Free Taipei by Tao Lin Page B

“When you asked me if I liked Rilo Kiley, the night we met, I thought you were joking,” said Daniel.
    “No,” said Paul. “Why did you think that?”
    “You’re more earnest than I thought you’d be.”
    “I wouldn’t joke about something like that.”
    “Like what?” said Daniel.
    Paul said he wouldn’t pretend he liked something, or make fun of liking something, or like something “ironically.” Daniel sort of drifted away and began looking at Paul’s books with a patient, scholarly demeanor—in continuation, Paul realized, of a calm inquisitiveness that had characterized most of his behavior tonight, probably due to the five Klonopin he’d ingested, though he was always inquisitive and would continue asking questions, in certain conversations, when others would’ve stopped, which Paul liked. Twenty minutes later Daniel was reading pages of different books and Paul was looking at methadone’s Wikipedia page (“. . . developed in Germany in 1937 . . . an acyclic analog of morphine or heroin . . .”) when Fran returned from outside with cuts on her face and neck from a group of girls, she said, that called her a bitch and said she tried to steal shoes and attacked her, pushing her down. Daniel asked how the girls opened the gate to the house’s walkway. Fran repeated, with a vaguelyconfused expression, that she was attacked. Paul, who hadn’t realized she had left the room, asked how she reentered the gate without a key. Fran stared expectantly at Daniel with her child-like gaze, then quietly engaged herself in a solitary activity elsewhere in the room as Daniel and Paul began pondering the situation themselves, to no satisfying conclusion. Fran said she wanted to go dancing at Legion before it closed in less than an hour and Paul thought he saw her put a number of pills into her mouth in the stereotypically indiscriminate manner he’d previously seen only on TV or in movies. Fran and Daniel did yoga-like stretches on Paul’s yoga mat and snorted two Adderall—crushed into a potion-y blue, faintly neon sand—off a pink piece of construction paper. Daniel briefly hugged a supine Paul, then stood at a distance as Fran lay flat on top of Paul with her head facedown to the right of his head. Fran didn’t move for around forty seconds, during which, at one point, she murmured something that seemed significant but, muffled by the mattress, was not comprehensible. She rolled onto her back and Daniel pulled her to a standing position. Paul was surprised to feel moved in a calming, tearful manner—as if some long-term desire, requiring a tiring amount of effort, had been fulfilled—when, before leaving for Legion, both Daniel and Fran affected slightly friendlier demeanors (rounder eyes, higher-pitched voices, a sort of pleasantness of expression like minor face-lifts) to confirm meeting at the book party Paul mentioned earlier and had forgotten.
    Paul realized after they left that he’d gotten what from elementary school through college he often most wanted—unambiguous indications of secure, mutual friendships—but was no longer important to him.
     
    The book party, like algae, feeling its way elsewhere, moved slowly but persistently from the bookstore’s basement to itsfirst floor, to the sidewalk outside, converging finally with other groups at a corner bar, where Paul failed more than five times to recognize or remember the faces or names of recent to long-term acquaintances—and twice introduced people he’d already introduced to each other, including Daniel and Frederick, both of whom however either feigned having not met or had actually forgotten—but due to 2mg Klonopin remained poised, with a peaceful sensation of faultlessness, physiologically calm but mentally stimulated, throughout the night, as if beta testing the event by acting like an exaggerated version of himself, for others to practice against, before the real Paul, the only person without practice, was inserted for the