[MF] Driving Off the Spleen

For the last seven years I’ve taken one, extended trip annually. Alone and to a country I’ve never visited before. I don’t stay in resorts and I try to spend as much time as I can outside. I trek a lot. I go diving or fishing. It’s my way of doing what Melville’s Ishmael called “driving off the spleen.” I love technology, the internet, the comforts and care provided by modern science. And I have nothing but eyeroll for people who romanticize the past and pine for a world without modern dentistry or antibiotics while simultaneously carrying remote access to the sum total of acquired human knowledge in their hip pockets. Frankly, I feel very fortunate that my little flash-in-the-pan life happened to begin in the century and decade it that did. But sometimes it’s too saturated. Too loud. Too seasoned to taste. I feel like I have to shut it off for a while periodically to appreciate it while I’m in it. It’s probably also better for people who have to be around me on a regular basis. Since I started doing this, I yell less at traffic and less frequently contemplate violence when I see people delaying meals and interrupting other people’s work to Instagram a sandwich or a cocktail.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I think this makes me a deep person and that I’m about to tell you everyone should adopt this practice and live the life you love. Bullshit. It’s impossible. Most jobs don’t allow it (and most jobs aren’t disposable or easily replaced). If you have a spouse, a kid, or really even a dog, you’d be an asshole to periodically fuck off for a month. I get it. Pretty much everyone would take more time for themselves if presented the option. I couldn’t do it in my 20s. I was 32 before I could and I worked for years to build a life with an above average margin for personal freedom. I also got pretty lucky.

Now that I’ve finished ranting at you strangers who came here to casually peruse some internet smut, I’ll tell you a story from one of these trips. A story that features prominently in the catalogue of memories that sustain me in the boring days of actually having to do shit. In May, 2016 I went to Southeast Asia for about six weeks. And before you furl your brow at me, this is not a bro brag about banging fishbowl prostitutes in Soi Cowboy in BKK. My plan was to spend a week diving in the Andaman and then fly to Myanmar and take a bike around the country for a month. The country really only reopened to foreign tourism about 10 years ago and even though it’s changing fast (and was then as well), you can still see things and meet people that yank you out of the Facebook, iPhone headspace for a while.

I spent a few days in Yangon, saw the outstanding Shwedagon Pagoda that seems to catch fire in the sunset, and ate some raw crab straight from the docks. Then I headed up to country’s very peculiar, recently relocated capital of Napyidaw, where my trip was nearly interrupted. The government built the city basically from scratch 15 years ago, ringed it with an enormous eight lane highway as part of the Yangon–Mandalay Expressway, and then forgot to actually put some fucking people in the place. It’s a sprawling, pristine ghost town. I was the only guest in my government hotel on a block of empty government hotels. The proprietor and I were pretty limited in the communication department but he seemed keen to talk to me anyway. Also, he had an Indian Royal Enfield Bullet 350 which he proudly rolled out for me and through ad hoc sign language indicated would be alright for me to take out on this bizarre, lunar highway that night. I like bikes. I like Enfields in particular. Throw in a spacious, deserted night track and I’m not immune to being a total fucking idiot. I lasted about 30 minutes before getting jerked up by two very disgruntled metro cops. Though I speak not a word of Burmese, they made it abundantly clear to me that motorcycles were not allowed on the highway in the city and certainly not as operated by foreign dickheads at unreasonable speeds. I played dumb (not entirely false in this instance), shrugged and smiled a lot, pretended to speak Italian, and eventually they decided that reinstalling me in my hotel and calling it a night was the lesser of possible headaches for their evening.

Relieved to not be in a Burmese jail or out a chunk of my spending cash, I was eager to get to the next stage of the trip. I’d planned a few treks around the hill country in Shan State to the North. About a day and half later, I pulled into the Shan hillstation of Kalaw. Kalaw is a popular starting point for a 40 km trek to Myanmar’s iconic Lake Inle. A buddy who’d been there the year before told me not to book anything in advance and to just go to a particular restaurant where the owner arranged guides and homestays for foreigners. I found the guy, a jovial, avuncular shoulder slapper and he sat me down at a table with a thirty-something couple from Finland and a lovely Dutch law student in her mid twenties. She had blue eyes and sandy blonde hair above the shoulders with sun streaks to match a recently acquired tan. She wore a wispy spaghetti strap shirt that looked near the end of its commission and some short, polyfiber running shorts. The four of us exchanged the normal pleasantries. The Finns were social workers on holiday and Simone explained that she had taken a semester off to travel Asia. She was traveling alone. And to judge by her backpack, light as well. These details immediately piqued my interest. She told us she’d been through Western China and parts of Tibet already (an area I know to be challenging on account of the language barrier alone) and she made me chuckle riotously at an account of her accidentally falling into a public toilet in some remote town near Urumqi. I liked her instantly. I find independence and the capacity for humor at one’s own expense to be attractive traits in anyone.

After arranging to collect our guide at the restaurant early the next morning, we shuffled off to a bar I’d passed on the way in. It was odd. The interior featured wood paneled walls and a teak wood horseshoe bartop. It looked more like something you’d find in Santa Fe than SEA. Dusk was approaching and as we whiled away a few hours drinking Mekong Whiskey and gnawing on these little dried, salted river fish, a few other trekking groups filed in. A larger mixed group of mostly Europeans gradually assembled around the room’s one long table. I enjoy sharing anecdotes with traveling strangers and that night, I felt on. For a few solid hours I ascended into the rarest of forms. I shared capers and odd tales that detabled more than one attendant with laughter. Simone laughed next me and cast me frequent, lingering glances and I became Thor spying amongst the mortals a buxom maiden and stepping into an evening’s fictions. Shortly before midnight, the Finns bagged off and Simone suggested we do the same. I’d already found a room for the night as had she and we headed off in different directions.

We set out around 7:00 in the morning with a young Shan woman as our guide. Our group seemed generally fit and we passed the morning quickly tracing ridgetops through hills and padding down thin, clay paths in the jungle below. In the afternoon, we crossed a small plain and were suddenly caught in the strongest monsoon downpour I’ve ever seen. Though utterly windless, the rain was so thick and concentrated that it was hard to speak without gargling a mouthful of water. A small crop barn near the fields we were passing provided shelter.

Inside the Finns donned windbreakers and tried to dry off. My shirt had already been soaked in sweat because Myanmar in the summer is a fucking humid oven. I took off my shirt to wring it out and leaned against a door frame to watch the storm. Simone joined me but did nothing to remedy the fact that her soaked spaghetti top now clutched her breasts like surgeon’s gloves. We didn’t talk much, we just enjoyed the passing drama of the storm. When the sky cleared, our group headed off towards the hills to ascend a serpentine path to the farming village that would host us for the night. We came to the home of an elderly couple whose adult children apparently worked in another part of the country. The lady of the house offered us tea and proceeded to prepare a green curry with bits of egg and wild basil. The old man said something to our guide and she informed us we could procure beer from a small shop in the village. I walked down with the Finn and we brought up a crate of Myanmar Beer. Funny thing in Myanmar: the country is Myanmar, the people are called Myanmar, the language is called Myanmar, and the only fucking beer you can buy is called Myanmar. But that’s probably among their lesser pressing issues as a nation.

Our hosts installed us in a stilted, bamboo and thatch hut where we sat cross legged on the floor and ate curry and drank the fizzy yellow lager that is every beer in SEA. The sun went down and the sounds of the jungle came out, the buzzing, cawing, and howling of 10,000 species preparing for their nightly ritual of trying to variously eat or fuck each other in the humid darkness. The Finns powered down around 10:00. Fortuitously, our hosts had assumed our group comprised two couples and had placed the rug pallets we would sleep on in neighboring pairs on opposite sides of the room. I finished my beer and gave myself a splash-and-dash outside with a bucket from the rain barrel. I laid down on my back on the pallet inside. Simone came and laid down next me a few minutes later. We talked softly for a while. The room was quite dark and the flex and whir of an oscillating fan cut the heat hovering above us in the ceiling frame. As the Finns began sounding the rhythmic breathes of deep sleep, I felt Simone roll slowly against my left side. I shifted slightly to the left and located her shoulder, bare save for the blouse strap. I leaned further in and we kissed. I find first kisses (excluding those that transpire after last call at a downtown sports bar shortly before an awkward scurry to the ladies’ room to chuck Fireball on and around the sink) particularly intimate and foreshadowing of a woman’s sexuality. She bit my lip firmly and pulled me closer. I lifted her chin and kissed her neck. I moved my hand off her shoulder and cupped one of her breasts through her shirt and rolled her nipple back and forth between my finger and thumb. Then I slid my hand down her torso and reconnoitered the lines of her hip and the shape of her ass. After a few moments, she took my hand and slid it into her shorts. The palmer side of my middle finger found the slick glans of her clit. She held my wrist with one hand and gripped the back of my neck with the other. She ground her thighs together and I settled into a steady rhythm of strokes. In a few minutes, she gripped my neck and wrist tighter and shook for a moment. I kept my hand still and she exhaled deeply across my ear.

After holding this clutched pose about a minute, she unbuttoned my shorts and released my dick that had been imitating the Rockefeller Atlas against my shorts during the previous exchange. She licked her finger tips and nicked a bit of precum oozing off the head of my dick. Although she demonstrated a high quality of technique, sliding a ring of two fingers and her thumb up and down the upper shaft and head of my dick, it wouldn’t have really mattered if she hadn’t. She only needed about 45 seconds to get it done. I grabbed her arm to still her hand and released a volley of a half dozen draping across her shirt. We laid there silently for a few minutes and then she hopped up spritely and grabbed a tshirt from her bag.

I reclined on my back and she snuggled against my shoulder. I fell into a deep, unworried sleep. Hours later the light breaking through the east window in angular lines that revealed dust motes suspended in the air adjacent brought me gently back to consciousness. We gathered our things and shared a breakfast of flatbread and curried potatoes. We set off into the hills again. Apparently some French fuck who married a local had built a winery on the South side of Lake Inle and that was to be our cherished destination for the day. I like wine. I like wineries. I even like the fucking French. But part of me doesn’t want them (or my own compatriots) to be everywhere in the world, waiting for me, anymore than I would celebrate a Starbuck’s on the South Col of Mount Everest. Around 11:00, our guide stopped us at a juncture in the jungle. She explained that there was a waterfall with a pond in the forest about a half hour above us, if we wanted to take a small detour. The Finns declined and wanted to push on to the winery. Simone and I exchanged glances. I said we’d go up and double time the return. The day seemed clear and our guide did not object. They departed and we skipped up the trail like dancing sifakas sidling in the Madagascar sands.

After twenty minutes, the path leveled off and we followed the sound of rushing water near by. The pool was nearly round in shape and situated beneath a waterfall projecting from a jagged outcropping of limestone at one end. In the middle of the pool and just beyond the spray of the waterfall was an oval shaped smooth rock on a small sand bar. I dropped my pack and we shucked trow and hopped in. The day was offensively hot and I was offensively sweaty. But the pool was cool. I swam beneath the waterfall and Simone followed me. I picked her up in the waist deep water and she wrapped her legs around me. I carried her out to the sandbar and the smooth rock. I laid her tanned body down on the curved pulpit of rock. In that moment, the placement of her body on the center of that rock in the center of the pool with rays of sunlight passing through the canopy above struck me like the culmination of some arcane liturgy. I pushed inside her and held her legs like the implements of our private ceremony. As we sped up, I picked her up and she gripped me with her legs. We kept this up for about 10 minutes. And then I laid her back on the rock and pulled out and, gripping the base of my dick, showered several lines of cum across her tan stomach and navel. I dipped in the cool water. I walked ashore and retrieved a bit of Mekong Whiskey I’d cached in a water bottle. I returned to the rock and we exchanged slugs of the Mekong. My cum on her torso still glistened in the sun. Every few minutes I dipped my hand in the water to drip a few cold drops on her nipples to watch them tighten and rise momentarily. She laughed at me and hummed a tune I didn’t recognize. Checking the sun in the sky, I knew it was likely time to go. To go down the hill, rejoin the others, to talk, to try to be witty. I realized that neither of us had said a word since we left the group below. I lingered a few moments to granularly etch into my memory the transient beauty of how she looked at that exact moment. The way she was smiling at me, sprawled on the rock, humming and softly tracing lines in the water with an index finger.

Source: reddit.com/r/gonewildstories/comments/l3nn71/mf_driving_off_the_spleen