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    But by the end of the night I remembered very little. Let’s just say that I drank. Drank out of fear (she was so cruel). Drank out of happiness (she was so beautiful). Drank until my whole mouth and teeth had turned a dark ruby red and the pungency of my breath and perspiration betrayed my passing years. And she drank too. One mezzo litro of the local swill became a full litro, and then two litri, and then a bottle of something possibly Sardinian but, in any case, thicker than bull’s blood.

    Remember this, Lenny; develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you’ll never figure out what’s important.

    Enormous plates of food were needed to mop up this overindulgence. We thoughtfully chewed on the pig jowls of the bucatini all’amatriciana, slurped up a plate of spaghetti with spicy eggplant, and picked apart a rabbit practically drowning in olive oil. I knew I would miss all this when I got back to New York, even the horrible fluorescent lighting that brought out my age — the wrinkles around my eyes, the single long highway and the three county roads that ran across my forehead, testaments to many sleepless nights spent worrying about unredeemed pleasures and my carefully hoarded income, but mostly about death. This particular restaurant was favored by theater actors, and as I stabbed with my fork at the thick hollows of pasta and the glistening aubergines, I tried to remember forever their loud, attention-seeking voices and the vibrant Italian hand gestures that in my mind are synonymous with the living animal, and hence with life itself.

    I focused on the living animal in front of me and tried to make her love me. I spoke extravagantly and, I hope, sincerely. Here’s what I remember.

    I told her I didn’t want to leave Rome now that I had met her.

    She again told me I was a nerd, but a nerd who made her laugh.

    I told her I wanted to do more than make her laugh.

    She told me I should be thankful for what I had.

    I told her she should move to New York with me.

    She told me she was probably a lesbian.

    I told her my work was my life, but I still had room for love.

    She told me love was out of the question.

    I told her my parents were Russian immigrants who lived in New York.

    She told me hers were Korean immigrants who lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

    I told her my father was a retired janitor who liked to go fishing.

    She told me her father was a podiatrist who liked to punch his wife and two daughters in the face.

    “Oh,” I said. Eunice Park shrugged and excused herself. On my plate, the rabbit’s little dead heart hung from within his rib cage. I put my head in my hands and wondered if I should just throw some euros down on the table and walk out and leave.

    She released her hair from the bun’s captivity and it was dark and endless and as thick as twine. She was twenty-four years old.

    But soon enough I was walking down ivy-draped Via Giulia, my arm around Eunice Park’s fragrant, boyish frame. She was seemingly in good spirits, both loving and goading: promising me a kiss, then chastising my poor Italian. She was shyness and giggles, freckles in the moonlight and drunken, immature cries of “Shut up, Lenny!” and “You’re such an idiot!” I noticed she had released her hair from the bun’s captivity and that it was dark and endless and as thick as twine. She was twenty-four years old.

    My apartment could accommodate no more than a cheap twin- sized mattress and a fully opened suitcase, brimming with books (“My text-major friends at Elderbird used to call those things ‘doorstops,’ ” she told me). We kissed, lazily, like it was nothing, then roughly, like we meant it. There were some problems. Eunice Park wouldn’t take off her bra (“I have absolutely no chest”), and I was too drunk and scared to develop an erection. But I didn’t want intercourse anyway. I talked her out of her pants, cupped the twin, tiny globes of her ass with my palms, and pushed my lips right inside her soft, vital pussy. “Oh, Lenny,” she said, a little sadly, for she must have sensed just how much her youth and freshness meant to me, a man who lived in death’s anteroom and could barely stand the light and heat of his brief sojourn on earth. I licked and licked, breathing in the slight odor of something authentic and human, and eventually must have fallen asleep with my face between her legs. The next morning, she was kind enough to help me repack my suitcase, which refused to close without her help. “That’s not how you do it,” she said, when she saw me brushing my teeth. She made me stick out my tongue and roughly scraped its purple surface with the toothbrush. “There,” she said. “Better.”

    During the taxi ride to the airport, I felt the triple pangs of being happy and lonely and needy all at once. She had made me wash my lips and chin thoroughly to obliterate all traces of her, but Eunice Park’s alkaline tang still remained on the tip of my nose. I made great sniffing motions in the air, trying to capture her essence, think- ing already of how I would bait her to New York, make her my wife, make her my life, my life eternal. I touched my expertly brushed teeth and petted the flurry of gray hairs sticking out from beneath my shirt collar, which she had thoroughly examined in the morning’s weak early light. “Cute,” she had said. And then, with a child’s sense of wonder: “You’re old, Len.”

    Oh, dear diary. My youth has passed, but the wisdom of age hardly beckons. Why is it so hard to be a grown-up man in this world?

    Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

    Excerpted from Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart Copyright © 2010 by Gary Shteyngart. Excerpted by permission of Random House Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

     Photography by KINOD.

    Comments ( 11 )

    Jul 26 10 at 8:20 am
    Stevio

    I cannot imagine what you're talking about. Shteyngart is one of the bestselling and most highly-regarded novelists working. If you don't like this, fine, admit you just don't like reading words.

    Jul 26 10 at 9:00 am
    Mo

    Starts off wonderfully, and then rapidly turns into another boring little story.

    Jul 26 10 at 9:28 am
    balzac

    I like him. I like his work. But I feel like I've seen this character a thousand times before.

    Jul 26 10 at 10:42 am
    mal

    stelvio, i'm a hard core fiction reader. but this excerpt is very boring, IMHO.

    Jul 27 10 at 10:13 am
    mm

    Being bitchy on the internet < actually writing something.

    Jul 28 10 at 2:03 pm
    Dee

    Having opinions about literature is verboten now; we must all conform.

    To be honest, I thought it was a little trite but not awful.

    Jul 30 10 at 3:44 am
    JF

    I strongly disliked this.

    Jul 30 10 at 9:30 pm
    Cal

    I agree with Dee; apparently, giving an opinion on something is easily written off as 'bitchiness' if it isn't unabashedly and glowingly positive. I thought this was a little trite myself, but not enough to judge the novel on. Absurdistan was a neat thing.

    Aug 11 10 at 4:53 am
    Selvam, Sivagangai

    I personally think this author is obnoxious.

    Apr 17 11 at 2:23 pm
    KB

    I'm reading this book for school, and it seems like it would be interesting, but it's not. Very confusing, a lot of things are improperly explained. Interesting story, poor writing style.

    Apr 28 11 at 9:34 am
    ORZ

    I am confused with this. I feel like I'm half an hour late for a Sundance film.

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