Abandoned Apartments
Not long after I arrived in Tokyo, I took a job for a small start-up company cleaning abandoned twitter accounts. At the start of a day of work, I was given two spreadsheets: one a list of account names, email addresses, and passwords, the other a list of new account names, email addresses, and passwords. For eight hours a day, once a week, I worked through as many of the items on the list as I could; changing usernames and addresses, and deleting old tweets.
I was never actually told what the accounts were for — I think it was a kind of hush-hush publicity stunt; preparation for a twitter version of War of the Worlds or something — but it didn’t bother me, really; I needed the money, and the work was easy.
In this way, my Monday mornings became a blend of local cafes and scrubbing away at the electronic past. I saw myself as a member of a cleaning company, slowly working through the rooms of an abandoned apartment building, and throwing out what was left.
——
Logging into a person’s dead account felt like wading into a room still filled with their things. Though most of the accounts were fake — made to look like real people but in fact shells for misinformation and promotion — occasionally I’d find real accounts that once belonged to real people, along with their thoughts and feelings scribbled across the walls of their old electronic homes.
Sometimes I stumbled across unanswered messages in these accounts. It was like finding letters or diaries stashed away in desk drawers or hidden between the pages of old books. Wiping the dust from these messages sent up a subtle scent of nostalgia; a cloud of things unsaid, and replies unwritten.
They were my favorite thing about the new job.
——
Most of the unanswered messages I found were boring and straightforward — empty promises to increase followers, sales pitches for diet pills, and viruses in “have-you-seen-this” video links — but before they were opened, each whispered with a hazy potential for secrets and stories.
And when the messages were human — when they were a jumbled collection of random thoughts, impulsive emotions, and the back and forth of spontaneous conversation — I relished the opportunity to uncover past connections and dive into the truth once hidden from plain sight.
This was how I came to spend my Mondays; sifting through accounts and looking for messages, imagining stories about the people who wrote them, and erasing those messages completely.
Or sometimes, replying to them.
——
My own twitter account was like a little soapbox in a quiet alley off a very busy street. I could stand on it and say what I wanted, but everybody knew it was me because I’d written my name on it.
Replying to direct messages in abandoned accounts was different; it was like being in that same quiet alley, but standing on somebody else’s soapbox. Sometimes it felt like writing the last entry in an unfinished diary, or having the last say in an old argument, or bringing imaginary closure to stories that lacked a conclusion.
But whatever I wrote, the core feeling was always the same. Honesty. And it was weird to think that it was easier to be honest in the skin of someone else, than it was to be in my own.
The feeling was refreshing.
——
I often found accounts abandoned at the end of bad break-ups. The pattern was always the same: a slow build-up of disgruntled tweets that hinted at (but never directly mentioned) trouble in paradise, and a few unanswered messages in the inbox: one or two from friends, and one from the ex.
To these, I often wrote the kind of pensive messages I wished I had once written myself, tinged with the regret that comes with slow-passing time and the longing ache of lingering wounds.
Did you ever think that it would come to this? That it would take this long for me to finally tell you I loved you? That even now I find myself thinking of you by the mirror in our bedroom, doing your hair?
I know we never lived together, and I never saw you by the mirror in that bedroom we never shared, but I still see you like that sometimes, like a memory I wish I had, but never did.
Life is funny like that.
I don’t know how many messages I wrote along those lines, each of them soaked in the remorse of moments long passed, but it must have been a lot.
——
When I started, I told myself I’d reply with what I imagined a person would say, or what I wanted them to say, but very quickly I came to write what Iwould say, and what I wanted to say.
Something about doing this was cathartic, and perhaps, in some selfish, backhanded way, that was what I needed in my life at the time.
A kind of catharsis.
——
The first reply I received to one of my fabricated messages was from a man in England. I’d written a heartfelt letter about the lingering hope of the past, and how even with a gap of time between us like an ocean, I still hadn’t found what I was looking for in the years since we’d been apart. I’d concluded by saying, “I wonder if I’ve fallen in love with the search, at the cost of finding the answer.”
I liked this line very much.
In response, the man from England wrote, “I want my CD back. Jo gave that to me, and I want it back.”
I stared at this message for a long time. I thought of how I might feel, receiving a message after two, maybe three years, and what I might think or feel upon receiving it.
“Well I have the CD now,” I said, “and I like it so much I’m going to keep it.”
Minutes later, I blocked jeffyboy772, deleted all of the tweets in the account I was working on, and changed its details entirely.
There is nothing quite like a sparkling clean, brand new apartment, I thought.
——
Adopting the personalities of the online dead came with a startling freedom. In many ways, it felt as though I could say and act however I liked. There were no consequences to my actions anymore; only what I wanted to say, and whether or not somebody was there to listen.
Over time I experienced a host of different lives this way — reconnecting with old friends, burning old bridges, occasionally rekindling forgotten feelings — and all of it for blissful two hour stretches before scrubbing it all clean, and starting over from scratch.
Sometimes I pictured it like inviting people to the apartment I was cleaning, and letting them sit in the bedroom of an old friend, where they could chat with a ghost before they were promptly kicked out, and left unable to find their way back because the room had suddenly disappeared completely.
I enjoyed the imagery of this imagined moment very much.
——
One day, as I was just about finished cleaning an account, I received a message. This was odd, because I had not written a message that day, which meant the incoming message was not a reply. And because the accounts I handled were all very old, it was perplexing to think that somebody would think to send anything at all.
The message, when I opened it, read simply, “Where did you go?”
On a whim, I replied, “I’m right here.”
Five minutes later, I received another message.
“Right where?”
“Right here in Tokyo,” I wrote.
There was a long pause, followed by four words.
“Tell me about it.”
So I did.
——
The woman on the other end of the messages — at least as far as her profile was concerned — went by the name of Ruth. What connection she had with the account I was using I wasn’t sure; I had not taken notice of the name or the tweets before I deleted and replaced them, which meant that for all intents and purposes, I was now Mr. Tom Ripley.
I told Ruth about my new life in Tokyo. I told her I had moved not long ago for answers to deep existential questions, and that perhaps unsurprisingly, I had not found the answers yet. I told her about the morning commute, and the job hunting, and the strange sensation of feeling at home in a place that was entirely foreign.
Ruth seemed to enjoy the interaction. She accepted the new Tom, asked him lots of questions, and appeared to like his jokes. It was a feeling like lovers reconnecting long after the flames of their romance had gone out, leaving only the gentle wisps of fond memories in the ashes.
It struck me as a chance to relive the past, and perhaps even play it out differently a second time around.
That night, I removed Tom Ripley’s account from my work spreadsheet and kept it for myself.
——
Ruth was curious about Tokyo. She asked about places I’d never been, food I’d never eaten, and customs I wasn’t aware of, and I explored the city for her vicariously; walking, eating, and learning. On these days, wandering between train stations listening to music, I often thought of the odd connection that had taken place in the abandoned apartment of the man now known as Tom Ripley. It was as though I had randomly answered a ringing phone, taken on another identity, and described that person’s day as my own.
And over time, I saw myself as the character in the first draft of a novel; still in development, and still unfinished, but with all the pieces to one day become something special.
As long as the story was right.
——
Ruth didn’t tell me much about herself. Mostly, she messaged at odd hours and told me what music she was listening to.
But sometimes she let details slip, and it was through those dropped puzzle pieces that I put together a picture of who she was. She had once worked in finance, but was now studying art. She worked a part-time job somewhere in the city where she lived. She painted in the mornings. She did not have many friends.
On the rare occasion, Ruth sent long messages like flooded streams of consciousness. They contained her day, the people she met during it, and whatever feelings were most prominent. Usually, they ended with her mentioning what she was not paying attention to on the television, and how bad the wine was that she couldn’t seem to stop drinking. Sometimes she wondered where her cat was and if it had gotten out, but it always showed up before she fell asleep.
I liked these messages a lot.
——
“Sometimes I miss you,” she said, “and I wish you were here.”
“Sometimes I wish I was, too,” I said.
“But you’re in Tokyo now.”
“And there’s no coming back from Tokyo.”
It was a simple phrase that had become a running joke; a place so far away that going felt unbelievable, and coming back felt impossible. A place like a dream you could escape to, Ruth once said.
I enjoyed the imagery of this imagined moment very much.
——
For the next few weeks, it was like I relied on Ruth. As though I waited for her messages because they brought with them the spark I needed to start or continue my day.
These messages came to occupy the space that hovered between moments; the invisible bridges that linked one to another, and the glue that held my life together.
——
One day, Ruth wrote, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Do you believe they exist?”
“I don’t.”
“It was the anniversary of my friend’s death, today,” Ruth said. “He fell during a hike through Morialta, and he died waiting for an ambulance. It was raining, and he shouldn’t have been there, but he was always stubborn like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“People sometimes talked about reincarnation. Rebirth and that kind of thing. I used to like the poetry in that idea, that we were only gone for a short spell before somehow, somewhere, coming back.”
“Used to?”
“When you think about life that way — of death and rebirth, over and over — it’s like we’re all ghosts, isn’t it? We’re all just lonely little ghosts, occasionally inhabiting the shells we call life, and hopping from one body to the next.”
“But why lonely?“
“Because we lose our memories every time, don’t we? Even if in one life we meet our soulmate, it’s fleeting — it’s just a single instant among thousands of others, and we might never meet them again. Don’t you think that’s lonely?”
“When you put it that way, yes.”
“So sometimes I wonder. If my friend was reborn, where did he go? What’s he doing now, and how old is he?”
“Maybe he’s in Tokyo,” I said.
“But there’s no coming back from Tokyo.”
“So they say.”
“So why go? Why did you?”
I thought for a time.
“Because there are stories here, and I want to think I’m the one to write them. There are lives to live, too, and I want to think I’m the one to live them. Sometimes you need a place to start over; a place where you’re nothing more than a blank slate without any of the baggage of the past.”
“Like reincarnation, without the death part.”
“I like to think of it like moving into a new apartment.”
“I like that, too.”
——
Ruth did not message me for a long time after that conversation. When she finally did, it was late into the evening.
“How did this happen?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“This. Us. We’re talking again. For the longest time there was just… nothing.”
“Well, I guess… time heals all wounds?”
“I had a feeling you would say that.”
“Haha.”
“But it doesn’t heal the ones that hurt the worst, does it?”
At first I wasn’t sure what to say. I had wanted to say something about my fractured relationship with my family, and the chaos that came with my father’s passing, and the heartbreak that had left me crippled until I left the country I called home, but I didn’t.
“I guess not,” I said.
And it was odd to think that the honesty I had once treasured in these fake accounts was suddenly lost to me. I could no longer speak of the feelings that sat at the bottom of my heart, and instead I now felt like a person at the bottom of a well, waiting for somebody — anybody — to pass by and listen to their story.
Later I realized it was strange because I did not feel like I was in another person’s skin anymore.
I felt like I was Tom Ripley, and he was me.
——
The following morning, Ruth messaged again.
“We should stop this,” she said.
“?”
“I know that you’re not real.”
“You what?”
“I was there with him the night he passed away. My husband. I carried him through the walking paths along Morialta, and I sat there waiting for the ambulance as his life drained away with the pouring rain.”
“Oh.”
“It broke my heart. And for the next few years I drowned myself in wine and bad movies. I lived off the money he left me and I hated myself.”
I stared at the screen, waiting.
“And one morning I open up twitter and I send him a message, and he replies.”
Where are you?
I’m right here.
“And I didn’t have anything else,” she said. “I was so low, and so broken. And I really wanted to think that maybe you were him. I liked thinking he was reborn as someone else, and that even if that person was just a drifter wandering the streets of Tokyo, it didn’t really matter as long as he was somewhere he could be happy. And if he’d forgotten me, it was okay as along as that meant he’d also forgotten the pain and suffering that had marked our last few months together, as the illness drained his body of what life he had left.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
There was a long pause.
“A part of me hates you,” Ruth said. “But a part of me wants to thank you, too. Maybe what I needed was a chance to meet his ghost to know I had to finally let him go.”
“Maybe. I hope so.”
“But whatever it is that compels you, the real you, to haunt the lives of others through the people they once knew, it also makes you a ghost. For as long as you do it, that’s what you will be. A ghost. And at some point you’re going to have to decide if that’s what you want.”
“I know,” I said.
Because I always had.
——
A few days later, Ruth told me she’d bought a ticket to Tokyo.
“You told me once that you saw Tokyo as a place for lives to live. A place to start over. I think I want to be that for a little while.”
“A blank slate?”
“Yes.”
And I knew then that I would not ask when she was coming, or give her my address or try to get in touch. Our relationship worked because we could imagine each other exactly as we wanted. We didn’t have to worry about any other reality but the one we had created, and the one that made the most sense at the time.
But you can’t be a blank slate when someone knows who you are.
“Just be careful,” I said. “They say there’s no coming back from Tokyo.”
“Thank you, Tom. Goodbye.”
And just like that, I knew. It was like hanging up the phone in Tom Ripley’s abandoned apartment and knowing, finally, that the phone was disconnected.
It would not ring again.
——
A week later, the start-up company stopped needing new twitter accounts, and I found myself out of a job. I gave them back all their spreadsheet lists, and I deleted all the copies I had made.
I got part-time work doing odd jobs around the city, and life returned to normal. On the weekends, I walked the busy Tokyo streets and wondered if Ruth was walking them too. I wondered how the city spoke to her, and how it felt to experience a world you had once only known through the ghost of your lost lover.
We might have passed each other by, but I would never know for certain. I only knew that I was done being a ghost. I had spent days and weeks in abandoned apartments, cleaning some of them, and bringing back ghosts in others. I’d met hundreds of people and, for brief, fleeting moments, been hundreds more, but I felt like I was done.
I did not want to wander empty apartments any longer.
I wanted to make a home of the one I called my own.
— -
Music
(Chad Lawson — I Should Be Sleeping)
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— Hengtee