom. Around ten people, mostly children, surrounding what appeared to be a newlywed couple, passed through Paul’s vision, on their way out of the building, then Erin sat by him, then the pastor (a large man with white hair and a serious but friendly demeanor) sat behind a tiny desk (six feet away, at the opposite wall) and read a prepared statement, completing the
marriage, at which point—coincidentally, it seemed—a door opened and a smiling woman, with a tiny dog at her feet, congratulated Paul and Erin, after which, sort of huddled against each other, they moved toward the exit grinning.

“I immediately thought ‘fuck you’ to the stranger congratulating us,” said Paul outside, on a sidewalk. Erin laughed and said she thought “pop-up ad,” because “it went through the door,” and they hugged and jumped repeatedly as one mass, spinning a little and sometimes saying “we did it” quietly. Paul ran suddenly away, onto the parking lot, in a wide arc that curved eventually toward the rental car in a centripetal force, accelerating to a speed that was, at this point in his life, unfamiliarly fast, but not near maximum, before slowing, as he neared the passenger door—and, knowing he would not collide with the car, briefly aware of the dream-like amount of control he had over his body—to a stop.

In Erin’s car, two weeks later, on the way to Brooklyn—from Baltimore, where the past two nights he separately met Erin’s parents, who were married but lived apart—Paul texted two drug dealers, Android and Peanut, to buy MDMA, ecstasy, LSD, cocaine to have in Taiwan, where they were going in the morning. Paul’s parents had invited Paul and Erin to stay with them, as a kind of wedding present, all expenses paid including plane tickets, December 13 to January 2. The marriage, without which Paul likely would not be visiting Taiwan this year, seemed also to have drastically improved his relationship with his mother, who hadn’t mentioned drugs, at all, the past three weeks, now that she had something positive to focus on and nurture.

It was dark out and neither drug dealer had responded, after two hours, when they arrived in Brooklyn and parked by Khim’s. After buying lemons, celery, kale, apples, energy
drinks, toilet paper they walked six blocks to Paul’s apartment, then within ten minutes both drug dealers—and Paul’s brother, to give Paul a Christmas present and presents to bring to their parents—texted that they were on their way. Android, named after the smartphone, Paul assumed, arrived first. Paul went outside, past the bronze gate, into Android’s expensive-seeming car.