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Archive for the category “travel”

30 Aug 2012

Cabin Fever Mountain: Euphoria Along the Annapurna Circuit

Nothing but snowy dunes and the clear blue sky lay before me as I peered up at the summit of my journey—Torung La Pass. Three weeks of walking had led me to this moment. Three weeks of tropical waterfalls, wooded pine, wild marijuana, stupas … three wonderful weeks. The air felt thin, fifty percent thinner than normal, precisely. I stopped for a moment and leaned heavily on my one good walking stick. The other had broken along the way. Cheap equipment bought in Pokhara before the journey. Everything was cheap in Nepal. Everything. Up ahead, I noticed that UK, a young Swede I had met along the way to the pass, was walking steadily toward the top. For the better part of the journey, I had joked about his brash foolhardy nature, predicting all the while that it would catch up to him. It had in the end, and his head ached from altitude sickness—a symptom of walking too fast and not breaking enough. It had nearly claimed two in our group. Yet there he was leading the charge. The other poor fellow to feel the jitters was a German man by the name of Max. He was wandering in the back somewhere, behind the five Israeli men and the German girl, Stephi. She was a fun girl, full of life, and slow as hell up a mountain. Blame it on the camera. I had begun to notice on my way that those with the SLR’s were the slowest. Every leaf, every shrub, every movement of the wind, and her eyes would glimmer, her mouth would perce in anticipation, so eager to capture a moment more valuable for her in memory than in the moment. That was my view of pictures at least. My camera was a snapshot, and the only movement it made was bashing around in my pants pocket. The lens broke on the walking stick, in case you were wondering.

I turned around and looked down the path to see if she was in sight yet along the trail, to no avail. The only person close enough to see was Noam, a short, dark-skinned Israeli man from the region north of Jerusalem. He was an emotional man, and showed his fears and his criticism as much as any actor in a romance novel, something I had gotten a dose of more and more as the days drew on. We had fought on and off over the past few days, mostly over food, namely candy bars. On the mountain, when men and beast plod along without comfort, heaving in toil, the small joys become immensely important—Hot water, warm tea, and you guessed it, candy bars. For the eight of us in the trekking party, the Marylin Monroe of candy was the wild and elusive Twix—sought after, drooled over, fought to the teeth for. In fact, in the twilit hours the night before our “summiting day,” in the unforgivingly snowy regions of the mountainside, a fight erupted over the chocolaty, crunchy, caramel wafer. It was strange and passive-aggressive to boot as well.

It all started with a staring contest and a bet. Before I start, I will say that Cabin Fever is real and deadly to new friendships. With that said, our tale begins in the cafeteria room of a jankily constructed log cabin hotel, 900 meters below the pass. It is a quarter past nine o’clock, and already eyes all around are growing heavy. Mouths are beginning to yawn in anticipation of that dreamy goodness that befits well-deserved rest. But still a few linger and laugh and play games. I sit at the head of the table, with a smile hearty and sincere to the last, as I watch Noam and Stephi stare down each other in a friendly staring contest. I notice Maxxi staring at me and shuffling in his seat to catch my attention. I look into his big grey Bavarian eyes and the game begins. We are locked. In a moment, I wane and a smatter of uncontrolled blinks rocket from my countenance. We laugh. I realize right then that I am bad at this game, and shake my head in disbelief. Schmelling, another Israeli—the ringleader of the Jews, if you will—smiles and winks at me. I am taken aback by his dashing good looks and congressionally styled hairdo. He looks like he could be an extra in Grease, standing next to a dropped ’44 Chevy, but for the black-rimmed square lens glasses covering his eyes. Like the lobbyist that he is, his eyes move about the room, seeking to entertain and envelop all. He winks at Tal, who doesn’t respond due to extreme bake-edness. He doesn’t look like he’s quite there, sitting on the other side of the table with his hat drawn down and his chin on his chest.

Noam beats Stephi and bursts out of his seat in victorious jubilation. I am stunned and surprised by his energy at so late an hour. I wonder what effects the marijuana must have had on him as he slaps his ass and gallops around the room. I still can’t help but smile at his antics, which seem to lighten the room for the moment. Then he points at me and yells, “I duel you.” One eyebrow leaps up, and then the rest of me does as I wonder at his meaning. “Let’s stare,” he spouts out. I smile and position myself before him. “But wait,” he says. “Let’s make it interesting. The loser buys a Twix.” My smile gains a foot lengthwise. The game has just become serious in a moment. My mouth waters at the chance of sugar before bedtime.

I am a cheap man too, just to throw that out there, so I must not lose. I psych myself up for the competition and ponder the stakes. Twix have inflated with every 100 metre level elevation in the Annapurna Trail, and what was once 40 Nepali rupees is now 200. (80 rp = 1 US dollar) I am on a budget, and have spent my candy ration for the day. I stretch for the fight. I blink feverishly for three seconds, hold for three, then blink feverishly for three more. I scratch the scratchy parts of my gigantic Lawrence nose and get ready. Stephi leans in and begins the count. “3,2, 1… Game on bitches.”

We are underway. Tal starts to make a face, but Shmelling slaps him in the face. “No faces, you idiot,” he says like a serpent. “Let them make the faces.” Noam clenches his big brown nose, and wavelike wrinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. It looks funny, and my eyes have to widen to catch myself. My mouth twitches, but avoids running away with the game-plan. Too close. I dash into the offensive, and shove my index finger up my nose, burying it nearly to the knuckle. All that huddle around guffaw like hill-billies caught banging a goat in the back of a barn, but Noam appears unaffected. His mouth moves. His massive, deep eyebrows furrow. His forehead creases fold and unfold. I am unaffected, however, for I have smartly locked all of my attention on a mole in the middle of his left cheek. Focus, I tell myself. Focus. Then Schmelling says, “Make a real face, Mike.” Is that a challenge, SHHHHH-mare-ling, and I pull out the big guns.

I’m talking about my penis.

That was a joke.

My right hand goes to work, and grips and pulls my nostrils up hard. My left hand, alternately, pulls the bags under my eyes down. The result is startling. I have transformed, and now have the appearance of an ogre. Noam blinks, rolls his head back, and falls over laughing. I have won the lottery.

The lights go out. The music stops. I stand alone—Achilles, with a crying Trojan under the heel of his fancy fighting sandals.

The lights turn on, and I sit down with a content smile, awaiting my prize. Noam’s laughter settles and he begins to talk to Stephi. I look at Schmelling and Maxxi and we fist bump together. Then I wait for Noam to get up. I look at Noam. He continues to talk. I look at Schmelling. I look at Max. I look at Noam. He is still talking, and not getting up.

“Teli Twix! (Give me Twix in Hebrew)” I yell ruefully at Noam. That gets his attention. Schmelling laughs and repeats it back at him. Noam turns away and continues to chatter. “Teli Twix!” I repeat. I look at Shmelling. He mouths something to me in Hebrew and urges me forward. I yell , “Ackshov! (Now)” He looks at me and throws his hands up derisively as if to say, I give up shithead, and stands up and I nod in affirmation as he scurries off to the front desk to get my winnings.

The group goes on to talk amongst themselves. I smile agreeably, but stray continually towards Noam, who slowly goes about his work. Impatience builds, as I salivate all over the table like the purple spray-painted dog in the corner. Finally he turns and walks back, holding the golden wrapper in his hands. I smile and daydream ahead a few moments. I am holding the chocolate goodness in my hand. All are cheering with envious eyes. I sink my teeth in. Oooo.

He moves over to me, and turns. Suspicion mounts instantly. My hands press against the table. He sits back down at his seat and opens the Twix. My heart gives out.

That sonofabitch.

I try to fathom what is happening, what conspiracy is afoot to drag me away from the one thing on this god forsaken mountain that has any and all value. Is God mad at me? He pulls out a Twix. The gates of Hell are opening in the floorboards, and smoke is rising. He breaks a piece off and hands it to Tal. Fire erupts from within, and I am feeling the heat. Then he fucks up, and starts to pass the Twix around.

“Teli Twix!” I yell with outstretched hands. A heavy drum beats in the background. I repeat myself, but he continues to pass.

“Hold on,” he says. My head twists as harshly as a crane in a tornado.

“What is he doing?” I ask Schmelling. He looks at me and shrugs his shoulders.

Max tries to hand me a piece. I look him in the eye and shake my head. “No. I’m good,” I say as obstinately as possible.

“What?” Noam asks loudly.

“I don’t want a piece man. That’s what I said.”

“What do you mean, man. Take it.”

“The bet was that the loser buys the winner a Twix.”

“No,” he retorts. “I said that the loser buys everyone a Twix.

“Hey, Schmelling,” I hearken over to his side, “Did you hear him say that?”

“No, Mike. I didn’t hear him say that,” he says spitting the words out, along with a mouthful of Twix.

Noam curses at Schmelling in Hebrew, then stares me down.

“Eat the Twix,” he demands of me.

“No, man. I’m sorry, and I don’t want to cause any problems, but I don’t want it now. It was all mine, and I’m not taking crumbs.”

“Fuck you man,” he says to me. “You’re a bitch.”

What did that motha fucka just say? I think. I catch Max in the corner of my eye staring at me awkwardly, waiting on my response. I Scratch my head and grin at Schmelling. His face is red and he has a guilty, crumb filled smile on his face. Stephi looks utterly befuddled. Tal is asleep.

“Woe Noam. That isn’t cool,” I retort like a boy scout.

Noam laughs at me. “You know what. You’re a fucking monkey. And you,” he says, pointing at Schmelling, “are an asshole.” Schmelling puts up his hands in surrender.

“Woe man. Calm down,” I say. “I just don’t want your Twix.”

“Fuck you man,” he repeats and points at me. I look away as he scoffs and sits down. I notice that the aura of the room is an awful melancholic shade of blue. I continue to stand. The air feels colder. My palms feel clammy. I feel awkward.

“This is awkward,” I say weakly. I had to leave. “I’m going to get a blanket.” I move away slowly. Max starts to talk to Stephi. Schmelling’s eyes trail off. Noam’s shoulders relax. As I go to the front desk and ask for another blanket, I cannot shrug off, much less fathom what had so quickly escalated. The only thing I can feel pulsing through me, without a doubt, is doubt, plain and simple. What the fuck just happened? I wonder. Something strange had definitely occurred. Why? It was awkward as hell. But what exactly was it? Where did it come from? Was I to blame? I notice myself then, standing alone. I look over at them. They are busy talking. Loneliness settles on me like fog on lake water in the morning. I grab the blanket, walk over, and say goodnight quickly and walk away. They look at me with puzzled faces, but utter no disagreements.

The air outside hammers my face as I step out onto the patio. I run to my room to avoid getting my socks wet, to no avail. They are soaked. I sit on my bed and my head swirls over the proceedings, and what to do to solve the feelings that are now cutting through me like a sawblade on oak. Slowly, I can feel the fever come over me, as if I am tracking it in the snow. I am an outsider. I stand up. I should leave. I should pack up and leave. Those people in there won’t care anyways. It’s over. I think for a few moments, weighing the situation. Outside the window, snow is falling heavily. No. It is the middle of the night, and I will not survive if I start walking in ten hours before sun-up. I sit back down, undress and curl into my sleeping bag.

I start to wonder at the symptoms of Cabin Fever. Most likely, feeling like an outsider is the first. Then paranoia. Then anger. I definitely felt paranoid that everyone thought I was a crazyass. I was angry at Noam for flipping out at me. Maybe I was going crazy. I buried my head and tried for the life of me to zen the fuck out and slow my heart-rate down. It was beating so fast that it felt like a hummingbird was flying around inside me, poking the inside of my chest again and again.

Twenty minutes later, a knock came at the door, and Noam, Schmelling, and Nimrod entered. Nimrod was the last Israeli. I didn’t look at them, but said faintly, “Hey,” without giving away the tension in my voice.

Noam responded. “Hey man. I just wanted to say that … well, that we’re cool, whatever happened. Ya?”

“Ya, man. For sure.” I responded back at them. A few moments later, the door shut.

A minute passed, and Stephi came in and started to undress to go to bed. Her and I were sharing the room, and it had never seemed so quiet before. Until that moment, we had talked for hours on end every night about everything. I felt betrayed by her silence at the table more than anyone. As that hum of nothingness hanged in the air, I wondered whether or not to speak. Moments passed as I deliberated. Suddenly, I realized that she hadn’t done anything. What did I expect? She just chose not to defend me. That means that I was being an ass, plain and simple. That’s all. I was an ass. And now I feel like a crazyass stuck on a mountain and won’t talk to anyone. So, lying there in my bed, I did the only thing I could. I opened my mouth and blurted out an affirmation. “That got real crazy back there, didn’t it?”

“Ya,” she replied out of the bleakness. “It did.”

“What happened to me? I was such an asshole!”

Then she let out a long gentle sigh, and said, “No, you weren’t.” Already, I could feel the worry melting away. “That just got crazy,” she continued. “We’re all acting a little nuts up here. It’s this place!”

“Ya!” I shouted. Thank God she understood. “I feel like I’m going crazy up in this goddamned place!” Jesus, had she hit the nail on the head with that statement. We both laughed.

“I know. It’s like, being up here for so long, walking for hours on end every day, for the past two or three weeks. It’s just a lot to handle.”

“It is.”

As the night went on, we talked and talked, as we did before, and let out everything. We talked about the mountain, our trekking party, and branched off into everything else. I told her about my background, family life… and even went so far as to explain why I had felt the need to escape the US and my family in the first place. It was like finding a hand in the darkness. That night, after we had exhausted ourselves talking, I stayed up scribbling away in my journal until my flashlight went out.

The next day, I woke up early and sought out Noam. He was eating a bagel in the main den, and greeted me warmly. I apologized profusely to him and everyone else for my behavior the night before. We hugged it out and all laughed about it. Then we ate, and set off on the trail’s grueling finale.

On the last bits of the hike, Noam and I began silently completing to see who would get up to the summit first. I saw a flash in his eyes as he looked up at me from around the bend, and I straightened myself out. I’m not giving into him on the last stretch, I told myself. So I took a deep breath and turned around to continue up the last stretch. UK and Schmelling were already way ahead of me, and gaining space every second, so I pushed off and started to tread.

The ground was icy, and the upturn was so slick that I could feel my feet slide ever so slightly. I dug in step by step and planted my stick in the soft powder to my side. The path was as narrow as my hip, and directly to my right was a shear drop for about 300 meters. I looked down and scoffed at it. Traversing landslide areas, rickety bridges that swung from side to side, and running across pebbly trails that dissolved right under your boot had prepared me for the last stretch. I smiled at the sheen coming off the mountain face and the clear horizon spreading out everywhere before my eyes, spat off the side, and soldiered on undaunted. Moments passed, and the cliff-face disappeared behind me. It was the last stretch of the hike. I could see bright red, yellow, blue, and green colors waving a hundred meters in front of me. The end. My walk turned into a gallop. The waves gave way and parted suddenly, the hike leveled off, and the pass opened up. I had climbed Cabin Fever Mountain.

Sitting along the pass was a small wooden tea house to the left and a stupa to the right. The stupa was small and made of stones, unlike the other stupas along the way that were plastered on the outside and painted with white and gold. Attached to it was a bevy of prayer flags in every color. Prayer flags for safety, for victory, for affirmation. I walked over and pulled out mine from my coat pocket. It was a grey flag I had seen lying on the trail, tattered and worn. It looked like a bad dish rag, and it was perfect. I was so happy I kissed it before I tied it on. I didn’t have to say any prayers. Everything seemed to speak for itself up there. I don’t know if it was for a lack of oxygen in the air, but I felt nothing but euphoria—beautiful, unadulterated, euphoria.

As we sat around in the heavy wind and drank tea, sang, and took picture after picture, I kept thinking that I had to be blessed. A man like me—Michael Querin—up on the mountain, looking out at Nepal. I had to be blessed.

And I was. Everything you could imagine had happened on that unforgiving mountain in the Himalayas. My crew and I had laughed, and toiled, and nearly killed each other. All the while, the one thing that kept sticking out in my mind was that life was on that mountain. All around was life, and it burst out more plainly than any other time in my life. Every moment that I breathed in the air, I could feel the spirit of the earth rushing in and out of me, invigorating my soul, enlivening my spirit. It was enchanting. I do believe that I am in love with the Annapurna Circuit.

Posted in nepal, outdoors, spiritual, transience, uplifting and tagged Nepal, Pokhara, Staring contest, Twix | Leave a Comment

13 Jun 2012

1 Comment

Coming Back

I sat in Narita Airport for over three hours in the same seat, facing the window. My eyes wandered back and forth. I scanned the runway and watched as the planes float down and touch the ground. I skimmed the lines of the 747 wings a couple hundred meters away. My eyes focused on the welding lines and bulkheads. To my left, a group of elderly Japanese women chattered in their native tongue. I listened intently to that the unfamiliar banter I had grown so accustomed to hearing yet never understanding. It felt good to hear it, as if for the last time. It would be gone soon enough. In a few hours, I would be home—home—the word hit me like an anvil—People that would understand me, places that would kindle my memory, finite details that would play with my head and make me laugh and moan; small things I had forgotten in the hubbub of strangeness.

As my eyes began to lose focus, I wandered into the reality that had chosen to unfold within my head mere hours before the true reality. Before then, like all things that are difficult, it all felt surreal. Life in a different place does that to memories. Things don’t exist for a while. Realities change. I knew that. I had the experience before. Italy had come and gone a few years ago, and felt further back than the U.S. In fact, it felt as if I hadn’t been there at all. It simply didn’t happen. It was a dream and when it ended, I had turned into Mr. Hyde again.

There are many types of ‘Mr. Hyde,’ for he is simply man’s worst nightmare—the ghost in the closet. The particular beast that came to mind at that moment was the conformist, the betrayer of epiphanies. The folly and power that exudes from an utterly simple life fades away, as it always does when reality hits, and you turn like a coward back to “the joker”—the man with fluctuating character.

At that moment, the airport saddened me. In my time abroad, it had become a hall filled with endless doors leading to excitement, and pain, and challenging—to new places—to the scenery of the life that I wanted to live forever and ever.

I recalled the man that I was, and I was scared. If it happened once, why not again? If I lost that simple gaze before, what would stop the drop this time? The abundance of ideas and differences that I had experienced, as opposed to home, made me wary.

Then it came—that feeling that everyone that leaves through doors and does not linger to look back goes through—the itch to run. It is stronger and more persistent than any addiction I have ever had, acceptable or otherwise, and an onrush of reasons streamed through my head:

You can stay here no-name, you can walk out onto the streets of Tokyo, find a hostel, wake up early and start looking for a teaching position tomorrow.

Japanese girls are hot and you’re going to miss out?

Why haven’t you learned Japanese yet? Now is the time.

You know in two days, you’re either going to be kicked out or on the run from “truth and righteousness.”

It was then that the whirl-wind question came up. It comes with a force, and causes you to question your plans—What if I never come back?

As I remember it, after that question popped into my head, the grass became greener, the clouds parted and the heavens opened up, and the Japanese women working at the airport turned into goddesses before my very eyes. The myriad of places that I had traveled flowed through my head with a lavender scent, and my heart ached.

For two full hours in that airport, it felt like time had cracked in two and sucked me into a vortex. I hadn’t felt so nervous in a long time.

But I still got on that Singapore United flight A1205 bound for Los Angeles, and I have Knowledge to thank for talking me up from that spiraling hell my brain was driving in.

Knowledge is a sonofabitch in my opinion because he hits you in the face instead of just nudging you on the shoulder. All I remember is that one minute I saw daisies and mermaids, and the next minute I had closed Treasure Island and was heading outside.

I was in the middle of feeding my neurosis when a girl with a small mousy voice tells me to move over. I look up, and what do you know, she’s got a cute button nose and eyes to match. But then she opens her mouth and Knowledge is shining all over her teeth. I swear, I must have looked like James Bond when he saw Jaws for the first time in Moonraker, absolutely terrified. Then I looked over at the Chatty Cathy group and realized that a sea of whale language isn’t cute at all, but rather irritating. That’s when it hit me—I just had a bit of cold feet.

Doubt and paranoia never go away because like a joke, they are most of the time based on some shred of truth. I’m home now, and I can already feel that damned conformist monster reeling within. As hard as I try to hide the “good ole Mcgregor” my friends and family know so well, old antics materialize from time to time. But vices and imperfection alone aren’t the mark of a coward, it’s letting them dictate your life that is. Hence, as long as I never forget the burning will to move forward that surfaced under the layer of neurosis back in Narita Airport, a solid character may stay intact.

Posted in responsibilty, solidarity, travel and tagged Chatty Cathy, cold feet, homesick, James Bond, Los Angeles, Moonraker, Narita Airport, Narita International Airport, Tokyo, Treasure Island

02 Jun 2012

Nepal is Paradise and You Must Go There

For the past thirty minutes, the prelude to this story was going to be inspirational, focused on getting all of my friends to stop making excuses and grab the traveling twenty’s life by the horns, as I have. I wrote as deliberately as I could, giving flashy examples that would pierce the heart and bring out of the soul of the wanderer in everyone, but then it got too threatening and I realized something; not everyone is as free to leave everything as me. It’s okay and I get it.

I want everyone with the means to explore to do precisely that, and by ‘means,’ I imply youth, lacking in responsibilities, and just between you and me, a bit of virility never hurt.

I came back a few weeks ago to the US and started hanging out with friends I hadn’t seen for well over a year. It has been great to see them again, but I have heard one thing more than anything else during our catch-up sessions, “I wish,” followed by the ‘but’ that stood in the way. I couldn’t really believe most of the reasons that were pulled out. At times, I even shot them down. Looking back now, that was not good by any means. I get it.

I get it a lot, don’t I? J But that’s just it, travel and you will get it too. Traveling simplifies it. More than that, it hits you with the itch to move. But as I sit here on my bed at midnight, I realize where the fear to leave comes from. I had it, and it still crops up at times. Stability, solidity, whatever you want to call it. That day-in-day-out that is so easy to bitch about, but feels really really comfortable. I got it when I went to Korea. It felt sticky and weird, but I kind of liked it because it gave me time to jack off and play Nintendo DS. That was a joke and I’m sorry. J

There is no way for me to intimidate people into traveling, and criticism certainly doesn’t help. Most of the time, it just makes people scoff at you and roll their eyes. I get it that ‘the life’ that most people (or at least my friends) think of after college is getting a job or going to grad school, but I am here to tell you that if you’re not one hundred percent positive about it now, stop! STOP YOU SONS OF BITCHES! That’s not the life now, and you’re too young to go and get that picket fence all nailed up just yet. The twenties are for figuring shit out, and what better way is there than to go half-way across the world and try to make friends with people that don’t speak English. I’m talking about challenges.

But challenges are great. And I digress to Nepal…

Nepal is the place to start and end. It is as lovely as a flower, but as strong and mind-blowing as a hit of acid and a shit-ton of bass.

In Asia, a man can find anything, like drugs and sex, but Nepal is different. Honestly, Nepal probably has that stuff in plenitude as well, but Nepal is not that. It is the place where you find the things that have been lost, and gain the things that are yet to be found.

I cannot describe Nepal in a way that does it justice, just as a picture cannot capture the magnitude of depth or the sound that mountains make. Beauty can be described brilliantly at times, but everything falls short of feeling. That’s why travel-writing in my opinion, though awesome at times, ultimately sucks. It paints a picture that is dear to the orator, but less-than-relatable to anyone that wasn’t in the moment. But I’m writing and that was me two minutes ago. All branches of writing, as pictures, and stories, and moments, are not meant to catalog lives, but stir up the fire under the feet, to liven us up and draw us out. MOVE DAMNIT, MOVE! If you see that generic landscape picture on your desktop and are not stirred even a little, you are an android and I want nothing to do with you. You see that shit and you are struck for a time, however small.

So I’m doing it. I’m talking about Nepal.

Trekking in the Himalayas is challenging. The harshest battles were fought over Twix and our stances on the death penalty. I found strong parallels between the mountain and my parents.

There. I’m done.

I know. It’s a rip-off. I didn’t talk about it at all. What would I do, tell you something funny, or crazy, or extremely inspirational? But that’s just it; I don’t want my stories to be desktop photos that people can roll their eyes at and label as clichéd travel stories, and I don’t want people living through my crazy-assedness. If people are strong enough to move, they’re certainly strong enough to stand up and push themselves out the door without my ass telling them what to do.

The Gods are the smartest,

For they do not proffer

The whole of the heavens

Or life’s greatest coffer,

For such is as evident,

As sand in the desert,

Yet most will not find it

With their eyes on the dirt.

And I, with my hand on the trigger,

Know only that life is much bigger.

I could try and tell a tale,

But then I’m sure, I’d quickly fail.

For anything less than life is a jip,

So why would I offer a time as a tip?

Posted in inspirational, nepal, poetry, solidarity and tagged Asia, Himalayas, Nepal, Nintendo DS, post-university life, travelling in nepal, Twix | Leave a Comment

19 Apr 2012

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Ideals

Woe to those that envy the chaser,

Who rides and rides with a life-like pacer.

Today, I’ll die. Nope. Tomorrow perhaps.

Today I’ll ride, to Hell and back.

Woe to those that prize the search,

For long are the days, and cramped the perch.

Today, Nepal. Tomorrow the road.

Today I’ll go and ne’re return.

Woe to those, who seek the easy,

As if life is full of the weak and weary,

For moments grow long when the mind is idle.

Be warned!

The sun hangs still in lands of title,

And riches in travel hold peril and bridle.

So come if you can, but take to heart,

That a man has an idol

When he can’t play the part.

Posted in diary, introspective, poetry, travel and tagged Nepal, nomadic life

18 Apr 2012

1 Comment

The Rude Malaysian

The Warrior of Light knows that no one is stupid and that life teaches everyone – however long that may take.

-Manual of the Warrior of Light (Paulo Coelho)

Today I met a Malaysian man that made me think about a lot of things, mainly Asians and how I interact with them as a white traveler. It all started in the market, a place where nothing usually occurs except trading your hard earned money for junk to fill up liters of your bag. I had a delicious strawberry lassi that I had purchased from a smiling Indian woman and was heading for the sandal area. I cut around a group of people and headed down an alley, and that’s when we met.

“I always take the shortcut,” a short Malaysian man in glasses said.

“Nice,” I replied half-assedly and walked faster. My stride must have said something along the lines of, ‘Fuck off,’ but the man persisted.

“Where are you going?”

“Going to get some sandals, man,” I replied. Great, I thought. Here’s another dude that wants to small-talk and practice his English. I’m not in the mood for the six-step now. Still he continued.

“Where are you from?”

“California,” I said with the man-cent (a heavy implacable voice that terrifies the weary and forces the small to shrink back).

“Really, American?” he asked.

I break the narration to point out that when a foreigner says ‘American’ as a question, they either love you like ‘Chanel’ (as I later found out) or they think you’re personally responsible for everything terrible in the world. Most of the time, such reactions come from Asians and Europeans. Which do you think hate and love? Most of the time, it’s that easy to tell.

Anyways . . .

“Ya, bud, I’m American,” I said loudly.

That’s when the fun started. He turned on his heels and followed behind me. From then on, it got interesting. He started to ask me questions, a lot of questions. And they weren’t regular. They were curveballs, starting with “What do you think of how Asian people treat you?”

“What?” I said rather startled.

That’s when he spilled all over the market, talking like a castaway that just got off Crazy Island. He told me that he was writing a book . . . about how differently white people are treated in Asia than Asian travelers. He went off. White people are like Chanel, and their shit is Gucci. His words, not mine. Who the hell do I have in my company?-was all I could think from the beginning.

He asked me how my experiences were in Korea. “Korea’s weird,” I said as I usually do. “A lot of Koreans are pretty damn racist against white people, actually.” Not my finest moment, I can see now. A slip that too obvious to be Freudian and too general to be knowledge.

“It depends on the age,” he responded.

“Do you talk to a lot of Asian people?” he continued to probe.

“Ya. I do,” I said with a rather arrogant tone.

“It’s fake,” he spouted.

“What is?”

“Anytime you ever have a conversation with an Asian, they just smile and nod. You are all superstars to them.”

“Now, now, now,” I responded. “It’s not fake. I think that’s a bit narrow-minded to say that it’s all fake. Not everybody has a complex in Asia that dictates loving white people. You can’t just stereotype everybody, man. That’s pretty narrow-minded.”

He looked at me. The smile was gone. Way to go, I thought. Two minutes into the conversation and I’m already attacking the guy. It had been a while since I had a real conversation with a local. “Think,” he said. “Give me an example of one conversation you have had with an Asian in your travels that was real. One.” Then he started to whistle like an asshole.

I looked at him. I’ll play your game, you son of a bitch, I thought and started the journey to remember one. It was hard. I started to sweat, and he continued to whistle. “Don’t make up one now,” he said. Fuck off, I thought, and continued. His manner got to me, and in my foggy state, I couldn’t remember anything.

I’ve got to. I started to trace countries: Vietnam . . . women that wanted to bang and be seen with a white guy, Laos . . . locals that stay in groups, Cambodia . . . women that just wanted to get out, any way they could . . . Thailand, no locals left; Just white people. Fuck. For some reason, I forgot to think of my whole year spent in Korea. It was probably because I felt beaten from the start by his arrogance. Chalk it up to something to work on for the future.

“It’s ok,” he said after a minute or so.

He looked at me. He wasn’t smiling though, like I thought he would be. He looked kind of sad, like a man that figures his wife is cheating and then catches her lover on the voice-mail. We were silent for a while, and then I asked his opinion. “Why can’t I remember anything? There had be something?”

“Asian people think white people are better. It’s not your fault. It’s ours. We kiss your feet before you see our faces.”

He rattled me. He was generalizing so much. But I couldn’t do anything. I felt like he got me. After all, I couldn’t recall a real conversation. (The real question is – What constitutes a real conversation?–as my friend later pointed out to me.) I felt so frustrated by his extreme cynicism. He stated a problem and gave no solution. It felt like a scene straight out of 1984. The fog hit me, and I reacted.

“So what’s the point of writing the book?” I asked harshly.

“I want people to see it.”

“What audience are you aiming for?”

“I’m writing it for backpackers.”

“White or Asian?”

“White.”

“Why? You said that white people know it’s fake. Why don’t you write the book for Asians?”

“Asians know. They love it. They’re slaves to it. White people are the problem. They know, but they try to stay ignorant to it. They don’t get the glamour in non-Asian countries, so when they get it here, they love it.”

“Aww,” I whined. But it’s not like they’re trying to be ignorant. No one wants a fake conversation, but when you’re in a new setting with new people, you’re top priority is to make friends.”

“Yes, yes, I understand, but they should be aware of the fact so that they can find Asian people that don’t perpetuate the stereotype.”

“What, like you?” I asked. He grinned.

“I’m not like most Asians.” I couldn’t agree more.

“But what will it be, a summary of this idea?”

“Yes.”

“Are you planning on offering some kind of solution?”

“There is no solution to it.” I was silent. He continued. “Every Asian wants to adopt a white person. ‘Come and meet my family. Be a part of my life. It’s like a market and everyone’s just trying to grab a white man while they’re on sale.”

“Jesus, man. You make Asians sound like a bunch of cattle herding around for the best grass.”

“White people don’t like to talk about it because it makes them uncomfortable.”

My silence was a testament to that. This type of conversation certainly wasn’t on the ballad for the night, and here I was, talking to a guy that stereotyped every conversation between a white man and an Asian. What did he think of our conversation then?

“What about a white person that marries a Malaysian? That’s not real either?” This is it, I thought. What could he do, say that love between white people and Asians was impossible? Now it will get narrowed even further.

“Sometimes, but usually it’s difficult. White culture ends up superseding Asian culture. One has to give way. It’s ok for a Malaysian though. If they divorce, the kids are like gold. They have the strength, the ‘aura of the white-man.’ They don’t need to sell. They can sell all by themselves. Look around Kuala Lumpur. All the billboards show only three types of people, mixed malay-white, white, or pure Malaysian. In all cases, the models look white. They get surgery, wear contacts, get highlights. That’s what Malaysian women want, the white life, or white kids. Asian people want to copy. That’s the difference between white people that come to Asia and Asians that come to America. White people are curious of Asian culture, but they don’t try to copy. They know who they are. Asians spend two weeks in America and forget where they come from. They just want to assimilate.”

By this point, I had more or less stopped talking. For all intents and purposes, I thought this guy was an ass. But it didn’t matter to me then. I had nothing to do for the next couple of hours and this was the first Malaysian Muslim I had spoken to since I came to Kuala Lumpur. And to make things even stranger, he handed me his number and contact info and told me he wanted to meet the next day.

“So how do you think it is for an Asian-American that visits Asia? In terms of interacting with an Asian, is it like a white person coming here?”

“Ask the cab drivers.” Alright, I thought. This is going to be a trip. He continued. “So I asked cab drivers who they disliked the most out of all foreigners in their car. After all, they meet hundreds of people every day. They said that Asians from white countries were predominately the loudest and most arrogant, trying to show that they are from a Western society. The Western Asian is born in two cultures, the ‘household culture,’ and the surrounding culture. At home, they are Asian. Out and about in their country, they act white. And in Asia, they act superior, which translates to white. The mind always tries to one up the rest of the population. White culture is at the top. It’s like Prada shoes.”

“Alright, man.” I smiled. “Let’s talk about something else.”

He lightened the conversation a bit, and decided to focus on me. I told him that I was an aspiring writer and he almost exploded in excitement. Then he started to probe with the hard questions, as he did. What do you like about yourself? What do you dislike? Are you happy here? It seems like people that have been traveling for as long as you have problems at home . . . He didn’t ask me about my family, though. I think he could predict by my reactions that I didn’t want to open that door. And he didn’t ask me about my religion. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

The question that stuck out the most was when he asked me what I thought of myself on the whole. I told him that I thought I was sort of arrogant and opinionated at times. “That’s interesting,” he said, “to speak of your vices first.”

“Well I gotta work on it,” was my response.

I even managed to surprise myself. When he asked me what I sensed other people thought of me, I told him that I thought most people loved me at the beginning and hated me at the end, an idea of mine that I keep buried away from everyone (Until right now, I guess). He didn’t miss a beat either, but probed and probed after why I thought so. I told him. “They just want me to be consistent,” I admitted after a moment of silence. “That’s the thing. I’m not. My opinions change ever goddamned second. One minute, I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, the next I’m dancing at a rave trippin’ my balls off. I can’t stay put, even if I tried.”

Then, after a while, he got all affectionate. “I like you,” he said blushing. “You’re very open-minded.”

“Thanks,” I said. In the back of my head, a voice was saying, Fuck . . . When the devil calls you an angel, what are you?

But that was the catch. He wasn’t totally a doosh, but he was definitely rude, and loved to stereotype. But he admitted that he was rude. I didn’t know what to think.

We talked until his bus came. He invited me to come to his home-town and stay for a few days. As his bus pulled up, he kissed me on the cheek ‘italian-style’ and gave me a big hug. Good guy, I thought and waved goodbye.

Thinking about our conversation now, I realize that I could have made a lot of counter-arguments. Particularly, I have meaningful conversations with people every day because they listen to me and I to them. Well, most of the time. But you do have a different barometer when travelling so much. You do not have enough time in one place, nor do you know where to look for a good conversation. So when you find someone, you force things sometimes, like friendships and deep conversations. I guess that’s when it can be fake. The language barrier is another problem as well. But I didn’t argue with the man. From the way the conversation played out, it looked in a lot of ways like I agreed with him, or at least felt beaten down by his arrogance (burying the phrase from you, Tim) I just chewed on what he said and nodded. I guess I was a little like the Asians he spoke of that put their opinions aside to the white man’s and smile. I don’t agree with a lot of his ideas, but it’s ok. We have different opinions. I recall something that he said that made a lot of sense, “An open-minded person can argue with someone and still remain friends after.” I’ll have to remember that.

It’s funny. As the months go by in my travels, there have been times when I felt comfortable falling back into quiet introspection. I start to avoid people that smile too readily, thinking that they just want to attach themselves to me. It all makes me feel scared and lonely. I begin to stay by my hostel and talk with the old timers that have nothing better to do than chronicle their entire lives for me. But it’s is at these times a voice within me shouts like a horn, Get up and move! Go outside! Talk to that random bum sitting on the sidewalk. And if there’s one thing I learned from my encounter with the rude Malaysian named Ris, it is that there are real conversations out there; raw and discomforting at times, but real. You just have to get up and find them. I always have to remind myself though, not to judge a man too harshly, for it’s impossible not to judge. Until I reach enlightenment, my brain will continue to make assumptions, hate, and fear some things. But as a follower of The Manual of the Warrior of the Light, I must remember to carry faith, hope and love wherever I go.

Posted in culture, cutural difference, introspective, malaysia and tagged Asia, Asian people, Chanel, cultural stereotypes, Korea, Paulo Coelho, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, United States, White people

04 Mar 2012

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Smoke and Panic: A Stoned Disaster in Laos

One fine day, I got arrested . . . would be the way to tell the story if it had happened. But it didn’t, and I thank the Lord, or the ethereal savage that saved me from destitution. Like any other fearful day, it all occurred upon the shores of the Mekong in the small and chick-with-dick-infested city of Vientiane.

My friend and I had just come up short lady-hunting for the day, with nothing to show but forlorn faces. As I see it, there is not a thing to do in Laos but relax and do drugs. So was the thinking that triggered the night’s awful woes.

As the moon rose over the waters and glared off of the hot asphalt of the promenade, we hunted for a prize, a sweet-smelling, gold-flecked, purple-hazed, buck to be sure. By God did our eyes have the sight to snag a unicorn, hopefully to the likes of which would not be equaled.

But weary and hapless is the search for the mystical plant in a strange land, and only leads had us to go upon. Favor and fortune however lay in the hands of white-faced travelers such as ourselves in the south and east of Asia, for all nightly creatures knew perfectly where the heart of our questing lay. Twas a tuk-tuk man, tall and gaunt, with a dirty bar shirt and torn pants that would plod the course and later demand the tariff. The conversation commenced briskly in the dark night’s wind, and carried nigh farther than that of a whisper:

“Yo,” said the strange man. “Boom-boom? Coke? Mary-hoo-wah-nah?” Our ears rang at the tailing sound in his questioning. We nodded, and ball-footed over to his auto rickshaw.

‘You got the shit, motha fucka?’ were not the words, for such would have been rough and unworthy. Nor ‘Yes, kind and entrepreneurial fellow. Mary Jane is the lady we seek.’

Our hearkening was simple and rather mousy. “We want weed . . . ?”

He smiled in a manner that should have made everything apparent at the outset. I got you dumb bitches-was written all over that keen grin. “Okay,” he spouted delightfully. “But wait. Not here,” for we were in the middle of the street, in front of the Holy Buddha, Jebus, and countless lady-boy prostitutes. “Get in tuk-tuk. We go different place.”

At this moment, my mind was on the goal, not the means, nor the road, so I hopped in along with my friend and we were off down the road. After a hundred paces, the rickshaw halted, and our eyes popped out of our heads, for we sat in front of a ghetto quickie-mart. And as we would soon discover, neither at the bass of oak nor fern lay the gold n’ oldy plant, but in old and decrepit hands.

We followed at the heels of the smelly man and strode in the store through the front door, walked to the back behind mounds of random goodies and knick-knacks, and stopped. “Wait,” he said pointing to a handful of barrels,” and so we sat and waited for the land’s specialties.

Suddenly, Betty Crocker of the Hill Tribe walked up to us with a solid ounce of pressed prairie grass in her cold dead fingers. My friend and I exchanged glances and exclaimed at the utterly ridiculous pairing. My God, I thought. She looked at us with a stern and implacable expression, and handed the shit to the dude, who then passed it directly into my friend’s clammy hands. He shoved his face in without question and heaved in like a vacuum. A smile appeared on his face wider than I had ever believed possible. Then he passed it to me.

By God.

My nose fell to the weed, and I was suddenly invaded by the pungent, plundering Ganjaic forces. To get all ghetto, I was like, What . . . the fuck? Damn! This is some good shit.

The deal was on. I didn’t lose a step, but burst out, “How much?”

“One hundred,” he said.

“Kip?” my savvy business-orientating mind asked. He nodded. My head shot out the math . . . Twelve dollars USD.

I suppose at that moment, the only way to describe my reaction would be to parallel it with the opening song of the Lion King, for the circle-of-life would be the best way to explain such an epic pairing of money-to-drugs.

But something happened akin to rationality. I thought of Broken Down Palace, current Japanese prisoners in Malaysia, bad karma, and concluded that an ounce of weed in Commi-Country is a Pandora’s Box waiting to happen. I turned to my friend and half-asked/half-said, “We don’t need that much man.”

He agreed, to my utter bewilderment, for Long John would never pass such booty. “Ya,” he said and turned to the woman.

“What can we get for 50 kip?”

The woman’s face turned red, and her hand ripped away the treasure to divide the proceeds. We waited on the edge of our barrels.

No!-our hearts rang as her hand descended a third of the way up the plant. You son of a bitch!- I thought, no doubt calculating that she was miscalculating. That is a mere 33 kip’s worth you crone!

“Wait!” my friend trumpeted as his arms whooshed in a circle, “We’ll take it all.” An astute decision.

She scowled at us, but the guillotine had not dropped on our dreams. My friend whipped out a plastic bag and after a long and arduous process of crushing and breaking apart, we managed to sack the produce. We shook hands, I bought a coke, and we exited the cavern.

The journey continued, and we scowered the area for a place to smoke, giddy and glad with a sack of weed, a lighter, and a soon-to-be Coca-Colabong. But after a few minutes, our hearts began to flutter anxiously, for a sufficient drop zone could not be allocated. Finally, I hatched a plan.

“Dude,” I said pointing out into the darkness, “Let’s just go out by the steps.” The steps bordered the Mekong. On the other side was Thailand.

“Good idea,” he affirmed. “Nobody’ll be there and we can spot the po-po.”

A wise decision, we thought, but as we would soon find out, the Devil lies hidden in the thicket, dressed as a snake.

We walked wearily out to the steps and my friend did his work. With a kitchen knife wrapped in bamboo leaves that the old one had given to us as a bonus, he cut some holes in the can and layered them with sativa. Then the magic began.

It was a perfect strain, not too light, not too heavy, with the right kind of mellow and no repercussive bouts of paranoia. We were soon kings on high, and to top it off, sitting on the edge of Laos with the gleaming Mekong and the border of Thailand spread out before us.

But the glory was shattered. “Yo,” my friend whispered to me. I turned. A plainly dressed man was approaching from my side. We put the cindery can and knife between us and eyed him as he walked up to us. He grunted and pointed at our craftsmanship. He must have been raised by apes with no speaking capabilities. We separated and looked down guiltily down at the ganja-encrusted can and knife. That’s when he moved.

He picked the knife up and played with it in his hand, a curious look mounted on his face. I was horrified and stood prostrated as the knife swung around mere inches from my face. He was standing on my side, with my knife, and I was high as balls. In life there are the paranoid and there are the misfortunate. When the threat of death enters the equation, there are only the latter.

His knife-hand dropped to his side, and he started to walk away. At this moment, I learned what kind of man sat by my side. My friend rose and barred the man’s way. “That’s ours,” he said loudly and proceeded to rip the knife out of the strange man’s hand. Gods are not so brash.

The man got the fuck out of there fast, walking as briskly as Speedy Gonzalez. He yelled in Lao, and to our surprise, a fat man off sitting on a step a hundred meters away got up and followed.

We were spell-bound to say the least, and decided to leave. But as I was to realize, smoking makes you stupid.

“Dude,” I beckoned, “We might as well finish it.” In my defense, we still had a fair amount on us. I just figured that it would be best to discard the evidence. And what better way than consumption?

He laughed. “But where?” he asked.

“Let’s go out by the river man. It’s pitch-black. Nobody’ll find us there.”

“Good idea.”

We were wrong.

We descended on the lake, all the while unaware of the fact that we were foreigners heading for the country’s borderline armed with a knife and prosecutable amounts of marijuana. Apparently, the part of the brain that accounts for academic intelligence does not correlate with actual intelligence.

We stopped on the bottom of a hill next to a cliff that overlooked the river. It was a peaceful spot, and all that could be heard was the sound of the flowing river and the wind as it passed through the tall grassy reeds.

Then we blazed once more and descended farther into the bowels of stone-edness. After a few moments, we had forgotten everything mere moments before and were completely hammered. I watched the river and smiled.

Suddenly, my friend hearkened to my attention, “He’s back!”

I turned. Six shadowy figures had materialized at the top of the hill.

My heart raced in my chest. I looked back at my friend, who was now moving quickly. He swallowed the weed in his hand, and for good measure crushed the can and chucked it in the river. A short thin figure ran down and started to shout at my friend.

They began to argue. However, I was not paying attention to them. My eyes had honed in on the large AK-47 in one of the man’s hands.

“Dude,” I called. He continued to point and yell at the man.

“Dude! They’ve got guns.” The five men came down on us and I put my hands up. They’re going to rob us, kill us, and throw us in the river, I thought as they pointed at me and shouted.

“We’re cool! We’re cool!” I kept saying with my shaking hands high in the air. My friend stopped talking and stared at the gun as it passed from one man to another. Death swam in my head. I turned slowly, hands high as I could muster, and descended slowly to my knees. As the rocky ground cut into the top of my feet, I looked at the river and felt like this would be the last time I would breathe the cool night’s air. I didn’t pray. I just shook violently under the cold shiver of death. Then it happened.

“Police,” the thin man said.

I turned my head. The man opened his plain sandy jacket, and sure enough, a badge on his shirt shined in the moon’s light. Death by execution was off the table, I concluded, for the moment at least.

He motioned to pat my friend down. The horror. I watched as my friend passed the plastic bag to him in the darkness. We were fucked.

A commando-dressed man started to venture through my pockets and my mind raced. The next time I would see my friend, it would be in a dirty Asian prison cell. We are going to have a lot of time to talk. I was heart-broken.

“Don’t say anything,” my friend shouted at me. What does it matter? I thought. But I kept silent, and the man took everything out of my pocket.

“Where do you stay?” the thin man asked.

“Be quiet,” my friend reiterated.

They found the hotel key in my pocket. Nothing was written on it except the room number.

“I don’t know where we stay,” my friend said.

They started to interrogate us. They found the knife, wrapped in bamboo. They had the plastic bag, which no doubt contained at least fragments of weed in it. We had no way out.

“Let’s go to police station,” the thin man said to my friend as he searched through his pockets.

“Wait, wait,” my friend replied. “Is there any way we can pay an on-the-spot fine?” The man did not reply to the bribe.

They checked our passports and saw that we had visas, but remained unconvinced. They shouted at us that we were illegals from Thailand. What an odd place to be in for a Californian.

I retorted, telling them that we were just tourists.

They fished out the can. We all looked it over.

No resin. The water had cleaned it off. Bad-ass.

“We were just drinking coke,” I said, trying to stave off my leg’s violent shake.

They brought out their flashlights and started to look all over the ground. What are they doing? I wondered as they looked around.

I whispered to my friend, “What’s happening? What are they looking for?” My friend said nothing.

“The weed?” I thought, sure that they had what they needed.

“I swallowed it.”

“All of it?”

He nodded. Praise be to the quick thinking of my friend. But we were still not out of the woods yet. Time passed, and after about forty minutes of standing in wait, we wondered if they would ever let us go.

“You made mistake!” the man started to shout.

“Fine, my friend said. We go police station. Then we go embassy!”

“Yes,” the man bluffed.

“Fine, Let’s go! We no do nothing here. Why we stay so long?”

“No! You make mistake!” he repeated pointing.

I bowed my head. “Yes. Yes. Big mistake,” I concurred. I knew what he wanted, prostration . . . obedience. I repeated it once more.

“Yes. You did.”

“Yes.”

“Mike,” my friend cut in warily.

“We are very sorry,” I continued. “We will never do it again. We no come to border at night.”

“Bad idea!”

“Yes, sir. Bad idea.”

“Bad idea!”

“Yes!”

My friend got the hint after a long time, and started to bow down too. After repeated apologies, it worked.

“Go,” he said after all of the bullshit and danced over satisfied to his friends.

We went alright. We flew up the hill and across the street.

“Oh my god! Oh my God!” I exclaimed, beside myself, with tears welling up in my face.

“Fuck ya!” my friend cried out.

I came to find out exactly why we were never brought to prison. My friend had swallowed the weed and then turned the bag inside out, dropping the crumbs to the ground as he handed it over. Also, he had apparently left a large portion of the original ounce at the hotel for safe keeping. We circled around the area for good measure just in case someone was following and went back to the room.

My friend immediately flushed the rest down the toilet out of justified paranoia and we went to bed. I lay awake for a while though thinking about how stupid we were, and how close we came to imprisonment.

I later found out that the Vientiane Border Patrol’s principle revenue comes from busting foreigners for marijuana possession and charging them a fine of 500$ USD.

In the weeks since the event, my friend and I have told this story to countless people, and we all get a real ride out of it . . . because it’s ridiculous. The best stories are always the crazy ones. But I learned two important things that will help any traveler in South-East Asia: First of all, always think twice before deciding to smoke or drop or do anything deemed “nefarious” on the borders of foreign countries. Secondly and more importantly, Vientiane sucks, unless you’re a cop or a lady-boy, so if you don’t want to get caught in anything your mom will later consider ‘a good learning experience,’ avoid it at all costs.

Posted in humorous, laos, travel and tagged getting high in laos, laos police, seeing the mekong delta, Vientiane

20 Feb 2012

Unforgiving Oceans of Laos: A Man’s Tale of She-Men

So this will paint a good picture of how strange this place, “the journey,” is. And to preface this story, for those that are weak-hearted, I must say this—Sometimes men look like women by choice, and sometimes they’re pretty, and sometimes, sometimes, you make out with them and it fucks you up.

Alright I said it, and it’s out there. It was a crazy night.

It all started one Sunday night in Laos, as many stories I’m sure start. My friend Tim and I were walking down the promenade and of course, there were many prostitutes, as there are in any capitol in any country anywhere, but especially in Vientiane. Now if you know prostitutes, you know that they are like Great Whites on the California coast line. They prowl around unnoticed, but aware to everyone. There fins lurk the waters, and prod the unwary.

So there was this girl and it got crazy and … I’m just kidding. I’m not going to talk about banging ladies for cash. That’s not this story.

So a particular great white had been prowling for days. She was a pretty mid-twenties Lao woman, and she wasn’t bashful, as no prostitutes are. Time and time again, as my friend and I walked around at night, she would ride up on her little scooter and get in our way. You want some boom-boom is a phrase you will always here in this land, from everyone—prostitutes, drivers, old ladies—everyone. It’s there, along with Cialis and marijuana. I’m serious, Viagra pills are now on the black market.

So this girl tried and tried and tried, and as she does, my stare and silence is growing more and more obvious. I’m a lover, damnit, and I gotta fill some urges. But oh! This was not the time. With all the HIV and other STD’s that float around the darker regions of Laos, I would not be getting off from any girl offering herself up too easily.

But this girl was relentless, to say the least, and continued to prostrate herself to us, and unbeknowest to the both of us, was packing the whole time.

We got fed up with the riverbank and wanted to hit the clubs hard, so we asked around. In no time, we found a traveler that knew where the bright lights were, and wanted to go himself, so we went.

At the top of the largest building in Laos, there lie a club fit for the three of us. Or so we thought. We paid the fees and got the padding down, but when we entered, realized we had gotten fucked the whole time. The place was empty other than a group of gay Laosians dancing in the back.

However, we don’t just quit, my friend and I, and the other guy, so we decided to stick it out, and bought a round of beers to stave us for the time being.

The foreign music drummed along with the time, and the place got crowded. And out of nowhere, the Great White pulled up next to us with a couple of friends.

Tim and I are easy-going and impartial, so we smiled at her and invited her over for laughs. She acquiesced unstrained, as we knew in our confident man-stance she would.

The other guy, a weak-looking British “gentleman” with a big mouth, glared at her and turned to us.

“Fellas, what you think yore doin?”

We gave him the What the fuck?-face and waited.

“That’s a lady-boy.”

I looked at him. I stared into his eyes, and my brow rose. I looked over at her, and back at him, and again at her. Tim and I looked at each other, and I said, “I-I-I-I don’t think so.”

“I should know. I took her back to me place, up to my gaw-dahm room, and she told me.”

Tim and I were speechless. I stared at her, and the hopeless fog inhabited me. I stared hard, at her neck, at her legs, at her hands, and finally at her shoulders. He was right. She was a lady-boy.

But she was so pretty. It would be later that a blog on the web entitled Lady-Boy Survival Guide would make everything clear, listing the means for lady-boy topographical identification. The first rule explained the beauty—they have a strange beauty—and that was it.

She was a pretty girl, a strangely pretty girl, and she was a man, and I looked at her … and momentarily shrank back in despair. She saw my face, and knew, and felt a kindred despair.

I didn’t know what to do. And the guilt piled on.

I started to feel despair over feeling despair for her, trapped in guilt over thinking at the outset that she was evil. She wasn’t evil. She was just a man with a desire to be a woman. Who was I to judge? So I threw away mistaken reactions and tried to make her feel better.

I smiled and punched her in the shoulder and joked and told her to be happy. Her introspective glare started to wane after a while and she became lively again, and the group was nearly back to normal. Tim and I were happy. The “girl” was happy. The other guy didn’t matter.

It was then that a storm came, a tyrant that would capsize me for days to come.

A group of girls pulled up near us, and we recognized them. We had met them briefly at a New Years bash in town and taken pictures with them. They liked us, and one specifically, had the lust for me hard.

She gave me the look, one I will forever remember and came up to me. She was attractive, my drunken stare deduced, and she invaded my space as quickly as I let her. The storm was so distorted that my senses didn’t even know to batten down the hatches.

In no time at all, she came on strong, and I allowed it. Hell, I’m a man. When a lady comes on, it’s not a question. There are no questions. There are only answers. And by God, as we danced and made out, I had one.

But something felt awry, for in all my days, I had never met a woman to match my insatiable appetite for lust. She was on her way, and it blindsided me a bit. I backed off, and got her off of me. Something told me to break off for a while and clear my head. So I joined Tim and we walked away to scope out some other chicks.

Now you might think -That’s fucked, man. You can’t just ditch a chick and go off with another.—but I acted innocently. I was merely looking for air, and helping my friend, who needed an Ice-man , a gunner at the wing to help his ass out in a dog-fight.

We walked around and he spotted a fine group of girls, so we walked up and started talking to them. I tried not to look too suspicious as I wing-manned my friend’s girl’s friend, but the glares started to flare from the horizon. The stormy woman I had been conducting myself with before was brooding, as I thought she would, and eyeing me with a heavy gaze that said everything. I tried not to let it affect me for now. I figured I could calm her down later, and let her know what was happening.

But she came up on my bow as I floated in the clear blue waters, and attacked me with my sails up.

“Don’t worry,” she started oddly enough to me.

“What?”

“I don’t care. I know you are not my boyfriend.” She has a point, I thought, but why come up and tell me that after throwing out those glares, so I answered warily, “Alright.”

“Just so you know. I’m a man. You make out with man! You are gay!”

Bass drops out, beat drops off, silence …

Aaaaaaaaaah shit! Fuck! What?-Fuck! What?-Fuck! I grabbed Tim.

“Dude! She just told me she’s a man!”

My friend said nothing for a second, then burst out laughing.

“What!? How do you know?”

“She just said it!”

My boat had capsized, I was drowning, and the deep blue darkness surrounded me as I fell deeper and deeper.

For a long time, my mind made circles and brooded and ruminated and thought a shit-ton about my situation. You just made out with a man. She’s right. For all intents and purposes, that’s as gay as it gets.

But then Tim’s advice pulled me out of the depths of my sinking introspection. He told me simply: It’s all good man. And that sucks. Oh, and shit happens.

The last piece of wisdom helped the most, and helps me to write this. The shit hit me in the face, and I swallowed it down good, and it’s done.

But the boat wasn’t turned over to greet the clear blue sky just yet, and I wasn’t quite right. Something like making out with a dude doesn’t just slip off as easily as standing up or getting on a great riding beast. My mind had to right itself, my mind being my cock.

I fished around, saw an attractive older woman, and decided to hit her up hard. She was pretty, and she was a she, or so she said after I asked her straight-up and she went as far as to tell me she was a mother of five. We laughed. I worked that shit like my life depended on it. At that moment, the life in my mind did. She wanted it. It worked in no time as if the fates were on my side once more, and she wanted to go. She asked me. I was thinking to myself, Fuck ya Mike. On form, brother.

We walked out holding hands and chatting lightly. I had an eye on the room and a good night, so the talk was light and broken, and all the while, I noticed a small Laosian creeping along behind us. I looked at him and asked, “Is that your friend?” She nodded, and they talked in the parking lot as I waited eagerly like a boy at the door of a pound on his birthday.

She pulled up with her scooter and I hopped on. The creepy friend followed behind, nearly clipping our heels. And still I held out with an aching pain in my loins, and a grin the size of Texas. She whispered in my ear as we drove along, and I gripped her thighs. I was feeling the mood hard.

We got to my hotel and I got off. After a second, the friend pulled up next to her. I was curious, to explain the obvious. What was this guy doing here? Did he want to watch or something? I looked at her and pointed at him with a rueful finger.

“Why is your friend here?” She smiled, but didn’t say anything. The little man did.

“You want her for the night?”

I let out a long, heavy sigh and dropped my head down. The great whites got me in the life-saver.

Tim pulled up with the girl he had been hitting on, and the little man spoke to him, “You want her?”-he said and pointed in her direction as she sat on the scooter. Apparently, they were partners in crime.

“Nope. I’m going to bed,” Tim answered politely and moved toward the door.

I stood up straight and stared at my girl. “You want me?”-I asked. She gave me a big grin and nothing else. I sucked in hard, looked at the man, and said, “I don’t pay, man. Sorry.” I smiled at the lot and walked off to bed.

The night was rough, as one can ascertain, and stuck with me for a while. I played it off, played it up, and am now ready to write about it. As far as I can tell, it is as follows: The seas bare down on you so hard sometimes when you’re out so far that you can’t smell the land. You can sense it before you push off, but you go anyways. As much as you want to predict what you will see, you can’t because everything is out there—whales, sharks, stormy weather—sometimes more. At times, it’s so mysterious that legends arise. This is my legend, motha fucka. I French-kissed a chick with a dick, then went home with a whore.

Posted in adult, diary, humorous, laos, travel and tagged clubbing in laos, Great White, HIV, laos, Prostitution, transvestism, Vientiane | Leave a Comment

14 Feb 2012

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Cambodia-Style

It seems like everything I’ve been writing lately has been about fucking and loving. That’s all I’ve been doing. It makes sense. In a place like South-East Asia, that’s all there is to do—party and play around with the opposite sex. Sometimes, though, sometimes amidst the fog of banging, there arises a drum that resonates. Such was the case with this girl. Her name was Lucky. I kept thinking the whole time that she must be scared. The look in her eyes at times told me so. But now I don’t know. I think maybe the sacredness I saw was a reflection of some kind.

We met one night amidst the partying at a meat-stand, where those Cambodians will cook anything greasy for a couple US dollars. She was sitting close by next to her older sister. The first thing I saw was her funny overalls. They were drooping over the front of her, like they were two sizes too big for her chest. Under the overalls, she wore a red wife-beater. She was skinny. Her smile hit me like a freight-train hits a cow and nearly killed me. It was big and happy as hell. She had so many teeth in that mouth that you could’ve mistaken her for a shark. Don’t get me wrong though. She was gorgeous. If the smile didn’t get you, the eyes sure as hell would. They did. I stared at her big brown eyes. She caught me, but I kept staring, so she jirked her head back like an all-enquiring puppy-dog and asked me straight up why I stared at her. I just laughed and stared.

It’s a funny difference in these countries, staring. In America, or so I had always thought, staring for a long time was either creepy or seedy. Well, it’s not the case so much here. I’ve learned to stare and mean it. Most of the time, when it works, I can see it in their smile and the way they blush. It’s the lust. This time was different. That’s how I knew I wanted to chase. She was crazy-honest I thought. And by God did I hit it on the head then and there. She was. I won’t use the present tense because like all things written in earnest, it’s an earnest to forget and not to remember.

As I was saying, she was honest and pretty, and crazy. I am a fan of all three, and manage to hit at least one characteristic every time … but never three. Three is a lot to handle.

We talked for a while and I got steered in deep to her aura. I laughed when she danced, and talked, and did anything really. She was a real character, and I like to laugh at such people. People like her are in the world to be laughed with and at. That’s their purpose. They help to get out the good laughs when one is able. Gotta take advantage of a good thing.

She was goofy, and didn’t mind making a fool out of herself. I find that I can relate to such people. However, such off-the-wall gregariousness in public says a lot about a person’s fears. When a man is not afraid to make a fool out of himself, it’s because he doesn’t care. Whether that’s do to self-esteem or abandonment issues is the question worth considering.

Well, in all her goofiness, she was a shy girl. And I am a gentleman, so we decided to meet the next day. We kissed goodbye, and I sat in a pool hole for an hour waiting for my friend to ball her sister and then went to bed.

The next day was interesting and taught me everything about Cambodian culture. Basically, I learned that security is everything. On the surface, this need for security makes Cambodian women sound like gold-diggers. On the contrary, however, I can tell you that such is found in all of us to an extent. The search for comfort is the root. I seek comfort for my loins and my heart. Lucky, I began to see, sought the same-same, but different. She was born into poverty with eight other sisters and one brother. Her father is dead. Her mother left for a time after, and now she calls her sister Mom.

I am American. I can do anything. For a long time, I used to think blindly that everyone came from the same blank slate. Cambodia wizens one up quickly. Overall, I just try not to judge anything at all.

D-Day did make me wary all the same. We met by the bar and I did not stamp my foot in decisiveness. Bad idea I found out, though I cannot for the life of me change the fact that I am a man under no directive path. I don’t care where I land during the day so long as my face is not drooping at sunset. She chose “Shanghai Bar,” a dark den filled with dark hair and dark old and broken European hearts. Like most in Pnom Penh, it is over-staffed, under-payed, and filled to the brim with entrepreneurial women seeking money and attention with the freedom to say no, though most, if not all can’t. The girl on my shoulder worked there in her younger days, as I later found out. She is a talking girl, and knew every girl there. It was a gregarious situation amongst the ladies, and I was on the outskirts.

So we left that mother fucker straight-away and went to the seaside, and the lair was behind us, but not without casualties, for she had brought a gimp onto the boarding boat—her best friend, who couldn’t speak English. Indeed, as one can tell, it was frustrating to say the least. My mind could not escape the turmoil, and so like many men in similar situations, my gaze for a time hung to the wall and I tried to think my way out of the ditch that blindsided my view and punctured my front tire.

It got worse before it got better. I had to pay for everything. This included the friend’s appetite. I felt like a sucker. I am not monetarily carefree, especially when travelling, so my principle-minded heart was on fire as I picked up the check and walked out with them. But my philosophy is glass-half-full, and by god did I death-grip it and walk out the door with a smile.

Alright so, one may think at this moment, why didn’t this sap just bounce. Well, that god-damned smile kept me smiling, and made me think she wasn’t just trying to take me. Okay, I knew that a free date is great for a poor Cambodian girl, and as Cambodian dating is concerned, men do pay for the girl, but it wasn’t that. It was her eyes. She told me that she wasn’t smiling at the dish on her plate, but at the one to her side, me.

So I punched the clutch and tried to gun it out of the hole. But for swearing, someone drank from the god-damned glass, I stalled out completely and we ended up back at the female watering hole another time. My mind started to run, and I began to think that all was lost. I could not call my friend to bolster my heart, and I was sitting forlornly by her side for a long time watching her chat to everyone but me, and counting the checks that slipped slowly closer and closer toward the hole in my wallet. But her sister threw me a road flare and informed me that my two friends were coming. This made me smile, and I awaited the troops.

They showed up and I got some breathing room from my date. We talked seldomly as my Brazilian friend Marcos
and I played pool with the bar-girls. Now and again, Lucky would turn and come over to me to mingle. We would chat and tickle each other and fight Tom-and-Jerry style. Our eyes held the same implacably suggestive gaze. But for the life of me I couldn’t understand why my attempts to kiss her were fought to the tooth. I could not make a dent on what seemed like an adamantine exterior. I was stuck.

For the sake of explaining, I am a confident man when the troops wave the flag, but morale-deprived when the troops scurry away. I do not thrive on the down-and-out. So as I mused and watched her play on her i-phone, I counted the cards and threw the deck in the air. Fuck it, I thought as I played pool with Marcos.

He saw my frustration, and listened patiently. Then he spoke from somewhere within, and held a coy eye the entire time. “Cambodian women are subservient. They will do what you say. Just say it.” His words haunted me. All my life, the term subservience has held nothing but woe, and brought nothing but heartache. I didn’t want to believe, and felt even more hopeless at the thought. But he saw my silence as a green light, and took it upon himself to do something. He looked at me, turned, and walked over and whispered something in her ear. The next thing I knew, she shouted at me with a smile and beckoned me over. I didn’t know what to think, but trudged over nonetheless. She spoke in simple words. There was no small-talk. She did not play. She asked me if I was tired, and said she was as well. “Let’s go,” she said to me. I looked at her, cocked my head to the side, and looked back at Marcos. What the fuck did he say?- I thought.

I asked her, “Do you want to?”

She replied, “If you want.”

I cringed. Ya, I thought, ya I want, God did I ever, but what the fuck! God damn was this a curveball. Moments before, she was touchin’ shit on her phone, now she wanted to fuck.

“I want,” I said so matter-of-factly I nearly laughed, “but I don’t understand. Why the turn-around? What did Marcos say to you? Why now, all of a sudden, you just want to go?”

She smiled for a long time and didn’t answer. So I thought worse.

Finally, she lead. “We go,” she said and got up out of the bar-stool. As she grabbed her bag, I made a run at Marcos. I spoke so seriously to him that he cowered to the wall and my finger felt like an anvil. At that moment, all I could think was that he had proved his words and I wanted to kill him for it.

“Marcos,” I smote, “What the hell did you say to her?”

“I didn’t say anything, man. Don’t worry.”

I felt my face get hot. I pointed at him. “Hey, man. Don’t ever talk to my girl like you did. I don’t care what you said. It’s not your place. Mind your own god-damned business.”

I stopped talking and shook my head. I felt like I didn’t care what he thought or said, or even had said. That wasn’t what frustrated me. Her words, “If you want,” frustrated me, and at the time, said everything, explained everything, meant everything. In Cambodia, the man wants, and he gets, and the girl takes it and gets scraps in return.

As he shook his hands to calm me, I looked into his eyes and felt guilt. Here was a man I saw as a friend, a man I grew fond of quickly, and I was yelling at him over something he said to my girl, something I didn’t even know. I felt like a bully. He walked over to the other side of the bar, and we walked out toward my hotel. I stopped and walked back to get the key. As I grabbed it from my friend, Marcos apologized again and I accepted it as best I could and told him not to worry, seeing in his eyes finally good-will.

As her and I walked to the hotel, I spoke of Marcos and asked her what he said. As it turned out, he had merely informed her that I was bored and he felt she was ignoring me. I felt ridiculous, but I shrugged it off as best I could so as to look forward to the night ahead. We went up to my room and lay next to each other on the bed for a long time. We discussed Cambodia and America, dating, our situation together, and then we made love. It was nice, and a moment during the intensity explained everything. As we breathed heavy and hard, I asked her plain-and-simple “Do you like it?” and those big brown glazed-over eyes opened wide and she answered, “As you want.”

Now I have a handle on what Marcos said about Cambodian women. It’s not altruism, slavery, or even panning for gold. It is fair-trade. She is safe in my arms and I in her gaze. A touch of Capitalism, Cambodia-style.

-This one’s for you Tom. I’ll always be your Jerry.

Posted in adult, cambodia, diary, humorous, responsibilty, travel and tagged Cambodia, Cambodian Culture, Culture of Cambodia, Dating in Cambodia, Gender Roles, Phnom Penh, Southeast Asia, United States, Women in Cambodia

05 Feb 2012

Awakening of Sense

Written on a Friday night (February 3^rd)

Days of inspiration in Ho Chi Minh can be found in the nightly walks. I walk without destination, seeking an area to muse over the things that stand in the shadow of my mind. I know not where I go. I know only that I must walk and feel my way through the wonder that defines this strange place. I see the dirt on the sidewalks and the chaos in the streets. I smell the rotten stench of a thing defined as fruit, though I deny fully its stance as such. I hear sounds around me that I do not understand, people talking, dogs barking, and the occasional outburst. When addressed, I smile and politely decline, knowing that their offerings cannot satisfy my lust for the midnight air. My gaze constantly rises above the pavement and the faces, to the tops of the green trees and higher, to the blackness of the sky that does not carry the shimmering countryside stars. As I step out onto the street, straight into the heart of the beast, I smile at the constant sound of horns that blast about me. I look forward to the unknown destination for which I seek.

As I descend away from the Red Lights that hold my belongings, away from the faces that sit drunkenly speaking about things that will not change, I feel the gears within me spin freely, uncluttered with worry and panic. I feel alive! I think not of the nights spent in constant soldier for things. I am no longer buried in purposeful need: the need to squelch the fire within that lustfully burns for sex, for community, for materialism, for any such things that bind me addictively. I am not entangled now. I stand unencumbered. I am. My mind does not dictate now. For this, I am as light on my feet as the wolf-dog is when escaping into the white wild, carried by instincts unknown to the naked eye.

I follow the stride of my feet. They carry me onward, past the market, past the men-on-scooters that offer boom-boom and mary-juana, into the abyss that scares the disquieted. I am aware of the dangers involved in wandering aimlessly through the darkened streets of such a sprawling city. It spurs me on. Though I am ill-prepared for battle, equipped with a pack full of electronics that would profit any back-alley entrepreneur, such are the tools of the mind for which I am in nightly necessity. Like a man treading through the Yukon with a sled full of Jack London novels, I carry nothing that aids the purposeful nor practical man, but only the tools that are made to unleash the mind—in my case, my Kindle, my I-pod, and my net-book. Tonight, my desire is to fall into enchantment and exclaim to my heart’s content on the brightly-lit pages that now stand before me.

Though I know that the mind builds off of so many things outside its immediate perspective, and that such inspiration is thought to stir most commonly by means of social interaction, I wander tonight all the same, inspired by the aura around me. I sit at a table made for four but occupied by one. I am surrounded by Vietnamese strangers that look on. The hostess waits for me to order another Tiger beer. The man at the table next to me stares in bewildered curiosity. His eyes watch the dexterous activity of my fingers. He sees the grin on my face, and the vigor that seeps from my gaze as I explain my flighty feelings.

Posted in diary, introspective, spiritual, uplifting, vietnam and tagged Walking around Ho Chi Minh | Leave a Comment

31 Jan 2012

1 Comment

Việt Romance: The Tale of a One-Night Stand

I write now to get this, from here on out to be known as “that occasion that held my gaze,” out of my mind, though I know, God do I know, that it will not leave so quickly, as do all good things that hurt upon their leaving the present. It all started while eating, as most things, no, scratch that, no things go down. She, of course, the “she,” sat in a small plastic chair a few meters away. She caught my attention with a mocking flex of the arms. I was wearing a tank-top, and apparently had already made an impression. I looked into her eyes and smiled. The woman in charge, an old witness to the “American War,” as they like to call it, yelled in my direction to catch my attention. I assumed the banter I could not understand was, “Hello sir. How may I be of service?” so I asked for Phở—Vietnamese noodles—a simple request, minus the added burden of asking for no meat. In a country where cows roam on the highways, I suppose vegetarian is a difficult concept to grasp. I’m not a vegetarian though. I love meat, but I sit still nonetheless, as resolute in my decision as a chain smoker whose eyes glaze over at the sight of a Marlboro ad. I am constantly drawn to the smell of dead cooked animal. Anyways, the woman didn’t understand, of course, but out of the white light came English words from afar, “No meat?” I stared at the soft attractive eyes in front of me and smiled. “Yes. No meat.” She translated the message. From then on out, the smitten eyes of love/lust fell her way.

She was energetic. To describe her in any manner of words would lead to such a conclusion. It emanated out of her like condensation on a hot humid day. She yelled loudly in Vietnamese to coworkers and laughed abruptly; she spoke loudly and honestly in English, not avoiding any question because of shyness or overt politeness. It calmed me down. Most times, I am on the edge when speaking. This consists of shouting and saying things that would in most conversations not come out, unless being the last before departure. On the whole, I speak as plainly the wild man coming down from the mountains, and in a thousand volumes more. But I felt calm. I am under the light now, seeing that “calmness” in my corner is a good thing when meeting someone.

Anyways, she smiled at me, but to my sad surprise, her eyes were on my friend. What?!- my heart exclaimed as I tried to grasp the situation before me. This cannot be so! But, damn the fiends that brought it about, such was the case at the onset. We talked communally, covering generally harmless banter, and then I made a move. “Let’s go to the beach,” I said brashly and added, “We’re going to go to the beach,” as an added incentive. “Ok. I can take some time off,” she said and followed. The catch though, was her 15(!!!!) year old niece, who followed closely behind. She had eyes for me. I laugh now, but -What the fuck? – was the phrase used to describe it then.

The beach was beautiful, as a general term used to describe something as awe-inspiring as clear blue and foamy white splashing up onto grainy rocks as purposefully small as to give meaning to the transience that is life. We sat down near the edge of the incoming watery dribbling in a pattern not in my best interest—The arrangement, from right to left was me, the youngin’, my friend Tim, and “Helen”—real name-given-by-her-to-appeal-to-foreign-customers, Kathy. I couldn’t help but feel awkward. The girl to whom I had made the move sat next to the enemy-at-hand, my friend, and the small-fry next to me literally pet the hair on my arm and stared longingly in my direction. I got up. I concluded the situation be damned as I walked a few meters north up the beach to squat Vietnamese-style. It is a difficult posture for most Caucasians, by the way, though I do believe I am no longer a novice. In uncommon intervals, my eyes leaned southward to beseech a response in the dream that was unattainable. A few minutes after my move, she got up. My eyes open widely, eyebrows raised in expectation, and a grin appeared beneath the recesses of my nose. I got up—too quickly, damned be my excited loins—and walked slowly over, trying desperately to avoid staring in her direction, to no avail. She looked so stunning—the eyes that looked so honestly, as if to defy the laws of contentment in a lasting hunger for the unknowing; the smile, so deviously concocted, yet so inevitably alluring and intoxicating; the plains of her face, as smooth and straight as the dunes of the Sahara. She looked good.

But no!, for she turned abruptly from my line and walked away from the water. I followed, wondering how in the world to strike a blow that would remain lastingly seductive. The fates however, sat in my corner that moment. She made the move. Using dexterous toes in the sand, she made a large circle swiftly and said, “Come! Let’s play a game,” in her native tone so appealingly energetic. Sweet was the mind’s conclusion, as I answered her call.

Wrestling was the game, and by God stands as the ultimate means of sexual seduction, with such physicality, as to trap the heat of a woman on the beach. I was on form, as they say, and poised for such a challenge that day. It was an interesting type of wrestling as well, differing in many ways from the common game of kings. The ring stood carved into the sand a mere 2 feet in diameter, and the hands of each opponent were placed in waiting atop each other’s shoulders—I use the term opponent so playfully as to exact the duality that veered in the direction of a romp-in-the-sack, if it doesn’t stand plainly enough on its own. I want it to be clear, sex is on the table in any event played in earnest with triumph as the ultimate goal.

She was a damn good wrestler, to say the least. I liked it, laughing as I write this. In all my life, I have fought with many women verbally, often ending in dissatisfaction, but fighting physically in jolly good fun kicks ass. Grabbity-grab-grab is all that needs to be said on that front. In such cases, never let up on a woman. It turns them on more. I was going for the conclusion, this woman wants to battle, and isn’t afraid to get rough, with a casual smile on my face in the process of such deduction. Never get anxious, you fools.

Well, when we started to tangle, the story had written itself. She turned. I might as well have sunk a hook into her mouth and reeled her into my clutches. Her eyes returned my gaze from then on. As the day progressed, our connection deepened. She had an opinion, had ideals, had all of her limbs attached—things that make a man want to jump a woman in broad daylight. It was the eyes that spoke to me. The story comes from the gaze. Hers told me everything, like a beacon sent over a kilometer’s radius, undeniably commanding any and every graspable moment of life. She had rooms, she stated, five of them, all of which were rules which told me that she was saying ‘rules’ and not rooms the whole time. The ones said that stuck out were as follows: no drinking, no lying, and the family unit as key. To explain the need for such self-opposed limits, she said only, “I was party girl, a silly girl. My mother sent me to Buddha. It changed my life.” I don’t know what to think of that honestly. I didn’t feel convinced, but I wanted to feel convinced. My heart wanted to concur, but my head was reminding me of all the people in my life that feared the waves, but turned a blind eye to the wholes in their boat. I shut the thoughts out of my mind in the only way I could at that moment, I focused my eyes on her eyes and focused my attention on the brown around the black.

We wrestled, we laid on each other next to the water, and our foreheads touched on many occasions, quickly followed by the ridiculous statements, “We are friends. This isn’t what friends do.” I kissed her cheek—don’t count me out yet boys—and she followed suit. “Are you going bowling? Yes or no?” she asked and kissed my chest. I looked at Tim. He did NOT want to go bowling, and neither did I. Bowling is a terrible place as far as I’m concerned when going after a girl. “No, I don’t think so,” I said and handed her Tim’s phone—mine was dead at the time—and she plugged in her number. *Note: When it comes to judging whether or not you will ever successfully talk to a girl again, it’s as easy as this; if she dials the number herself from your phone, thank the lord. If she saves the number in your phone, but doesn’t call, she’s just wary that you forgot her name and thinks you’re a drunken idiot. If she inputs the number, doesn’t save, and doesn’t call, don’t count on anything after the fact, and go-for-broke right away. If she tries to dictate the number to you, shove the phone in her face, politely of course you jackasses.

They left and Tim and I stayed on the beach. Later that night, I called her with the intention of staging a date for the following day. Well, plans change. She wanted to hang out a half hour later. I agreed, but failed to remember the trunk of the car, her niece. By the way, she didn’t speak English, only Cock-block, which sounds like Vietnamese and in most cases comes out in the male I’d-rather-stare-at-a-girl-than-talk-to-her population of the country. When I got there, we painted clay figurines with watercolor. I repeat, painted shit with fucking watercolor. It was laughable. And to top it off, the youngin’ had a temper and wouldn’t stop yelling. Granted, Kathy loved egging her on, and had forced me to help her throw the poor girl in the ocean fully clothed mere hours before. She didn’t like it, obviously.

After the creative bout of idiocy, we went to dinner, the three of us. The entire time on this date, all I could think was that I CANNOT believe I am on a date with this beautiful woman and her borderline mentally handicapped niece. We ate and talked. Turned out, she had been married before and now divorced. Of course, it didn’t bother me in the least. Oddly enough, she said it was funny as well. ‘Funny’ struck me as a weird word to describe an ending such as hers—You’re not going to have my baby right now. Fine, then I’m going to go impregnate someone else and then divorce your ass. That’s not funny. Anyways, she says to me, “After dinner, I will go home. Is that ok?” Honestly lady, I thought, that is a ridiculous question and I don’t even want to answer it. No. I want to meet you, “meet” meaning have sex with you.

“Let’s walk on the beach,” was my response when I leveled my feet on the ground. She smiled.

“You want to walk on the beach?”-she said with a grin that told me the game was up.

“Yes.”

“You want to sex with me.”

“What?”

“You don’t want to walk on the beach.”

“Yes I do,” I said—I actually did want to begin with the beach. Sex would follow.

“No,” she retorted.

“Fine let’s watch a movie,” I replied. This move seems seemingly ridiculous on the surface, since it is so goddamned obvious, but my momentary philosophy is, You can cover up the po-go stick with any manner of translucent material so long as you cover it up. In the end, they’ll want to hop on it anyways, because it’s fun. They just want to play surprised, like a boy who knows he’s getting a rifle on Christmas—He would play it off, but as soon as he saw the outlines of the present, he would tear it to shreds and use it until it broke (Same with women. Don’t hate me. It’s just a sex drive.)

“Where?”-she asked.

“At my place.”

She laughed at me outlandishly, as though I had just fallen on my face. It did not deter me. The eyes told me I was on the right track. But then a deer in the road appeared in the form of relative-ity.

“But my niece. I have to take her home.” She paused, and then said, “I can see you tomorrow.”

Fuck tomorrow is all I had to say. Why procrastinate on joy? So I beckoned her.

“Let’s meet today. Why meet tomorrow? I want to have fun, and I have time tonight.”

She smiled and looked stumped. I, on the other hand, had an idea, a plan, a scheme. Think on your feet Neanderthal, my spirit animal—the coyote—said. “She can drop us off and go home. After we watch the movie (yep, still using it as camouflage), I’ll drive you home.”

“You have a bicycle?” Her eyes held a inquiring tone.

“No. I have a motorcycle.”

Her eyes lit up. “Good idea,” she said. I grinned in a likeness akin to the Persian in the movie 300 after he makes a deal with the Spartan elders.

I paid. However, the manner in which I paid would stand forever as my downfall. I walked away from the table right as the cock-block heard our newly hatched plan. I looked back as I handed the hostess the money and knew at once by the look on Kathy’s face that the jig was up. You’re an idiot Mike.

I walked back and felt the winds of change upon me, so palpable that it wouldn’t be disguised by any amount of strong cologne (Axe). We got on the road and started heading in the direction of the hotel. As we streamed through the traffic so quickly that the hairs on my neck stood on tippy toes, Kathy spoke softly.

“I’m just going to take you home.”

“What?” though I knew too well what was happening.

“I forgot that I have to play cards with my friends.”

My god, what an excuse, I thought before answering, “Alright,” in a slow, mournful drone.

I told her to drop me off a click before the hotel. I figured I would just trudge somberly next to the beach until the ocean washed me away.

As I got off, I looked into her eyes for a time, such a time as to escape time. I told myself it would be the last time. The pain felt like a tumor inside my chest, growing and taking over the happiness that so often methodically worked its way out into my aura. Her gaze told me that she saw the change as well.

“It was nice meeting you,” I said. After a date in my country, this means, “Too-da-Loo. I’ll probably never see you again.” She didn’t get it. Apparently, she took it as a statement of no consequence, a ‘that was a good date and see you tomorrow’ type of comment. Lost in translation.

They drove off and I walked sullenly down the beach to my hotel. The sadness kindled in my heart like the edge of a lit cigarette.

I felt like leaving existence, getting out as soon as possible from the beach, from the people, from everyone and everything beside the feel of the wind on my face. I wanted to drive away and leave my troubles in the rear-view mirror. I grabbed my keys from the hotel room and walked downstairs. As I reached the door, however, my phone rang. It was a text, the text that tells everything after a date.

“Where are you,” with no question mark as if to say, “We are meeting tonight. Why aren’t you kissing me now?”

We met and went to the beach. The culmination of the water, the sky, and her company, made me soar like a kite during Giung Ju’s cherry-blossom festival. I had cried then that Spring, in pure joy, and I likened it to the present as I ran on the beach with her. That is how happy the mixture of the ocean and a pretty girl make me. The rest worked itself out that night. By the end, as I walked home, the stars shined down upon me as if I were the only man worthy of their glare.

The day after, the sun was out and my heart was full. After I had composed myself from the night before, I texted her, “What are you doing today?”

I waited for a quick reply, but such was not forthcoming. I waited and waited as I sat naked in the hotel room. I was naked because I had just taken a shower. The fan blazed brightly upon me and the thin linen shades were drawn to courteously ward off unsightly glares. The waiting ended.

“I am going to Saigon. I miss my family.”

Nha Trang—my location at that time—was not near Saigon. It was no where near Saigon. Saigon is a long way away. I felt the skin on my face drop. I responded in a dash.

“For how long?”

“Forever.” Forever felt like an oxymoron used at the wrong time. (“When is Dad coming home?”-the eight years old asks his mother. “In about a million years.”) Action was necessary.

“I have to see you before you go. Meet me.”

No response.

I called the number in a panic so palpable that I could track its source and watch it accumulate into a pool known only as doom. It felt as if it were not rational that this was happening; an irrational act was afoot and I had caught it. Not seeing her after the previous night could only be summed up as such as I sat sprawled on the bed, staring haplessly at my phone and my penis. She answered after one too many rings.

“Hey.”

Jesus, I thought as I responded. “Hey … … What’s going on? You’re leaving?”

“Yes. I talked to my mom this morning … I cried … I really miss them.”

I could hear the pain in her voice and knew that this was no excuse. The pain building in my insides instantly grew into something fiercely comparable.

“Am I going to see you before?”

“You can see me when I come back.”

“But I’m leaving Nha Trang in a couple of days.”

“…Really?…”

It sounded serious, but all I could think was that she had to be kidding me with that response. I told her the night before that my stay was temporary. An American’s stay in Nha Trang is about as long as there are sunny days in Northern Vietnam during the monsoon season.

“Let’s meet today.”

“I have to pack.”

“What? I have to see you before you go. I might never see you again.”

Her response killed me. Right now, the thought of it makes me liken myself to the shittiest piece of meat imaginable.

“If destiny brings us together again, we will meet someday.”

I couldn’t respond. My reaction was inaudible and the rest of the conversation slipped from my fingers. Then the call ended.

Thoughts raced threw my head. I felt a vicious anger over the situation at hand; not in her decision, though. I recalled the eyes, the hopeful tragic eyes that tell you something is wrong. She needed comfort, and I, a man she had just met the day before, couldn’t claim to be in a saddle fit for such a task. So I sent her a text, a simple text that would shut the door silently, appreciatively awakening nothing unwanted inside.

“I had a great time with. I am happy for you and I hope you have a great time in Saigon. You are a special girl. It was nice meeting you.”

I know now, though I sit sadder than a moment ago when I wrote this out, that every day brings forth moments of happiness so profound that all you can do is bask in their rays for a moment. You can’t even speak for fear that in your ramblings, you’ll miss out on the wholeness of its sum. They pass like the sunset, leaving a thin silver lining that defines the night sky. But a sunrise is just around the corner. As I sit now, my stance is actively open for the next time I come upon such a glorious night. However, if on such a night, I can hold the sun by its flame and ride on its luminescence, so I shall.

Posted in adult, humorous, romance, vietnam and tagged Dating in Vietnam, Seduction

thatoldlukesmile

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