One lunch, he told me an old Chinese folktale about a fox who fell in love with a prince. The fox begged a powerful spirit to turn him into a human and the spirit agreed in exchange for the fox’s soul. But being mischievous, it turned the fox into a man. When the man tried to express his love for the prince, he was locked away and executed.
My mom told me Uncle Stan shoved a thousand Tylenol pills into his pistachio ice cream (his favorite flavor), and fell into eternal sleep.
“Does that mean you have one eternal dream, or millions of different ones?” I asked.
I don’t remember her answer. But I do remember a stranger who tried to come to the funeral and was turned angrily away by my family. He said, teary-eyed, “I just wanted to say good-bye.”
10:08PM: We meet up with four of my friends who want to go swing dancing at a techno club. Jim and Larry have zoot suits on; Lillian and Suzy are wearing swing skirts and rhinestone brooches. Lillian carries Jim around like an accessory: he loves her but she always plays innocent. Suzy’s dating a guy named Brad Pitt who looks nothing like the actor, while Larry’s one of those unfortunate people who blames his woes on his wife (he’s always telling me not to get married till I’m fifty). All four are great dancers.
I’m mediocre, and that’s being generous.
10:14PM: I comment to Sarah about the epidemic of ordinary people dressing up as superheroes including one in a zoot suit who scares off thieves by blaring on his trumpet. “Who are your superheroes?” I ask.
“Garbage men.”
“Garbage men?”
“Can you image what would happen to society if no one took away our garbage?”
10:33PM: Techno music is blaring; there’s a curtain of zoot suits swerving and veering like acrobats. The mathematics of human bodies equals legions of jitterbugs dancing the lindy hop in tangential algorithms. Jim spins Lillian eight times, skips opposite her. She goes so fast, it’s like the world’s axis has changed and everything’s revolving around her.
10:42PM: I get a vodka on the rocks. Sarah prefers tequila. I down mine and order a double. Someone grabs me from behind. It’s an old friend, Amy. She hugs me, looks scintillating in the rainbow of lights from the strobe. We exchange banalities, I go back to Sarah, and Amy goes back to her army of suitors.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
11:18PM: When we step out, Sarah fires up a cigarette. “What’s bugging you?”
“My friend Amy… She used to be married, happiest couple ever. But her husband got skin cancer and passed away. After that, she went crazy and slept with like a hundred guys… I know it’s none of my business, but I just get depressed when I see her…”
She lights up a match, hands it to me.
“Burn your memories away.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Only ‘cause you’re holding on,” she says, then blows out the match in my hands.
12:36AM: Cumulatively, we’ve sucked down fifteen tequila shots. The four dancers decide they want to karaoke in Koreatown. Their favorite place is nearby on Wilshire. The hostess is a lithe Korean girl who has the face of a teenager, the body and dress of a professional hooker. She guides us to our private room. Lillian and Suzy hog the mic; Sarah swings the tambourines. Jim cheers every time Lillian sings, while Larry is gawking out the window at our hostess.
“Wonder what it’d be like one night with her,” he whispers to me. “You could bounce pennies on that ass.”
12:57AM: I’m drunk; Sarah’s drunk and needs another cigarette. We go out for some air. “Two languages I love most are Mandarin and English,” she says as she tags another character on the brick floor. “You realize the first written language was probably by a guy who couldn’t draw? People have been doing graffiti since the beginning of time and there’s languages that we wouldn’t even know about if someone hadn’t tagged all over the temples.”
“When was the first time you did it?”
“My grandpa told me in Manchuria, when the Japanese invaded, the Chinese couldn’t fight back, so they’d write characters on the walls to protest. A lot of innocents died back then, including his brother and his best friend…”
“You were protesting an invasion force the first time?”
She laughs. “One of my junior high teachers accused me of cheating on a test. I was so angry, I tagged bad things about her all over the lockers. I got in big trouble, had to clean the lockers and mop the entire school.”
“No wonder you appreciate garbage men.”
1:07AM: “I got an idea,” she says. “You have a pen and paper?”
I don’t, but we get some from a liquor store. We approach a newspaper box; she pops in a quarter. “Write something,” she commands.
We write about the limits of doubt, the fatigue of joy, how boredom is the culprit of most evils and conspiracies are stupidities justified after the fact. She stuffs the notes into different papers—LA Express with their proffered sex, City Times with local buffoonery.
“I love giving people surprises,” she explains.
1:22AM: While putting in the papers, I brush up against her. Jolts run through me, and I notice her bare neck, her legs under her skirt. She catches my glance but ignores it and says, “C’mon, write more notes!”
1:55AM: After karaoke, our posse hits up a famous joint that serves donuts with yogurt and hot caramel. It’s practically empty. Ten minutes later, throngs of clubbers arrive, desperate guys spurting at the seams, lonely girls wondering if they’ll ever find true love in the throes of drunken bravado.
2:08AM: I really want to kiss Sarah.
“You’re both left-handed,” Lillian marvels.
“Is that special?”
“It means you’re both right-brained!”
My four companions want to go to an underground rave club where they still serve drinks. Sarah says, “I think I’m done for tonight.”
2:45AM: Being drunk always makes me feel a thousand times lonelier than I am, and Sarah looks beautiful as I drive her home.
“I think video games have an inferiority complex,” I tell her when we get to her apartment. “They compensate by trying to make everything look super realistic.”
“Anything wrong with reality?” she asks.
“No no no. I’m just saying — actually, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She simpers. “Good night.”
“You don’t wanna… I don’t know.”
She looks at me inquisitively.
Say something smooth, be suave, be cool.
“Good night.”
I want to punch my mouth, flush my head down the toilet.
She asks, “You wanna watch a movie?”
I’m through her door before she is.
2:51AM: She shows me a collection of movies she’s made with friends: Vertigo: The Happy Ending. Romeo and John. Citizen Kane’s Redemption. Peace Club. Planet of the Cats. I pick the Godmother Part One.
2:57AM: She pops popcorn; we sit on her couch, flick the movie on. She says, “Tell me a sad story from your life.”
“You first,” I say.
She thinks about it. “My best friend in college fell in love with her pet guinea pig and decided to marry him. When she told her parents, they had her institutionalized.”
“Wow… That is sad.”
“Your turn.”
My head is a blur. I have a lot of pathetic stories, mishaps, mistakes, acts of stupidity, more rejections than I can remember. I used to stutter like a hyena; I was so pimple-faced, girls refused to talk to me. She’s quiet. I stare at her. She’s looking straight at me. I kiss her. She shakes her head. “We shouldn’t do—” But it’s too late and our lips lock. The sound of violins in the movie are mottled by occasional floods of bullets.