Welcome to the Jungle, chapter one

Welcome To The Jungle, by Ilan Theseus

…and I fell in with the myriad lost,
The flow of degradation,
The billion-fold, thoughtless mass.
Who’d become attached and gone astray from themselves.
Or were never able to follow the inward paths,
And would try to stop anyone else who attempted.
—Dean Helweg

Chapter One: Goodbye To All That

“You want sucky?” Asked my chinese masseuse.
We were in a small room, while I layed flat on my back, totally naked, watching a Hong Kong movie on a small television I had a remote for, with a glass of hot tea on a small table within reach.
“Sure.” I said.
The girl didn’t understand the word, but got my meaning, and handed me a slip of paper with three boxes I would choose from.

Box1:  2 hour massage 
Box2:  2 hour massage with extra service
Box3:  2 hour massage with delux service

There was no longer any confusion with tips, like the old days. Where I didn’t even have my pants to take a wallet out of since I’d left them checked in a locker. Now the price was tidy. But which one is the blow job, I wondered.
Every massage I’d ever had in China was great. With or without an orgasm, they always worked the muscles, and were trained well. They never wined about their job. They didn’t make you feel sad for them. The atmosphere in these establishments was, and this is the best word I can come up with, regal. They treat you right.
From the nice looking woman greeting me on the steps, to the couple of people I passed by at the front desk, as I was escorted towards a back downstairs locker and shower area, everyone made it easy. And when you came out of the showers in the bathrobe they provided, the woman who escorted you there was still waiting outside the door, to lead you up some stairs to a large room with televisions, lots of reclining chairs, where you could have a foot massage if you wanted, and all the complimentary lu cha you were thirsty for.
I skipped all that and was taken directly to one of the back hallways, where a beautiful, young chinese girl took my hand to lead me into one of the private rooms.
“No thanks.” I said. I was laying on my stomache while she was doing my legs, working her way up, into the buttox muscles, and it was very relaxing till she stuck her finger straight up my ass real quick. It was covered with oil that burned the insides of my rectum for some reason.
After your time’s up, if you just lay quite, she’ll gather her things and leave you to yourself, sometimes even switching off the light for you as she exits, carefully shutting the door behind her. You can sleep right there.
I didn’t know it then, but that was my last massage in China.
I got out of their by six that morning and toured around Shenzhen for a couple hours. The train into Hong Kong was right there, and running all day. And that’s where I would eventually be going back to.
I was just coming back from a few weeks in Beijing. And was glad to be so near to home. That ride into and through the New Territories, passing places like Kowloon, before stopping finally at Tsim Tsa Tsoi…well what more can I say about it. It was where I felt the most full of energy. I was always happy there, even when things weren’t perfect.
Hong Kong was civilization. And I’d be on that subway train under the ocean heading towards Hong Kong Island, or floating over it on one of the ferries, watching the beautiful buildings getting larger and larger, or making a phone call from inside the subteranean tunnel. What a city.
From the subway exit it was a block or two of walking, then onto the ferry for Cheung Chau Island. Cause that was where I lived.
This morning I was still in Shenzhen, though, walking around past what looked like a city block or more of hardware outlets.
Nuts and bolts of every size and kind, screws, tools of all sorts, next to fifty room fans all layed out, next to aqua-pumps thirty deep, this book could just be a list of all that was there.
I continued along, stopping for breakfast somewhere, some eggs with tomatoes and noodles, if I had to guess.
I wasn’t paying all that much attention. It was so normal by then.
I’d spent nearly a year there in Hong Kong. My tourist visa expired every three months so I would just go out before then and come back in. it renewed every time.
Everything was more or less running smoothly. I kept my apartment there on Cheung Chau, where I was in the City I loved, and made a few trips to other countries sometimes, like a lot of other people. I fit in there.
There was a difference that day, however. And I noticed it right away, standing in line for one of the visitor immigration checkpoints.
I was looking at my phone, killing time in line while someone was getting hassled at the desk by a young female officer, dutifully searching her screen, staring at it for two minutes through thick, coke-bottle glasses. She was nerdy looking, and I felt afraid of her suddenly.
I looked around casually at the other lines, which seemed to be moving faster; but was in the middle of mine, heading straight for that girl. If I stepped out of it suddenly and then to the back of one of the others that would’ve looked weird. There was no turning back now. I would just have to see how this went.
I was watching her hassling this guy, who was making confused faces at the woman waiting for him on the other side, holding his hands up and shaking his head. More minutes went by. But then she waved him through. He was in. And I inched a little closer.
“You said on your form your address is in—“ He was holding it up to his face. “The Bermuda Triangle, California?” He looked at me from over the top of it.
What could I say? It was some bullshit I wrote because I’d never been hassled before. I didn’t even think they read those little cards you fill out before entering. I’d entered so many times.
This wasn’t going well, to say the least.
“You’re a tourist here?” The immigration officer asked, sitting on the other side of the desk with his arms resting in front.
“I’m job hunting, and my girlfriend lives here.” I said.
“May we contact her?” He asked.
“If you want.” I said. And reached into my bag, now sitting on the desk, to take out my phone for her number. His eyes got big. He was watching everything I did, looking at the bag. I couldn’t figure out what the situation was exactly. “I know I’ve been in some trouble.” I said casually, flipping through an address book for the number. “Is this why you pulled me back here?”
“That…and some other things.” He said, now getting up.
It was a large room full of waiting chairs along one wall, across from immigration officer desks. It looked a little like a bank. But now this guy was standing with a group of others some meters away, all of them staring at me and talking. What the fuck was this. I’d given him the number and guessed he went over to that other room to make the call. And now he was walking back.
“I talked to Ally?” He was still unsure about the name. “—on Cheung Chau?”
“Yes.” I said.
“She’s Tawainese.”
“So?” I asked.
“She’s from Taiwan.” He said.
“She’s a resident, here.” I replied.
“You keep an apartment here?” he asked.
“Yes.” I said.
And I was given seven days to pack my shit and go. They released me to the train.
I was sitting in a waterfront back patio off one of the Lama Island cafes, thinking about all this shit. It’d been two days. And I still hadn’t accepted it somehow. There was a way out, I believed.
“There is a way out.” Said Mickey, untying a rope from the dock. “You’re taking a plane.”
But now we were on the boat he’d rented.
Months earlier I was at his place, looking at the layout of Lama Island on two computer screens he had set-up together on his desk.
Mickey was from the earlier times, when the Full Moon Parties of the 1970s were kicking off in Thailand. He was one of those early backpackers that got stranded in the East by sheer will power. He was an explorer and full of stories, but rarely shared any. He was in the now, as they say.
“Look at this.” He was pointing with the mouse curser at the back part of the island where a small cove and empty beach were. “That’s the place.” He said, just before snorting another line of coke.
And now there were three boats total, traveling back and forth from the town to our tent on the quiet, uninhabited and soft sandy beach. I sat staring out at the ocean with my toes burried deep in the wet sand, under the warm, blue water.
It was late afternoon. All I knew about this boiled down to what Mickey told me, that it would be a two day thing. That was all the info I had.
Now Mickey had one end of a very heavy speaker box, walking backwards, looking over a shoulder. While I had the other, following him out of the surf, towards the big tent, already set-up, to place on one of the long tables underneath, facing the water…then back to the boat again for the other one, nearly tripping once on a rock I didn’t see as I shuffled through sand with bare feet, pushing my legs through the water. I got a nice cut from that.
There were a couple of French guys there, dutifully unloading and setting up, since the morning in fact, a lot longer than me.
Martin the Architect was there. He was my neighbor in Cheung Chau.
A canadian guy with a similar build to me, thin, about the same height, but he had black hair, was there. but I had dark brown hair, wich sometimes lightened, depending on my mood.
A tall, lencky Brittish guy was setting up the table just in time for speaker number two. He had that somewhat gamey look, which Mickey had, too, but not as much as him. The muscle-skinny westerner that looks like his third world surrounds in South East Asia. But this guy was living there on Lama. I’d seen him for the first time years earlier. He was missing an eye, but I never asked how. So he was wearing a bandana somehow tied around that part of his face, covering his cheek partly, and one side of his head.
“Take a hit.” He said, passing Mickey and I a freshly lit, plus-size spliff.
After everything was unloaded the boats became dedicated people movers. Going back and forth till right into the evening, with only one running now, floating in past Mickey and I. A handfull of people got off. One of them was a small, firey Spanish woman with a ten year old daughter tagging along.
She was in her forties somewhere. And she notorious on the island for sleeping around, with everyone.
She fucked all the french guys there that night, at some point, over the years
She fucked my Canadian doppleganger.
And… She fucked the Italian guy getting off the boat with her, carrying a crate of Citron Vodka.
Mickey had a white tarp as the roof of the DJ tent, held up there by four poles the French guys securely burriend into the ground earlier.
It had lights on the corners, creating strobe effects, different colors, automatically moving and spreading out in light shows, sending out electrons over the gentle, private cove in front, and over the tangled jungle behind.
And now Mickey and I sat on those rocks, each with a red plastic cup out as the Italian stood in front of us, sea water lapping against his knees.
“I have no ice.” He said. “I’m so sorry.”
But he did have a carton of real orange juice in one hand, and a bottle of the Citron in the other.
“What happened?” Asked Mickey.
His plastic cup got knocked over and his screw driver mixed with the sea. He’d balanced it on the rock, and lost his attention elsewhere. I felt bad for him, but what could I do. And mine was half-emptied by then. And we were both screwed-up on ecstasy.
I first noticed something odd when the Italian guy was rolling around on the beach in front of us. He was doing summersolts and growling, rubbing his hands all over his face, then pulling a cigarette out of his pocket.
“I didn’t bring any money.” I said.
“Well.” Replied my Canadian Doppleganger. “You can just take a few pills out of my pocket later if you see me passed out on the beach.”
He was selling the pink ones.
Mickey had half a prescription bottle of white ones, though. And my credit was good with him. He invited me out here, after all. And as usual with no warning or advice.
This was a party for his fiftieth birthday.
And over the next forty-five minutes or so, as the MDMA coursed through our bloodstreams and brains, mixing with our emotional selves, our intelligence and perceptions, we watched the lights shooting of the roof of the tent in all directions, with a crowd of fifty or more people on the beach in front, straying away to the darkness surrounding this sensory feast, having conversations that were disguised by the techno music pumping out of two normous, professional speakers, with that one-eyed Brit Djing. And a small gasoline generator was making it all go.
“How many are you going to take tonight?” I asked.
“Two or three.” Said Mickey.
“I don’t have any cigarettes.” I said.
“Well, I guess you’re going to have to start using your social skills.” He replied.
“I do have a few grams of some shit hash from Shenzhen.” I said.
“That’s going to be gold in the morning.” He said. “I’ve got some papers, if you need them.”
I watched him while we sat there. He was in the grip of middle-age. Wrinkles fanned out from the corners of his sure stare, down his cheeks a ways, and into his temples over dry, weathered skin, that had developed a natural tan over the years.
His head potruded forward off his shoulders a bit. He had his feet up with his elbows on his knees, resting his chin off his thumbs, fingers clasped in front.
And I was thirty-one years old.
“Come on, man.” I said to this asian kid.
He was laying in the water, half his body submerged, sitting up straight, touching the surface of the ocean.
“Can I bum a smoke off you?” I asked. His bag was just at my feet, in the dry sand.
It was starting to drizzle.
“Come on.” I said, again. “Let’s build a fire.”
There were a few people out walking, closer to the other side of the beach mostly, and just a handful. While the boy and I gathered sticks, any pieces of wood we could find.
“I’m going to rip these bushes apart.” I said, looking into the jungle. It ran right along the length of the beach, and went back into the landscape, and settled between the hills as if it flowed there and rested. It was immense, and eventually met with the town, if you didn’t get lost.
I was holding up a large fan leaf from some plant, using it to get out of the rain. Somehow I was able to penetrate a few feet into it, into the lusty growth, with no fear of snakes, and pull out a branch almost as heavy as the asian boy.
He was from Singapore or something. Or maybe he was local. He might have been early twenties somewhere, and was standing in front of the firepit we dug out in the sand nearby, trying to light some wet news paper under a pile of twigs. I had the whole thing set up in the t-pee.
“Its an act of defiance.” I said, dragging the huge branch behind in the sand. “Our tiny flame will win.” I said.
But the wood was totally wet by now. We fought with it till eventually two Hong Kong girls stopped by.
“What’s going on here?” One of them said.
“Something that didn’t work out.” I said.
“Let’s go under the tarp.” She said, as the other nodded.
“Kinda busy, mate.” Said the one-eyed Brittish guy. He was still DJ-ing, with nearly everyone crowded under the roof now. The tables were all pushed around the outer-edges of the dry rectangular patch in the sand.
I put a spliff in his mouth and lit it up. Then moved back over to the two Hong Kong girls. A young French guy was interested in one of them and hanging around us for the last hour or so.
They were involved in some sort of grab-ass. He’d kiss her cheek and smile. She’d pretend to get really angry and stomp around for a couple minutes. At first I thought something had actually happened. She was frowning, then looking confused.
“Don’t pay attention to it.” Her friend said.
The rain let up a bit so the friend and I got some distance from the noise under the tent. Back on the rock, now just the two of us there, watching the light show and listening to killer techno.
We had two plastic cups filled with a splash of the citron, and mixed with the only thing left in one of the coolers, orange drink. The real juice was gone a long time ago.
It’s just not the same, I thought to myself.
“Did you come with the French guys?” I asked.
“We had lunch with them before coming here.” She said. Then she started nodding her head, to herself. And her thoughts surfaced. “They’r all named Alex.” She said.
“All who?” I asked.
“French guys.” She replied. “The three of them are Alexes, too. One is Alexa.”
“That’s weird.” I said.
“Yeah.” She said.
The conversation was right around here somewhere, when Mickey stepped out of the dancing people and walked casually across the sand, stopping at the edge of the water. And now he was standing there looking at us, grinning.
“I’d better go check this out.” I said to the girl. And was now wading knee deep towards him, then ankle deep, with my pants rolled way up.
“Switch to shorts.” He suggested. “Big day tomorrow.”
We were both watching the girl. Who was laying back on the rock now, with ocean all around her and the stars above and behind. Light from the tent flashed against her body. She was wearing short-shorts, maybe cordiroy material, with just a thin, white t-shirt that had gotten wet and was now stuck to her purple bathing top underneath. I watched her legs as she tried to get more comfortable and situated on the contours of that big, jagged stone, nearly the size of a car.
“Did you find any cigarettes? I asked.
“Take two.” He said, pulling out a pack.
The ocean was back up to my knees as I got to the rock. She leaned forward, moving her cup out of the way as I climbed up. I sat next to her, watching Mickey disappear into the Tent again. It was nearly four in the morning, sunlight was spreading from behind us, barely noticable now, but slowly overtaking the flashing party lights. We looked at each other, she had short, black hair , juts covering her ears, and bangs down to her round eyes, for a chinese girl. She had a pure, round face that was beautiful and fresh. As I raised my hand towards it she stuck out her tongue, where I placed one of the white pills. Then one for me. And we washed them down with a bottle of water she had in her bag.
“It’s hurting me.” A european girl said, showing me the bug that was gripping her finger. It was on there tight. And at the ends of its legs were tiny spikes that dug into her skin. She was fascinated by it, but horrified at the same time. The whole situation was giving me some anxiety.
The crowd had spread out over the beach and it was morning, maybe around six.
People were exhausted mostly, looking for some place to sleep. And most of them didn’t bring anything useful for that, like a tent. And me neither. But I was still going.
I layed down in the sand, watching the ten year old girl dancing to the music that was still playing; the music would be going non-stop for two days.
She was doing cirles, a cart-wheel at one point, then another. And each time she did one her legs spread far apart, showing off her black tights that stretched around her legs and around her ass. It was mesmerizing. I looked next to me at the Italian, who was also enraptured by the show.
“Yeah, take a pic of us.” I said to someone snapping a photo.
“Come on.” Said the slutty Spanish lady, while her daughter was still playing in the sand. “Lets go sit up on those rocks.”
These weren’t the ocean rocks, they were on a hillside next to the beach. So we hiked a couple minutes alone together, navigating our way up through even more rocks and trees—where Mickey was already sitting with his girlfriend.
“Let’s burn one.” I said, lighting a joint I’d pre-rolled.
We watche the top of the tent, a few people going under it now and then, as the sun came up to our right over the ocean. There were people dancing on the beach, a few swimming in the water, it was a great party so far. As Mickey looked on, his wife beside him.
“I don’t even feel like sleeping.” Said the Spanish woman, sitting close beside me now.
I wish it could be like this more often.” I said outloud.
Mickey was leaning back a little, with his hands folded around his shins, not saying a word.
“Things got fucked up.” I said.
“What got fucked up?” asked the Spanish woman.
“My life, at least for now.” I said.
“Seems ok now.” She said.
“I know what I’m gonna do, but I just can’t believe it.” I said.