In June of 2016, I found myself in Kuala Lumper on a Thursday morning. I don’t say “found myself” as a stand-in, uninspired loss of metaphor to start a narrative. I’d been in Bangkok the day before and, blasted out of my skull, had booked a flight to KL for the morning and apparently had the lunatic, alcoholic wherewithal to set an alarm and summon a cab to deliver me to the airport and take the flight. As best I can recall, I’d elected to flee Thailand because an Ozzie mate I was with at some Dwarven plastic table outside a shabby Rambutri beer joint had invited this American girl to sit with us and she’d gone on at length about Thailand healing her psyche and making her a better person while I watched middle-aged dentists from Ohio attempt to woo lady-boys in the streets. At some point, it seems I stood up and declared loudly that I needed to put a militarized border between myself and the recently enlightened. Then like a shitty, wetwork SkyNet, I became self aware in the lobby of a boxy hotel in the Chinese district of KL as I contemplated the mechanics of the pen I was holding to sign a credit card receipt. Arriving in my room, the interior of my skull buzzed like an unserviced fluorescent light installation in a middle school hallway. I checked my dop kit and was relieved to find the Valium I’d picked up in Siem Reap. I took two and slept off the day like a worthless asshole.
Author: Hieronymous_Tex
[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.
[MFF] I’ve peaked and it’s all downhill from here.
I had the most intense and satisfying sexual experience of my life at the age of 37 in October, 2019. It’s almost certainly all downhill from here. Even in the free range of my imagination, apart from summoning an alternate reality’s Rihanna and Scarlett Johansson who have an inexplicable, keen devotion to my dick, I can’t top the scenario that played out in an Airbnb beach bungalow on Saturday, October the 12th of 2019. I feel like my life now neatly divides into before and after that afternoon. Whenever I find myself feeling down or lacking confidence, a quick mental replay of that day never fails to put the swagger back in my step and give me a jaunty disposition towards the world.
Fair warning: there will be a bit of an extended setup here as I feel the intensity of the experience is diminished by a lack of context. And I’m writing this mostly for mine own amusement in any case. It’s a strangely quiet evening here and I’ve just poured myself three fingers of Bulleit Rye. Take a trip with me, bored thirsty Redditors.