American Psycho is one of my favorite novels: despite its meh plot, there is something very alluring to me about excess and Ellis is more than happy to indulge in the unapologetic. The novel begins with an epigraph from (Nothing But) Flowers that I have always found to be a perfect encapsulation of being young, selfish and completely jacked up on an uninsightful kind of unhappiness–And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention. The ensuing misogyny and perversion, I have always argued, are merely incidental. “Don’t you get it?! Those sluts were just collateral damage!”
Nope. No one ever agrees.
Over the years, I have worn my copy thin; it was my go-to salve both the year I spent writing my graduate thesis and those months in China when my research was a stalled clusterfuck. That is, it gets me through those days when I think I have nothing compelling to say, which is kind of a concern when the majority of the public already sees art as a luxury good that merely takes away funding from cancer research. Eventually, I wrote the same Talking Heads epigraph on a post-it note and put it on my mirror in Shanghai. I found an obscure kind of comfort in looking at it everyday. At the very least, as things fell apart, there was me there to document it on a daily basis. When I had to leave China abruptly–packing one year of living in four days into two bags–I left the post-it on my mirror for the friend subletting my apartment. I have no doubt that he saw it, but he never mentioned it to me. In hindsight, I have no idea what he could’ve really said to me, but I often wonder if it tainted his impression of me as that art-girl-in-Fulbright-but-otherwise-functional human being. I don’t know, but Kelly later told me that he thought I was “pretty hilarious.”
There are also happier associations.
In the early days of Harbin, I made an off-handed comment to Reed that Clerks 2 was a mediocre film not particularly worth watching, but I enjoyed the opening sequence as I liked the song Kevin Smith decided to play over it. He casually identified it as (Nothing But) Flowers, then I can only imagine ordered the same shoddy Chinese food he is always apt to ordering (perhaps 鱼箱茄子for the billionth time). Turns out his dad had raised him on Talking Heads and he could recite their entire catalog raisonne, and it also turns out Reed is best friends with the infamous Freddie Wong and likes to make spud guns only to shoot out kleenex tissues. Well Jesus Christ. At that moment I decided that we were going to be friends whether he liked it or not.
There were also many days when I sat there blissed out listening to the lyrics, which conveniently did absolutely nothing but further my obsession with post-apocalyptic scenarios. I’m starting to realize that not everyone likes to discuss the end of the world with the same fervor as I do. It is not so much that they find it depressing or far-fetched, but more so because I get annoyingly specific about what happens if we assume you are to survive the initial fallout: what is the first thing you would do? How would you purify your water? Do you know how to properly skin and clean an animal? How long do you think you would last before you kill someone over the last canned goods–do you think you’d be an outlier? Who would you contact for support? No cheating, they have to be within the same geographical area as you!! And so on and so forth. This line of earnest questioning, I assure you, will annoy the shit out of almost everyone you know. And the grilling only gets more epic the more alcohol I consume.
Yet somehow I managed to have a longish conversation about this with Jason one night in Beijing. He took it seriously enough to explain to me the intricacies of Mad Max, then took out his cell phone to scroll down his list of contacts in Beijing whom he thought could legitimately up his chances for survival. He eventually came up with John and maybe Stuart. I told John this the other day, almost two years after the initial conversation. He frowned at me and shook his head.
Stuart??? That guy? Nah.
I’ve been asked countless times how was my experience abroad–the subject was a fairly sensitive one until recently and my answers have never graduated beyond a jumble of emotionally stunted stammers and platitudes. Many times over, I wish I could just send them (Nothing But) Flowers as a valid response. I don’t mean it as a summary of my time in China; never one for the big picture, I’m already starting to forget what it’s like to be there and why I was there in the first place. But once in awhile the details shine through in a way I could never articulate–the way I felt staring at the epigraph and then seeing myself staring back in the mirror, the nights happily spent in the company of Kelly and Reed in some abhorrent Harbin eatery, the maze of Beijing hutongs that eventually led to the best bars and best conversations.
But as always my answers have never deviated.
China was fine. How about you? What have you been up to?
