Super Sad True Love Story

The next chapter reports from the same day as the first, June 1, but from “the GlobalTeens account of Eunice Park” (25). Eunice, under the online name “Euni-Tard,” writes to “Grillbitch” (25) in an abbreviated language that shows their intimacy. Both attended Elderbird College. Eunice writes in a testimonial style about “the cutest guy,” Ben, whom she met in Rome: he is her type, “tall, kind of German-looking, very preppie, but not an asshole” (25). He works for “LandO’LakesGMFordCredit” (25).

Eunice recounts spending the day with Ben and making out at a party. She notes the way that other women look at her, “like [she] was stealing one of their white guys or something” (25). Hung up on Ben, she also addresses Lenny on the side, calling him an “old, gross guy,” only okay in comparison to “another even older guy, this sculptor” (26). She marvels that she had to “SHOW A GROWN MAN HOW TO USE A TOOTHBRUSH” (26).

Grillbitch dramatically responds, explaining that she is “completely VOMITING” (26). She advises Eunice to accept Ben’s advances, “let him fuck you HARD the first night, then leave him completely confused the rest of the time” (26). To reciprocate the exchange, Grillbitch explains how another girl solicited her boyfriend, Gopher, at a party the other night. After Grillbitch wards this girl off, her sexual encounter with men at the party is taped and posted on GlobalTeens. The girl’s ratings in “Personality” and “Fuckability” (27) rise quickly.

The chapter quickly switches tone to Eunice’s mother’s broken English. She complains about Eunice’s just-arrived, and unacceptably low, LSAT scores. The quick message ends with a note to “be careful” with men and a reminder that, despite Eunice’s father’s urgings to avoid saying “I love you,” she says, “Love you from deep in my heart” (27).

Eunice responds with a request for money and an assurance that “Ethel Kim got 154 on her LSAT,” so Eunice must be “doing fine” (28) by comparison. Although she is not working because she does not have a “permesso soggiorno” (30), she is volunteering; she requests that her mother tell her father that news. However, her mother is upset that Eunice only writes to ask for money. She reminds Eunice that she prays “extra for [her]” and encourages her to find a Korean church where she “will find date” (28).

Reading into her mother’s message, Eunice panics at the note that her father is “not feeling good” (28). Her mother responds: “Daddy drink a little much and he get mad” (28). She, and Eunice’s sister Sally, hid and slept elsewhere while he calmed down. Eunice, despite her mother’s encouragement to enjoy herself in Rome, panics and reaches out to Sally. Sally defers the question, asking about fashion, and finally the girls settle into a conversation about the “cute white guy” (29) Eunice met.

Sally explains that she is headed to a protest against the American Restoration Authority, the Bipartisans that Lenny worked hard to explain he was part of. She criticizes Eunice for not knowing what the ARA is. In response, Eunice encourages Sally to move out of the house and get an internship or a job, because she doesn’t want her “getting political” (30). Sally does not respond, and Eunice panics, offering to fly home and take care of her family.

The exchange with Eunice’s family happens over three days and then abruptly ends. The remaining message, on June 4, comes from Lenny. He is “practicing [his] abbreviations” and lets her know she’s “got a place to stay” (31) in New York any time. He signs the note “Love, Leonard” (31). 

The next chapter returns to Lenny’s diary, on the same day that he writes to Eunice. He recalls the fat man he encounters in the “special terminal for flights to the United States and SecurityState Israel,” which is “dilapidated” (32). The man is in the first-class lounge, a potential “Life Lover” interested in his life-extending product.

Lenny’s äppärät identified some wealthy individuals, but this man does not even register on the machine—he doesn’t have an äppärät. He looks “like a nothing,” in a way that “people don’t really look anymore” (32). Lenny categorizes the man as ITP, or Impossible to Preserve. He is also scared of him.

On the flight, Lenny reads Chekhov’s novella Three Years in search of romantic advice. Meanwhile, others in first class “were staring [Lenny] down for having an open book,” even complaining aloud that it “smells like wet socks” (35). He pulls out his äppärät to reaffirm that he loves digital things. Amid this stress, a young videographer paces the aisles, particularly focusing on the unattractive fat man.

Using his äppärät, Lenny searches for information on Eunice. He finds her original home in California and then at her family’s current home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. His äppärät is “retro” (36), but it finds a swell of information determining that Dr. Lee (Eunice’s father) had lost money in the move across the country. Lenny dives deeply in to Eunice and Sally’s credit spending, tracking how “their precious immigrant nest egg was declining steadily and ominously” (36).

Lenny also checks the social networks to find pictures, especially of Sally and Eunice. He closely analyzes the photographs to build his “mind’s burgeoning Eunice archive” (37). Frequently, he returns to her “brilliantly fake smile” (37). All of this distraction pulls him internal enough that “when the plane’s wheels finally licked the tarmac in New York” (37), Lenny does not notice tanks between the runways.

Upon landing, Army officers swarm the plane. They scan the passengers with their “large brown ghetto äppäräti” and then grab “the fat ugly man” (38). He pleads with them to look in his wallet to find his “Bipartisan” (38) card. When questioned, he tells them that he left his äppärät at home. The cabin fills “with the sound of a grown-up’s out-of-practice whimpering” (38).

After they deal with the fat man, the soldiers ask all U.S. citizens to raise their hands. Although he remembers that his parents had been born in the Soviet Union, and he knows of his family’s “genetic instinct to deal with unbridled authority” (39), Lenny is afraid. He longs for his parents and for Eunice, as he faces what seem to be his “last moments” (39).

The first-class passengers are ushered to a shed. A tank that arrives delivers a sign declaring that no one may acknowledge the sign—“the object” (41)—until they have moved at least half a mile from the airport. While the nine Americans sit in fear, the Italians on the board have already turned to discussion of how to “take particular advantage of the ailing dollar” (41).

But “the fat man’s smell of fear” (41) overtakes Lenny and he forgets what happens. He finds himself “sitting on the floor of the security shed” with his legs sprawled out “as if [he] were a sleepwalker or an athlete” (41). He recognizes that he is speaking but does not know what he is saying. The Italians look on in sympathy.