Being Awkward Doesn't Help With the Whores

Last night in the Philippines. Rachelle and I are going out to check out a club with a Team Canada hockey jersey after grabbing some sinigang from the local bar we've been frequenting (home of the innocent Filipina I've been hitting on for the past week). Said girl had stood me up on a date the day before, however, the sinigang is super good and I wanted to say goodbye to the bartenders I'd befriended.
At the bar, she opened up conversation with Rachelle and I and we got to talking about what we would do on our last night. Once she heard our plans she made us promise to come pick her and her barmates up to join us in our revelry. So it starts.
Things are normal, go to bar, there are ladyboys, there is me, there is disco disco. Dance. Dance. Finish with the drinking, go to Andok's (AKA: The greatest fast food joint in the mooniverse) and grab some fried chicken (read: yum). Rachelle and girly-cutey-tiny Filipina head home, my main man bartender and I head to a karaoke bar (3AM).
We arrive at karaoke hovel. Planks for walls. Planks for roof. Planks for tables. Nothing but girls. Interesting.
My bartender sits me down on a bench next to a girl and in front of two others, I'm not completely oblivious to what's going on. "Choose which one you want to sit with". I choose the one already sitting next to me, I don't really want to make her move, and besides, she's the cutest girl I can see with my half-cut vision. "I'm Rose"
"I'm Anthony"
I find out it's her first night on the job and she's never spoken with a foreigner before, still not exactly sure what her job is. Turns out, I'm supposed to buy her beers in return for her hanging off of me and singing karaoke in my direction, good thing beers are cheap. We sing and awkwardly hold on to eachother through songs like "Take on Me" and "White Christmas". At 6AM she says it's time to go and asks me "what do you want?". After about 2 weeks being connected to a San Miguel IV drip I have about the smooth of 90 grit.
"I want to have sex with you".
"Are you sure?"
"I don't know." I say, what is this some kind of trick question? Am I going to end up in Philippine prison for being overly hormone driven?
"Are you sure?"
She speaks in Tagalog with some of the other girls around the shack. We are all told to leave as it is 6AM and the shack is closing, stepping through the door the light is almost blinding. Once outside I am surrounded by the girls, most of them about chin level with me.
"You want something?" They're badgering me, I can't handle it, I barely managed to start talking to the other girl about her business and now I'm surrounded by little fireballs demanding to know exactly what I want to do.
"To go to sleep."
On the tricycle ride home I find out that the going rate is about 1500 Piso (35C$)
I don't think I can handle the whores.
Back at the resort I find a note from Rachelle telling me to meet the innocent girl for fried chicken at 8AM, about an hour and a half away.
I don't think I can handle Filipinas.

Hanging out in the Mall of Asia

It's raining. The streetlight, in a romantic mood, takes to shining particularly beautifully on the falling drops, holding on to some for , a moment before allowing them to fall slow motion into the black. There's a typhoon nearby named Juan, he seems out to inconvenience rather than anything else.
I think of women, and I think of myself, looking for the key somewhere in my conscious to connect me effortlessly, without risk, to any female I choose. Some magic combination of words, gestures, and clothes, to awaken the ultimate ladykiller I know lies somewhere slumbering inside me. By connection, of course, I mean physically, me prodding, her prodded. Connecting intellectually is too much to ask for, one must keep one's fantasies from growing delusional.
I draw a woman, naked, kneeling, face on the floor, arms stretched forward, black straight hair, back curved. So hot. Favourite position.
Rachelle is drinking her green tea across the table while filling out her travel journal for the past few days. There's something comfortable about having a female around, sets things at ease. I show her my picture pointing, to a girl walking by with her boyfriend, and telling her, "that's what she looks like naked".
"Gross".
I make an exaggerated pelvic thrust and grunt.
Attention shifts to a family, skinny husband, fat wife, two daughters, one in a Winnie the Pooh push car, the other in her mother's arms. Intolerably cute, like every filipino child seems to be. The husband walks into a store leaving the cart, mother, and kids. Mom, sits on the Pooh Bear cart, almost right on top of her daughter who squirms trying to find breathing space. Mom ignores her child's weaseling and gasping behind her. After a minute or so, the confined daughter finally makes it out of her cart, freed from her corpulent assailer/progenitor just in time for dad to return from the store. Tubby stands up.
"She wasn't always like that," I say, "she was probably pretty and thin before they got married and he got strapped to her with two living, painfully cute, anchors".
"Probably" says Rachelle.
All I can think of is, "marriage is risky".

Harry Haller's Wandering Book Club

While I was rolling around Europe I carried a giant stack of books with me. Thinking that it would be wasting energy for me to continue carrying the books after I finished them I decided that I'd abandon each book after I'd finished it. However, it seemed impersonal to me to just abandon the books never to hear from them again. In order to keep a connection with each book and whoever's hands they happened to fall into I inscribed my name and e-mail address in each one along with the instructions:


1. Read the book.
2. Write your name.
3. Abandon the book in a public place.


All under the title of "Harry Haller's Wandering Book Club". Now I have only to sit and wait and hope that whoever finds "The Crying of Lot 49", "Les Miserables", "The Way of All Flesh", or any of the other books I left behind as a literary trail of my travels, and see if anybody actually steps up to be part of the club. Until then, I'll keep reading and trailing books behind me, hoping that somewhere somebody picks up where I left off. Soon "The Iliad" will be lying somewhere in Makati, and somebody else will be wondering why the hell Achilles is such a wimp and why he won't just man up.

Hey bitches!

So, here's the deal, I'm in Hong Kong, and the final verdict is: Asia is the best.

Food is better in Asia, it's busy, buildings are ambitious (read: not the same thing that they've been building for the last 1500 years) and Rachelle is here.

Anyways, I'm up on a bar in Central Honk Kong, admiring the skyline, drinking a Leffe, thinking that life is good, it might only be better if I couldn't smell the harbour. I've seen a lot on my way to this place, I've been picked up and thrown by multiple dudes, some I knew, some I didn't. For some reason Asia just feels like home, stepping off the plane and breathing in the humid polluted air was one of the most pleasant experiences in recent memory.

To many more buzzed evenings in Asian metropolises (metropoli?).

 Lang Kwai Fong meet shotgun's dance moves

 Would you fuck me, I'd fuck me, I'd fuck me hard

 Side trip to Japan

 Communicating with you, my people

Drinking on God's day, as per da use.

Cheers,

A.

A special thanks to Rachelle, Joey, Joey's dad, and Melvin

P.S. Pocari Sweat fucking RULEZZZ!!!