“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—”