NATHAN XIE
A State of Being Nothing More
I was watching Kore-eda’s After Life one night with my boyfriend and he said the conceit of the film—the recently dead must identify the happiest moment of their life—sounded like a stereotypical writing prompt. We were sitting at the kitchen counter, eating dumplings with peanut sauce, while old men and women admitted their happiest moments happened in childhood. I have always cried easily, so my tears then were nothing remarkable. I asked my boyfriend if he had a happiest moment and he said, No, I don’t have one.
His answer hurt, and I only knew why after one of the younger men among the recently dead refused to name a happiest moment. What about me? I asked my boyfriend. He leaned over and kissed my forehead in response.
Do you have a happiest moment? he asked.
I did, but I couldn’t say it involved him if he couldn’t say the same of me, and furthermore, I wanted to believe my happiest moment was yet to come. My boyfriend stopped the movie, and I told him about the first time I visited Tokyo.
It was the summer before college. I wasn’t out of the closet yet, and the friends who came with me were from church, were religious, and only accepted me when they knew me as a straight man. I remembered being a typical tourist in Tokyo. I remembered the quiet and clean despite crowded streets. I remembered the cool water I cleaned my hands with at the shrine. I remembered going into giant department stores unable to afford anything. Besides for the trip being my first time in a foreign country, it wasn’t particularly exciting even though my excitement throughout never abated. In Tokyo, the life I lived before and would return to fell away, and for a summer week I was purely a tourist without any concerns except for what to do next. I was happy.
And you’ve never been happier since? my boyfriend asked.
One day I will be again, I said as I took the last dumpling.
He nodded, but the truth was we couldn’t guarantee any such thing. He could break up with me the next day, or perhaps I would. He could go down on one knee and we would live an unsatisfying marriage, dreaming of other men. Perhaps one day I would die and someone at the way station in After Life would ask me what my happiest moment in life was, and I would recount my first time in Tokyo, and I would feel sorry for myself even though I should not feel sorry for myself. I would think I might as well have died after that summer week in Tokyo. Why did I breeze past that peak, only to trudge downhill through the rest of life?
But my boyfriend, he wordlessly took my plate, and I, instead of finding something else to do, watched him wash the dishes with a calm focus, a constant rush of water between his fingers, and the flow of sound and time faded into white noise. The room smelled of olive oil. For a moment, there was no happiness, no sadness. Not quite emptiness, but something clear and light like air. Gradually, the world hummed into motion again. My boyfriend turned off the sink and he opened a pack of senbei crackers and handed one to me.
Nathan Xie (he/they) is a writer based in New York. In 2023, he received One Story’s Adina Talve-Goodman fellowship, and support from Lambda Literary and the Periplus Collective. His writing can be found at nathan-xie.com.