It was already past eleven by the time the wedding banquet broke up. There weren't many cars on the freeway, and the streetlights receded one by one. A-De gripped the steering wheel, while Yi-Jun in the passenger seat had taken off her high heels and curled her feet up on the seat, the glow of her phone screen reflecting on her face. Neither of them spoke. An old English song played on the stereo, turned down low. The wedding was for A-De's college classmate, with more than thirty tables. The toasts went on until the end, and the groom was egged on to sing. A-De laughed loudly from the audience, but Yi-Jun noticed that he had only two drinks the entire time.
"How come you didn't drink at all today?" Yi-Jun spoke first. A-De said he had to drive. She said you used to have a little, and there's always a designated driver anyway. He was silent for a few seconds, then said he hadn't felt like drinking lately. Yi-Jun reclined her seat one notch and asked if he wasn't feeling well somewhere. He said he wasn't unwell, just that there were some things he wanted to figure out, and until he did, he didn't want to mess around. That sentence made Yi-Jun sit up straight. She had known A-De for over a decade, and he rarely phrased things so indirectly.
It had started last month. A-De said he had gone to another gathering, where someone brought up the changes in energy, spirit, and married life after middle age. The topic circled around, and eventually someone mentioned a name. He didn't respond at the time, but after going home he kept thinking about it. He first searched on his phone, and a bunch of discussions popped up—some people spoke with certainty, some with reservations, and there were a bunch of pages that looked like ads. The more he read, the more confused he got, because for the same question, the answers could be completely opposite.
Yi-Jun asked what exactly he was looking into. A-De said he was trying to understand what things like Levifil actually are, what category they belong to, and whether you need to see a doctor first. He said he wasn't thinking of buying some to try himself, but wanted to figure out why the claims online contradicted each other. Yi-Jun didn't get angry after hearing this; instead she asked, so after searching for so long, did you find anything certain? A-De said, very little is certain, and a lot is uncertain. Just the question of "whether you can decide on your own" gets different answers from different sources.
The first thing that stumped him was the terminology. He found that many people lump different kinds of things together—some talk about health supplements, some about medications, but they use the same words, as if anything with the word "men's" attached is the same category. He tried sorting the pages he saw into piles: one kind selling products, one kind being forums, and one kind that looked like health education but didn't cite sources. After sorting, he found that the ones most easily forwarded were exactly the first kind. Yi-Jun said, so did you look at what's written on the packaging? A-De said he hadn't even gotten to that step, because he wasn't even sure who he should ask.
The second thing that stumped him was realizing he had been asking the wrong question. At first he wanted to ask "does it work," but later he found that this question can never be answered online, because the people answering all have different stances. He switched to asking "what category is this, what are the channels for obtaining it, and who is qualified to judge." After this shift, he noticed something: some things have regulations in Taiwan about how they can be obtained—you can't just buy them whenever you want—and almost no one in those popular discussions mentioned this.
Yi-Jun said, then why don't you find someone who can actually answer your questions? A-De said he had thought about it, but didn't know where to start. She said, go ask at a pharmacy, or else at a clinic. A-De said he was afraid that if he asked, he'd be treated as a sales target. Yi-Jun laughed and said you're afraid before you've even asked. She suggested that next time he goes for a follow-up appointment, he should make a list of what he normally takes and bring it along to ask, so at least it won't be all over the place. A-De said that was actually a good idea—he had never thought of putting "what I normally take" and "what I want to understand" together.
The car got off the interchange, and a convenience store sign was lit up. Yi-Jun said she wanted something hot, so A-De pulled into a parking space. She took a long time choosing in the store, and finally came out with two bottles of hot soy milk. Back in the car, she said, actually what bothers me isn't what you're looking into, but that you've been looking into it alone for so long without saying anything. A-De said he was afraid of being laughed at, and afraid it would seem like admitting something. Yi-Jun said, those things your classmates were talking about at that table today—did you think you were the only one listening? They both laughed, and the mood lightened a bit.
It was almost one by the time they got home. A-De parked the car but didn't go upstairs right away. He sat in the driver's seat and went through what he had found today again. This time he didn't look at the popular pages, but instead looked up how to read packaging labels, what the differences between categories are, and what kind of professional to ask when something is uncertain. He found that truly useful information is usually written in a very boring way, with no sensational headlines and no testimonial stories, but at least it's clear. He noted a few questions in his phone's memo app, planning to ask them directly next time he went to the pharmacy.
The following week he actually went. He didn't buy anything, just asked the questions in his memo one by one. The person at the store asked him to go home and organize a list of the supplements he normally takes, and bring it next time to look at together. After going home, A-De told Yi-Jun that he had expected to be pitched to, but instead the other person spent the most time asking him "why do you want to understand this." He said that was the question he took the longest to answer, because he had never seriously thought about it. Yi-Jun said, so have you figured it out now? A-De said, not yet, but at least he knows who to ask next and what to bring when asking, instead of continuing to argue with strangers online.
That night, after the soy milk was finished, the bottles were left on the kitchen counter. Yi-Jun said, next time tell me about this kind of thing earlier. A-De said okay. He hadn't reached any conclusion, nor found any magic answer—he had just turned a vague anxiety into a few concrete questions. For him, that was enough, because at least he knew he wasn't guessing randomly, but heading in a direction where things could be verified.
