"Killing Mr. Potato Head"

 

The evening’s reception was a resounding success. There must have been over 100 people in attendance!

Smiling through sweet sips of champagne, Mr. Wu gazed proudly around the pristine reception hall. The place was nothing short of immaculate, with its teak walls, jade sculptures, marble-top tables, and crystal chandeliers...

Mr. Wu drew in a deep breath. Then he nodded in satisfaction, and his eyes twinkled as he soaked in the sights and smells of the feast, and his ears perked up at the clinking of wine glasses, hum of chatter, and choruses of laughter.

This was it. His years were coming to fruition. He’d bought a big house and a fancy car. He’d married a beautiful woman and had a beautiful baby. Yes. This was it. He was on his way to being a true tiger. He could see it now. The IPO, the private planes, Swiss bank accounts, luxury ski trips, interviews on TV. It was happening. By Buddha, it was happening!

 

Mr. Wu’s daughter, Lin, eyed her father with disgust. Her eyes blazing as she sat rooted to her chair. Watching her father drink and be merry, it made her sick. Watching him brag about “his” business… Ugh, it boiled her blood.

Lin hated everything about her father, starting with his personality. She hated him as a person, first and foremost. But she also really hated his appearance. Particularly his head. The shape of his head, it was weird. It was like a big, boiled egg, like his face was just a drawing on a boiled egg. Oh, and the way his forehead slopes at too sharp an angle, like a ramp, as it curves to his scalp, to her, that was also highly unnerving.

Not only did he have a big stupid weird head, but she hated his short legs and arms too. With his short legs and arms and big bald head, her father reminded her, unflatteringly, of a Mr. Potato Head doll.

How could any woman be with a man like that, she’d pondered, in dismay… She’d suspected her mother had had an affair. That he wasn’t her real father.

God, she really hoped he wasn’t.  

 

Mr. Wu’s wife, Shan, sat by his side, like always, steeped in silence. While Mr. Wu bloviated, Shan incessantly checked her phone, tapped on her tablet, kept track of products, sales, and clients. Shan was a shrewd, serious, silent, and solemn woman. A woman with eyes like crystal balls. A woman with eyes that always appeared to be staring directly at you, like an Andy Warhol painting.

Shan was a woman of few words. But when she spoke, her words were elegant and refined, shot at measured clips.

And when she spoke, people listened. 

 

Lin glowered at her father, thinking of ways to kill him. She’d most enjoy murdering him with a blunt object of some sort, she fantasized. To feel the flaying of his flesh… To feel his bones breaking as she beat him to death... His big stupid head bursting and squishing open like a watermelon…

God, she hated her father. She hated him more than anyone. It was a secret hate, though, one she’d never confessed. It was a secret hate that manifested itself in fits of silence, lack of eye contact, and, during college, a series of online “hookups” with older men, of varying ethnicities.

She’d read once that a woman’s first relationship with a man is the father/daughter relationship, how that sets the tone for all future relationships with men.

The mere thought of that made her want to jump off a bridge.   

 

 

As usual, they left before the drinking games began. Above them hung an inky-black, starless sky, featuring only a fuzzy outline of its low-hanging crescent moon, and Lin and Shan crossed through the parking lot, in lockstep, arm in arm, stepping swiftly in the heavy cold and its growing darkness.

Shan clutched Lin’s arm tighter. Her opal eyes bulged. Then she peered around, panoramically, and swung her gaze, touched her lips to Lin’s left ear, and whispered in wet hot pulses that perhaps the car had been bugged. That Lin’s father had possibly planted a listening device in the vehicle’s dashboard.

The pair swallowed their words, piled into the Porsche. Their ride home featuring a symphony of sighs, sign language, screenshots and knowing nods.  

 

It was just past midnight when Mr. Wu stumbled home, stinking drunk. His unwelcome arrival like a sudden nosebleed. His arrival announced as he slammed the door, shaking the house’s foundations. In a form of mimicry, a madman’s cries cut the air, and he was acting the fool, kicking the couch, shouting incorrigibly.  

Shan, her face twisted in broken sleep, padded forward, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.

In a red flowery bathrobe, she descended the winding staircase.

The noise hushed into gaping silence. But only for a minute or two. Then the screams began, grew louder, shriller. Shan’s pained shrieks echoing, piercing the character of the night, rousting Lin out of bed.

 

Lin groggily stepped down the winding staircase. Then a frisson of fear passed over her like an electric current. Words were dead and meaningless as she laid weary eyes on her father, Mr. Potato Head… Mr. Potato Head all red-faced, in the atrium, gripping a brick-shaped butcher knife. Mr. Potato Head pinning her mother against the double door. Mr. Potato Head pressing the blade of the knife to her mother’s throat.  

Lin ran to the kitchen, grabbed the first blunt object she saw- a frying pan from off the stovetop- then dashed into the atrium, and cocked back the frying pan like a baseball bat and whapped her father upside his horrible big bald head.

 

Mr. Wu grunted, and the air left his lungs as he dropped the knife, the knife landing with a clink on the hardwood floor. Then Mr. Wu crouched and wallowed in pain, cupping his hands defensively over his skull, and he waddled sideways like a crab, in a lame attempt to escape the oncoming blows.

Lin continued to hammer at her father’s big stupid head with the frying pan, hitting him again and again. The pan clanking as it beat at his skull, the metal reverberating in high-pitched jangles, like a blacksmith hitting hot iron.

Lin lost herself in the violence. It felt so good. Her serotonin surged. Bashing her father’s big bald head was such a release, such a huge release that it was almost orgasmic.

It was the first time she’d ever fought back against her father. After everything he’d done. And there’d been a lot he’d done. There’d been countless slaps and shoves. There’d been countless threats. He’d beat her, her mother with impunity. He’d belittled them. He’d been such a tyrant.  

But that was ending. Ending now. And Lin let a bloodcurdling, celebratory howl. And she swung the pan harder and harder, heaving it at her father’s horribly ugly head, which was gushing blood and beginning to resemble a pepperoni pizza, the way his yellow skin was peeling back over his skull to reveal thick clumpy red patches.

 

Mr. Wu lay unconscious. Shan then tugged Lin away, hugged and comforted her. Lin dropped the blood-splattered pan, curled and cried into her mother’s bosom.

Lin begged her mother to finish him off. It could be self-defense. They could finally break free of him.

Shan gently broke their embrace. Shook her head. Rubbed her red face and stared off into the unknown distance, wistfully.

 

Mr. Wu woke up late the next morning, in the anteroom, his head throbbing and pulsing, his skull feeling like someone was tap-dancing on it.

He pushed himself up from the floor, lurched into the kitchen. No one was there.

Then he moved slowly and lifelessly, like a zombie, making his way into the backyard, where he threaded through the freshly planted rose garden, and he purposely stomped on a few budding plants.

The garden led him to the bean-shaped, empty swimming pool, and he circled the swimming pool, the bright blue crater, a few times, unsure what he was looking for. Perhaps someone just to tell him what happened to his head, and why he’d awakened, on the floor, in a crown of blood.

 

 

"Sky Burial in Tibet"

 

After the palace, we drove out to the countryside and saw something I could never, not in my wildest drug-addled dreams, have ever imagined.

A “sky burial.”

Suffice to say, we weren’t scheduled to see it; it wasn’t on our itinerary; we were to visit a temple nearby, but, on the drive over, from the van, we saw a small procession dragging a corpse up a rocky hill, and we asked the guide about it. Once he responded that it was a sky burial, we hounded him to pull over, to let us see, and he begrudgingly obliged, parked on the side of the road and we rushed out to view the unfolding spectacle. 

The corpse was a plump, brown-skinned old man. His naked, lifeless body was being dragged by three men, two of them youngish, one of them middle-aged. At the top of the earthy hill, the men, accompanied by 5 chanting monks, lay the corpse down. From off their shoulders, the men threw down and opened backpacks, then fished out what looked like small axes, chopping tools. 

Flanked by the chanting, bald-headed monks, the men, in floppy orange clothing, were smiling and nonchalantly chatting, and then the men suddenly raised their axes high in the air and began hacking apart the corpse, chopping the body into pieces.

My stomach shifted, watching it. The others retched. The Welshman didn’t, though. He’d served in the army so he’d seen way more gruesome scenes. Still, he was speechless, awed by it, watching the men laugh, not callously, but so normally, so casually, as they broke the body apart.

Our tour guide was unmoved. But when he noticed how affected we were, he explained to us that in Tibetan Buddhism, it’s believed the soul passes out of the body, after death, so that body is not a person anymore, it’s just an empty vessel, a shell. The remains of the shell, he said, would be fed back to the Earth, be food for vultures.

Hearing him discuss the sky burial was the first time I’d heard any emotion, passion in his voice. Not a lot of emotion, mind you, but certainly a trace…

He said the monks’ chanting was part of a ritual to summon vultures to eat the corpse, that the monks would sprinkle sugar over the corpse to sweeten it for the birds.

The men chopping up, separating the body were a “Todken” a sky burial master, and his assistants, who specialized in these burials. Most Tibetans, the tour guide told us, believe that if they didn’t have a sky burial, they’d become a ghost, wandering the Earth, unable to pass on to the next life.

I asked the tour guide if he’d have a sky burial, and he nodded, reluctantly, not making eye contact. His head cocked back, his eyes were solemnly locked on the scene at the top of the hill, where the men were pulling the corpse’s limp limbs off as if picking apart a crab.

Then I asked the guide if he believed that he’d be a ghost if he didn’t receive a sky burial, and he didn’t reply to my question. An awkward silence hung heavy in the frigid mountain air. 

He went on to say that the ground in Tibet is too hard, cold, and rocky to bury bodies, so sky burials were of a practical nature, but also it fit Buddhist beliefs that humans are a part of something greater, a part of the universe, and the body, being empty of a soul, could be made beneficial, could be made a form of merit, being fed to the wild like this.

“Excarnation,” exclaimed the Welshman, smoothing back his scraggly blond hair that’d been flapping in the increasingly bitter, cold and dry wind.

The icy Himalayan air kicking up, to a man, we were a shivering mass, our jaws twitching, teeth chattering.

“It’s not always a ceremony like this one. Often the family will bring the body out, leave it by the temple, leave it for the vultures…” mentioned the tour guide, shifting his gaze and walking with heavy feet towards the van, and we followed him, like a V of swan, back over to the vehicle.

I wanted to quip to Welshman about being dead, left out like that, on a hill in the Himalayas sure saves a lot of money on a funeral. Is nice to the birds, too, feeding them dinner.

But then I remembered how it’s possible that your brain remains alive, possibly, for days after you die, and you’d maybe experience that... The corpse up there perhaps had just suffered the torture of being hacked apart with axes and would now endure the horrific ordeal of being eaten, picked apart like a Thanksgiving turkey by fucking vultures... Cremation, a big smoky final session in the sauna sounded a whole lot better to me…

We continued onward, drove up to a nearby temple that stood on a mountain spur. It was another white stone, red wood, and gold-trimmed complex and was nestled at the foot of a jagged, rocky hill, overlooking a crystal blue, surging river. Bands of multi-colored prayer flags hung from its front rafters and a gargantuan golden stupa spiraled from its center. 

The temple had tall, whitewashed walls, topped by bands of red ochre and golden circles. There were massive entry doors, made of wood and iron, and high, sloping walls. Like the palace and Jokhang Temple, the walls were decorated in Buddhist-themed motifs, like the ashtamangala. 

Strolling the temple grounds, we kept tripping and stumbling over raised steps in the doorways, which we found amusing, in a self-deprecating way, laughing at one another’s follies. However, the tour guide maintained his poker face and told us in a deadpan voice that the thresholds were intentionally built high, to block wayward spirits. 

In one of the winding halls, the Londoner swung his red face to me, his thin lips barely moving as he spoke, and he mumbled about how he had met a Tibetan girl working at the hostel and was trying to bang her. He then stopped to hand a few small bills to a monk at the temple for a blessing, whispering to me afterward that “I’m doing it for luck, so I can ‘shag’ that Tibetan girl. If this doesn’t work, I can assure you, I am done with Buddhism…”

Though this temple was smaller in scale, inside, it had a curious vastness. Walking about its corridors, I had an uneasy feeling. Glancing around at the lifelike Buddha sculptures and busts in every corner, many of them appeared to be glaring, and it was as if the weight of a thousand eyes were baring down on me. I was experiencing a creeping omen, an anxiety, like perhaps spirits in the temple’s vicinity were trying to warn us about something…

 

After touring the temple, we returned to Lhasa. We had an early dinner, without our guide, at a Nepalese restaurant near our hostel.

(The tour guide was with us during the day, but at night he’d departed in his minivan to go back wherever it was that he went, and we were left to our own devices…)

Staggering out of the restaurant, our bellies stuffed with curry, jasmine rice and nan breads, we went wandering through the city center, then decided to check out a nearby bar. On our way, we must have passed by a police booth at every intersection. Seemingly, on every street, there was a small white and blue police booth, manned by one or two cops. Atop each booth, and installed at every intersection, and all around the city, were a panopticon of security cameras, the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. Man, I was getting the feeling like the CCP could see more than God…

The heavy security presence, cameras, abundance of police were noticeable to us upon arrival at the airport, and throughout our stay. We’d also passed by numerous roving Chinese police squads, usually consisting of about 10 men, 10 sour-faced coppers, in phalanxes, marching in lockstep, all fitted with fire extinguishers.

And now was when we’d understand why most of the cops in Lhasa wielded fire extinguishers instead of just the traditional police accoutrements…

"A Visit to the Dalai Lama's House"

 

Aside from the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa wasn’t as crowded or peopled as Hong Kong. Perhaps there aren’t a whole lot of people who’d want to live in a place that high off the ground. I wasn’t sure how people could live there, really, living up in the sky like that.

Back in Hong Kong, I’d read an article about how Tibetans had evolved differently than other humans, developing special genes and anatomies that enabled them to survive at a higher altitude. Their very existence, like, an example of Darwinism, these people of the skies…

The Tibetans were interesting people, man. They had a different appearance to them than the Chinese. They were something of a hybrid between the Indians, with their shorter stature and dark brown skin, and Chinese, with slanted eyes.

Visiting different spots around the city, I noticed immediately how friendly they were, the Tibetans. And I’d laugh at how the street peddlers would cajole us, some even trying, absurdly, to wrangle us, pull us into their street side stall, so they could sell us tchotchkes, sweets, or whatever they had sitting under canopies or large umbrellas.

I didn’t know what they were saying since most were speaking Tibetan to us. But it was obvious they were hawking their wares, pointing to things, shoving them in our faces. It was comical, really.  

Although, man, it was sad, some of the street beggars we saw. There was a time or two, when a beggar, holding a little baby, would literally hoist up the baby and thrust it at us, while pleading for money. Welshman said not to be fooled by it, however, because, apparently, in parts of Asia, there’s a “baby renting” racket, where “professional” beggars will rent a baby for a day, to elicit sympathy…

There were little kid street beggars, too, skittering around. One beggar, looking no more than 6 years old, ran up to our group, wrapped himself around the tall lanky Londoner’s leg and wouldn’t let go until the guy gave the kid a couple bucks. It felt more like a form of emotional extortion to me… But really, it was sad, man, to see that level of poverty, to see little kids doing that…

I mean, dude, I grew up rich. I pretty much grew up in a castle. The worst thing I could remember witnessing was a friend in summer camp, on a hike, stumble into a beehive, and get swarmed by angry waves of bees, stung up and down his back. I was roughly 20 feet away, viewed the horrific scene as we trekked up a path, by a clearwater mountain stream. I remember the bees, the buzzing mass, the hovering shadow encircle and swallow him in its clutches, the army of flying insects jabbing and stinging at him as he wallowed, his voice cracking in misery, pain and terror.

Amazingly, he didn’t die. But his back, his face, and his arms and legs were swollen, sheeted in red lumps. Dude looked almost like the Elephant Man... It was ill…

That was likely the worst, saddest thing I’d ever seen in person. But I’d never seen such wide-scale suffering until I traveled to the developing world. I had never seen truly grinding, truly generational poverty. I had never seen such inequity, corruption and failure of leadership until I traveled to Latin America, parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa. Man, it was fucking visceral, seeing that. Seriously, like, I’d take the worst slum, the worst neighborhood in America, any day, over the slums I saw. Americans really don’t understand how some people are living.

I remember, as a kid, seeing that fat lady in those infomercials, pleading for money to feed starving African children. I didn’t see her anywhere, in my travels. I was thinking maybe I’d spot her in some slum, on the outskirts of a city, filming an infomercial. But I didn’t. I remember that we’d always joked, my friends and me, that she’d been eating all those kids’ food, or she was like a cannibal or some shit, kidnapping and eating the kids. But after seeing those places, for real, all that became less funny. I wonder what happened to that lady. I don’t know.

But, seriously, man, like I really became aware of how fortunate I was, in so many ways, after traveling the world, for real…

Most of the Tibetans we came across had obviously not traveled much outside of Tibet. Most had obviously never seen white people before, with how they were looking at us, gazing at us in wide-eyed, happy amazement. The rural, farmer types in particular. They’d point, wave, stare at us. Here or there one would speak to us, in Tibetan, smiling and asking us questions.

Welshman whispered to me something about how it was a far cry from the first foreigners who’d visited Tibet and were hissed at and spit on. Nope, we were treated far better, thankfully…

When the Tibetans would speak to us, wave, say stuff in Tibetan, we’d just smile back, shrug our shoulders. Our tour guide, you might have thought, would have translated some, but he kept quiet, dour-faced as always; his lips firmly pressed together at all times.

As he led us around, his hard face betrayed little emotion, and he kept his eyes fixed to the ground or in a straight line toward our destination. He only translated when a transaction of cash was necessary, like at restaurants or buying entrance tickets to temples or if we wanted help purchasing a souvenir.

 

It was striking, to me, how positive most of the locals’ attitudes were, given the circumstances, and how much random people on the street smiled.

I only knew a bit of the history. I’d read online, before we came, how the Communist Chinese had invaded Tibet, occupied it since the 1950s and declared it a part of China, how they expelled the Dalai Lama, considered him a terrorist. To the Chinese, the Dalai Lama was like Osama Bin Laden. It was all strange to me, seeing that I’d always viewed the Dalai Lama as a peaceful, friendly old man.

I’d read too that the Chinese had even banned the Dalai Lama from being reincarnated. Man, the Chinese had things in Tibet so locked down that they controlled reincarnations! I wondered how that worked, if the Chinese government had paranormal police, like the Ghostbusters, and if the Dalai Lama’s ghost would be thrown into a paranormal prison, a purgatory of some sort. I couldn’t quite figure that one out. The communists are weird, man. 

 

Speaking of the Dalai Lama, we were able to visit his house, the Potala Palace, which is an immense, mammoth red and white structure atop a hill, in the old city area of Lhasa.

Driving in and stepping out of the van, we tossed our heads back, gawked and gasped at the sight of the palace. The palatial structure towered and skied above us, sat imposingly with the sharp teeth of the Himalayas as its backdrop. Its grandiose appearance gave it a curious aura of seclusion, and to enter the palace, we had to trudge up a small mountain of steps that were almost like an unending stairway to the heavens.

Walking up the vertiginously ascending, zigzagging, endless flights of white stone stairs was like climbing an obstacle course, with how thin the air was. We were all parched, huffing and puffing, hands on knees, once we reached the stairs’ summit, but our moods were slightly lifted upon being greeted by the snow lion statues at the entrance. We then wordlessly panned our gazes, appreciated and soaked in the jaw-dropping views of the Tibetan plateau. 

In contrast to its bewildering façade, the palace felt curiously empty inside. But it was definitely worth seeing for its panoramic views of Lhasa and its environs. Not to mention the breathtaking, lush wooden architecture, columns, and inward sloping walls painted in iridescent reds, golds, and greens. The walls were beautifully decorated, too, meticulously painted in detailed Buddhist scenes and images. With the overall craftsmanship, scale of the 32-acre complex, with its 13 storeys and over 1000 rooms, one could easily understand its UNESCO status, designation as one of the “Wonders of the World.”

Despite its grandeur, there really was an empty feeling in being there, I thought. As if we shouldn’t be there. The palace was a graveyard of sorts, a house of ghosts, a place in enemy hands. It felt like Paris, the Eiffel Tower, during the Nazi years.

Just being a tourist there felt wrong, guilty in a way. I felt like a graverobber, like I was prying open and exploring an ancient tomb…

"A Trip to Tibet"

 

Soon enough, we were lifting off, in another plane, this one to Lhasa. Flying into Tibet, soaring over the Himalayas, a shudder plaited down my spine as I peered down from the plane, gawking at those mountains. The Himalayas were mountains like I’d never seen before. They had this unique shape, twisting sharp tips and spooky gray, white and black colors. They looked more like a leviathan, a strange dark living organism, than a chain of mountains. Thinking how they’d risen, erupted from the Earth, they were, in a way, the Earth’s adult teeth, wisdom teeth, fangs from the ground.

Stepping off the plane, the air was sucked dry from my lungs, as if a vacuum tube had been shoved down my throat. Frigid winds whipped at my face, causing my eyes to wet up and my nose to coldly congeal and drip icy snot.

It was tough to adjust. I felt breathless and lead boned as we lurched through the airport, respirating in rapid, shallow sprints. All of us were feeling rough, light-headed, dizzy due to the sudden shock of the altitude sickness. And we all were slightly aphasiac at the magnificence of the place’s scenery, the ruggedly exotic, breathtaking landscape.

(I’d been to Denver, so I’d been “mile high,” but this place was something else. It was 14,370 feet in the air. It really was the “rooftop of the world,” like walking through the clouds. If you stepped too quickly, especially when ascending stairs, you’d be gasping, literally. We found out fast, that in Lhasa, slow movements were preferrable…) 

The vibe in the place was weird, man. I don’t think I could ever have adjusted to it. Tibet, Lhasa, was just heavy with tension, and the minute we met our tour guide, by the baggage carousel, I felt a cold-dripping premonition...

We piled into a minivan with our tour guide, who drove us from the airport to downtown Lhasa, and he started telling us about the city, its ancient history. His English was excellent, only slightly accented, which was certainly advantageous for us, since none of us spoke any Tibetan...

Peering out the van’s tinted windows, we saw red flags everywhere. And I mean real red flags, the Chinese national flag. Chinese flags plastered on billboards, Chinese flags hanging from lampposts, Chinese flags attached to traffic lights, Chinese flags hanging over seemingly every business or home.

There were gigantic billboards lining every road with what looked to be propaganda. It was hammer and sickle, commie stuff, Chinese characters with lots of exclamation points and brave, happy peasants working under or saluting the omnipresent red flag.

Looking at the Chinese flag, the Welshman whispered into my ear that the flag was Mao’s bedsheet dipped into a pool of blood, and that Mao had run, like a cricket bowler, and launched himself into the sky, snatched five evil dwarf stars from space and then crashed back to Earth, slapped the evil stars onto his blood-soaked flag. Welshman said he’d read something about that in a book by a Chinese dissident.

“Ma Jian is my favorite Chinese writer,” Welshman whispered, panning his snarling mug back toward the passing scenery of wintery plains and spiraling swaths of snow-capped mountains. 

The Welshman was a bit of a bookworm, read a lot, unlike me, who’d read some, but was more into nonfiction and thrillers, the page-turner, Tom Clancy stuff. The Welshman read fucking Russian, French, and Indian novels and shit… However, you probably wouldn’t pin him as a reader, if you saw him walking down the street. Given his perpetually scowling Sid Vicious face, you’d think of him, likely, as a ruffian. And you’d also be right. The Welshman was really a case study of interesting dichotomies... 

The Welshman pointed out that every street sign was tri-lingual, with the Chinese characters atop, in the largest type, then the Tibetan script underneath, roughly half its size, and English, smooshed to the bottom, even smaller. “The irony is didactic,” mumbled the Welshman, as he angled his handheld digital camera, pressed it to the van’s windows, snapping pics like a seasoned traveler.

Arriving in downtown Lhasa, I found the city itself to be a dichotomy, a curious amalgamation of modern and ancient. Modern, glassy boxes of buildings were situated next to slanted roof, chalk white structures; knots of Buddhist monks in saffron robes played on cell phones in front of golden, triangular temples, constructions that appeared over 1000 years old; elderly street hawkers, with faces worn as an old leather glove, wrapped almost like mummies in countless layers of clothes, the hawkers squatting on tiny plastic stools, curbside, the hawkers with colorful blankets unfurled and piled with vegetables or fruits or handicrafts to sell to passersby, the hawkers adroitly operating smartphones, accepting mobile phone, digital payments… It was quite a scene…

Driving by a temple, we passed a group of lumpy elderly women, their bodies wrapped in heavy orange shawls. They were facedown, prostrating on the street, outside the temple. I’d never seen anyone prostrate. One of the other Brits exploded in laughter, upon witnessing the women throwing themselves, crawling on their bellies through the icy muck of the street.

“What is that shite?” he asked himself, through gasps of cackling, high-pitched laughs... The Brit had a narrow, ruddy face and a frohawk style haircut that made him look sort of like a chicken…

“They’re prostrating,” spat back the Welshman, sounding annoyed.

“Prostrating? What’s that?” the laugher queried, speaking in one of those London accents that omitted every hard “T”. “Prostra..ing,” he chirped, but after realizing his ignorance, the Londoner’s laughter quieted and slowly died.  

“It’s a religious thing,” returned the Welshman, sneering and pointing his camera at the prostrating women.

I’d half-expected the Welshman to crack a dark joke about it. But he didn’t.

 

We then arrived at our hostel. The place was a total dump. It had graffiti written on the walls and stank like a pungent mixture of cigarettes and unwashed ass.

After we checked in, our tour guide, a local Tibetan, a chunky, 30ish, sad-faced man, pulled the Welshman aside and whispered something, the guide speaking with a somber expression.

The Welshman stepped back over to us, with a pained face. He said something about how we needed to keep quiet about political matters. That the tour guide had done 3 years in jail because he got ratted out for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party, saying something he claims he never said, and it had taken 3 years in jail for it to be cleared up, so we needed to be careful how we spoke during our trip.

(Yeah, like, I’d noticed immediately something was off about the tour guide, man. He had the thousand-yard stare and spoke mechanically. He never smiled. His lips weirdly twitched. His dark brown face, especially his eyes, looked droopy, like an invisible weight were pulling them downward. He had unevenly buzzcut hair, color-clashing clothes, tattered sneakers, and his yellow jacket was zipped up to his chin. His head seemed to be bloated, like the size of a pumpkin, really unnaturally large, even for his heavy-set body... He just didn’t look right, not at all… Man, I bet the poor fuck was tortured like a bastard for years in that Chinese prison. We all really pitied him after learning his past, laying our eyes on him as if he’d been a holocaust survivor or some shit…)

“A fucking cultural genocide,” mumbled the Welshman, as we hauled our heavy backpacks, wheezing as we trudged up three flights of twisting, narrow stairs, to settle into our dingy rooms.

 

Shortly after getting situated in the hostel, our guide took us out on a short drive around downtown Lhasa.

Man, it was amazing. It was sort of like I’d have imagined India to be, except colder and less populated. It was more modern than I’d envisioned, too, full of shiny new cars, vans, buses, trucks, and motorbikes. And there were no animal-pulled carts or rickshaws, either, like I pictured. Except for the bicycle driven rickshaws, though, which, like, at that altitude, those dudes pushing and pedaling those bicycle rickshaws had to be stronger, more jacked than even the most roided-up Lance Armstrong…

The traditional Tibetan buildings around the city were similar to other Asian buildings I’d seen, with the triangular, sloping roofs. But they were slightly different, had a chalkier white exterior, smaller windows, and loads of bright orange prayer flags hanging from their upcurved eaves.

Lhasa was turning out to be a bustling, lively little place, with tons of restaurants, tiny shops, street vendors, people in brightly colored garb, puffy sheep fur jackets, turban type head wraps and various colorful ethnic clothes.

(With their explosions of radiant colors, the woven patterns on their loose, long-sleeved robes, their wide-brimmed hats, plaited hair, beads, precious stones, glimmering jewels and finery, the Tibetans, reminded me, in a way, of Native Americans… And I spotted one Tibetan woman, in a purplish red robe, who was wearing a headdress that was similar to a Jamaican beanie, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a fortuneteller of some sort, maybe the Tibetan reincarnation or sister spirit of Miss Cleo…)

All of Lhasa’s winding streets and curving alleys seemed to be leading to the Jokhang Temple, which was the heart of the city, both spiritually and economically.

The temple was where our short driving excursion ended. We parked across the street from it, got out, set out on foot and perused the rows and rows of stalls outside the temple’s gates. The stalls were selling items to the masses of tourists (who were mostly Tibetans), hawking stuff like Buddha-themed souvenirs, Tibetan knickknacks, prayer wheels, and local food, largely consisting of dumplings stuffed with yak meat.  

As we walked through the rows of souvenir stalls, toward the imposingly tall, golden temple gates, which were glowing effulgently in the cold sun, we encountered more folks out front, Tibetan pilgrims, predominantly elderly, in black robes, who were prostrating, chanting and crawling on their bellies, through the streets beside the temple entrance… None of us said a word as we walked by, shifting our paths to avoid them, their bodies undulating and sliding as if submerged in water…

Our guide then brought us inside, took us on a tour of the Jokhang Temple, shepherded us around. It was astounding. Beyond words, really. There were bald-headed monks in saffron robes chanting Buddhist mantras as we walked in. I got goosebumps, stepping in there, for real. It was like a scene from a movie, like Indiana Jones or something. To a man, in our group, we were all pretty speechless, in awe of it…

The Jokhang Temple has an impressively long history. Our guide said it has stood in various forms since 652, and the Welshman whispered something to me about how it was a miracle the place survived the Cultural Revolution, when mobs of angry young communists were running amok, all over China, smashing up every temple in sight…

The temple was jam-packed with people, largely Tibetan pilgrims, Buddhists, who were there to pray. Long lines of worshippers were streaming in and out of the temple gates, crowding and moving in masses through the halls, rooms, and spaces. Practically every inch of the place was peopled.  

We carried forward, amongst the knots, like passengers in a packed train station. The temple was like a maze. It was disorienting, overwhelming, and incredible, with twisting, turning halls and corridors that were brimming with statues, paintings, writings in Sanskrit. The halls and corridors were somehow narrow yet vast, infinite yet still somehow small...  

Throughout the temple, there were Tibetans on their knees, chanting, bowing to Buddha statues, bowing and praying to and with the monks. The Tibetans were really into their prayers too. Their bodies electrified as they knelt. The monks sitting there all cross-legged and Buddha-like, too, were the epitome of Zen. It was quite a sight. The monks’ and pilgrims’ chanting reminded me somewhat of preachers speaking in tongues. But, really, it was nothing like you’d ever see in America…

The temple was simply magnificent. Man, like, I’d seen gorgeous churches in Europe, but I’d never witnessed anything that could compare to this temple, certainly not in terms of exoticness. It had these intricate frescos of scenes from Buddhism, and immaculate, brightly painted red, gold and green wooden beams, and various Buddha sculptures sat everywhere.

We trudged up a steep stairway to a rooftop deck, took a look at the peaks of the Himalayas that ringed around the temple. I noticed that the temple’s roof was gilded, and part of it looked to be made from pure gold. I couldn’t imagine how they’d constructed it, with that much gold. It looked like more gold than I’d seen in every gangsta rap video ever made. I think Trinidad James would die from a euphoric heart attack if he ever saw it…  

I wanted to ask the guide more about the temple’s construction, but he’d stopped to pray with a monk. He was on his knees, his eyes shut, and was chanting, rocking back and forth, and so I didn’t think it was the ideal time to disturb him.

A feeling surfaced in me, like, how peaceful this was, the temple, how chill. Unlike Christian churches, with the bloody Jesuses hanging overhead, the Buddhist imagery seemed so… serene. It seemed to be about life rather than death and purgatory. That was the vibe I got from it, anyway, and I appreciated it…

Not only was visiting the temple incredible, but the smell inside, oh man, it was unforgettable. The monks were burning incense, “joss sticks,” everywhere, plus some other sort of stuff that I couldn’t identify. As we made our exit, clumped amongst another surging mass that pushed toward the gate, I asked the tour guide about the unique scent, and he said it was yak butter.

Like, wow, the stuff had the most pungent smell to it. The smell crawled and nestled itself in my nostrils, clung to my clothes. It was stronger than any cigarette smoke, as if the scent were a power of its own. Everywhere in Lhasa, I noticed it, that same smell, that cloying, heavy scent of yak butter. At first sniff, it repulsed me, but pretty soon I got used to it, and even started to like it...

Walking out of that temple, our group was dead quiet. I think we were all experiencing a touch of sensory overload. It blew me away, really, that something so beautiful, intricate, and incredible could actually exist.

 

"The Welshman"

 

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…

"Mr. Wilson"

 

Mr. Wilson:

 

I tell you what, I’ve been in this neighborhood my whole life, and that house has always been an eyesore. It’s completely out of place. Who wants a big kooky gothic building like that in a residential area?

Its history is something else too…

The house was built by a tobacco baron, about 220 years back. But the very day he was to have moved in, him, his wife, and their two kids perished in a ghastly accident.

The family was en route to the house, riding in a horse-drawn carriage, when the carriage suddenly caught fire, and the four burned to death inside. A lantern had spilled, lit the carriage ablaze, apparently. But this was a while back, before forensics, CSI, and science like that, so it’s impossible to say what exactly happened. Whatever it was, it must have been a terrifying experience.

Worse yet, the driver of the carriage and the family’s butler had tried to pry the stagecoach doors open, but the horse got spooked and galloped away and that dang runaway horse then dragged the flaming carriage all through the town. The townsfolk, their pants scared off, were hollering and pointing and running every which way…

A policeman on horseback finally rode in, chased after the flaming wreck, and shot the runaway horse dead. Tragically, however, none of the family survived. 

I tell you, it must have been a nightmarish scene.

Allegedly the house was built on the spot of a battle, or a massacre, depending on who you ask, involving Pilgrims and Indians. Exactly who massacred who is hotly debated among historians. But it is for sure that many died and were buried on those grounds. The Pilgrims’ bodies were dug up and moved later, given proper burials. Rumor has it that the Indians, though, are still buried there…

For years it was considered cursed, hallowed ground. No one wanted to build anything there. One merchant tried to build a general store, but accidents kept happening during the construction, and he gave up. A couple workers died too during the construction of the house. Both fell from tall ladders, in the same spot, weirdly enough, I read.

After the tobacco guy and his family died in that freak fire, the house and the land sat empty for years. Until it was bought by the funeral folks.

Yessir, I remember back when it was a funeral home. When we were kids, we’d ride our bikes by the house, rubberneck and gawk at it. The funeral home only took in bodies, embalmed or cremated them, at that time, from what I can recall.

It’d creep the heck out of us, watching columns of gray smoke billow up from the chimney, knowing where the smoke was from… There’d be a noticeable metallic odor around the house too, kind of like a roast lamb or the smell of a cooking grill after cleaning it…

No one wanted anything to do with the place, other than gawk at it out of morbid curiosity. No one I knew had ever gone in there, no one I knew had stepped foot inside that creepy gothic monstrosity…

It was a family business for years, the funeral home. Then the family moved on, passed on. I never read about or heard of any accidents or gruesome stories involving the funeral home family, though, the Barkers. The patriarch was said to be a fine man. He was well-respected in the community and donated generously to the local church.  

One of the sons eventually became the undertaker and ran the place. But he didn’t live there and wasn’t active in the community. I remember seeing him. He was a freakishly tall, thin, and pale fellow. The man was pale as a vampire. He and his assistant, another pale, tall fellow, lived on the other side of town.

The two seemed to always be together and no one knew much about them. Given their work and unsettling appearances, no one wanted to have much to do with them. They were an embodiment of death. They looked like ghosts themselves, and there were rumors that they might actually be ghosts.

The two scared the bejeebus out of everyone. I got the heebie-jeebies just at the mere sight of them.

The pair worked there for years until they closed the business after the last Barker died.

You know, it’s off-topic, but I wonder what happens when an undertaker dies? Who buries the undertaker? Must be strange for an undertaker to bury another undertaker. I don’t know. I wonder about stuff like that. My wife says I talk too dang much. Anyway…

Anyway, they sold the property. We thought it’d be torn down and rebuilt, but a young family bought it and moved in not long after the funeral business shut down. It surprised everyone in the neighborhood. We couldn’t quite wrap our heads around why they’d want to live there, of all… You know, the stories of that place…

Everyone had a ghost story about it, about the house. Everyone in the neighborhood would talk about how they’d see strange phenomena, ‘round there. The most popular was the story of a ghost lady in an old-style white dress, and her stomach was ripped open and bloody, as if she’d been attacked, stabbed and murdered in a gory way.

The lady allegedly looked like someone from colonial times; she had a bonnet of some sort, and she’d walk around in circles, on the front lawn of the house, looking confused, like she was searching for something. At least that’s what everyone said. I never caught a glimpse of her.  

Maybe because I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in that ghost hooey. I never cared for scary movies or any of that jazz. I never even believed in God, to tell you the truth. But I never told anyone about that because there’s nothing worse than an atheist. An atheist is one step up from a communist. Or are atheists worse than communists? I don’t know.

I used to hate going to church. I hated pretending to pray. I’d daydream during the sermons. The priests up there in their robes. They were only grown men in pajamas to me. You know, one of them touched the altar boys, and I’d heard about it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t believe in God, because I heard the rumors about the priests. I heard it long before it became a national news story…

I hated the church. I hated it for most of my life.

But after the shootings, I’ll admit that I came to appreciate the community aspect of our church. I must admit the prayer services, candlelit vigils helped me through those dark days, just being with others, at that time, you know?

Still, the ghosts and that jazz, it’s hooey! I think it’s people’s imaginations. I can’t stand those silly horror movies. I really can’t! My wife watches them, but I think it’s nonsense.

And I can’t stand those “ghosthunter” shows on TV, either. I tell you, it’s a bunch of shysters, if you ask me. Hoaxes and hoaxers. All that. All those mediums and exorcists. Those “demonic possessions.” For shame! Those possessions back in medieval times were probably just some poor, mentally retarded kids, kids with speech impediments or folks with mental illnesses. Demons and ghosts, hah! It’s hogwash. It’s sad. It’s gosh-darn sad. Plain sad.

Everyone in the neighborhood figured they’d tear the place down. Not that I believe in ghosts, but still, who wants to live in a former funeral parlor? It’s yucky. It makes me want to throw up, thinking of those bodies in there, rotting and being embalmed and burned. The blood and guts running up and down the pipes in there. Who wants to shower in that? I gotta wonder if they flushed the blood and guts down the same pipes as our sewage. And then… does the treated water go to the same place as our drinking water comes from? The same pipes our house water comes from? I could google it, but it’s probably one thing you don’t want to know… Ick!

But, anyway, they remodeled the house and converted it into a residential property. I’m thinking they removed the funeral equipment before the family moved in, although I can’t say for sure.

Rumor has it the place still has its original furniture, the antique furniture, from the tobacco family, from 1800. Now that must be a sight, I tell you what…

Heck, they seemed alright, that family, the Oswalds. I remember them. They weren’t kin to the, you know, the infamous Oswald, but it must have been strange to share his name. It must have toughened them up, I’d think.

They came to a few neighborhood cookouts. But, tell you the truth, it was always uncomfortable being in their presence. Because they lived in that house. It was like the death clung to them. The spirit, idea of death had wrapped itself around them. Anytime you’d see them, you’d think of the bodies, the corpses being drained of blood or burned or whatever.

Again, I don’t believe in that junk about ghosts. But how could they live in that house? Why would they? Just look at it. Its gothic spires, its Victorian architecture. It looks like something from Edward Scissorhands.

They’d only lived there a couple months before… that happened… and all of them had been looking haggardly and sickly, more so than ever in the days prior...

A couple of the neighbors had caught a whiff of a burning smell coming from the house, similar to when the crematorium was running. Another neighbor said she’d been smelling a puke-like stink wafting out of there, another said it was like burning garbage. But me, no sir, I never noticed anything of the sort. Aside from the folks looking sickly, I never noticed anything strange ahead of that.. that day. That nightmare.  

It was such a nightmare too, when it happened. When the kid snapped. The kid had seemed normal enough, originally. Before he became a recluse. He’d been running around the neighborhood, same as any other kid. I heard other kids teased him, and his siblings, over their house, called them the “Adams Family” and stuff like that. You know how cruel kids can be.

But I don’t know if that was enough to make him snap. I don’t know if there’s ever really one reason. If there’s ever really one sign or there’s many signs. I don’t know.

I blame the parents, to be honest. How do you let your kid not leave his room? How do you let your kid sit around 24/7, playing violent video games and posting gory pics of plane crashes and gruesome murders online? The kid taped black garbage bags over his bedroom windows. He washed himself compulsively. He had no friends. He was pale as a ghost and only wore black. The kid looked like a monster, like a vampire. It was scary. Like sometimes you hear that a neighbor or coworker snapped, and you think, “How could he?” But him? It was like, “Of course he did…” The kid was a freak. He had serious issues.

So why did the parents buy that little freak a gun? A machine gun? It’s not like he’s going deer hunting with an M-16. I can’t wrap my head around it. Really, I just can’t.

I didn’t hear the gunshots. But I was home. I was getting ready for work. I saw the little freak, too, driving his mom’s minivan, on the way to shoot up his school. It was the first time I’d seen him in months. He looked a lot older than I remembered and was wearing a dang wedding dress. His face was blanched, looked made of marble. I couldn’t spot a trace of emotion.

Of course, I didn’t know he’d just shot his whole family and was on the way to shoot up his school. When the police interviewed me, I told them this. I wish, I so wish I would have known. I wish I had a clue. I would have called the cops. Then maybe I could have stopped the little freak from killing those poor kids at the school.

That’s the regret I live with. That’s what I think about. I flashback to that muggy morning. How hot and sticky it already was. How high the sun hung in the clear blue sky, the sun this huge shimmering orange ball. That might have been the hottest morning I can ever remember.

My dang car was like an oven; it was plain scorching inside. The steering wheel in my car felt like it was on fire. I was standing in the driveway waiting for the car to cool down when I saw that little psycho, driving along in his death van.

I think about that, about seeing that kid, that freak. He didn’t look at me. But I looked at him. I almost waved at him, like I do every neighbor, but I didn’t. Because he scared me. I think of that too. What if I’d waved at him and he’d rolled down the window, of that brown death van, and shot me dead in the street, like an animal?

What if that stopped it, though? What if he’d shot me, then the cops came and stopped him from going into that school? I’d rather he took me out than those kids. Maybe I’d have survived, and it’d be me in that wheelchair instead of that kid a few doors down, who’ll never walk again. I’ve lived for 52 years. That kid is only a kid. That kid is only 15, and he’s got to be in a stinking chair for the rest of his days!

I live with that. I live with those thoughts.

In the days following the shootings, I wanted the house torn down. Everyone in the neighborhood did. There’d be gawkers, idiots driving by, snapping photos of it. As if that’s what we needed, after the press, media was hounding us, with all their press vehicles, photographers, slick-talking journalists poking mics in our faces, their news tents pitched everywhere up and down the block.

We wanted to have that ugly house bulldozed once the cops were done with the crime scene. Heck, I’d have driven the bulldozer myself, taken it down. Everyone around here wanted that house gone. 

But not the relatives of the family, some cousin who inherited the house. No sir. He insisted on keeping it and renting it for now. He’s holding out to sell it later, apparently. Maybe he’s thinking the infamy will wear down and he can command a better price.

We, and I mean me and the other folks on the neighborhood council, lobbied the bank to buy the property so it could be torn down. We wanted to build a playground on the site, or start a small farm, a garden, do something to put life there, bring life to that place of unspeakable death.

But we didn’t get our wish. That ugly old horrible house is still standing, high and creepy as ever. And weirdos still are driving by to take photos of the dang thing. It’s a travesty. It absolutely is.   

Now a former NFL player is moving in, renting the place. I remember him playing. The guy was a terrific lineman.

But when I saw him driving up, walking into the house, he didn’t look good. He was limping and his face was sullen. I think he’s fallen on hard times. That must be why he’s living in an old murder house. Poor fella…

I wonder, would a guy like that be afraid of “ghosts?” I mean, he played against the fastest, strongest, most ferocious athletes in the world. What’s scarier than an NFL linebacker? No one is tougher, nothing is scarier than an NFL linebacker flying at you. A dang pumped up, 6’2, 240-pound hot mess of muscle. A meathead with a neck as thick as a tree trunk. A mohawked-maniac stabbed full of steroids, all screaming and flying at you like a bat out of hell. I tell you what, nothing is scarier than that...

Speaking of linebackers, Junior Seau was that fella’s teammate for a couple seasons. Junior Seau! I want to ask him about Junior, the “Tasmanian Devil.” I loved that guy! He was a favorite player of mine, probably my second favorite linebacker ever, after Derrick Thomas.

I’m not sure I could work up the nerve to ask about Junior, though. Not after what happened... I guess it’s one of those things you shouldn’t mention…

"Super Bowl Loser"

 

“Super Bowl Loser”

 

I was so frigging scared I thought I might die. Anyone who tells you they weren’t scared or nervous, anxious before playing the Super Bowl, they’re full of crap. Everyone on the team was amped up. Our mouths were dry. Our hearts were pumping. I must have pissed 5 times before we hit the field. It was the biggest game of my damn life, everything I’d dreamed of since I was a little kid.

I didn’t sleep a wink the night before. I was running on fumes. It was pure adrenaline and passion. I was just so amped up…

But once I hit the field, it became another game. However, the hits were harder. A lot harder. The intensity was certainly higher, super-charged, really, but the game was no longer an idea, no longer a fear; it was a game. It was the game I knew well, every movement, every formation, everything was inside me, in a physical, damn near spiritual language. I was a cog in the team machine. And we were in motion. We were grinding, and I was pushing and moving as my body had for years.

Until the final drive. That was something else. I’d never been so excited in my life. The rush returned. My mouth was filled with salt. My mouth was like a damn desert, it was so dry.

And I felt alive, so goddamn alive! There was a divine power running through me, a feeling like some sort of superhuman strength, like when a mother can lift a 10,000-pound car to save her baby. This is how I felt. I think I could have picked up a semitruck and thrown it across an ocean. That was the energy I had. That was the voltage thumping and surging through me. A force of God was pumping through my veins.

I remember trotting onto the field after that long Super Bowl commercial timeout. I remember my eyes were squeezed to slits. In the huddle, I was shaking, I was so fricking amped! The crowd noise was deafening. I can still hear its hiss, like an airplane engine, I can hear it; it’s blurry, but I hear it. Goddammit, when I have the flashbacks, when I have the dreams, I hear… I hear the hiss...

We were playing in the Georgia Dome, and usually, for Falcons games, that place was quiet as a library, aside from when they pump in fake crowd noise, but for this game, this noise was real, and running like a power saw in my ears. This was the damn Super Bowl, and on that final drive, my ears were in pain. Dammit, I’m not lying, I think my eardrums were ready to bleed.

We were fighting, pushing and scrapping, charging our way down the field. I wasn’t letting their sack specialist DE have any piece of my QB. I was pancaking his bitch ass like nobody’s business. They talk about the NFL being a “family game,” but, let me tell you, the stuff that’s said on that field would make a nun faint.

And, dammit, you should have heard the trash talk in that game. Their superstar DE, goddamn, he was cussing, talking the worst trash talk I think I’d ever heard. He was talking about my mother. He was talking about my ugly horse face. He was calling me a fag and a bitch and a honky chickenshit motherfucker and everything under the sun.

He was one to talk. He was one ugly sumbitch. A teen wolf looking motherfucker, looking exactly like Michael J. Fox in that shitty 80s movie. The dude looked like a fucking werewolf, with his big buckteeth. I think he really was a goddamn werewolf. He was one mean man, a tenacious competitor. Hell, I hated the shit-talker but respected his game. He was fierce.

But I kept him in check. I pushed him off on every play. I was a wall, I was a man of steel, I was a barbed wire fence, I was standing taller than a wall surrounding a prison or an army base, dammit. I was Fort Knox.

Dammit, fucking dammit, I felt invincible that whole game. I didn’t allow a single sack. We scored 28 points. 28 points. It should have been enough. It should have been...

My senses were so heightened that game, that day. I’d played football my whole life, but I never really noticed the stink of the game. I’d never noticed the smell of piss, shit, vomit, sweat, farts, blood, any of those, probably because I’d be so super-focused on the game. But in that game, especially that final drive, my nostrils were flaring, burning with smells…

We were neck and neck the whole contest. Then they kicked a 52-yard field goal, right after the two-minute warning, and seized the lead.

Then… that last drive. It was magical, like it was in slow motion. We clawed down the field. Our QB was throwing bullets. He was throwing daggers. Precision passes. It was surgical. He was Tom Brady. He was Joe Montana. He was cold-blooded, sweating buckets of ice water. He was stoic. Methodical. Moving us like soldiers. Inching us forward, inching us forward, yard after hard-earned yard.

I was feeling it. I was tasting the champagne. It was that storybook ending. We were going to Disneyland. We were fucking going to Disneyland, I kept ensuring myself. It was my mantra… 

Then the last play, from the 15-yard line. Shotgun formation. Then the snap. Then the throw. The catch and the dive. The receiver wrestled down, the receiver reaching out his long wiry arm, touching the ball toward the goal line. From my vantage point, I thought he made it, I jumped up and roared. I thought we were going to goddamn Disneyland. I was there. I was on a float in a parade. I was in fucking Disneyland!

But when the refs waved it off... But when the refs shook their heads, when they shook their heads and slashed their arms, when the confetti fell and THEIR side ran hooting and jumping and dancing onto the field. I stood in disbelief for a couple minutes. I was thinking there had to be more time, one more play, just one play, just one more play, dammit, that’s all we needed.

I was frozen in shock for a couple minutes. My body seized up. Then the humiliation hit me, crashing over me like a wave of shit, like somebody had scooped out shit-water from a toilet and dumped it over my head.

Goddammit, we lost the Super Bowl. We lost the fucking Super Bowl. We’re the biggest losers in America. We’re the biggest losers in the world. Everyone, even people who don’t watch football, saw us lose. Everyone was at their Super Bowl parties, sitting on their couches, eating potato chips, drinking beers and pointing at us. Everyone was laughing at us.

We lost. We were fucking losers. We disappointed everyone. We’d have to go back to our city as losers. There would be no parade for us, only an empty, cold airport. There would be no afterparty, just a depressing hotel room. There’d be no champagne, no chummy interviews with the press. No fucking trip to Disneyland...

Dammit, the way the media guys in the locker room were speaking to us, sad faced and solemn, really, it was… as if we were at a funeral...  

The locker room after the game, it was dismal. You could hear a pin drop. Barely anyone said a word. A couple guys cried. The whole world saw us lose the Super Bowl. We were losers and we all knew it. Every dream I’d had as a kid, growing up, playing football, it was to win the Super Bowl, to hoist that shiny silver Lombardi Trophy, to kiss that trophy. And here we were, in the game, fighting and scraping until the last minute, but we just couldn’t get it done.

We were losers.

I can’t imagine how horrible and soul-crushing it must have been to be on those Buffalo Bills teams that lost 4 straight Super Bowls. I don’t know how those guys were able to show their faces in public again after that. Honestly, just losing one had me thinking of checking into the witness protection program or disappearing to a deserted island in the Pacific. I was so ashamed.  

My old man told me there is no second place. Only a first to lose. He’d never played in the NFL, but he played D1 college ball at Army. When I made the NFL, I thought, “at least I’ve done something HE never did.” I felt so proud. When we made it to the Super Bowl, I thought I’d wear my sparkly Super Bowl ring to every Christmas party, and then… maybe then… then... he’d be proud of me.

Just once, I’d like to have seen him smile. The man never smiled. Never. Not even on holidays. Weddings. Nothing. He’d never once congratulated me. Not when I played D1 ball, not when I got drafted, nothing. It pushed me to be better, and I won’t whine or anything and I love him all the same… But it’s just… that I looked up to him, playing ball. I looked up to him, when I was a kid. I mean, dammit, he was a colonel in the US Army. My dad was a bona fide hero. He was my hero.  

And I’d thought of him patting me on the back, hugging me during our victory party. It’d have made him proud… It’d have made him smile… He could’ve bragged about it to his buddies at the VFW, shown them my Super Bowl ring…

But no. I lost the game. I was a loser.

I couldn’t look my old man in the eyes afterward. And I never got a second chance at a Super Bowl. I never got back to the big game.

Not that I could really face my Pops, even before that game. But after that, dammit, I never could really talk to him, not even when he was on his deathbed.

Dammit, I made millions. I was an all-pro. I played 16 years in the NFL. But the only time I got to the big game, I lost. Losing that Super Bowl, being the biggest loser, having to face my old man, my family, after that game, having to explain to my children that we lost, that was the worst moment of my life. That was far worse than losing my money.

Goddammit, we let everyone down. And I have to live with that. I lost my pride with that Super Bowl. I will never have a second chance. That game, that drive will haunt me forever.

That game… The noise, the crowd hiss… That sea of camera lights flashing… Me, shoving forward, beads of hot sweat burning my eyes as I was looking up over the rows of helmets and knots of padded bodies… Me, seeing our guy twisting on the turf, stretching his arm to the white chalk of the goal line, and then… the whistles, the fireworks, the reckoning, knowing our guy came up just inches, dammit, just inches short, that… that wakes me up in the middle of the night... It fucking haunts me.

I only watched that game tape once, during the offseason following the Super Bowl. Otherwise, I don’t ever want to see video of it. Not like I need to, anyway, since it often creeps back, runs on a loop, in my mind.

When I flashback to that Super Bowl, that’s pretty much the only time, really, these days, I think much about football. I don’t even watch the Super Bowl anymore, unless I go to a party…  

My wife’s been talking about this haunting crap. I don’t believe in it. I believe in real ghosts. The past. Traumatic memories and lost opportunities… The ghost of Super Bowl past. The ghost of lingering disappointment and lost pride. Those, dammit. Those are my ghosts.

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