So my mom’s been spazzing… Man, she’s petrified about moving
into the new house. Claims it’s haunted. It’s certainly haunted by bad vibes.
There’s no doubt about that.
Everyone heard of what happened there. That kid going nuts
and blasting his family, then attacking his school. Oh, and his trial, what a
spectacle. They’d actually tried “demonic possession” as a defense. His lawyers
even hired some quack to testify on his behalf. This quack was a famous ghost
hunter, and he testified about his “examination” of the house and played, in
the courtroom, these hissing and popping noises he’d recorded, claiming they
were “voices of the dead.” The whole fucking shitshow was on TLC.
If you ask me, the “ghost hunter,” the quack, was just a
clout chaser. He was trying to cash in on the tragedy. Look, he sold a book
about it, went on TV shows afterward. He was an asshole, as far as I’m
concerned, a bullshit artist, same as those psychics and mediums, those
parasites who exploit misfortune, target the naïve, rake in blood money… Fuck
him and fuck every one of his ilk…
I’m not sure if I believe ghosts are sentient beings. I
imagine them more as forces and energy, but indifferent, not malevolent or
benevolent. They’re basically the same as a gust of wind or the pull of
gravity. They’re a part of nature.
Ghosts make for fun flicks, though. I’ve watched a lot of
horror movies. When I was younger, I’d be scared by that stuff, too. Carrie freaked
me out. The frothing, fucking demonic bitch. I could have seen some lame chick
I pumped and dumped going batshit like that. I could see her covered, head to
toe, in blood, chasing me down a school hallway, shooting fireballs from her
ass…
Nowadays, there are tons of Carries, right? Aren’t a lot of
these kids, shooting up schools, a Carrie? It’s the revenge of the nerds out
there. Nerds going homicidal. You know, like the middle school kid with dental
headgear who got his face splashed in the toilet a couple years ago and then
opened fire in the school cafeteria. Or that kid at a high school a few towns
over, who got a banana shoved up his ass, at a houseparty, by jocks, and later went
out and shot up a football game.
Carries, nerds. Man, don’t fuck with the nerds anymore…
But people still do. I bet they always will. It’s human nature,
to fuck with people. And like nowadays, with the cyberbullying, it’s even
worse. Like, remember the retarded kid with a lightsaber? That video went
viral. Millions of people saw that. Millions of people saw and laughed at an
11-year-old retarded kid’s worst moment. It’s terrible. Really, it is. That kid
will grow up to be a mass shooter or a serial killer or some shit.
Not that I’m innocent. We pranked lots of kids. We gave kids
atomic wedgies. We did that shit. And the older kids did it to us. It’s a
cycle. An ecosystem of abuse. But I never thought of anyone shooting up my
school. We were fortunate that no one in our class was the type. But shit, if
I’d been living in Colby Oswald’s neighborhood, right?
Yeah, dude, I was scared more of ghosts, as a kid, than
school shooters. I believed in ghost stories, I believed in Slenderman and
urban legends. I believed, at one point, for real, that if I said “Candyman”
three times, into a mirror, Candyman would show up and kill me. And while I
don’t believe in Slenderman or Candyman, anymore, I still sort of do believe in
ghosts. But in a different way.
Look… my views changed. My outlook changed. I changed after
I traveled the world…
That’s one thing I’m most proud of doing. Traveling the
world. It’s one thing no one can ever take from you, your travels.
I remember hearing an interview with the rapper Lloyd Banks.
He was once famous, on top of the charts. These days, he’s not, and an interviewer
asked him about it, asking him euphemistically how he felt now that his time in
the spotlight was over.
Banks, being cool as fuck, like he is, replied by saying
something about how the money, fame, that comes and goes, but the experiences
he had, especially traveling the world, that’s something no one can ever take
from him.
And I feel that, man. I feel the same way.
Lloyd Banks, in that interview, was reminiscing, talking about
visiting beaches made of volcanic sands, these black sand beaches, in the
Canary Islands. Yo, I saw that too. I went there too, man. I actually saw that.
I walked, barefoot, on volcanic sands. It was absurd...
Man, I floated in the Dead Sea. I strolled through areas of
the Middle East that have been inhabited for over 10,000 years. I trekked
through Aztec, Incan, and Mayan ruins in Central and South America. I chased
after an alpaca that ran up and stole my phone with its mouth. I rode a donkey
in the Andes Mountains. I hiked in the Amazon, went scuba diving in the Philippines,
spearfishing in Tahiti. I visited the Roman Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower.
As cool as all that is, the most spectacular place I’ve ever
visited, and the most unforgettable, most transformative experience I ever had,
without a doubt, has to be… Tibet.
My perception of the world, of life, of virtually everything,
changed, drastically, after I visited Tibet.
I’m lucky to have ever gotten in. Mere entry is strictly
controlled. If you want to enter the country, and you’re not a Chinese citizen,
you have to be part of a Chinese government-approved tour group, be part of a Chinese
government-approved tour.
I was fortunate enough to have joined such a tour group,
along with a handful of travel buddies I’d made while staying in a hostel in Hong
Kong. The idea was instigated by my bunkmate at the hostel, an older British
“bloke,” this former S.A.S., heavy-drinking Welshman. Dude was fucking nuts.
And cool as shit.
I mean like here we were, in this pub in Kowloon, and out of
nowhere, his eyes bulge and he blurts out, “I want to climb Mount Everest
naked…”
I thought it was a joke, that it was the beers talking. We
really were shooting the shit, slamming pint after pint in that pub...
That pub. It was an authentically British place. The Brits
seem to have a system, a network of British pubs, in every city in the world. I’m
sure you’ve seen one. A place with pictures of soccer players and cricketers on
the walls and Union Jack flags hanging from the rafters. This was one of those
places… A place that served bangers and mash and pork pies and eggs and baked
beans and black pudding and haggis and all the other weird shit the Brits eat.
Yo, I tell you, man, like I’d always heard British food was disgusting,
but when I tried it, it was delectable. Traditional British food is far better
than advertised… Just don’t ask what haggis or black pudding is made with…
Anyway, this crazy Welsh motherfucker was slugging down
pints of Guinness. Using the side of his forearm to wipe away the froth from
his thin lips, he starts getting serious, his face tightening, and he’s going
on, writing an itinerary, plotting a voyage to the Himalayas. He proclaimed to
have been to 82 countries, but said he never saw the Himalayas, never went to Tibet.
He was 43, he said, but looked 35 or so, and had a head full
of scraggly blond hair. As with most Brits, he was shockingly pale, looking
like he’d taken a bath in bleach.
Although he didn’t have any scars or wrinkles, aside from a
couple light forehead creases, he did appear as the sort who’d been in his
share of fights, had his share of drama, but, given his disposition, it was
easy to picture his opponents faring far worse than him in any dispute. Dude
was pretty jacked, I gotta say, looked like he pumped iron or did hundreds of
push-ups every day. He had that natural, tensile type, corded musculature…
Yo, for real, how is it that so many of these army dudes
stay ripped, even after they’re discharged? My Grandpa was like that. There’s
something about what being in the army does to those guys…
But yeah, dude was bemoaning his traveling days coming to an
end, confessing that he missed Wales. During his lamentations, with his face
crinkling, and the way the neon light trickling in from the pub’s front window flashed
off his face, I remember starting to think that he looked older and that I
could see him being in his 40s.
At least I was able to understand him. His accent was clean.
Unlike some of the other Brits I’d met, most notably the Scots.
Some guys from Glasgow, I could barely understand. Coolest
people, funnest people in the world, the Scots, but I couldn’t comprehend what they
were saying, half the time. I’m not even convinced what those Scots were saying
was even really English. Maybe it was a kilt and bagpipes, fucking Gaelic
language or something. Part of it was English, I’m sure. It sounded like
English, anyway. I’d seen the film Trainspotting, so that helped. Too
bad the real live Scottish people didn’t come with subtitles, though…
Oh, and I remember asking a couple Scots if they’d seen the
Loch Ness Monster, and most of them just looked at me funny, shook their heads,
though one responded that “I don’t think anyone’s ever seen it...”
Oh, man, fucking British people, they’re great. They say
funny shit! Like, even if they’re mad and yelling, it still sounds funny, just
because of how they talk. I’d always thought of the Brits as only being these
tea-drinking, “posh,” jolly fucking Prince Harry, Lady Diana Jane Austen type of
assholes. But nah, they get rowdy!
Especially around soccer, which I can understand, since it’s
so boring. Those soccer hooligans, they gotta beat the shit out of somebody to
make a game that stupid and boring into something more exciting. I can
understand it.
Part of that must be related to the drinking. Those Brits
get wild when they drink. You feed the Brits a few pints and all that stiff
upper lip shit vanishes. And man, seriously, they drink hard. Like, having been
in a frat, I saw heavy drinking, but the Brits, they were fucking animals. They
took it to another level.
Oh man, they’re great. I loved those British guys. They were
the best…
Tough bastards too. Lotsa shaven heads. Missing teeth. Ready
to brawl in a minute. A real warrior culture over there. Like, that island, how
fucking cold and rainy it is, you gotta be tough to live there.
I visited Britain, too, and loved it. It was so green, like
even greener than the Irish Spring commercials, all the rolling hills, fucking
Leprechauns hiding out there with pots of gold and shit. Oh, man, it was bucolic,
truly beautiful, but those people are wild. They’re fucking animals.
Why don’t we get those sorts, the wild Brits in America? The
“yobs” as they call them there... We don’t get those in America. We only get
the goofy fucking Monty Python, Benny Hill, and John Oliver types or the classy
types, like the Royals, and rich businesspeople, the “Excuse me, sir, might you
have some Grey Poopah” riding in a Jaguar Brits, or the rock stars, or the
Harry Potter magic wand waving Brits, or handsome Harry Styles or David Beckham
soccer ball kicking motherfucker Brit.
The rest, they don’t get passports, probably. They do a good
job keeping their animals hidden, caged up in that cold crazy island.
The UK doesn’t let its maniacs out. But America does. Any
American abroad is likely either in the army or a criminal or evil businessman
or all three. Or an escaped child molester. Or worse- a missionary. If you ever
see an American abroad, run away! Nah, I’m only kidding. Sort of.
Some of the maniacs do escape Britain, though. I met a few
maniacs, like the Welshman, traveling in Asia. And I have to say, they were
pretty fucking cool.
Back to the Welshman, first time I met him, in my hostel. He
was lying on the bunk above me, reading a book about the Korean War, and was
wearing a t-shirt, a fucking t-shirt, and blue jeans, in the middle of winter.
Dude had some big biceps, too, a pair of guns on him…
It was so cold then, too, in Hong Kong. This shit cold. This
thickly humid cold. This damp cold. The cold was almost like a living force, a sinister,
malignant being. It was everywhere and touching everything. I never experienced
such nasty cold. It was miserable. And it was made much worse with the rainy,
misty weather.
And then here was this Welsh dude, with this tattoo of a
green dragon on his muscular arm, and he invites me out for pints and starts
talking jokingly, then seriously about hitting Tibet. His sweet beer breath
fogging over us, he was getting hyped up, his blue eyes bulging as he started talking
about really going there, not to hike Mount Everest naked, but going on a legit
tour.
Damn skippy, I’m with it. Tibet? The rooftop of the world? To
me, it was the most exotic place imaginable. It was the farthest end of the
Earth. I’d come to Asia without much of a plan, was just gonna bum around,
check out different countries, and I was stoked to check out the wildest one
possible…
We booked the ticket, tour from a travel agent nearby our
hostel in Kowloon and left a few days later. It wasn’t the most opportune time
to go, being winter, and colder than a witch’s cunt, but Tibet was open and way
cheaper, at that time of year, so we seized the chance.
(Welshman said China would frequently close Tibet off around
“sensitive” times of the year, like an anniversary of an uprising or holiday…)
Man, just flying into the place was a thrill. We flew first
from Hong Kong to Chongqing.
Chongqing, somewhere in southwest China, was so foggy that,
as we descended and approached the city, I could barely see anything from our
plane’s windows until the black tongue of the airport runway appeared, almost
magically, and mere seconds later we touched down with a hard bump.
At the airport in Chongqing, we had a short layover, part of
which I spent hitting on a cute young Chinese chick working at a souvenir
stand. She was petite, with sky high cheekbones, big brown eyes, and straight shiny
black hair reaching to her flat belly. She was wearing a tight red sweater and
hugging blue jeans that complimented the curves of her flawlessly trim figure,
and looking her over, I was starting to grasp the concept of “yellow fever.”
She spoke about 20 words of English, and I couldn’t speak a
word of Chinese, but anything I said was making her laugh like I was a standup comedian.
I asked for her number too, but she just kept laughing and giggling. I did the
phone hand signals and everything. I don’t know if she didn’t understand or
just didn’t want me calling her. Eventually I gave up and rejoined my travel crew,
sat by them on a metal bench facing the gate.
The Welshman swung his gaze at me as I sat down, and he snarled.
With his snarling, his thin upper lip curling, his face reminded me a little of
Sid Vicious. But like a blonder, older Sid Vicious. A wiser Sid Vicious. An in
an airport in China middle-aged Sid Vicious. A Sid Vicious who hadn’t murdered
his girlfriend and overdosed on smack. A Sid Vicious if he’d joined the S.A.S.
instead of the Sex Pistols.
I couldn’t really imagine Welshman doing smack, but I could
see him murdering people. I could see him murdering lots of people. Shit, he
was in the army, the S.A.S., so who knows how many bodies he had… I could see
him in gully suits, running loose in jungles, jumping down from trees, his face
slathered in green camo paint, all that Rambo sorta shit. Yeah, man, I probably
didn’t even want to know the crazy military shit he’d done… Accordingly, I made
a mental note to stay on his good side…
Welshman was sipping on a can of Coke, and he declared that
Chinese chicks were hot; “fit” was the term he used. (“Fit” means “sexy” in spoken
British.)
Though he warned me about Tibetan girls, proclaiming that Tibetan
girls have hairy armpits and bad teeth, stinky breath. He was one to talk, really,
considering his teeth were a train wreck, but his breath never stank, except of
alcohol. His generalizations would have triggered people on Twitter, I bet. I
sure hope he never took to tweeting.
He was tendentious, a skosh borderline racist to everyone, though;
an equal offender of sorts, so I didn’t care, and again, he did frighten me a
bit, so I kept quiet about his occasional inflammatory remarks…
