Super Sad True Love Story

The next chapter returns to Eunice Park’s GlobalTeens account. GlobalTeens gives Eunice a “super hint” about how “excessive typing makes wrists large and unattractive” (42) and suggests switching to images mode. But Eunice is looking “to verbal with” (42) a friend, and she messages Grillbitch to tell her she misses speaking in person.

Eunice describes her date with Ben, which she enjoyed until she started telling him “that his feet smelled” and he got “all intro” (42). Turning off his äppärät, he was also able to hide his feelings. The two still had sex, but it was just “all right” (42), and Eunice had a panic attack after. His efforts to comfort her failed, and she describes feeling “shame” and “undeserving of being with someone like Ben” (42). Eunice also explains her family’s domestic abuse and money loss issues to her friend. Although she feels no shame about spending her cruel father’s money overseas, she explains, she also cannot forget the good things he’s done.

Grillbitch responds with her “way sad” (43) condolences at Eunice’s emotionally complicated situation: “[P]arents can be really disappointing but their [sic] the only parents we have” (43). With continued misspellings, Grillbitch works to encourage Eunice, notably by pointing out that Ben clearly thinks she is “just a real tough slut” (43). Between requests for a special kind of underwear made in Italy, Grillbitch confides that she needs Eunice to confide in “because the world sometimes feels so, like, I can’t even describe it” (44).

The next day, June 7, Eunice’s mother messages her again. She explains that, before their Reverend, Eunice’s mother apologized to her father and her father promised to pray when he was angry before hitting her. Their prayers go to Eunice and Sally, for whom they came to America, although they couldn’t have known then that Korea would be richer and more peaceful than America.

These words do not calm Eunice, who invites her mother and sister to come to Rome for “a break from Daddy” (45). Sally’s next message that day vacillates back and forth between more requests for complicated lingerie to go under Onionskin jeans and updates on their father’s strange habit of singing with Sally while she is in the shower. Ultimately, Sally and Eunice argue over whether or not they should accept their parents’ situation. Once again, Sally pulls away from the conversation while Eunice asks for her forgiveness and considers committing to her career. Once again, she writes that “as soon as [she finds] a cheap ticket, [she’s] coming home” (47). 

On June 6, the same day of Eunice’s sad messages to Grillbitch, Lenny continues the story of his journey home after the “ordeal at JFK” (48). After a message about “POSITIVE CHANGES AND CUTBACKS” (48) from Joshie, his boss, Lenny wondered whether he is about to be fired.

On a piece of paper, Lenny explains, he immediately started writing a “strategy for short-term survival and then immortality” (48) in New York. He plans to work hard, make Joshie protect him, “Love Eunice,” despite her distance, care for his friends, be nice to his parents “(Within Limits)” (49), and celebrate what he has. He plans to keep the paper in his wallet “for easy reference” (49).

Lenny explains that he began by appreciating his 740 square foot apartment and his “Wall of Books” (49). He sprayed air freshener near the books to try to cover the smell of books for Eunice, his youthful soon-to-be lover. Then he “celebrated [his] other possessions” (50). This apartment, he explains, is “part of a NORC—a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community” (50), full of nonagenarians. Near the elevator, a board lists recent deaths.

He narrates to his diary the details of a walk around the east side of Manhattan. He explains that he relished hearing children speak in “overblown verbs, explosive nouns, beautifully bungled prepositions,” and wonders: “How long would it be before these kids retreated into the dense clickety-clack äppärät world” (51). He followed a Chinese woman through Chinatown and notices the Credit Poles, put in place by the American Restoration Authority, that register a person’s credit score whenever they walk by.

Although Lenny’s score was high when he walked by, it also lit up with a red asterisk. He worried that the otter has still flagged him, and he searched for Nettie Fine on GlobalTeens, but her account was untraceable. In that moment, he recognizes that he wanted “a little love and mothering” (53).

The neighborhood, Lenny reflects, is just like it was when he left for Rome a year before, but with “an added aimlessness to the population” (53). A military armored car, with a rotating machine gun on top, stopped traffic in the middle of the road. Lenny, after realizing what was happening, fled urgently. After revisiting the list in his wallet for some advice, he found a cab and directed it to “the Upper East Side lair of [his] second father” (54), Joshie.

At “the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation” (54) headquarters, in an old synagogue, Lenny finds a familiar scent of hypoallergenic air freshener. Otherwise, he recognizes no one in the building, as it is “filled by young men and women dressed with angry post-college disregard” (55). Lenny explains that, among the aging-obsessed workers, he had made few friends after turning 30. On the walls, old train schedule boards display results from employees’ physicals and reports of their moods. As Lenny looks at the board, he realizes that he is not listed.

Finally, Kelly Nardl, a familiar coworker, rescues Lenny with his nickname “Rhesus Monkey” (56). She makes him a plate of flowering cabbage, which is “a sign of respect” (56) at Post-Human Services. Although Lenny notices Kelly’s “imperfection,” he chooses to “celebrate” (57) it. Together, they reminisce about their old set of colleagues, all most all of whom, except for Howard Shu, have been fired. Kelly encourages Lenny to prepare for Joshie’s return from D.C. with a visit to the Eternity Lounge to make him look “a little younger” (59).

In the lounge, there is hardly room to sit. “The new kids” wear a newer model of äppärät, “the kind Eunice had worn” (59). As he reaches for some green tea, young people he does not even recognize begin to mock him. Even when he mocks back, threatening to one young man to “put [his] stress levels up on The Boards” (60), the young man easily dominates him, both verbally and physically. Only the sound of “His Name” (60)—the arrival of Joshie—breaks up the cheering.

Joshie is “younger than before” (61). Lenny reflects that “in restaurants he had sometimes been mistaken for [Lenny’s] handsomer brother” (61). Joshie sweeps Lenny away to his office. Along the way, he repeatedly points out Lenny’s gray hair. He encourages Lenny to “detoxify, dude” (62).

When Joshie points out that he might cry after all of the criticism, Lenny recalls that he only wants “to listen to [Joshie] take care of [him] some more” (63). The Post-Human Services division attends to each change in bodies, yet Joshie senses that he is “still a facsimile of [his] early childhood” (63). He wants to ask Joshie about his love for Eunice.

Although Joshie has criticized love in the past, he reassures Lenny that “love is great for pH, ACTH, LDL, whatever ails you” (64). The key is that Lenny needs to “make this healthy Asian girl need [Lenny] the way that he [needs Joshie]” (63).

Joshie also encourages Lenny to work on his health and possibly learn Chinese so that he can capitalize on the shifting world order. Lenny explains that he traveled to Rome so that he could “spend some time thinking about immortality in a really old place” and “read some books,” but Joshie tells him that “these books, they are the problem” (64). Books distracted him from selling the product. He would be reassigned to intakes until he relearned the selling skills he needed.

Outside Joshie’s office, Lenny encounters a swarm of young colleagues, including Howard Shu. When Shu and Joshie high five, Lenny feels “the pureness of envy” (65). Shu pulls up Lenny’s file to onboard him and, in the process, explains the fines he accrued through expenses in Italy. He criticizes Lenny’s inefficiencies once his “papa’s gone” (66). Kelly brings a new äppärät for Lenny, and he remembers the days before the Staatling-Wapachung Corporation acquired Joshie’s company, when he, Kelly, and Shu were equals.

Outside the office, Lenny recognizes that his debt would force him to delay his “first stab at dechronification” (68) procedures. Like all other lives, he realizes, his own would end one day, and he “would disappear from the earth” (68). 

Three days after Lenny’s return to the office, Eunice’s mother messages her via GlobalTeens. She is sad because Eunice’s father refers to Eunice as a “bohemia,” claiming that she does not “protect the mystery” and is “probably with black man” (70). She encourages Eunice to embrace her responsibility, which sets her family apart from Americans and is the reason, she claims, why Korea and China are rich nations.

Eunice tells Sally, again, that she will take the next step home. Sally encourages her not to, but Eunice, enraged that her father hits her mother, insists to Sally that their mother needs protection. Sally plans to leave to see friends and work but tells Eunice that their cousin will stay with their parents to keep the home safe. Amid Eunice’s worry over Sally’s political activity, their conversation drifts back to fashion.

On June 11, Eunice writes to Grillbitch to talk through her family situation and insist that she is “coming home” (72). She has broken up with Ben, who she was “completely intimidated by,” and has been “crying for days” (72). Only one consolation is “Lenny, the old guy” (72), who she considers moving in with in New York. She recognizes her need “to be taken care of too” (72). She wonders if it is problematic to “block out the grossness and just enjoy his very serious love” (72). She recognizes that he is “what Prof Margaux in Assertiveness Class used to call ‘a real human being’” (73).