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Monday, August 15, 2011

Fever

E@L has been in two, three, any number of minds of late - and going out of his own. Should he do this, should he do that, what's to happen if, how can he help here, how can he limit the damage there... a lot of this is family, in fact most, but there are other issues as well, as you might have gathered from earlier posts, that are occupying large parts of his tiny mind.

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[Pre-reading: Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina' - at least the first paragraph. T.S Eliot, 'The Waste Land'. Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (Vol1 of 'In Search of Lost Time'). Richard Mason, 'The World Of Suzie Wong'. Richard Bernstein, 'The East, The West and Sex']

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Hollow man, lost man.

E@L has been single and loving it for many years now. He has been in Asia over 13 years. It's usually terrific, you all know that. But swings and dips and high and lows and near-misses and bullets dodged and living alone and sharing apartments and never having even been *offered* a blow-job, let alone a pity-fuck, from our ex-SPG (E@L did get a massage, pajama type, no happy ending) in over three years... all of this demands some contemplation, some life-examination, every so often, as the cleaner's schedule in a public toilet needs a tick bi-hourly. And the question of whether or not the toilet has actually been cleaned corresponds nicely with whether E@L's soul-searching provides a good psychological service and cleans anything at all.

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As you are aware, recently E@L had fallen somewhat into a lustful, nauseating monomania and watched himself develop a ridiculous attachment to someone who couldn't, literally, give a fuck (must be a family trait), and came to the point of turning himself into the sort of fool he so regularly lampoons. He'll call her Odette. Previously, he has been a bastion of common-sense, warning others and himself of what can happen when the blood flows south. He has tried to make his blog a vaccination centre against such feverish idiocy...

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Ah, Odette, moans E@L, light of my life, fire of my loins, little brown fuck machine of my dreams.

The mystique of the Asian, the strange and foreign Orient, the exotic East (sorry, that's tautological - exotic means foreign and orient means East): The girls that the expat man finds are inevitably so cute, so sweet, so quiet, so acquiescent. And for these females, the expat is so rich and so clean (according to some survey or other E@L read about [in the Bernstein book] many Asian women said that they preferred foreign men because they had better hygiene than their countrymen!!!).

Sure, such selfish superficiality is a part of it, but it's also because the expat man in Asia is, well, in Asia. He is going to met many Asian girls, single ones, pretty one, some on the prowl (on the internet of course as well as the clubs and bars) and their ineluctable charm (specious though it may be - women remain women wherever they find us) will draw him in.

Is it the same for expat women? E@L hates to be controversial [cough, cough, hack, spit] but expat women tend, or have tended in the past, to be expats by default, arriving off the boat in their long frocks and holding hats and parasols, as partners in a relationship - wives, E@L means. The majority of expat women E@L has met in Asia are trailing on the steps of their husbands' career paths. Sure there are many single females who have come over as expats. Talented, determined and gorgeous they may be, but E@L does not apologize for considering them the minority.

And when the married man runs off with the LBFM of his dreams, he leaves the 50ft Zombie Divorcee with gin-blanked eyes, sun-leathered skin, mind emptied of all except the need for affirmation that can only be assuaged by fucking yet another opportunistic male (any race will do) who cares nothing for the encounter.

E@L doesn't want to go into to this Yellow Fever thing too much here, but he needs to provide a little explanation as to why the object of his affliction, oops, affection, is an Asian girl.

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But is it because of E@L's long-term single-man, bachelor, man-alone lifestyle that there has been an arguably inevitable hollowing out of his emotion core, that those superficial, ephemeral and economic relationships seem to encourage, that the shell that remains can be so quickly and easily filled with such a stupid and futile set of obsessions?

It happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly - he has only known Odette slightly, but for years - that E@L wonders why it happened at all. Mere proximity? Merely seeing the evidence that she was bi-sexual and she liked to fuck?

And it was strange to see how it affected his perception of her. At first they were merely traveling companions and then becoming more friendly and closer, the girls and E@L telling jokes and secrets, laughing hysterically as they knocked off the last of the Maker's Mark. (That night of laughter was brilliant fun now E@L thinks back on it. It was that night, after they were tucked up in their separate beds in the lounge room, before his face disappeared into the mesh of his CPAP, that E@L told her, in confused circumlocutions, that he wanted to fuck her. She looked at him, said "Oh, that's nice," and turned her head away and went to sleep. He is still not certain that she understood at all what he had been mumbling so drunkenly.)

But then (no, it was well before the night of the laughter) over the days of sun-lounging and partying that suddenly Odette became to E@L, as did Proust's original Odette to M. Swann, someone to be both desired and loathed, a thing of love and of pain. She was someone else all of a sudden, or she was two people - the friendly niece to his nice-guy avuncular persona getting and giving buddy cuddles and platonic kisses, and then, somehow, a distant creature, untouchable, an unknown mind. Was she torturing him, teasing him on purpose, or was the knife churning in his guts all in his head? Did she know what she was doing to him, or did she think it was still as it was that night of drinking Makers Mark, that the situation hadn't somehow, mysteriously, morphed into a monster - a green-eyed giant of inexplicable possessiveness and crazy jealousy.

As he watches her attention flit elsewhere throughout a long night and morning (from OT to Clarke Quay, a curious inverse of the usual direction, but that is what happens when you run with females) from a Baron de Charlus or two here, to another girl or two there, he feels absent, he feels nauseous, he feels peripheral. Lust unrequited.

At least E@L is not married to the bitch.

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- Dude, you don't know Brittany Spears!
- Yes I do!
- Well, she's never heard of you!
- Really? Well who's signature is that on the bottom of this restraining order?!

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And it doesn't help as E@L watches as his friends, one by one, disappear into so called 'healthy' relationships. Not all are happy (at least they are unhappy in their own way), but in his social life recently, E@L has become a third or fifth wheel as these couples do weird couplish things like feed sushi to each other across tables while their dusty toes grope underneath same for sweaty, palpitating crotches. And then they go home and have sex. With each other, or so one gathers from the FB videos and photos.

It has been a long long long long long time but once again, a spark has shot off where a flint has cracked across his stony heart. E@L really has no expectation of anything except being ever more cock-teased interminably here, but at least this game won't damage him any further, won't burn him as have the flames from previous flinty times have done (we are talking decades of non-healing wounds here) as he doesn't take it seriously enough. He has retained a modicum of sense and reality, and the fire of this one-sided attachment to Odette has essentially expired.

But it is a symptom.

E@L wonders if he might start to fall in love much too easily, that the vacuum in his (for want of a less value-laden word) soul is sucking furiously. Unlike the girls in his life.

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Ends with a whimper. Not a bang in sight.

The tick-box must be checked - is it cathartic to write about this or not?

E@L


(hat tip to Scott in HK for that brilliant photo - been hanging on to it for ages to get a suitable opportunity)

6 comments:

Spike said...

Here's the thing that you don't mention in your post (and believe it or not I've given this some thought in the past, specifically regarding you, though I've never mentioned it, but now that you've opened the subject...)

You are away from Singapore about 3-1/2 weeks out of every four. That pretty much rules out a relationship for you unless you're incredibly rich or have an incredibly huge penis. Not saying it's impossible but I am saying that 99.9% of the sort of woman you aspire to (IQ above 200 and body that won't quit) is going to have a problem with you never being home. Either be happy with things the way they are or make some major changes in your lifestyle so that when someone does come along, you're actually there?

expat@large said...

To quote an old buddy who has travelled this road - "I am such a drama queen."

Never let the facts get in the way, etc...

200 IQ? - happy with anyone in triple figures. High 90s?

And yes it's either the traveling man lifestyle or the serious relationship - that was meant to be the main theme of the novel I am never going to write unless I get some of those Limitless type drugs. Na, you're right, no-one sensible girl would want a serious relationship with someone in a job like mine.

The money I make is OK, but the myth of the incredibly long penis was "long" quashed - http://expatatlarge.blogspot.com/2011/07/knocking-top-off.html

Sigh. Would I prefer to be jealous of my friends in their relationships (no matter how much they might wriggle and bitch about it), or jealous of the person in a relationship with me, forever unsure of what was going on while I was away? I know my frailties and weaknesses, and where the pain comes from. Why would I want to start all that again?

This is not what my sick mum wants to hear!


Nice to hear from you Spike. Haven't been to HK for ages but next time - you, me, beers.

expat@large said...

All of this is creeping the poor kid out, I realize this and it will stop now.

Lost in Melbourne said...

There is a school of thought that the suffering artist looks for punishment to give their life depth. The writer finds pages worth of material here.
I am too pragmatic at times but I also wonder at the constant lust for very young girls at that men tie themselves in knots over. To me a woman below 30 hardly gets my attention at all, sure they 'might' look ok but even all their naughty teasing is no worth against a woman with a real sex drive and the experience to use it. A woman who had had a few knock backs in life and in closer to reality, and can see who the real person is inside.

The trade off with a very intelligent woman is they can be a harsh critic and often they are not so caught up on being all for you. I can accept the compromise and you met the lady may desires. 140+ IQ and certainly no dummy, but she is tough and unromantic. Perhaps not everyone's dream and over 30, but so am I. There is a trade off, but you can be happy with that.

Everyone gets something from a relationship whether it is love, list, companionship or a bunch of money. Beyond just cash you have something to offer, but I doubt a 20 year old could see it. A jaded a life worn man is attractive to many females believe or not, many might suggest you are less likely to stray. The young hardbodies are always looking for a bigger better deal, young value lies below the surface, that's where to look in others.

Geeze I talk some shit sometimes though, sorry for the mutters

Skippy-san said...

Feel the power of the dark side!. Its OK to give into yellow fever-trust me on this one! You have the life I dream about. Enjoy it! Savor it! Soon age and viagra will make it not so fun anymore.

Spike's advice is right. Look on the bright side of what you have.

Lost in Melbourne said...

The Yellow fever is a given, I am blind to western women.

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