“It was probably best not to think about your life, though— ever— Greg knew, but to just assume that it was there, and happening, to trust that it was out there, doing whatever it was that a life would do. It was probably best, instead, to spend your time wiping the bathroom floor with wet toilet paper, filling the refridgerator with food, noting the day-to-day depletion of it, looking at stuff and going ‘Hmm’ without thinking anything. Things like that. Things that were neutral and lucid and make profound sense as long as you kept them to yourself, in a secret box concealed from the rest of your brain— a box you then crawled into, like a hiding spot. An end-place.”

— Tao Lin, “Suburban Teenage Wasteland Blues,” a short story within Bed