Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Bugs Crawling All Over My Brain

yesterday i sat down to digitize undoubtedly the most upside-gone-defining experience i've had yet, only to discover a colony of ants had invaded my laptop, scurrying in and out of nearly every interface and orifice. after unplugging their support line, the power cord, i spent nearly the next hour shaking, and flicking, and squashing, and stomping as many of the increasingly creepy critters as possible, trying to rid my computer of a potentially deadly infestation instead of my brain, which actually needs it more. in fact, i was thinking about taking off work this week to both catch my breath and catch up on this blog which, at this point, is so back logged i'm afraid i may not remember or have time to write about everything that's been going on.

i think i've gotten most of the bugs outta my motherboard, but i still feel'em gnawing away at my medulla oblongotta. though before i can write about what happened last weekend (related to the "deeply disturbing" event of 2 weeks before), i hafta write the conlusion to phuong, and then continue with the hanoi adventures. and then some time after that i need to post what's going on in the world of teaching vietnamese students american slang. and yes, you'll love it.

i'm expecting things to calm down a bit soon, so hopefully i'll have more time to write about the day to day shit which is no less interesting, but gets lost in the priorities list.

so here's a pic of me saying what's up to the sisters from the roof of the strangest building i'd ever been in - still all kinds of fucked up...

think about it, that could be you i'm talking to. but unfortunately for your sorry ass, it's not. i have no idea how someone from outside vietnam can call my cellphone, but i'm sure that if you just dial some random number of digits that exceeds 7 but is less than say 15, i'm sure sooner or later you'll get through to me. godspeed, peace y'all. 'mout.

Friday, March 18, 2005

An Amusing Confusion from Boozing Illusions

our first stop was a bia hoi, a popular spot to be in vietnam, particularly in hanoi. i have no idea what hoi means, but i know that bia is really the functional word here. i can't remember what you call it in english, but it's like a grating, grainy-tasting golden water with a layer of foam on top that tickles your upper lip when you tilt the glass and pour the curious concoction into your mouth. there, a billion bubbles burst on your tongue, stinging the taste buds and forcing you to swallow these intoxicated-state-inducing toxic waste suds – an enchanting experience that is at first intriguing, soon exhilarating, but eventually nauseating… until one becomes thirsty for another frosty, frothy glass and, at about a quarter a pop at these places, who can afford self-restraint?

not me, that's fo' goddamn sure. so a couple dollars later i hobbled outside where i wobbled awaiting the others. the street was wet, lit in colorful spurts of impressionist gleams and glistens. it was quiet aside from some cheery chatter and the dreary splatter from cars near and far tearing water from the street as they sped spitting by. a sigh revealed the cold, bare body of the air in front of me which promptly redressed and smacked me across the face for being so fresh – an incessant backhand that offhand actually left me refreshed. there was something familiar about all this and then i recognized it: i had been transported back to the brisk, bitter streets of new york from nearly a year before, which instantly gave me a distant adoration for this temporary habitation.

the manifestations of en why sea continued when, after a short cab ride, i found myself on a lame-ass boat blasting some kind of house music, or maybe it was a house-boat blasting lame-ass music. whatever it was, it was a cheap imitation of the floating labyrinth bumpin on the hudson, but a welcome reminder of those times, and within minutes of boarding it i welcomed yet another reminder with a casual 5-finger hug when someone returned from the bar with a glass of carlsberg for me, which i sipped and guzzled between giggles and chuckles, chilling with friends filling me in and waitresses filling me up again. something else reminded me of home too – white people, specifically, of the young hot female variety which was most unexpected because most, if not all, of the expat clubs i know in saigon are either frequented by an older crowd, or have been infiltrated by too many hookers who repel foreign girls as if they were an education. [ed: ohhhh! take that, all you blog-reading english-speaking asian whores!]

i spotted one girl there, apparently diggin my style from afar, that could have been either or – by that i mean she looked like a chink which, given the circumstances, placed her in prostitute territory, but dressed and carried herself like a typical white chick. and by "carried herself," i mean doing her best imitation of someone with dignity while lazily swaying and leaning against whatever she could so that her drunk ass didn't fall over. but, to be honest, i'm not really sure because at around that time, i was devoting an inordinate amount of my brain's resources to making sure my mouth emitted some minimal level of intelligible sounds, a wasted effort as i was about to fi–

"excuse me. did you say something about chinks?"
i turned mid-sentence and it was her.
"what?"
"you said something about chinks."
"chinks?! no...?"
"no, chinks."
"yeah i know, but i din't say anything about chinks!"
"not chinks! CHINKS!"
"NO I… listen, i doh-no what yuh talking about, but i really din't say anything about chinks. ok?"
she looked confused which made me even more confused, so i "huhhed" the kind of "huh" that obviously means "what the hell is the matter with this drunk bitch?" to a few of my friends who were all standing around looking at me incredulously. "CHICKS you idiot!"
"ohhhhh…" turning back to her, "no, i dun thing so. why?"

from the 10 minute or so conversation that followed i discovered that one, she wasn't an asian professional, just some amateur american slut, and two, she was even drunker than i'd thought. how embarrassing for her.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Be Water

i remember sitting in that doctor's office less than 5 months ago looking at a map of vietnam for the first time - well the first time i cared to understand its geography - and saw the entire flower-shaped nation colored an alarming orange except for two tiny spots, one towards the bottom of the stem and the other almost centralized near the petals. a botanist's handbook would surely advise one to steer clear of this flower, because according to this map, the uncolored dots marked the only places where deadly diseases were not considered rampant threats to a western traveller's health. so of course i took notice of these two havens - the one in the north was called hanoi; the other, ho chi minh city. i wound up in the southern of the two, but knew that one day i might find myself in hanoi because despite my adventurous nature, i sure as hell wasn't gonna be trekking through that dense orange fog of tropical-flavored fevers and diseases.

so for tet, me and the posse (including upside-goners alison, carrie, mike, dave, and craig) bypassed the jungle in a soaring metal hazmat suit, leaving the suffocatingly warm, stale air of saigon behind for the untold riches of fresh breathing sustenance in the dew-soaked pistil of vietnam, hanoi. i was promised a cleaner, less noisy city with beautiful architecture, chill people, and cool, wet weather and, from arrival to departure, hanoi did not disappoint in these expectations. strange enough, i may have been most content with the fact that it rained almost everyday and was breath-identifyingly cold at times. you see, i'm writing this a month after having returned and water has yet to fall from the sky in saigon in 2005. the nights are barely cool enough to wear a light jacket and every day smothers in heat - exactly like the one before without even the slightest hint that the following day will be any different. it's a bit unsettling when the only precipitation to form is the perspiration on my nose and forehead. so i was understandably giddy when we touched down in hanoi to see rain again. then sat mesmerized during the cab ride to the hotel, wistfully watching the windshield wipers winking, whisking away the wetness on the window. oh what a wonderful way to wait - water washing, singing swish-swashing by revolving tires evolving along a wire a million tireless miles, longing listlessly while chilling blissfully, nestled in this silly vessel listening.

when i arrived at the hotel, i dropped my suitcase and backpack on the floor, grabbed my black adidas earwarmer, put it on upside-down (or right-side up, depending), and hit up hanoi for the first of several memorable nights in the capital of vietnam.

stories about chinks, dog meat, scrabble, torn tree branches, and chicken flu to follow.

Monday, March 07, 2005

untitled

this entry is a temporary place-holder for what happened this past weekend. 2 events: 1 disturbingly spiteful experience involving phuong, and the other... just deeply disturbing. though the story is incomplete at this point, and may even just end up being too fucked up to write about (trust me i want to, but this really is a story i should never repeat... ever), i'll definitely let y'all know what happened in person. shit, and i still haven't written about eating dog yet...

Sunday, March 06, 2005

A Snake Lied in Wait (Part 1)

"mat, why? ...you're the only one never finish."
"i think... i don't finish because you don't really love me."

the moonlight streaming in through a gap between the curtains provided just enough light to see the truth blind the defanged vampire, prompting her to look away. her curious question followed by a seemingly honest (but incorrect) observation had unwittingly proved false a previous assertion - that she had only been with one other person. but i had more or less already known that from her well-rehearsed execution of several different techniques and positions, and i didn't at all care about the verity of the statement; i knew it wasn't true for a different reason. so i perpetuated the lie and to it, added the truth of the condition in question for which our having 'made love' was to supposedly prove: whether or not she loved me. of course i didn't have to stick my dick in her to know she didn't really love me; only to make sure she knew just how much i didn't love her: i fucking hated her.

well not all of her. for example, i liked the way she looked. she had a bangin body which i can say for sure is an accurate description. voluptuous, soft but robust and busty with a bubble butt. Not at all busted - her face was round, but beautifully carved by the jagged outline of her artificially enhanced hair which gave it a plastic texture and an unnaturally strong resistance to tangles. her dyed honey-hued hair matched the bronze complexion of her smooth, admittedly or apparently flawless skin, and all together wrapped around her money-blackened, vanity-flattened core so that on the surface she appeared not as the dangerously self-indulgent whore she was, but simply as another sexy asian girl. the sole peephole to the darkness within were those insidious obsidian eyes which, despite their deceptively alluring beauty, bore the burden of her fatal flaw: they could sell lies better than they could see'em.

the devil cloaked itself in clothes once again and the girl did the same. she went to the bathroom and i met her outside it, then led her downstairs in silence and downward stares. i had spent about ten weeks with this girl, about half the time honestly just trying to get with her, and the other half secretly carrying out a spiteful campaign to phuong the shit out of her. i had just finished fucking her, but i didn't yet think i was done fucking her over. so what to do now? her birthday was the next day, or so she claimed, and earlier i had promised i would take her out to one of the best restaurants in saigon. should i tell her a time to meet me there and just never show up? i really did fucking hate this bitch, but by the time she left on her motorbike, both of us mumbling affectionless farewells, no eye contact or swells, my animosity towards my animal mate had become nearly inanimate as i began to recognize that the masquerade was finally over.

though at this point i felt my mask was off, all the lies, traded like glances between us, had kept her true identity, her real life, hidden. the only bits of information she told me about herself i knew for sure were true were the first three things i learned about her: where she had worked, her phone number, and her first name. i'm skeptical of almost everything else, though i believe she really wanted me to 'help' her go to america. and i also believe she actually quit her job at the shoe store for two reasons - first, because she's so fucking lazy and second, because she was becoming more blunt about wanting money. a few weeks prior i got her friend to tell me that she did indeed have a boyfriend, and after confronting her about it (and her desperately denying it until it was no longer a viable lie) she finally admitted to having a boyfriend... but she had broken up with him for me (right), and now she wanted me to 'take care of' her just as he had. oh yeah? so you mean i can marry you, bring your skanky no-english-speaking ass over to america, and pay you a salary? yeah, this one was a keeper.

our 'relationship' was a facade consisting of the occasional coffee date or her stopping by my house for a couple hours on weekday evenings, the whole time resisting my modest advances, checking her watch incessantly, and leaving when she was 'tired' or she had to be home for whatever hesitated, half-attempted excuse. the two of us were viciously trying to satisfy our own selfish agendas at the expense of the other, but while it had become numbingly obvious that she didn't want to be with me, i successfully disguised my intentions so that she really believed i was in love with her. i echoed every hollow "i love you" back to her, but with more conviction, which turned out to be my greatest asset. we had been dating for more than 2 months and not once did she want to meet me on the weekend, yet i still asked her to meet me when she could. i forgave her follies and accepted her apologies, all while nodding along to the beat of her lies... and she loved that - thinking her lies passed as truth. and i know she loved her prada jacket, nameplate necklace, phone, motorbike, and whatever else she could surround herself with to make people believe she was somehow accomplished; she may even have loved the idea that some american schmuck was (apparently) in love with her... but she definitely didn't love me.

nothing could testify to this better than the conversation i had with her earlier that very day. she phuonged me friday night which although wasn't at all surprising, i had to message her the following morning to voice my discontent. she responded simply, "i love you," to which i replied with at least one reason why i thought that was inadequate. she never wrote back. i will discuss some other time the separate, 'disturbing' event of that saturday afternoon, and then you will better understand my state of mind at the time. for now i'll just say that by saturday evening i was in dire need of either a girlfriend, or a good fuck, and phuong was the closest thing to it - a good fuck that is. so i called her up saturday evening requesting to see her, but of course she was busy, so i told her i wanted to see her either sunday or never again. she mistakenly opted for sunday.

so sunday afternoon i met her and her best friend/translator, hieu, at a cafe. after not discussing everything from the neo-conservative policy in the middle east to the recent discovery of the oldest bipedal hominid, i asked phuong why she doesn't like to see me on the weekends. "not important." oh ok. hmmm let's see. so whatever happened to promising to see me more since she broke up with her old boyfriend?

"i go to school now. i don't have free time."
"ok so you don't want to meet me on the weekends, and you have no free time during the week... so is that it? you don't really love me?"
"no, i do."

i was stunned speechless. she wanted me to believe she loved me in spite of her refusal to meet me, apparently ever again. i can't remember how exactly i danced around this one, trying to get the truth out of her one way or the other, but she wasn't budging, and i was left a bit baffled as to the status of my mission. i asked her if she still wanted to go out to dinner with me tomorrow night for her birthday and she said she did. so then i asked her to come back to my house, but she refused. "ok. once again, i'm confused. if you don't want to come to my house tonight, then i don't want to meet you tomorrow. can't you come just for a little bit?" she reluctantly agreed. having accomplished my enabling objective, i went straight home, and i'd be lying if i said in that time i wasn't both anxiously and angrily awaiting her arrival.

A Mate Dyed In Hate (Part 2)

my vengeance had been festering for weeks, now feeding on the raw skin of the bald-faced lies which had replaced with more and more frequency the almost honest broken promises of her clandestine affairs. yet i had known even before the daylight escaped from my unblinking eyes that the evening would bring about an ultimatum in this fatal fox hunt of phuong or be phuonged. the incident from saturday left me both replete of patience for even a single lie, and with a simple desire for a girl with whom to lie. and as i've already mentioned, her birthday was the following day, and i absolutely did not want to spend the time nor the money to sustain this jaded charade any longer. so i was squeezed, but at ease despite realizing i'd soon be either appeased or really unpleased, and she'd leave as either the trophy tease or with slightly sore knees.

there was, as always, a strong possibility she wouldn't show up. as i was leaving the cafe, i had asked her if i should even bother calling her at 7:15 to ask her why she was 15 minutes late. a smile escaped from her face that was a familiar chagrin of a grin, one i had seen every time i made light of this ridiculous arrangement between us. she knew i was aware of her unreliability, but i was careful about never letting on that i knew she was flat-out trying to play me. so when the doorbell rang a half-hour before she said she'd be at my house, i did my best, "who could it possibly be? no way is it phuong 'cause she shouldn't be here for at least another hour or two... [now opening the door] wait, who are you, and what did you do with my girlfriend?"

the wolf flashed her teeth cracking the same sheepish smile i'd seen earlier that day, and i, the gatekeeper, recognizing the correct password allowed her entrance into my home. then with a kind of calm recklessness, she glided her massive and expensive, or just massively excessive, motorbike up the ramp and stepped inside. the wolf clearly preferred chic to sheep's clothing, unwittingly wearing her most celebrated costume on the night of her final recital: a tight low-cut black shirt that generally concealed less than it revealed, most notably a pair of plump luscious bumps that seemed to be forever begging for a breather; and a pair of dark-blue denim jeans that clung to her legs and hugged her ass like they actually loved her. pity for her pants though that her ass was actually in love with the sofa, gadunka-dunking right past me and plunging into its plush mate with the deepest affection.

in short time, we were alone downstairs making small talk which honestly was the smallest of talks. so my first move was to corral her upstairs when she got up to get a drink, but i blinked a blunderous blink, allowing her to do a flying somersault over me and back onto the sofa before i could even unwink. she knew what i wanted to do up there, and it wasn't to expand on such riveting topics of conversation as whether or not she'd seen this or that video before. so we sat and half-watched whatever the fuck was playing on mtv asia for the next two hours while i exhausted every available phuong to get her to sleep with me.

i wasted little time, launching the foray with the obvious: "why don't you want to make love to me? is it because you don't really love me?" the combination of forceful logic and the blunt truth stunned her, if only for a moment, until she countered with the proper response, that perhaps it was i who did not love her. touche, biotch. but what about the fact that she's always the one blowing me off with lame excuses and not vice-versa? to which she probably replied with something along the lines of "uhh, well if you loved me you would believe what i told you," but with incorrect verb tenses and no modals. her combination of reverse logic and hotness would often leave us in a tangled deadlock.

the precise sequence of events in this classic clash is both irrevocable and irrelevant, but involved everything from amorous grapples to searing sweet-talk. i pummeled her with physical compliments and unleashed a relentless flurry of flatteries that she parried like a pro. this left me vulnerable, but i played my weakness as an advantage, claiming i was sincerely sick - both homesick and lovesick from the 'true love' i had had with my prior girlfriend; one in which we shared our love for each other by making love together (disclaimer: it gets worse). among my most successful maneuvers was to simply turn away with a somber, pensive gaze which deprived her of attention, thus threatening asphyxiation, and allowed me to collect myself for a follow-up attack. and of course i didn't neglect to toss around my strongest bargaining chip - my word that i would 'help' her go to america, but only if she showed me she really loved me.

yet she had proved herself impenetrable against all methods of attack, her resistance fortified with but a single insistence: "you don't take care for me." now there must be an error in her vietnamese-english dictionary that mistranslates the vietnamese phrase for "give enough money to" as "take care for," which made this a difficult argument to circumvent because aside from "taking care for" the bill when we went out for coffee and "taking care for" her once to buy a pair of jeans, i had never given the bitch a dime - and that includes christmas, both new years, valentine's day, and all of black history month. i offered a couple instances when i attempted to take care of her while she was sick, but she was apparently unaware of this particular meaning of the phrase.

so, in the end, all she really wanted from me was money which, sadly, was outside my budget. fortunately, a promise is a credit card with no spending limits or service fees, so we swapped our xao-tipped swords for pens filled with empty promises and negotiated the terms of the fuck. "first prove to me you love me, and then i'll give you money," i demanded. at first she declined, insisting i pay her at least a day before we embraced at the waist in the most intimate of partnerships, but i refused to compromise, standing firm that i had waited long enough. "i can give you money tonight," i said being mindful of word choice so as not to offend the de facto prostitute. she hesitated before asking to confirm the value of the transaction, and i repeated, "five million dong," which she must have figured was quite the bargain after i agreed to only taking five minutes of her time. except she didn't realize i'd only be giving her one dong in five million hard, hard payments.

i treaded cautiously up the steps, turning around now and then as if to catch her unsheathing a hidden dagger. she was a most worthy opponent, and i held her in the highest regard despite wanting to eat out her insides from the coochie up, like how i imagine sylvester must feel about tweety. aside from her venerable skills in the art of deception, she possessed the ability to make me laugh. she always understood the humor in the english i taught her, such as the difference between "white people" and "yellow people," and made effective use of "get the fuck outta my way." i could definitely say that i had a good time with her on occasion, even if every smile of hers was really a shiny grimace, every giggle a gagging hiccup, and every sugar apple kiss actually a carrot on a stick. nah fuck it, i hated her. and besides, by the time i reached my bedroom, i was too horny to avert intercourse, my rosy memory then too thorny for remorse.

thus a hate fuck ensued that for lack of conscience, good taste, better judgment, or all of the above, i will now describe in all its despicable details so that i may point to three noteworthy fuck ups. my hands were on her hips when i began to kiss her, and as the hot and heavy progressed aggressively i sensed a bit of reluctance so i paused, but she said nothing. her pants then, those jealous lovers, were the first to go followed by the lights, but only because i'm an idiot and didn't realize that the room would be too dark to record video. yeah that's right, after i turned off the lights, i secretly set my phone to record and put it on my headboard, but the moonlight illuminating the bedroom could only be captured by our eyes. in my defense though, it was merely for documentation purposes because i have such a hard time remembering details. luckily i have the sounds to jog my han– errr memory.

well if turning the lights off was my first mistake, then allowing her to guide my uncondomed cock into her pussy of questionable reputation was my second folly for at least three reasons. first, vietnam has one of the fastest rising rates of HIV infection in the world, not to mention the smorgasbord of other, well-established venereal diseases in this, the prostitute-visiting-male-partner capital of the world. good thing phuong undoubtedly stopped seeing that old boyfriend of hers. second, who in his right mind would ever want to take the risk of impregnating someone lower than him on the social ladder, especially especially an american in vietnam? well at least with this one i had some control 'cause i could just pull out when i wanted... that is if it weren't for the third reason which is that for someone who hasn't felt the warm tight squeeze of a tender, freshly wet dick-receptacle in, let's just say, way too long, going in without something to numb the senses of a queasy penis was an all-out invitation to the third mistake which happened to be...

cumming inside her! thank you, thank you... though i must say i hadn't at all planned to (potentially) phuong her in this way and in spite of her actual hand in the second natural disaster which allowed for the third, most monumental fuck up of'em all, i alone can take credit for this. oh yeah, and i never told her. see the only reason i busted but kept going was that i had only seen less than ten minutes of body slammin pussy-smashing action and if i had pulled out then, which i was perfectly capable of doing, it would have meant the fuck of thus far merely mild discontent would never have reached a mature status of full-on hate. stopping there would be conceding defeat, so now depleted of those hindering love juices, i let her grind on my pubic bone while i recharged with hate, deciding to explore this whore in a contortionary tour. so i split her and dipped her and bent her and flipped her in an array of sexplay in which i did her every which way.

and yeah, i too thought it was odd she didn't realize the cum dripping out of her wasn't her own, but by her mechanical knowledge of such indecent positions and robotic transitions from one to the next, i knew she'd been through these motions without emotions before. and when she said she was too tired to go on anymore, without me saying a word she dove mouth first into my funked up junk which was nasty enough to catch even me by surprise. i expected her to be out as soon as possible, especially because it had already been quite a bit longer than her original five minute allotment, but she proceeded to professionally bob, lick, and hand jive for a foolishly fruitless 15 more minutes. when she had finally given up she looked quietly bewildered, and i was unsure if it was because she thought she couldn't get me off or because she didn't know if i would pay her for an unfinished job (of proving she loved me). i sensed her disappointment, but knew there'd never be another appointment, so i told her the reason i didn't finish was because she must not have really loved me. and that was just about the last thing i ever said to her.

i didn't call her that night or the following day, not even to wish her a happy birthday. nor did i ever pay her. i assume she got the hint because she hasn't tried to contact me either, no doubt hiding out to heal her injured ego. she was a ninja, a master of the art of deception. i knew i couldn't pin down all these lies, so instead, by deflecting her barrage of trick euphemisms, spinning misleadingisms, and poison-tipped lies back onto her with unrelenting determination, i eventually managed to pin her down and stab her, repeatedly, in her most vulnerable point. yet she survived in spite of shame, slipping away into seclusive shadows so that this most deadliest of assassins may no doubt revise her strategy and one day strike again. yes, phuong's been gotten, but can she ever be forgotten?