Paul woke on his back, with uncomfortably warm feet, in a bright room, not immediately aware who or where he was, or how he had arrived. Most mornings, with decreasing frequency, probably only because the process was becoming unconscious, he wouldn’t exactly know anything until three to twenty seconds of passive remembering, as if by unzipping a file — newroom.zip — into a PDF, showing his recent history and narrative context, which he’d delete after viewing, thinking that before he slept again he would have memorized this period of his life, but would keep newroom.zip, apparently not trusting himself.
February to November
relationship with Michelle
December
visited parents in Taiwan for first time since they moved back
February
moved from Kyle and Gabby’s apartment to new room
April
unconsciously viewed Anton as romantic prospect met Laura at Kyle and Gabby’s party
May to August
“interim period”
September/October
book tour
December
visit parents again?
Paul’s father was 28 and Paul’s mother was 24 when they alone (out of a combined fifteen to twenty-five siblings) left Taiwan for America. Paul was born in Virginia six years later, in 1983, when his brother was 7. Paul was 3 when the family moved to Apopka, a pastoral suburb near Orlando, Florida.
Paul cried the first day of preschool for around ten minutes after his mother, who was secretly watching and also crying, seemed to have left. It was their first time apart. Paul’s mother watched as the principal cajoled Paul into interacting with his classmates, among whom he was well liked and popular, if a bit shy and “disengaged, sometimes,” said one of the high school students who worked at the preschool, which was called the Discovery Center. Each day, after that, Paul cried less and transitioned more abruptly from crying to interacting with classmates, and by the middle of the second week he didn’t cry anymore. At home, where mostly only Mandarin was spoken, Paul was loud and either slug-like or, his mother would say in English, “hyperactive,” rarely walking to maneuver through the house, only crawling, rolling like a log, sprinting, hopping, or climbing across sofas, counters, tables, chairs, etc. in a game called “don’t touch the ground.” Whenever motionless and not asleep or sleepy, lying on carpet in sunlight, or in bed with eyes open, bristling with undirectionalized momentum, he would want to intensely sprint in all directions simultaneously, with one unit of striving, never stopping. He would blurrily anticipate this unimaginably worldward action, then burst off his bed to standing position, or make a loud noise and violently spasm, or jolt from the carpet into a sprint, flailing his arms, feeling always incompletely satisfied.
Paul’s first grade teacher recommended he be placed in the English-as-second-language program, widely viewed as for “impaired” students, but Paul’s mother kept him in the normal class. His second grade teacher recommended he be tested for the “gifted” program and he was admitted and began going every Friday to gifted, in which most of the twenty-five to thirty students, having begun in first grade, were already friends. Paul felt alone on Fridays, but not lonely or uncomfortable or anxious, only that he was in a new and challenging situation without assistance or consequence for failure — a feeling not unlike playing a difficult Nintendo game alone, with no instruction manual. Paul played chess one Friday with Barry, who suggested Paul’s second move. Barry knew more about chess, so was being helpful, Paul thought, and did as suggested for his third move also, then watched an extremely happy Barry dash through the rectangular classroom telling groups of classmates he’d beaten Paul in a four-move check-mate. Paul told three classmates Barry had “tricked him,” then returned to the floor and put the chess pieces away and, with a sensation of seeing a spider crawl out of view inside his room, felt himself reassimilating Barry into the world as a kind of robot-like presence he would always need to be careful around and would never comprehend. In third grade, one morning, Paul finished telling something to his friend Chris, who was strangely unresponsive for a few seconds, then with an exaggeratedly disgusted expression told Paul his breath smelled “horrible” and “brush your teeth,” then turned 180 degrees, in his seat, to talk to someone else. Paul mechanically committed to always brushing his teeth and adjusted his view of Chris to include him, with Barry and 90 to 95 percent of people he’d met, as separate and unknowable.
In fourth grade, Paul spent two days with Lori, a second grader in his neighborhood. Lori kissed Paul’s cheek in a tree, then in her room showed him a Mickey Mantle card from her father, who’d said Mickey Mantle had the record for most RBIs. Paul, who collected baseball cards, said Hank Aaron had the record for most RBIs. Lori said he was probably right, because he was really smart. At dusk, the next day, rollerblading on the longest street in the neighborhood, Lori said she needed to try harder than Paul to go the same speed, because her legs were shorter, which Paul thought was insightful.
Entering middle school, sixth to eighth grade, Paul wanted to play percussion like three of his friends, including his “best friend,” Hunter, but his piano teacher said percussion would bore him, so he chose trumpet, which he disliked, but continued playing until the summer before high school, when he switched to percussion on the first day of “band camp,” which was ten hours of practice every weekday for two weeks. During lunch break, that day, Paul was practicing alone by silently counting and sometimes tapping a cymbal with a soft-headed mallet when a senior percussionist, the section leader, began teasing him from across the room, saying he was “so cool” and something about his baggy jeans, which his skateboarding brother, at college in Philadelphia, had left in Florida. Paul was unable to think anything, except that he didn’t know what to do, at all, so he committed to doing nothing, which the senior incorporated into his teasing by focusing on how Paul was “too cool” to react, continuing for maybe thirty seconds before commenting briefly on Paul’s hair and leaving the room.
Believing that all the senior’s friends and acquaintances, which included almost every person at band camp, now viewed his main effort in life as wanting to be “cool,” which he did want, to some degree, but which now seemed impossible, Paul became increasingly, physically, exclusively critically, nearly continuously self-conscious, the next few days, in ways he hadn’t been before — but probably had been in latent development since preschool — and which affected his musicianship. His middle school friends, including Hunter, among whom he’d been most fearless and at least equally competent at whatever sport or video game, watched him fail every day to play the simplest parts, usually tambourine or triangle, of each piece. The percussion instructor that year punished everyone with push-ups if one person, usually Paul, played something incorrectly more than once. Paul’s friends — subtly, then openly, with confusion and frustration — began to express disbelief at Paul’s inability to count to a number and hit a cowbell or cymbal. Paul was too embarrassed, by the end of the first week, to speak to his friends — all of whom seemed to have easily befriended the section leader and other upperclassmen — and by the second week had begun committing, in certain situations, to not speaking unless asked a question.