Shoplifting From American Apparel Read online

  SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL

  © 2009 TAO LIN

  MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING

  145 PLYMOUTH STREET

  BROOKLYN, NY 11201

  WWW.MHPBOOKS.COM

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PAPERBACK EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  LIN, TAO, 1983–

  SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERICAN APPAREL / TAO LIN.

  P. CM.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-028-0

  I. TITLE.

  PS3612.I517S56 2009

  B13′.6—DC22

  2009012729

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  First Page

  Titles in the Companion Series

  Titles in the Contemporary Series

  Sam woke around 3:30 p.m. and saw no emails from Sheila. He made a smoothie. He lay on his bed and stared at his computer screen. He showered and put on clothes and opened the Microsoft Word file of his poetry. He looked at his email. About an hour later it was dark outside. Sam ate cereal with soymilk. He put things on eBay then tried to guess the password to Sheila’s email account, not thinking he would be successful, and not being successful. He did fifty jumping jacks. “God, I felt fucked lying on the bed,” he said to Luis a few hours later on Gmail chat. “I wanted to fall asleep immediately but that is impossible. I need to fall asleep. Any second now. Just fall down asleep.”

  “I played video games,” said Luis. “Perfect Dark. I killed people for two hours then I got bored. I know what you mean by impossible.”

  “This is fucked,” said Sam.

  “You know those people that get up every day, and do things,” said Luis.

  “I’m going to eat cereal even though I’m not hungry,” said Sam.

  “And are real proactive,” said Luis. “And like are getting things done, and never quit their jobs. Those people suck.”

  “We get shit done too,” said Sam. “Look at our books.”

  “I know, but that brings in no money,” said Luis. “Are we, like, that word ‘bohemians.’ Or something. Our bios: ‘They lived in poverty writing their masterpieces.’ ”

  “We are the fucked generation,” said Sam. “Someone release the press release announcing this. Look at that typo.”

  The word “announcing” was almost twice as long as normal.

  “I’m laughing,” said Luis. “That is a good typo.”

  “How do we get out of this,” said Sam.

  “ ‘Their shoes were shit, they couldn’t afford haircuts, they were stealing to stay alive, living off of strippers to create their art, but they believed that if they could write it something would happen,’ ” said Luis.

  “Who are they,” said Sam.

  “They is us,” said Luis.

  “I’m alone,” said Sam. “What would happen if I started sniffing coke.”

  “You would kill yourself in a panic attack.”

  “Are you sure,” said Sam.

  “You will be on coke trying to steal batteries and your mind won’t be working properly and you will fuck up and someone will catch you and then you will go to jail.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Sam. “I don’t have to worry about money anymore, I just steal batteries.”

  “Do people really buy batteries off eBay,” said Luis.

  “Yes. I have undercut the competition. Walmart is crying.”

  “I’m going to watch cartoon porn,” said Luis. “No I’m not. I’m going to look at Indian women. Have you ever fucked an Indian girl.”

  “No,” said Sam. “Native American or Indian.”

  “You are awesome,” said Luis. “Is her picture online.”

  “I’m confused,” said Sam. “What are you talking about.”

  “How did you meet her,” said Luis.

  “No, I haven’t,” said Sam. “You’re confused.”

  “What are you talking about,” said Luis.

  “I haven’t had sex with one,” said Sam.

  “Okay,” said Luis. “What are you talking about.”

  “Luis,” said Sam. “What is happening. It’s Saturday.”

  “I think we are going insane,” said Luis. “From not being around people. We are starting to go inside ourselves, and play around inside of our own mental illness. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What should I eat,” said Sam. “I have two choices. Cereal or peanut butter bagel.”

  “Cereal,” said Luis.

  “I wanted the bagel. I’m eating the bagel, I don’t know why I asked.”

  “Sheila didn’t let you go over for leftovers,” said Luis.

  “No,” said Sam. “I mean, we just didn’t talk or something.”

  “Are you serious. Is everything okay.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “I woke up at 3:30.”

  “I won’t go to sleep until five in the morning,” said Luis. “We are fucked.”

  “I woke at 10:30 then said ‘this is fucked’ and went back to sleep,” said Sam. “I forced myself back to sleep.”

  “Sheila won’t talk to you,” said Luis. “Or is it because your cell phone broke.”

  “No,” said Sam. “We just didn’t talk since yesterday. We are like fighting or something. Or I just didn’t email her or something.”

  “When Marissa and I fight we lay on our sides for an hour in different rooms and wait for the person that was mean to come into the room and say they are sorry, then we existentially attack each other in very quiet voices,” said Luis.

  “That sounds great,” said Sam. “It’s only 11 p.m. What are we going to do for six hours.”

  “Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared,” said Luis.

  “Yes,” said Sam. “I really do that.”

  “Should we kill ourselves now or start crying or punch ourselves in the nuts,” said Luis.

  “What is wrong with us,” said Sam. “Should I email Sheila. Or wait until she emails me. I have no car, phone, bike. I’m going to add more people on MySpace.”

  “We are so weird,” said Luis. “We met online a year ago. And we are up a year later being weird as shit.”

  “One year,” said Sam. “This is weird.”

  “I feel like my chest is going to explode,” said Luis.

  “I’m adding random people on MySpace,” said Sam.

  “I feel weird,” said Luis. “Like I was molested by my uncle or something. You are on the floor. With the blanket around you.”

  “The blanket is over my head,” said Sam.

  “Are we fucked,” said Luis and got off the internet.

  Sam stared at his computer screen. He lay on his bed. It was November. Sam was in a rural area of Pennsylvania. He had moved here from New York City a few months ago to be near Sheila. He rolled off his bed and looked at his computer screen. Luis was back. “I just laid down and tried to cry,” said Sam. “I made a noise.”

  “My computer took a shit for a second,” said Luis.

  “I can’t think,” said Sam. “I’m going to do push-ups. What if Sheila and I break up. I’d be so fucked.”

  “You still like each other right.”

  “Yeah,” said Sam. “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Luis. “Do you wake up most days and your first thoughts are of literature, you go to sleep thinking about literature.”

  “Yes,” said Sam. “That is all I think about. If I’m having a shitty time with Sheila’s mom I think about writing it in my novel later. I think about that the same time it’s happening.”

  “When I’m talking to someone I thi
nk ‘can I use this dialogue in a book,’ ” said Luis. “If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.”

  “Has Marissa ever threatened to kill you,” said Sam.

  “Oscar Wilde said that a genius is a spectator to their own life, to the point that the real genius is uninteresting,” said Luis. “No, Marissa has never threatened to kill me.”

  “Oscar Wilde was stupid though,” said Sam.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” said Luis. “My chest is going to explode.”

  “My face is going to float away from my skull,” said Sam. “To emo music.”

  “What are we going to do,” said Luis. “We met each other in real life and didn’t talk that much.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “Publish more books.”

  Luis sent Sam a link to a porno site. “I already masturbated, should I really do it again,” said Sam. “I already masturbated today also,” said Luis. “If you need to I’ll go away.” “No, I’m just looking a little,” said Sam. “Masturbation is an escape from literature,” said Luis and emailed Sam a photo of a stripper.

  “Is she sweating,” said Sam.

  “I think they oiled her down,” said Luis.

  “That’s funny, I think,” said Sam.

  “We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do,” said Luis.

  “I’m going to masturbate then do some other shit then try to sleep for like 20 hours,” said Sam. “Have a good night.”

  “Have a good night, I’m laughing,” said Luis.

  About four months later Sam was living with Sheila in a suburban area of Pennsylvania. He was alone in Sheila’s mother’s house drinking iced coffee and looking at his poetry on the computer screen. The room was sunny and Sam felt warm. He looked out the window at a compost pile and an aboveground swimming pool.

  A few days later he and Sheila were on a train to New York City. They drank from a large plastic bottle containing organic soymilk, energy drink, and green tea extract and wrote sex stories to sell to nerve.com for $500. Sheila’s sex story had chainsaws and Sam’s sex story had Ha Jin doing things in a bathroom at Emory University. Sheila said she felt excited to be in New York City soon. They talked about making their own energy drink company. They got off the train and stood waiting for another train. They climbed a wall and sat in sunlight facing the train tracks.

  “I feel really happy right now,” said Sheila looking ahead.

  Sam looked at the side of Sheila’s face.

  “You didn’t feel happy before?” he said.

  “I mean I just feel really good right now,” said Sheila. “Don’t you?”

  “You don’t feel good at other times?” said Sam staring at his new shoes. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. That was stupid of me.”

  “It’s okay,” said Sheila.

  It was around 11 a.m. It was March.

  Sam felt himself about to say something.

  “Do you not feel good anymore?” he said.

  Sheila had a bored facial expression.

  “Something is wrong with me,” said Sam.

  They got off the wall and stood hugging each other. The train came and they got on and found a New York Times Magazine “Style Issue” and stood in an enclosed area between train cars with some other people. They pointed at things on each page and said “Which would you rather have?” or “Which would you rather be?” They pointed at a vacuum cleaner and a tree, a suitcase and a bottle of champagne, a small child and an old man. They chose the same thing each time. Sunlight came through trees passing by outside into the area where they stood. Sam noticed someone smiling at them and realized that for an amount of time he had not been aware of anything but what he and Sheila were doing.

  Four months later Sam was living in his brother’s studio apartment in Manhattan, sleeping on a mattress pad. He had not seen Sheila who now lived in Brooklyn in about two months. They emailed each other and then met one night at the Film Forum to see a documentary. In the lobby they didn’t talk and Sam felt worried. He saw that Sheila had dressed nicely. In the movie a man said he was going to commit suicide but decided to walk instead and had now been walking for ten years. After the movie Sam said the man was probably walking to the gas station because his car broke. Sheila grinned and said “probably.” They talked about a different movie and Sheila asked Sam if he wanted to see it together when it came out. Sam said he did. “What is that, look,” he said about people standing on trash bags looking at each other.

  “Freegans,” said Sheila.

  “There’s so many,” said Sam. “Why are there so many?”

  “That’s what they do,” said Sheila.

  “They look funny,” said Sam. “They seem bored.”

  “I think one of them was Adam,” said Sheila in a café. “He is like a famous freegan.”

  “I think I recognized Adam,” said Sam. “Yeah, I saw him on The View, on YouTube. The people on The View made fun of him for being serious. It was funny. When they made fun of him for being serious he was still serious.”

  “He is very serious,” said Sheila.

  They stood talking near the front doors while looking at each other’s shoes and other things. They left the café and went somewhere else then sat in front of New York University’s business school. It was around 10 p.m. They ate most of a giant salad of hijiki, lettuce, spinach, sprouts, and tofu. Sam turned the aluminum container upside-down over a large plant. “High-quality fertilizer,” he said.

  “Good,” said Sheila from where she sat. “Good job.”

  They talked about the salad’s size and organic ingredients.

  “We can eat it together in the future sometimes,” said Sam.

  “That would be good,” said Sheila. “I would like that.”

  Sam pointed at a building across the street and said he used to live there. He remembered standing at a railing in a stairwell inside the building three or four years ago, in college on a Friday night, listening to a self-help tape while thinking about killing himself. He remembered holding the tape player in his hand and looking at the earphone cord coming out of the tape player. The cord had seemed very strange.

  “Are you going to the library now?” said Sheila.

  “Yes,” said Sam holding an iced coffee.

  “Okay,” said Sheila. “Thank you for the salad. Thank you for watching the movie with me.”

  “I am home and my internet is fixed,” said Sheila in an email about an hour later. “I saw the freegans again. The Adam guy was eating a cupcake or something and he ate it really sloppy and walked around looking proud. I wanted to lecture him. I hope that you had a good night. Maybe we can hang out tomorrow.” Sam emailed that he was going to a party with his publisher’s intern tomorrow but that they could hang out a different day. After a few more emails Sam said he was going to work on things now. “Did you have a good night?” said Sheila. “You don’t seem to respond a lot to my emails. I guess that’s my fault but I’m just saying. Maybe you are emailing me more later.” Sam emailed that he had a good night and felt bad about making Sheila feel bad. He asked if Sheila could go on Gmail chat.

  “Hi,” said Sheila on Gmail chat.

  “Hi,” said Sam. “I respond to other people’s emails really short.”

  “Not everyone,” said Sheila.

  “Some people,” said Sam.

  “I’m trying to get myself to accept that you don’t like me as much anymore and aren’t interested in ever being with me again,” said Sheila. “I feel really frustrated with myself.”

  “Were you angry I didn’t write a long email back,” said Sam.

  “I wasn’t angry just sad. I shouldn’t be sad. I wish I wasn’t sad.”

  “If we can just be nice with each other, and accepting, we can be friends.”

  “I know,” said Sheila. “I feel so fucked.”

  “What if your friend kept telling you they felt fucked, and it was because you didn’t like them as much as they liked y
ou. That would make it so you would need to force yourself to like them more than you really do, just to get them to feel less fucked and happier. You would then want to get out of that situation. Because it’s like being forced to do something you don’t want to do.”

  “I know,” said Sheila. “I’m sorry. I thought I could change that. You always told me I could change that. Now I don’t understand. I feel a lot of sympathy for everyone. Out-of-control sympathy. An out-of-control amount of sympathy for everything.”

  “If you do that’s good,” said Sam with a worried facial expression.

  “I will just do things until I am ready to accept that we will never get back together,” said Sheila. “And when I have accepted that I will talk to you again.”

  A few weeks later Sam was walking to the library holding a large iced coffee. He had a reading in a few hours. He thought about the shirt he was wearing. He walked into American Apparel. He looked at things and sometimes touched things. He saw a person holding a book two inches from his face with his eyes over the top of the book. Sam thought the person was behaving strangely. A few minutes later Sam walked out of American Apparel holding an American Apparel shirt.

  The person with the book made noises behind Sam on the sidewalk. “Do you work there?” said Sam. The person said he did. “Do you really work for American Apparel?” said Sam. The person displayed a police badge attached to his belt buckle beneath his oversized jersey. “Oh,” said Sam.

  They went inside. They went downstairs. Sam was photographed and put in handcuffs. “Don’t steal from us,” said a manager looking at a computer screen. “Steal from some shitty corporation. We have fair-trade labor. I mean fair labor.”

  “I spend my money on even better places,” said Sam. “Organic vegan restaurants.”

  “I’m all for that,” said the manager.

  Someone wrote “arrested” on Sam’s photo and put it on the wall with about thirty other photos. The person who caught Sam put his head next to Sam’s head and another photo was taken. “What are you trying to do, Luigi?” someone said. “Get a bonus?”

  Two people behind Sam whispered things to each other.

  A few seconds later someone took the handcuffs off Sam.