Once while I was at my mom’s office waiting for her to get off work, she let me stand before the glass windows and gaze at the sights below. I don’t remember if her office was on the thirty-fourth floor or the thirty-seventh floor, but in any case, it was really, really high up. Everything in sight became small and distant; houses, roads, cars, pedestrians, no matter what it was, it was as if it had absolutely nothing to do with you. Except for one strange man.
This man stood on the rooftop of the somewhat shorter building across the street. He was wearing a baseball cap and on top of his baseball cap was another baseball cap. But wearing two hats was nothing—most outrageous was the fact that he was wearing several layers of clothes; there must have been somewhere around, what, fifty layers? I counted for him: he was wearing at least three long overcoats, two jackets—plus a third one that was tied around his waist; under the jackets were layer after layer of sweaters and shirts; and then there were his pants. This guy’s pants were even more ridiculous than his shirts and jackets. He wore the shorter pants on the outside and the longer ones on the inside, so you could see crystal-clear that he was wearing at least five or six pairs. Near the bottoms of his trouser legs there was a rainbow of different colors.
This guy was sunbathing, trying to catch some of those rays that appear on a Saturday afternoon at high noon just before summer. First he raised his head and tried to sunbathe standing up, then he lowered his head and pulled open the layers of collars around his neck and took in the sun like that for a few more minutes. Like a statue, he didn’t move a muscle. When it looked like he had had enough, he lay down with his arms and legs spread out—he looked like a giant version of the character 
. He even scratched his wiener a few times. When he was finished scratching his penis, he sang a song. At first I didn’t know what he was singing; I could only see his hands, feet, and head swaying back and forth, keeping the beat. Watching him for cues, I also started to sway my head in time. Although I couldn’t hear a word of his singing, I indeed knew that song. It was a tune we used to sing when we were little:
On and on we walk, walk, walk,
Hand in hand we skip.
On and on we walk, walk, walk,
Together we go on a field trip!
The clouds are graceful and the sun is soft,
The green hills and emerald water, splendid as can be.
On and on we walk, walk, walk,
Hand in hand we skip.
On and on we walk, walk, walk,
Together we go on a field trip!
“What’s that you’re singing?” my mom asked, suddenly patting me on the head from behind.
I pointed out that strange, suntanning character to my mother.
“Oh God, another loser!” As she spoke, my mother patted my shoulder. “What’s one to do? These days there are more and more of these characters in Taiwan.”
“Is he insane?” I asked.
“Well, he’s got to have a screw loose somewhere.”
“Look at all the clothes he’s wearing.”
“Let me see…” Mom started to laugh. “He’s wearing his whole family’s wardrobe on his back!”
“He must be really hot.”
“Let’s go! Time to eat.” My mother pulled me by the collar toward the door as she told me, “If you don’t study hard and work hard, that’s how you’ll end up. Got it?”
“Why?” I asked.
“No whys, that’s just how it is.”
“End up like what?” Don’t tell me you end up sunbathing on top of a high-rise wearing fifty layers of clothing, I thought.
“End up a loser,” Mom answered.
“Is there something wrong with being a loser?”
“Of course there is.” My mother turned around to take another look at that guy sunbathing. She let out a deep sigh, blinked her eyes, and, scratching my hair, said, “Hmm, maybe there’s nothing wrong with being a loser. It’s just that he’ll end up hurting other people. Hurting his family, like his wife and children.”
“That guy has kids?”
In the end my mother never told me whether or not that guy had children. She just gave me a hug from behind and walked away. Only when we got to the elevator did she ask me if I wanted a hamburger, fried chicken, or pizza.
I’ve already forgotten what exactly it was I ate that afternoon, but I remember that the whole time I kept humming that “On and on we walk, walk, walk” song. Moreover, after we got home, I bundled up in several layers of clothes. Then, just as I had once attempted to look up words like “dick,” “cunt,” and “fuck,” I embraced the dictionary and began to look for the meaning of “loser.” Unfortunately, all it said in the dictionary was “see good-for-nothing.” I already knew what good-for-nothing meant, it was something that was of no use. But a “loser” had to mean something more than just a good-for-nothing. I figured that it had to be a bit more interesting than that. It’s a shame that I couldn’t find the answer in the dictionary.
The next time I was to hear the term “loser” was in the van, and Annie was the one to speak the word. She turned around to ask me, “What’s a little handsome fellow like you hanging around with a bunch of losers like us for?”
Not knowing how to answer her, all I could do was lower my head.
“What do you mean losers? We’re a bunch of good-for-nothings!” Hoop called out, correcting her from the back seat. “If we weren’t such a pack of motherfucking good-for-nothings, we wouldn’t have ended up having the shit kicked out of us back there.”
The two guys on my left who looked like they had just pulled themselves out of a manure vat nodded in unison.
