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The third thing I did after splitting up with Gyu-ho was get on a plane to Bangkok.

If I had followed my initial plan, I would’ve lived an extremely enlightened and elegant life. Sleep from midnight to eight, make pourover coffees at home, exercise for three hours a day, learn the guitar, read all the books I wanted to, write, shop thriftily . . . But when I opened my eyes in the morning, I hadn’t a clue what time it was or whether the sun was even up. My circadian rhythms were completely shot. If, at first, I felt guilty about wasting my life away, I soon came to think, Well, whatever. Let’s see how far my money goes, let’s go as far as life will take me. And lying there on my Tempur bed, I came to the realization, Wow, this really is a very plush and perfect state of death, even boredom can get boring, and turned on my phone to do some half-hearted swiping on Tinder. Anyone would do, anyone to get me out of that coffin of a bed and into the world outside, from the rotting cesspool of my life to what lay beyond. I racked up swipes like I was repopulating the Earth. And when I got a match, I messaged, Where are you now? And finally dragged myself from bed to have bad sex for the sake of going outside.

I’d matched with him by pure mistake, back in Seoul.

A body in a suit, thirty-nine years of age. I found it so hilarious that he made a point of saying he’d majored in economics at Columbia University that I tapped his profile for more. To see what kind of an idiot went to such great lengths to hide his face and identity but proclaimed where he went to school—an Ivy League university, at that. The idiot turned out to be “Alex,” a Malay Singaporean. His favorite book was Keynes’s Employment, Interest and Money. His favorite artists were Bach and Rachmaninoff? Of course they were. He must have traveled a lot for business, because his profile came with a long list of dates of availability per city, and he was in Seoul for only a few days. Looking through this silly profile, my thumb accidentally hit Super Like. We matched, and he immediately messaged me. Could I come to his hotel? I thought for three seconds and replied yes, I could. He gave me his room number at the Four Seasons. Not bothering to shower, I put on my tracksuit that I wore for pajamas, pressed down a cap on my head, and headed for the hotel. The receptionist gave me a suspicious look as I came in, and I knocked on Alex’s door with no hopes of any sort for this encounter. Because life had always been eager to fail my expectations, no matter how low I set them.