Thursday morning. At the coffee stand.
Things took an unexpected turn today when I came to the coffee stand. The tables were full so the lady who always looks sad invited me to share a table with her. She immediately started speaking to me in perfect English.
“I heard you came here from Hong Kong,” she said.
“I did, yes. I really loved it there, but my job was not good so I had to leave. I miss it though.”
“I lived in Hong Kong too,” she said. “I was a domestic helper there for many years. I lived up on The Peak.”
My mouth dropped open and I sat there frozen in shock. Like. What?
“You lived up on The Peak?”
She continued, “I worked for three families. One was a judge. His family was so beautiful. I took care of his children for so many years. Then I worked for a finance man. Englishman. He was very cold in his heart. I did not like him.”
“Yeah, those Englishmen are really something, aren’t they? I don’t like the Finance Bro types either.”
“Very cold in the heart. Very cold.”
“Yeah. Exactly. Heartless.”
“The last one was a celebrity hairstylist,” she said. “He is very famous. It’s very expensive to make an appointment with him. He does hair for all the big Hollywood stars. He wasn’t in Hong Kong all the time, but when he was… wow. Parties. Big parties. Party, party, party. Always a party. Every night, party. All the big Hollywood stars and celebrities would be at the house. He was gay and had affairs with them all the time. He even had an affair with Hugh Jackman.”
GURL, WHATTTTTTTT?! SPILL THE DAMN TEA!!!!
She continued, “I don’t know why he is married to a woman when he is obviously gay.”
“Maybe he’s bisexual. Maybe he likes both men and women.”
“Maybe. All I know is that he liked my employer. He was very famous. He did Princess Diana’s hair. Do you know Kim Robinson?”
My jaw was on the floor, y’all. ON THE FLOOR!!!!! This lady has been giving off Vibes for weeks and today she finally sits down with me for the Big Reveal. I am so here for it. Spill the damn tea, gurl. Tell me all about life up on The Peak. Why am I sitting here writing my story? We should be writing YOUR story!
Okay, so, clearly the Hong Kong life connection is real. It’s such a thing. I don’t know how it is, but I keep attracting people in who have lived in or spent a lot of time in Hong Kong. It really is like a little club. Once you’re in, you’re in.
I was thinking yesterday about trying to get a job there again. It feels like it’s calling me back. I should try for it again. And this time do my research to make sure I’m nowhere near any South Africans.
Even this lady made The Face when I told her I was working for them. Everyone makes The Face when I mention the South Africans. Nobody likes them! lol! They represent themselves so poorly abroad. Literally, why do you even bother leaving your country if all you’re going to do is go out into the world and act like a racist asshole? It makes no sense. If you hate Chinese people so much, get the fuck out of Hong Kong. It’s not that hard, lol. Don’t come to China and complain about hating Chinese people. What is that? It makes no sense at all. What even are these people? Ugh.
She said she wishes she could go back, but she is older now and not in good health. She lives in the apartments out back with her family now. She is originally from here in Bangkok. She likes it here, but Hong Kong is a special place to her. She misses it every day. Girl, same.
Unfortunately, she had to leave to go to her doctor’s appointment. When she left, I was just sitting there like… wow, what just happened?
I guess this happened to make up for the fact that I did not go out last night.
Instead, I stayed home and decided to do some more research on the IRA so I could be better prepared for my next run-in with them. You know, make some note cards so I’m not so caught off-guard when someone starts saying good things about Gaddafi.
It’s been so long since I made my Dictators in Silly Outfits blog. I forgot about that whole thing. Let’s just say it’s very complicated from my perspective. Turns out he killed my dad’s friend in an airplane bombing. My dad was really happy when he heard that Gaddafi died in a ditch, tortured to death by his own people. I even said to my dad on his death bed, “Now you can go see your friend who was murdered by Gaddafi again.”
So yeah, it’s complicated. Plus, like, terrorism. I was there on 9/11. It’s a whole thing. I grew up watching this fucked up war in the Middle East broadcast live on TV every day. I know so many people who were affected by this crazyass shit. I knew so many people who came to the DC area from the Middle East for all sorts of reasons.
Then there is the fact that my paternal grandmother’s family is Irish Catholic and my maternal grandparents’ family are WASPs. It’s complicated AF. The WASPy side is the one that has always been oppressing me. Then my dad’s side rejected me once he died, which was crazy.
Then I found out that my paternal grandfather’s side had been hiding the fact that they were secretly Native American all along. Turns out most of their tribe was wiped out in a smallpox epidemic and the survivors married into my early colonizer European family that traces its origins back to the Roman Empire.
So that’s why I left my entire family behind and stopped speaking to most of them. Now I’m out in the world for the first time in my life instead of constantly being locked up in the library full of yellow wallpaper, and now I’m meeting all of these people with equally complicated pasts, and now I don’t even know what to think.
It’s such a complicated feeling.
It’s all tied together. All of it, everywhere, no matter where you go, it’s all so deeply tied together.
I left my research thinking, “I’m not sure how I feel about any of this. I feel like maybe the best opinion is to have no opinion, and simply sit there and observe and let them say whatever it is they have to say without argument.”
This is the moment I finally learned what it really meant to be an objective reporter with no skin in the game. I’ve been trying to learn this lesson my whole life. Leave it to the kid they had making bombs for them when he was only 16, who can now never return to the land he fought to save, and must forever live in exile here in Thailand, to teach me this lesson.
As I was sitting there reading, I realized who it really was I had been so casually conversing with at this bar, and who all the people were that I had casually been conversing with at this bar, and how totally fucking mind-blowing it actually is that the universe led me directly from the city of Hong Kong to this hotel down the street, which brought me to this bar with the Hong Kong lounge, that is full of ridiculous people who I have all these weird little connections to, just so I could hear all of these stories.
Or maybe it was the algorithm…
*spooky Twilight Zone music plays*
Wild. Just wild.
One of the things I noted during my research on the IRA was the culture of vigilantism that they developed. So basically, blowing shit up and killing people is totally okay because it’s on behalf of “freedom,” but moral decay goes against the Catholic Church and therefore it is not okay. Sexual harassment and assault of women, for example, was treated with much disdain.
So when these guys saw an Englishman who they all personally know to be a man of moral decay, speaking so disrespectfully to an American woman of Irish descent (on my father’s side), who they all personally know to be a polite, proper, uptight, “conservative” lady who “covers her legs,” it set off the vigilante instinct. This is why they surrounded us and started calling him out for all of his gross, creepy behavior, and eventually ended up scaring him away completely, even though I did not ask for any of this.
As I sat there processing everything, I realized that this happened because I have no boundaries at all. While I may not have approved of the IRA’s tactics here, they are right when they say I was allowing this Englishman to speak down to me and disrespect me.
You all can go back and read it. You saw what he said to me, as I directly reported it. You saw how he was talking to me and that he kept doing it even though I repeatedly told him not to. Then it opened up the door for him to think he could talk to me like that in public, at a bar. Instead of just letting him sit there and rail on me, these guys stepped in and said, “Fuck off, ya fookin’ English wanker.”
I guess I needed that more than I thought I did, because, again, no boundaries. I’m definitely used to being talked down to by my family and men and especially by people in South Dakota, who should definitely not be talking down to anybody because they themselves are trash.
I myself do not even speak very highly of myself most of the time because of this. Like I just stand there and let people rip me apart and then just walk away like it’s nothing. That’s not okay.
This set off a whole movie-length flashback. It was just a black-and- white highlight reel of all the ways my mother, older sister, and various other family members had abused and sabotaged me for the vast majority of my life.
I was like a ghost, just standing there helplessly watching as my mother destroyed promising opportunity after opportunity for me. It’s so painful to live with these memories. The worst part is the fact that she refuses to take any responsibility at all. She just says, “I never said that,” “I never did that,” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and “You’re living in the past.”
Last I heard, she’s living at my grandmother’s house and suffering from yet another medical issue she is no doubt trying to use to gain attention for herself. She has a long history of exaggerating her medical issues and other people’s medical issues for attention and sympathy. She has a long history of so many fucked up behaviors, I don’t even know how to armchair diagnose her beyond saying, “Dat bitch cray.”
I don’t know what her deal is, but I do know that my life is better now that she and my father are no longer in it. Like I’ve said before, my dad gets to conveniently “Star Wars Force Ghost” his way to forgiveness, but my mom is never going to be on that level. There is no forgiveness. Just a feeling of being totally fucking done with her crazyass bullshit.
The lesson here is to be more respectful of myself and treat myself better. Don’t let my family talk to me this way. Don’t let these men talk to me this way. Don’t let co-workers talk to me this way. Don’t let selfish assholes with zero self-awareness at the yoga shala talk to me this way. Don’t let anyone talk to me this way!
I’m a member of the fucking Hong Kong Club, bitch! Own it!
What’s on the agenda for today? Job hunting. Job hunting like crazy. I found a new lead on Reddit yesterday and it was like cracking open a treasure chest. Turns out all the AI they got to replace people is just hallucinating and spitting out garbage left and right, so there’s more demand than ever for actual humans to come in and fix the mess the robots and their greedy shareholder overlords made. They’re paying good money for it too. More money than I could ever make teaching English or yoga.
This gives me hope, which is exactly what I needed a week before turning 37. Lucky 37. Is this finally going to be “my year?” Is it finally going to be “my time?” Because I really need a win after feeling like a total loser my entire life.
You know what we need? We need to take Kim Kardashian’s advice and do a photoshoot. Just do so many photoshoots that the good pictures make all the bad pictures go away.
We need to just go to the Peninsula and do a whole James Bond-themed photoshoot by the pool in an evening gown and the infamous white bikini and appreciate the fact that this is somehow who I became after the total shitshow of a life I’ve lived.
Hong Kong Club. HKC. Horse races and white outfits with fancy hats and Pimm’s Cups by the tracks. Live dat Hermès lifestyle. Get that Birkin bag, girl!
Then put a brick in it and use it to smack around anyone who tries to abuse you in any way, shape, or form. The brick is a gift from the IRA, btw. Look, see, it even says, “Your day will come” on it, lol.
I shouldn’t make jokes like that. I know I shouldn’t. Like, they killed a lot of innocent people. It was not okay. I don’t condone the violence. I believe in World Peace.
That being said, I am from DC, so I will accept this gift for the definitely-not-a-political-bribe it is, and go on my very, merry way pretending like nothing interesting ever happened to me here at all.
I didn’t see shit, I didn’t hear shit, and if you ask me who I’ve been talking to, I will not be giving you any real names.
Snitches get stitches, or whatever.
Hashtag Gangsta Rap Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
Welcome to my Crib.
And she lived happily ever after. Maybe?
The End