So Cheepork, the Earl of Cunt, took me to Angel Massage, which is just a short five minutes walk from the Phrom Pong skytrain station.
And he opened the door and he stepped inside.
Cheepork: Good morning, angels!
Angels: Good morning, Cheepork!
And you people ask me why I go to Bangkok.
I mean, seriously, going to Bangkok is a spiritual journey for me. It is the source of all power. It is the one place in the universe that makes perfect sense to me.
So by shifting my focus from all that I hate – the idiots in Malaysia - to what I love – the Thai girls – my whole life changes. My viewpoints, my stories, my negativity, my dreams and desire and despair – all shifts when I go to Bangkok.
The first girl I took to my hotel room in Pattaya was Mae.
After an initial conversation that included the future of the Thai agricultural sector, I started laying the smackdown – my victim stories.
Me: Everyone I ever helped backstabbed me in some way. Blah blah blah.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: You see, I hate lying. So people take advantage of my honesty. I want a world where I can be as honest as I want to be and no one would heckle me. A world where I can be pure id. No ego. No superego. Just pure, free id. Like an animal. Like a beast.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: Everyone judges everyone else. Show me a person who has never judged another human being and I will show you a spastic brain-dead half-chipmunk in a coma.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: There is a giant conspiracy against me. There are people conspiring behind my back to get me to do things I don’t want or to change into something I’m not. So that they would have complete control over me. So that they can feel superior and feed their own stupid insecurities.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: See, it’s because of their stupid low self-worth. They need to put other people down or get them under their control so that they can feel big. Most have been victimised their entire lives, so they want to inflict the same kind of pain to other people. They want other people to be like them. To suffer like them. Because misery loves company.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: They feed their own ego with other people’s sufferings. They laugh and make fun of and put down other people. “Putting them in their place” because they are afraid that other people might be experiencing a better life. A better truth.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: Some are just plain downright righteous. I know, because I am the most righteous motherfucker ever. Some just want to use people. Others want to laugh at people, because laughing at other people somehow convinces their ego-selves that they are superior.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: These people will never know true happiness. Because they’re idiots.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: I hate people.
Mae: Nut?
Me: What?
Mae: You want nuts?
Me: Ah. Pistachio. Nah. Trying to keep cholesterol levels down. You go ahead.
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: Say, that’s TRUE!
Mae: Mmph?
Me: What you said. It’s absolutely true!
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Me: See, it’s their egos talking. Doing the shit they do. Trying to pull me down to their level. Misery loves company. If I fall to their level, then I will also be pure ego. I will be like them. Goddamn!
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. I finish first?
Me: What?
Mae: You finish? I finish first?
Me: Yes! YES! Everything will be finished! The impermanence of everything! This, too, shall pass. Nothing is forever so who the fuck gives a shit? I…DON’T…GIVE …A…FUCK…ANYMORE!
Mae: Mmmph. Mmph. Mmmmmph.
Easier said than done. It took two go go girls and another massage girl later that I began to lose interest in my victim stories. That I finally started my ascent beyond ego and paranoia – justified or not – and went ever closer to transcendence.
At Angel Massage, I met a girl who manhandled me in every which way and forced me to look into the mirror.
Ann: Narak.
Me: What?
Ann: Narak. It means ‘handsome guy’.
Me: Ah. You’re just saying that so I would give you more money. Well, I won’t.
Ann: I don’t want more money. Just look in the mirror. Narak.
Me: Bah. Handsome. Ugly. Just another label.
Ann: What you do? Your work?
Me: I’m a writer.
Ann: Label.
Me: Holy shit! You mean, all the things I see myself in – my work, my apartment, my phone, my computer, my whatever - are all just labels I attached to myself in fear of losing my identity? My identity…my self…my…ego?
Ann: Look. Narak.
Me: And to you, I’m just what I am right now? A handsome guy? This is the me, the only me that you recognize? The me of the moment? Free of all the other bullshit. All the other…STUFF?
The movie Star Trek: Insurrection has characters who talk of living in one perfect moment after another as the key to longevity. Of immortality.
Neon Genesis Evangelion explores the concept of Absolute Terror field (AT field) – a thin psionic membrane that keeps every one and every thing separated. Call the AT field what you will – ego, a sense of self, identity – it is the one thing that keeps everyone from being one with each other and with the universe.
It is the abject fear of losing one’s self. Though past holy men and philosophers and drug addicts alike strived to break this barrier down and tell people that they are part of each other and part of the universe itself. Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, Hideaki Anno, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Nit-Shit, Moliere, Jung, Freud. Plato’s ideas. And that stupid heretic Aristotle’s bullshit as well as others try to dismantle the oneness with the universe with stupid things like caste and species and genus and what have you.
The easiest way to break through the AT field is through sex. Meditation works for some people, but sex has always proven to be extremely potent and easy to induce a thinning of AT fields.
Some people allow for limited opening and expansion of the AT field to include a group. This is even worse. This is when we have racism, bullying at school, workplace, and on national levels, it leads to war.
The modern Malays seek each other for those who are ‘sekepala’. Literally, “those of one head”. And we all know when a group of people share only one head, only one brain, we become stupid. It is only through the diversity of ideas and differing viewpoints and arguments that anything will grow.
The Japanese version of sekepala is ‘kangke’ and I saw a lot of Malay children follow this ‘kangke’ at UM while watching them capture one of their own and rubbing his genitals to a pillar or a wall. In Nazi Germany, it manifested in Aryan supremacy.
Me: I like to combine things that seem unrelated, like prostitution and philosophy, anime and self-awareness, comics and literature and just prove that they’re very similar. See, prostitution used to be the cornerstone of some civilisations. In ancient Babylon, they worshipped the Goddess Astarte. Ishtar. The goddess of love and sexual desire. And all priestesses have to become a prostitute for one day before they can ascend to become Ishtar’s holy-woman. Whore-priestesses. Animes such as NGE and Serial Experiment Lain and FLCL explore the dimension of awareness as the most vital part of existence. Quantum physics in the sense that no universe can exist without the mind entering into it. Comics, well, if you think about it, comics are the earliest forms of literature, of art. The cavemen drew comics on their walls. Sequential art. To convey a message. Comics exist in ideograms and further creep into cuneiform and symbolic alphabets, which is all alphabet. And some comics today are the most important works of literature ever done by mankind.
Ann: Narak.
Me: What-what-WHAT?
Ann: Narak.
Me: You mean to say that all this thinking, all this whatever shit, even parts of my GREAT WORK, are also just the egoistic me putting myself in other things in trying to define myself? That I should just enjoy myself as I am? I…am. I…AM. I AM!
Ann: Mmmphh. Mmpph. Mmmmmph.
Me: That there is no reason for me to become a mirror to society, unless I wish it? That I do not have to be burdened with the responsibility of the human race because if they’re meant to die or be stupid or be ‘sekepala’ then I should just let it be?
Ann: Mmmphh. Mmpph. Mmmmmph.
Me: That my job, my only role in this universe, in this life, is to not give a fuck? And also to give a fuck?
Ann: Mmmphh. Mmpph. Mmmmmph.
Wow.
No wonder this is called Angel Massage.
