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| In France - 1.
2.
"Hey, how about trip into town?" Alain said.
It startled Lucien awake. He had been reading "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" by Jules Verne until he had fallen asleep, but was now suddenly thrust back into reality. Madeline was on the ground besides him. The book dropped and closed itself. in front of her paws.
"How long have I been sleeping?"
"I don't know, maybe an hour or two."
The color had returned to Lucien's face since Alain had first found him. The haze and fog that had covered his mind for the past two weeks had lifted. He no longer found himself suddenly awake in the middle of the night drenched in sweat or mumbling incomprehensibly to himself only to suddenly feel Alain's hand on his shoulder.
"Hey, you alright?"
"What?"
"Nothing...It's got to be Autumn already. Just look at that light," Alain said.
He was looking at the ray of light coming in from the small corner of openwindow that was not boarded up with sheet-metal and wood.
"I need you to help me with something since it looks like you're feeling better. I figured it's your specialty."
They walked downstairs to the ground floor of the warehouse. There were a lot of rusty and old cars scattered throughout. Most of them were wrecked or totaled. Alain had guessed that the place was a tow yard when he first stumbled upon it. A metal box, filled with numbered keys, on the back wall of the warehouse confirmed this. Since there were keys kept, some would be drivable he concluded.
"Right here." Alain was standing next to a black late model Peugot 306. Other than missing front bumper and hood, the car looked relatively okay. He got behind the wheel and gave the ignition a turn. The engine sputtered and whined but that was all. "I think we can get this one to work," he said, "What do you think?"
"Try it again," Lucien bent over the front of the car with his ear turned towards the engine, "It could be an alternator. The drive belt's snapped."
"Can we fix it?"
"Yeah, if we can find the parts."
"Then, let's find the parts."
They left the next morning and traveled along the RER tracks outside, in the suburbs of Paris. Lucien pushed the Carrefour shopping cart while Alain walked behind him with the spear rested over his shoulder like flag during a march. Inside the cart was a crossbow hidden underneath a towel in the baby seat and though it was loaded, they only had one arrow. Madeline sat in the cart along with the rest of their things: some canned food, matches, a red plastic petro container, a crow bar, the blankets from the warehouse along with a set of automotive tools.
"The suburbs were pretty much looted out during the first few days when there some people, so everything around here's empty. Paris is where it's at," Alain said.
"You've been talking about other people but besides the two of us, I haven't seen anyone else," Lucien said.
"There'll be people. It's just a matter of chance," Alain said, "But, you're right, it's been a while." He patted Madeline on the head and she ducked down.
It was Lucien's first time out of the gated warehouse since the day Alain found him roaming around in Grand Palais. Memories of what happened to him Paris came to him in fragments and he had difficulty putting them together. He only knew the circumstances under which Alain had found him: dirtied, bloodied, emaciated, a husk of humanity.
In his dreams, Paris and its buildings, monuments, homes, parks, and streets would come to him intact and everything was just as they were. Sometimes, he would find himself looking out from a bus window as it passed by a residential area. Other times, he was sitting on a park bench. No one noticed him. In all these dreams, it was absolutely silent until the fog came in.
The sound of the shopping cart wheels and their breathing were deafening. Some crows flew by overheard and they pushed the cart into bushes along the side of their path, hid and waited. A few minutes later, they got out and were on their way again.
"We're in Noisy le Champ. Just two hours to go," Alain said. They were passing by the RER station. "Keep your eyes open."
They walked the rest of the way without a word and finally arrived at the edge of the city.
***
"Did you go to school?" Alain said.
"Yeah. Sorbonne."
"Smart man. What'd you study?"
"Latin and English Literature."
"And yet, you ended up being a car mechanic." Alain smiled wryly.
They had gone all the way into the Latin Quarter, on the edges of the Sein, minutes away from Norte Dame, the Louvre. It was one of the busiest tourist spots in all of Paris and most traveled upon. Now it was still as dust. They walked down the streets eyeing empty cars parked along the sidewalks and streets.
"Hey, it's a Peugot 306. This one will definitely do," Lucien said, "It'll be a good idea to see what else we can pull from it."
Alain lifted Madeline out of the shopping car and tied her leash around a lamp post, "You keep watch while your Papa goes to work okay?"
They worked quickly. Alain was out of his element and simply stood by while Lucien went to work. It came to him instinctively, as if the movement and placements of wrenches, screwdrivers, bolts, the strain, had been forced into muscle-memory. Alain handed him whatever tools Lucien requested.
Madeline started to growl. The two men stopped working. Alain picked up the crossbow he had laid on top of the closed sunroof. Lucien dropped the tools and grabbed the spear.
"Hands up! Right now!" Alain shouted while aiming the crossbow across the street.
A man was standing across the street.
"Okay! Be cool!" he said in English and put his hands up.
It was a young man who looked to be in his twenties. Just a kid. He had no wounds and his clothes were not tattered. He wore glasses and did not appear to be armed. Without asking, he kneeled and put his hands his head.
"What the hell is he saying?" Alain said.
"He says not to shoot him."
"Parlez-vous Francais?" Lucien shouted to the man across the street.
He shook his head.
"Americans," Alain said.
"I'm Canadian," he shouted back.
Alain gripped the hilt of the crossbow and Lucien watched his finger flick back and forth across the trigger. For the first time, he noticed the malice in Alain's eyes. The veins along his forearm came out like tree roots pushing up out of the dirt. Lucien put a hand on Alain's shoulder, "I'm going to go over there and check him out."
"Take Madeline with you," Alain said.
Lucien undid the knot around the lamp post and tightened some of the slack in the rope around his hand. He kissed her on top of the head. "Easy. Easy." But as soon they took a step, she surged forward against the leash.
The strangers sudden appearance shook the uneasy quiet they had become use to. Their hostility surprised him. Madeline growled and had hunched up on her hind legs, ready to spring, he looped the leash around his fist one more time, "Easy."
"Name?" Lucien said.
"Samuel."
"Alright Samuel. No sudden moves," Lucien pointed at Alain standing across the street. Madeline was hunched up on her hind legs, tail swinging rapidly back and forth.
Lucien felt along the sides of Samuel's body and legs. He pulled out a worn out wallet, a US passport, a pocket Swiss army knife, Metro map and a set of keys. Lucien motioned for Alain to put the crossbow down and he reluctantly did so.
"What are you doing out here?" Lucien said.
"Looking for food."
"What are the keys for?"
"Nothing."
"We don't want to harm you. We're just looking for other people," Lucien said and threw the spear onto the street behind him, "Okay?"
"My girlfriend and I have an apartment around here."
"Any others?"
"No, it's just me and her."
"I believe you. But no sudden moves," Lucien nodded at Alain who nodded back. Samuel got up off his knees and walked across the street with Lucien and Madeline.
"What are you smiling about?" Alain said.
"Nothing. I juts feel like a damn cop. Anyway, I think he's okay."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Just look at him, he's scared shitless."
"So what did he say?"
"He's staying with his girlfriend in an apartment around here, but they've run out of food. What do you think we should do?"
"Let's help him and find out what we can," Alain said after a long pause.
"Where's the apartment?" Lucien said.
"Around Sorbonne." Samuel said.
"It's close," Lucien said to Alain.
"Tell him we'll share the canned food we brought with them, but we need to finish getting the things from the car first," Alain said.
"Okay. We'll share what we have with us, but we need to take some parts from the car first. When we're done, you'll show us where your apartment is?"
"How can I trust that you won't kill us when we get there."
"You'll just have to because we trust that you're not leading us to who knows what."
"Alright. I get it."
Lucien returned to working on the car. They managed to remove the spark plugs just in case, the car battery, as well as the alternator, and drive belt that they needed before the sun started to set. But as he worked, Lucien couldn't shake the look of Alain's eyes when Samuel first appeared. No matter how he tried to ignore it, the anxiety of not knowing the boundaries of danger and safety in this world, made him more uneasy than not knowing what had happened to it.
He wished he was back at the tow yard. Everything was just too sudden. They loaded everything into the cart and were on their way.
| | |
| All The Way From Reno:
1.
There is an art/science to finding drinkable cheap liquor. With some experience, a person becomes familiar with thetaste, the "effectiveness", the street credibility that goes along with label. With some experience, a person can notice the price trends and pick up on the sale cycles, when stocks are replenished and things of a more technical nature. There are Plan As and Plan Bs when a person walks into a store: what is for what kind of occasion or night. There is no difference between this person, who roams the aisles at late night gas stations, and the sommelier who opens wine bottles at a Michelin starred restaurant. The only difference is place.
But, if a person drinks it fast enough, they will end up in the same place either way.
Some nights, this place was on the sofa and with the phone in her hand, she would con her former boyfriends out into cross-coast phone sex. She had moved from Baltimore to Reno a year ago.
"I'm sorry, I know it's late but I can't sleep tonight..." she led them in. Once, after coming the first time and still feeling unsatisfied, she urged him into it for a second round. Halfway through, he feel asleep. The heavy breathing turned into silence and out of frustration she threw the TV remote against the wall. It broke in half and by divine intervention, it turned the TV off. She sat there in the dark she eventually feel asleep too.
***It was December and she was looking for Plan B. Plan A, "Hurricane Lager", was out of stock. She should have known better than to expect it to be there, it was the week before winter break for the college kids. At 8.6% and a $1.29 for a tall can, amazingly, it only tasted like the slightly metallic snow that had set in during in the early morning. It wasn't there though and she was frustrated. The snow was coming down in sheets outside. She didn't even notice until the headlights of a semi pulled into the parking lot and lit parts of the night outside. The driver left the engine rumbling and made his way into the store. He was wearing a black pea-coat, gray scarf and looked disheveled. Not the testosterone fueled truck driver, driving for hours without sleep, brand of disheveled, but more like the in between shaves. He walked in, poured a cup of coffee from the dispenser and turned his back to her. She walked into the next aisle to get a closer view from behind a stack of Home Run Pies and Devil's Food Cupcakes while he was concentrated on finishing his cup of coffee while watching re-runs of the Phillies players looking down at the mic as they were interviewed about how they felt after losing the World Series on the TV in the corner of the store. *** It had been almost a year and a half since she last had sex with an actual person. A person gets use to it after a while and then the desire just comes and goes, like going to the gym, donating to charity, or feeling good about going to work in the morning. What she missed the most was not the physical sensation of sex, but the feeling of physical intimacy. Sex made her feel vulnerable, but also safe at the same time. Being exposed whiled being held. She realized this during her first and only one night stand. It was the kind of clumsy and insecure sex that happens when two people who are both drunk and neurotic get together. He slipped out a few times and smiled meekly. "Sorry Sally," he said. And for some reason, his apologizing while using her name, made her giggle like a little girl. Later on, inside herself, the scene of him struggling to pull of the spent condom made her laugh hysterically.She didn't actually laugh out loud. It would have crushed him and she was feeling merciful, the office had staged a surprise birthday party for her in the last hour of work that day, and he was the one who planned it. She had planned to spend the night at his apartment, but instead, showered and went home. When she got home, she showered again and went to sleep. At work the next morning, she avoided him and after his temp. contract expired the month after, that was that. No one ever knew at the office and that was good. She didn't want them to know her too much. When her co-workers tried to get too friendly with her, it made more annoyed than anything else. ***
A year and a half is not so long thinking about it now as the drone of, "...we just didn't have it tonight and the better team won. My hats off of to them. They played a great game...We'll just go back to the drawing board, see what we can improve on, and hopefully, next season find ourselves here again....Thank you," drone on in the background. He didn't look like a truck driver. Images of black and red flannel shirts with big boxed patterns, greasy jeans and Caterpillar boats, long goatees and nylon trucker caps, burly forearms, sleeves rolled as if ready for a fight anywhere anytime, flashed through her mind. She had watched that arm wrestling movie with Sylvestor Stallone when she was a kid and the images were burned into the back of her memory, "When I turn my hat around, I'm like this truck behind me," the slurred voice said. Then he turned around. She had the tendency to stereotype people. She played with the classifications. The clothes they wear, they way the moved, talked. She worked for a well known insurance company, in the life insurance division, and assessing risk was a daily part of her job. Having been a risk assessor for the past three or four years, it was impossible to not catalog people even when she wasn't on the clock. On the day she switched from her pair of thick framed rectangular glasses to thin round ones, people at the office said she she looked nicer and less like a frozen over bitch, though not in those exact words. Such a small thing, glasses, for such a large change in perception. Then he paid for the drink and walked out of the store. She grabbed a random bottle, paid for it, bit her lip and followed after him.  She stood in front of the store and watched as he got into the truck. It was snowing at a nicer pace now, no more sheets. When he got into the truck, she thought that would be it. He would drive off, and she would spend the night being drunk and wondering who he was and would fantasize about the mixed connection until it put her to sleep until she would forget the next morning. But the truck stayed where it was parked, engine rumbling. The lights turned off and all the snow outside suddenly disappeared. When it didn't concern herself, she was good at quantifying risk: she came up with the numbers quickly and easily. There were formulas and she would just plug a person into them. When it did concern herself however, she couldn't do it and it threw her over and turned her upside down. In her life, temperament, and predicament, she was irresponsible, reckless and impulsive. "Fuck it, Sally," she said. ***The window came down and he stared at her. It wasn't a mean stare, but a straight faced "I had the feeling you would come over here because you were standing there in front of the store staring in my direction for the past seven minutes in freezing temperatures, so excuse me if I think you're a little crazy". He didn't say it though. "What can I do for you," he said. "I rode my bike here, before it started snowing and since I noticed you were just sitting in the truck and not going anywhere, I was wondering if I could stay for a few minutes. At least, until the snow stopped. You don't seem like the kind of person who would drive off and rape a girl somewhere in the backwoods and leave herthere," she said and smiled. At work was hours of empty conversations filled with back handed sarcasm directed towards clients. He looked at her without saying anything and then glanced over at the front of the store. The outline of a single white Schwinn was visible against the interior lights, locked against the rack with a u-bar across the front of the frame. She was lucky because it wasn't hers. "Alright." He leaned away from the window to unlock the passenger side door. The inside of the truck was rather plain. Just a suitcase, an NDS on the center counsel, a Louisville slugger resting against the transmission, and two pillows and blankets in the sleeping compartment behind the seats up front. Underneath the pillow was a book, "Play It As It Lays" by Joan Didion. She recognized it because she read it once. A long time ago. "I noticed that you left the truck on the whole time while you were inside. Was that for any reason?" she said. He turned the radio down. Hardcore Yankee fans, drunk and high from living vicariously through the glory of athletes who could careless about them were gloating all over the airwaves. "It's so that I can leave the heater on, so that it's not freezing cold when I get back inside." "I never thought about that." She was clutching the brown paper bag across her lap. He noticed the tip of the bottle. "Do you want something warmer to drink?" he said. She nodded, breathed into the palms of my hand, and imprinted them onto the window. "If you look underneath your seat, there's some whiskey. I noticed you were lingering around the liquor aisle the entire time I was inside." She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "I'm not implying anything," he said, "if that's what you're thinking." She poured herself close to what she thought a double into the cover/cup of the thermos he handed her and then felt the heat travel down her throat and across her insides as she sipped it. She coughed and saw her breathe fill up the space in front of her. "Want some water?" "No, I'm good. But thanks for asking." "Sorry. Usually I take it straight.." They were so polite to each other. It reminded her of "Sorry Sally" from the temp. at the office and she wanted to laugh. But, she stifled it. "Hi, long time listener, first time caller, the guess you had on the other night who said that Japanese and Oriental baseball players always choke in the big games should choke on a fat...Matsui is officially my hero. Out!" "Sorry about that folks, I think he meant to say Hideki," more droning in the background. "If that's what's you're thinking," he said. It echoed. What was she thinking. The echo then bounced against another wall. She felt the vibrations of big truck engine rumble through the cushions of her seat. She was tired of thinking. "Actually, I came up to your truck because I wanted to sleep with you," she said. The words tumbled of out her mouth. Plain and dry. The radio went off completely. "I'm not crazy or anything, but that's what I thought when I saw you inside." He flicked the switch for the windshield wipers and a fresh sheet of snow fell off. Some onto the hood of the truck, the rest onto the gravel, "Are you sure?" "No...but I want to. And I'm not drunk." She put the bottle of whiskey back beneath the seat. The clerk came outside and knocked on his window. "How long you going to be here buddy?" he said, "You're parked too close to the store to be idling for this long. Come on man." "Sorry about that. I'll get her moving." The clerk took a glance at her, but she lowered herself in the passenger seat and looked away. "Alright then," he said to himself. The truck pulled out of the gas station lot and took a wide right onto the road. "I'm heading to a rest stop just outside downtown." he said. "That's fine." They drove for a bit. "That actually wasn't my bicycle." She could feel the truck drop in speed right after the words came out. Then were on the highway and the truck was forced to pick it back up. "I've got to be in Truckee in a few hours. I won't be able to drive you back until morning," he said. "I don't care. I just want to go somewhere and get out of Reno," she said. ***
It was a Thursday and work would start at nine the next morning. Work. She thought about it and weighed the pros and cons like she always did. For months, she was had been trying to get herself fired. Quitting makes a person ineligible for unemployment benefits, so getting fired was the only way to go. Unfortunately, she also knew that she wouldn't be fired because she was young and slightly good looking and her bosses were the kind of men who leered at the asses of young women who walked by their tables while having dinner with their wives at the casino buffets. Work. She looked out the window and shut her mind up and then they were there. The rest stop was actually the Boomtown casino and there were lots of other trucks around. At first, they just sat there without talking. Fuck it Sally, she thought and leaned over.
AUDIO: Sam Cooke - "Tenderness"
| | |
| * I haven't drank in close to a month: no beer, no malt liquor, no wine, no vodka, no cognac, no whiskey, no soju, nothing. In the last seven years, one week had been the longest I went without one. I had always denied it in the past, but I can say now with absolute certainty that I had a drinking problem. I was an alcoholic. A substance abuser. An addict. However you want to put it.
The first time I had my real taste was in my junior year of college, I rode my bike down to the corner grocery story one weekend and brought home quart sized bottles of Miller and drank until I was passed out on the sofa while watching Top 100 Rock Videos on VH1. It went from just weekends to every Wednesday because I felt that I needed tocongratulate myself for just making it to the middle of the week. It was a tough quarter. Then it became a tough year. The year after was even tougher, so I drank myself into a haze every afternoon before taking the bus to campus.
A friend and I had class together and we'd meet and drive to Albertsons and buy a bottle of Korbel, or 40s of King Cobra or some Steelies, along with our lunch. Sometimes, I would pass out on the bus and take myself for an accidental loop around the city of Davis on Unitrans or miss class completely while sleeping on the couch with "Cops" blaring on the TV.
When I did make it to class, I sat in the back and munched on Altoids or Tic-Tacs hoping no one would notice the smell of my breath. And then I'd pass out during lecture; the quarter that I did the heaviest afternoon drinking was the one where I had cognitive psychology. One time, I woke up to an empty class room because class had ended and everyone left. I was sitting by myself, pen halfway falling out of my loose grasp, half finished sentences trailing off onto the wood.
***
Though we knew of each other for some time already, I didn't really get to know her until October. We had been fans of each others photos on Xanga. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and I went in for the swoop. In January, we started our relationship and the friend and I stopped going to lunch together; the four and five in the afternoon hang overs went away and I tried my best to stay awake. There were things to work for now.
But, I didn't stop drinking. Instead of having them everyday, it became every other day. Then every few days; few being a flexible word depending on the circumstances of the week. I began to feel secure and settled into my new relationship and things were looking up. She never knew, but the night that I first messaged her on AIM, I was actually on my third glass of vodka and orange juice. And by the end of the night, I had five or six of them. The I asked for her number. A few months later, I flew out to see her during my Spring break.
The rest is history as they say.
"If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries," Tony Leung (Cop 663).
The dates, March 25th, 2006 to April 10, 2006 are a complete dream to me. Even now, almost four years later, as much as I try to tell myself that my first trip to see her in Hong Kong was a real experience, it's as if it was never apart of my life. I can't shake this eerie feeling; like a hot air balloon just hovering in front of your face, not going up and disappearing into the clouds but not coming down and covering everything around it in colorful nylon either. I can't set it down to reality.
When I first got off the plane and into the bus, I told her to pinch me and tell me that this was real, which she did. And it was real. But I didn't believe her. I still don't. I will probably die wondering if those two and half weeks ever happened in my life.
On my last night of dreaming, we lit streamers in the bathroom and prayed that the fire alarm wouldn't go off. Just two months until she would fly to California. We could make it. It's not as if it was two years. We'd probably remind ourselves of this moment later in life and laugh at how depressed we were over just two months.  I completely forgot about my drinking from March 25th to April 10th.
***
The two months passed quickly. I had missed an entire week and half of classes and needed to catch up. There were papers to write, an art exhibition to organize, midterms to study for, goals and to-do lists to get through. Friends and house-mate who wanted travel stories. Books to read. Film negatives to scan. Stories to write. Bills to pay.
The alcohol also came back: There were parties, events, clubs, concerts, and boredom and two months. Whenever she called, I missed the first call on purpose and take some time for me to calm down and sober up before calling her back.
I keep water bottles next to my bed. I still do. They're right on the window sill. In my bedroom, there are empty Kirkland Signature water bottles all over the area around and underneath my bed. Sometimes they get trapped between the wall and the mattress and I forget about them until they crink while we made love.
When you drink too much and stay up on the same night, there's an insatiable thirst that hits you at around four in the morning, when you finally do. This is what started my habit of keeping water bottles next to my bed.
Summer came and after a slight delay, so did July. So did she. There was no reason to self-medicate. The weather was in the hundreds almost everyday that month, but we were okay and made it through the month.
July was a haze. Israel had a pseudo war with Syria which made the Evangelicals think the world was going to end at my auntie's church, which we went for mass, just once, to appease my aunt. There was also the day that she almost had a heat stroke and I was ready to take her to the hospital. There was lots of driving out into the countryside. There were day trips to Berkeley and San Francisco. And there was "magic hour".
The sunflowers also bloomed in July. I couldn't wait to show them to her. We drove the Nissan out towards Winters and stopped by the side of the private farms so she could marvel at them just as like how I marveled at the at the skyscrapers and density of Hong Kong.
It was a short bloom that year and they wilting by late July. We could barely get out and up close to the actual flowers since most of the farmers kept their bee hives in close vicinity. I put it in neutral and "ghost rode the whip" down the dirt paths.
She flew back home at the beginning of August.
I moved out of my house in Davis and back in with my family and stayed dry for some time. That entire summer, I barely touched any alcohol except for Matt's barbecue night. I was my longest stretch of staying sober up to that point but It didn't last long. BevMo was only down the street and the gas station was so close and it was open until midnight, until 2 am on weekends.
***
"I thought we’d stay together for the long haul. Flying like a jumbo jet on a full tank. But we changed course," Cop 663.
I will always remember this line from Wong Kar Wai's "Chungking Express". Tony Leung says it during the scene where he is flying that toy Boeing 747 along the outline of stewardess' body as she's putting her clothes back on while he's laying there in his white tidies. When you ask me, "Have you seen Chungking Express", this is the first scene that comes to my mind.
I spent close to 4 months in Hong Kong during the summer of 2007. In the previous months, I worked hard so that I could come. I worked two jobs, one in the afternoon, as an after school academic coach and one at night as a test grader. I was too tired to do anything else by the time I came home and just collapsed into bed.
Then I bought my plane tickets and told my family, I need to "be young and explore what I wanted in life". Those were my words to them. I had never felt so motivated.
I went because I wanted to be with her for something that was more meaningful than just a couple of weeks and more life altering than just a month. There were big plans. Plans for the long haul.
I didn't drink for the first two months in Hong Kong. I didn't even notice that I didn't, just like that July. There was no need to put myself under. She and I were together and again, getting shit-faced/smashed/blasted just to past the time was the furthest thing from my mind.
In the last two months, after the fruitless job searches, a few interviews (they were fruitless because I gave up and stopped looking), I decided to return home in September, I picked it up again. We had talked until our eyes dried. I didn't know what else to do after we changed course.
I'd leave her apartment at around midnight and walk "home". Her auntie rented an old family apartment she used to own. It was in disrepair and had the faint smell of water pipes and faded linoleum. I didn't want to go home but at the same time, I didn't want to give her family a bad impression of me by hanging out with their daughter until two or three in the morning every night while they were on the other side of the wall and door.
I would pick up cheap beer at Circle K and 7-Eleven underneath my building. A Kingway, or a Carlsberg, a Skol, Tsing Tao, whatever was cheap. On particularly hot and humid days, on days that we fought until our voices were barely a whisper like on July 1st when I told you I would get on the MTR and she'd never see me again, I would drink two or three or four of them.
I sat there on that sticky vinyl blue sofa and let the mosquitoes drink along my arms and legs until one or two in the morning flew by. Sometimes she would call to make sure I made it home safely but half the time, when I didn't answer on the first ring, it was because I was past it and completely unaware of the phone vibrating on the window sill.
There were lots of CD's. We checked them out from the library: "Modern Times" by Bob Dylan, the soundtrack for "Ray". There was a live version of "Georgia On My Mind" by Ray Charles (not Jamie Foxx) and I'd turn it up, put on my headphones and drank until I feel asleep. I'd wake up to tangled mess of cords in the morning. Other times, I'd turn the ceiling fan on and watch re-runs of "ER" because I thought I could save money by not turning on the air conditioner so that I could buy more booze. Money was tight and she and I were on a budget.
Ironically, during that stream of ERre-runs, Dr. Carter was succumbing to substance abuse problems (prescription drugs, anesthetics, and such). He was also just beginning his relationship with Dr. Abby Lockhart. I was rooting for them though things didn't work out in the end. It was too bad. I felt a little crushed since I was living vicariously through the both of them. Abby, Addy. Abby, Addy. Their make-ups were so similar.
She knew I drank. Her father drank a can of PBR every few nights at around midnight in the kitchen while he smoked and read the newspaper. I nodded goodbye to him while tying my shoelaces on the way out. Nothing new. But she never knew how much or how often I drank. I hinted it to her sometimes that I had a growing problem, and before we were together, I really had a problem. But it often came out as a joke. I was just some "crazy college party boy". I threw all the empty cans away before she came over in the morning or stacked them all the way in the back of the refrigerator..
There was a lot going on in our relationship and after all the talking, all the messages, the love making, the afternoon naps, the dinners, the dates, the ATM withdrawals, the silent bus and MTR rides, I had no idea what I was doing. We were collecting the paper dates that we tore off the Chinese style calendar for some project and we would write what we did on each day that sheet that we tore off. But we never did.
And then I took the 16 hour flight back home, to the United States and became a substitute teacher.
***
For my first year back, I couldn't write. Writing is a large part of my life. I'd say that it's more apart of me than pictures are. It's the end result of all the grinding and gear changes inside me. So I will sa some things about it because I feel it needs to be said.
Every time I picked up my pen I couldn't put anything together except to-do lists that didn't get done. After a few days of this, I resorted to writing things like "Eat" and "Wake-Up" and sometimes "Sleep". Things I knew would get checked off even if the world was ending provided we were not dead. They filled the whites of the pages.
The stories and characters weren't coming in as coherently and as instantly as they use to. She grew sick of reading my shit and told me I should be focusing on getting real jobs instead of wasting my time.
Ernest Hemingway, my literary hero, drank scotch, brandy and whiskey before he was able to sit down and get going. In fact, I think he may have written "A Movable Feast" while drunk and stumbling from cafe to cafe in Paris. "A Movable Feast" is considered one of his best works and the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and the rest of that expatriate "Lost Generation" made many cameos within it.
I can imagine them all, drinking wine at the Cafe de Medicis in front of the Jardin de Luxembourg and writing and talking about ideas. They drank beer at Balzacs in Rue des Escoles while chatting through free association games. You start a story, I'd run with it, pass it on to the next person, next thing you know, there's a structure for "East of End", maybe "This Side of Paradise". Near Opera, Hemingway was one of the first and most famous customers of Harry's New York Bar. There was also, Le Trou dans la Mur, next to Harry's, Cafe de la Paix, Lipp's in Saint-Germain on the Left Bank, so many places.
After France was liberated from the Germans at the end of World War II, Hemingway walked into the hotel bar of the Ritz Hotel, in glitzy Place Vendome, with an entire squad of soldiers falling in behind him, he declared that the liquor cabinets were now liberated.
Following Hemingway and his drinking haunts has its own section in travel books for people who want to visit Paris. This is how I know all this.
***
I asked a Nobel Laureate awarded poet during a workshop if he ever wrote when he was "under the influence" and if it ever liberated his creativity from our natural inhibition to edit our writing before the ideas even got out of our heads. Some high-faluting shit worded to impress. He gave a long pause and said, "It works for some people. When it works, you feel brilliant. When it doesn't, you want to crumple yourself up and throw yourself, not your pages into the trash bin, for having to rely something other than yourself and a clear mind." Since when did poets ever have clear minds, I wanted to say.
All I took from that was "It works for some people. When it works, you feel brilliant" and missed the rest of the qualifiers strung along with his answer. No one remembers the streamer coming off the trunk of the "just married" car or the dirtied train of the dress. I moved into hard liquor, Irish Coffees, Gin and Tonics, Cognac and Coke, and became crazy prolific. I was a bona-fide jazz musician with a .38mm Sigma pen and Muji notebooks.
One night, the ideas were coming in so fast, I was trying to type it in "rhythm", and imagined myself being a classical piano player: how the fingers and hands moved, but instead of piano keys, it was the characters on my keyboard and that even though the tap-tap of the keyboard wasn't exactly music, this was probably how music sounded to Beethoven because he was deaf and he could only hear the vibrations of the keys themselves as they struck the hammer, and it was from his "sensing" of the distinctions between the vibrations of each key that he was able to compose such beautiful music. So I turned my face to side and listened very carefully to the sound of my typing as I tried composing a story. This was the night I broke the F key.
The Nobel Laureate was right. I just wanted to throw my entire notebook and all the scribbles and half baked notions that came along with it, including myself, into the trash. And that is all I have to say about writing.
***
She came to see me in late February and March, The purpose of the trip was so that we could end things properly, face to face, sitting across from each other, things were been...difficult. And the distance. And our lives. And my lack of drive to better myself. And the distance. But, nothing of th sort happened, it was as if we had just gone back to how were last summer and she forgave all my faults, or ignored them, and we forgot about all our past fights and disappointments.
We said we would get drunk together just because we had never done it before, at least in front of each other. We were less naive and less innocent by then. She always bragged about how strong her alcohol tolerance was whenever we talked on the phone and she told me about going to the bar for parties or dinner with friends. "I never get drink". She's Asian, is barely 5'3 and weighs just a smudge over 100 lbs. I didn't buy it. I wanted to see what she was like, if she was like me at all. If she could be in shambles and shameless like I could be.
But in the end, it was just me drinking. I stumbled around my bedroom like a dazed eight year old trying to find his footing in a plastic ball pen and gave her quick and abrupt kisses to her cheeks, her lips, the tip of her nose, her forehead, like a boxing jab but with lips instead. She held my head with both hands to slow the impact. "You're being too adorable".
I tackled her into bed and ran my fingers through her hair and told her that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever been with, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and the most beautiful woman that I will ever be with. Forever. Forever ever. For future forevers. For parallel universe forevers until all the quasars died.
And then universe itself faded into complete darkness. I feel asleep in a pile of our laundry on the bed until I woke up and went to sleep in the living room downstairs. We were still keeping up with impressions since we were in my parents' home. I think she watched episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" on my desk from her MacBook for the rest of the night.
In the morning, she said that my breath smelled terrible and that she never wanted to see me like that again. So I promised to never get drunk like that in front of her again. A few days later, I drove her to SFO, she got on an airplane to Hong Kong. I kept getting drunk but not in front of her. I couldn't even if I wanted to because she wasn't even here anymore.
A lot of things have happened since. I haven't seen her seen her, directly in front of me, enough to see the condensation she makes on my passenger side window on cold mornings, since then.
***
On the night that my grandmother passed away and my family was grieving, I was at a sports bar with a pint in my hand. My cell phone rang and I picked it up and my father gave me the news, "Come home, your grandmother just passed away and your mom needs you." I could barely drive home, but I made it.
She broke her own news to me on my way home from the first day of the funeral and I didn't know what to think. Curiosity at first, then insecurity, then resentment, then vengeance, then anger, then regret, more insecurity, bewilderment, resignation, then I froze. Then I went to the gas station and bought a 12-pack and drank the entire thing while reading "Shortcomings" by Adrian Tomine until all the words and panels blurred together. Reading "Shortcomings" made everything feel so much worse than it necessarily had to because it was like hearing everything all over again, but more concise and blunt.
That night, I thought I nearly killed myself and woke up at three in the afternoon with a splitting pain in my side (my liver). It was the worst pain I had ever felt, not since the night I threw up all over Vai's toilet cover seat from too much Southern Comfort and Titus and I "bonded" because he was the one who helped me clean it up and I spent the rest of the night apologizing for ruining their toilet cover seat, but Vai didn't care, because she was drunk and hooking up with someone in the bedroom and all I was doing was just bothering her by knocking on the door to apologize...I think.
This was back in college, on the night before we went to the Asian American Empowerment event at Stanford University and I told Matt to just leave me on the side of the road if I died and to represent UC Davis to the fullest while everyone was waiting to see if I would throw up or not because I was leaning with my body halfway out of the rear seat with the door open of Tran's beige Mazda 6. "Make sure he doesn't do it in the car," I think I heard someone say.
I felt fine when we got to Stanford, it was a 2 hour nap from Davis, and I marveled at it's Greeco-Roman like columns and felt the emotional catharsis from telling others how minorities, especially Asian minorities (and Pacific Islanders) always get shafted and white people suck and having everyone agree with me.
Up until the night my grandmother died, this was the was the worst abuse that my liver took. Then my grandmother died.
Some people remember every single detail from their deepest physical pains. Some choose to forget them completely as if it never happened. Unfortunately, I'm one of those who remembers everything.
I remember everything from the night my dad called me, how I almost dropped the pint of Sierra Nevada on the ground. Jared, Tyson, Leoncio, Alvin, looking at me, not knowing what to say. Leoncio said "Let me know if you need anything and put his hand on my shoulder". "I'll be alright I said", the wait for the train to pass by before I get home, the way my mom looked when I first saw her, running the lint brush over my dad and brother's suits before we got into the chapel, praying for hours our knees and legs in front of where the body was, walking up the hill to where we lit the incense and burned our paper offerings, how the clouds before the monks told everyone to close their eyes while they lowered her body into the gaping chasm, the sound of the plane flying overheard, the plane suddenly reminding me of too many goodbyes at airports and now another goodbye involving planes.
But I don't want to talk about that. Or remember. I drank so much yet wasn't able to sleep because my insides were killing me.
***
Substitute teaching: year two. Besides a few things and events, probably the most forgettable year so far in my recent years. It was one of those years where stuff happens but there's not a lot you can say about them.
When I came back from Hong Kong two years ago, I weighed 135 lbs. After my first year back, I went up to 155 lbs. The drinking was beginning to show. Looking into the mirror every morning before I showered was a reminder of how I was ruining myself. My conscience told me to cut back. Only every other two nights now, no every other nights. And never back to backs except between Friday and Saturday night. Weekdays were for buzzes, Fridays and Saturdays were carte blanche and I could get smashed without guilt since it was the weekend and I could deal with hangovers on Sundays instead of Mondays.
I am thankful that my bed is directly behind my desk. Worked rolled by smoothly, our relationship strolled through its post World War I trenches that weren't buried over yet (bodies, spent munitions, land-mines and all), I continued writing and taking pictures, with occasional bouts of acute loneliness and passive-aggressive vengeful behavior. Combining these two things made me more emotionally promiscuous. I rationalized that I was young, I was only twenty four, I'm a man and men have natural needs and since she wasn't here anyway, I should find someone; she even said so herself.
Rationalization is the first step in justifying the need for what would otherwise be, a serious problem. I always call other people out on their hypo-criticism, but I was the biggest hypocrite of them all. When I realized it, that was the end of that.
The last month of the school year went by quickly. Not much happened. Fairly routine existence. Get phone call, sometimes at 5:30 am or 6:00 am. Go to work. No phone call, the read The Huffington Post for Hours. Watch the news, dress up like I'm going to work, but not go to work, go out to take pictures instead, hang out at cafes and bookstores, drive out to the countryside, watch matinées by myself, or go to the library to read books and write nonsense.
And oh yeah, apply for jobs. I did this endlessly. No replies. A few times, I got completely smashed just because I received a rejection written letter. I was just proud that they responded. The signature was even signed by hand. I wanted to celebrate because it meant they at least read my cover letter and resume.
In August, I left for Paris, France. Before leaving, I quit my job. The school year would be starting three weeks. I didn't have to heart to tell my boss that I was quitting because I hated my job; she loved having me as a substitute and so did the majority of the other teachers, so I lied to her that I got married and was relocating. I have no heart and no backbone even though I tell other people to have some all the time.
On the flight there, I opted for as much free alcohol as I could get whenever the stewardess came around with cheeks. Since it was Air Canada, the selection was a Molsen or Valley Fort Red Wine.
"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." - Ernest Hemingway
I found myself sitting on a stone bench on the banks of the Seine on a quiet late afternoon with a half empty bottle of red wine in my hand. I was lucky enough I guess. It was a new world and it shattered my daily routine for a few weeks. I didn't drink for a few days since I was staying with family friends and didn't want to ruin my family name by revealing that their oldest and supposedly "most bright" son was an alcoholic.
But the inevitable urge set in and my man-bag, the one she bought for me as a gift, was just the right size to stow an entire bottle of wine along with a camera and book. I'd throw the bottle away in the recycle bin right above the Metro stop before I got home. I went out on my own most of the time so no one would care. Public drinking was the norm in Paris. It was a moveable feast. Wine was cheaper than water in restaurants.
I drank myself to sleep on the bench and woke up to one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen under a lazy lavender sky. No hangover, no bad mood, just the shade of a beautiful bruise, the sunset setting along a horizon of bridges, church spires and river shine. And in the middle of all that, all I could think about was soap; that bar of soap she left in the moldy bathroom of that decaying apartment in Hong Kong. I had no right to reminisce, after all, I was the one who abandoned her in the end when she needed me the most.
Towards my last few days, I found myself having a drink while people watching from my room in Porte d'Ivry. There was nothing but residential high rises. It was such a different feeling than the night I spent on the Seine. It depressed me. Every first weekend, the city sounded the bombing alarms as a safety drill. I imagined this is what it sounded like when German bombers flew by in the first weeks of the war before Paris got held hostage. "You guys don't do that back home?" Pascal asked. "Sort of. We have fire drills and earthquake drills for kids". It was like an ambulance running over the city.
The park across the street was empty and the air was stall. Everyone had gone for the day: for work, driving lessons, classes, shopping, and I was home by myself packing my luggage.
Ups and downs. I told myself I'd quit when I get back to the States as I threw the can out of the window from my room on the 17th floor. It landed in the bushes and didn't even make a sound.
I was on my way home the very next afternoon. "Au revoir Paris!"
I didn't quit when I got home. In fact, I drank even more.
***
I have a lot of favorite scenes from "Chungking Express" besides the post-coital toy airplane scene. Like the one where Tony Leung talks to his towel as he's wringing it out. He says to it,
"She may have gone but life goes on. You must stop indulging yourself. You’re a real disappointment to me. You’ve changed so much. You can’t just switch personality like this. Her walking out is no excuse. Pull yourself together."
A dear friend and I talked about our addictions and problems one night. She told me that she had picked up smoking because of him and that it was getting hard to get around her room without hearing the clinks of empty wine bottles falling over and hitting each other. She was so upset that even though they were broken up, already, within a week or two, another toothbrush had replaced hers by the bathroom sink in his apartment. She noticed it when she went to pick up her belongings from him and settle with regards to the kitten they were parents of before the divorce.
"Me too!" I said in response to her wine bottle comment, "In fact, I'm slightly drunk right now." And we both laughed. "You know, I keep my bottles on top of the subwoofer underneath my desk. On the right songs, with the right amount of bass, they vibrate and sound like wind chimes."
"That's hilarious," she said.
We didn't say anything for a while and I just stared at the screen waiting for the italicize to appear to tell me she was typing. No reply. Finally, I typed "I'm going to sleep. How did we ever become like this."
She flew to Beijing a month later because she couldn't take it anymore and had to get herself together. "It's this city. I need to leave. I feel like nothing but a ghost here," she said.
***
I still feel the thirst. My skin crawls and I can feel a pulling in my throat when commercials for Coors Lite come on during Sunday NFL games as "The Love Train" by the O'Jays blast away in the background with everyone dancing under a rain of beer in the street on a hot summer's day and as the "silver bullet" gets closer, it starts snowing and the smiles get even larger as if everyone is on that ecstasy induced friendliness you saw at raves back in the day.
The worst I ever got it was from the Absolut commercial which used New Order's "Ceremony" as a soundtrack. That sense of restless longing you get from the reverbed guitar tones and then realizing you're at home, watching a commercial for Vodka on TV, while watching a stupid sport, instead of doing those things that you see in the actual commercial. And that reverbed guitar...it makes me want to just liberate myself again. Some people get inspired by things like this, for me, the inspiration is good for a few seconds. Then, it's confidence robbing.
That afternoon I drove to the Chevron a few blocks from my house, during half-time to get something to drink. I sat in the parking lot with my hand on the door handle. They were playing the fucking "The Love Train" on 101.1, the oldies station. A burly man threw me a wide smile across the front of my windshield while lugging a crate of Coronas under each arm. I reversed the car out of the spot and drove home and went through four Constant Comment tea bags while blasting my stereo.
"We're all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears." - Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro).
Later that night, I ran through ten miles before collapsing onto my knees at 24 Hour Fitness. The treadmill belt threw me back on the ground like a rag-doll. I burned through over a thousand calories plus a little more. The attendant at the front desk came over and asked if I was okay while I was breathing heavy on my palms and knees. "I'm okay. Just over did it a little," I said. My body felt like a running river.
***
Sometimes I when think about the crazy high euphoria and crushing come downs I got from being with her and from drowning myself in alcohol and what the differences were between the two, I don't know what to conclude or say. I just know that it was the most devastating and at the same time, sublime force that I ever willingly let tear through me. Because that's what it did: tore through bone, morrow, cartilage, fiber, tissue, mind, memory, emotion, thoughts. And it scares me. Scares me shitless because I don't ever want to feel so helpless and powerless in front of something like that again.
AUDIO: New Order - "Ceremony"
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