On Saturday, Eli and I did all the things we liked to do. We had a long and positive talk over breakfast. We watched basketball. We played basketball. We got beers with friends.
At our first evening stop, I had an avocado burger, calamari, “God Waters” (a light beer), and some good conversation. I chatted about The Old Man and the Sea being a book I enjoyed thinking about rather than actually reading, accessible Internet characterizing the 2010s, and Trump’s election being the most memorable moment of the decade. Kevin, one of Eli’s friends, was adopted and an international school kid, so he had moved around a lot growing up. I asked him how that impacted his attitude about friendship. Did he still get excited to meet new people? Was he numb to friends dropping out of his life? Did this social flux create trust issues in his romantic life? Kevin said he didn’t know another way, so he wasn’t sure.
Next, we went to a Japanese whisky bar on the fifth floor of a small building. We each ordered a Saporo with a whisky, placed them on a faded wood coffee table, and then settled into a spectrum of chairs: anything from a tiger engraved wood throne to a foldable plastic chair. All the face sweat looked red under the light. Everyone was an experienced lounger. It was in the way they abandoned their slippers, stretched their feet, and leaned their elbows. These dudes knew how to behave in the heat, I noted, as I pulled on my brew, slapped at mosquitoes, abstained from tobacco, and tried to imitate.
Earlier, over dinner, our group had added a 19 year-old British girl. From her plastic seat, she ranted about her past relationships and incessantly mentioned that she was bi-sexual. She also gave us tips on how to eat vagina. She was the type of person who didn’t have conversation. Your words had no impact on her words. When someone else was talking, she was preparing her next sexuality soliloquy. Jack was a fellow Brit to her and a roommate to Eli. He wanted to hook up with her so he kept up with her rants. During dead spaces in my talks, I peeked at them. At one point, I saw her crying then hugging Jack. Five minutes later, she was standing on a plastic chair, dancing.
Ryan, our gang’s Saigon nightlife expert, recommended we go to a lounge. I asked him if the music was too loud. He said no, and I believed him because “lounge”. After waiting for the British girl to move her bike, we walked into the Japanese quarter. It was filled with massage and “massage” places. Vietnamese girls in anime ensembles beckoned us in as old Japanese guys walked out. Our group made it passed them, intact, and arrived at the “lounge”. There was nothing relaxed about the spot. The music was loud and terrible. A skinny Vietnamese guy had a booth with trio of girls who seemed to be in an infinite twerk. Ryan hugged four of the twelve workers in tight black dresses. They hovered around us, smiling, saying hello, handing us menus.
The boys decided to get a bottle of gin. I announced that I wasn’t down to pitch in. I assumed they wanted to give me a masculine welcome to Saigon: getting wasted and, luckily, getting me laid with a local girl. I wanted none of this. I didn’t want a one-night stand. I didn’t want to be at a club. I’d rather have dressed up as Sailor Moon and given a Japanese grandpa a massage than went to a club with bottle service. I tried to enjoy dancing, but I hate “command” songs (“WIGGLE, WIGGLE, WIGGLE!). I tried to get into darts, but no one was on my level. I tried to get excited about the free Irish Car Bomb we won from darts, but I didn’t want to drink anymore. Increasingly desensitized to the surrounding stimuli, I sat on a black leather couch.
Despite a clear desire to leave, I smiled whenever someone looked at me. I wanted to make a good impression on Eli’s friends. I didn’t want them to think I was a crank. Yet, every time I performed positivity, I wasn’t only a crank—I was a lying crank.
Why was I not happy? The weather was good. I didn’t have work the next day. Decent human beings surrounded me. Usually this was enough to satisfy me.
I thought about ants.
When my mood doesn’t match a setting, I like to imagine ants in a clean room. The ants are my negative emotions. The clean room is my mind at peace. No one wants ants in a clean room, so they will usually start stomping around, impulsively crushing crawlers. This is inefficient, though. The ants are present because they sense a feast: something old and rotten, something that doesn’t belong in a clean room. Thus, the best way to remove the bugs is to remove the object they desire. And the smartest way to find the object is to resist killing the ants, watch them assemble into a clear line, and where they march. In other words, I let the ants march until my problem is clear.