Chapter 123

My alarm rang at 9:10. I felt surprisingly good. The aches from the previous morning weren’t there, likely it’s because my body is adapting. Also I didn’t feel any adverse effects from the alcohol. I’m morphing into a hashing machine.

I did my ablutions, packed my bag and went to the Holiday Inn across from the hash bar where I dropped it in a friend’s room before going to the bar. People were sitting around, recalling events from the previous night. “Oh hi, [redacted hasher name], I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on”, I greeted one of the bar top dancers. She laughed and claimed she didn’t even realize she didn’t have a bra on until long after she took her dress off. I’m a bit dubious, but I’m not shaming, it was a fun party and it’s a free countr... well...

The third day of Nash Hash started with a hangover run of about 5 km in the city, then a brunch buffet with copious amounts of bloody marys. People taking part in the Rusty Man triashlon had to drink at least one full pint of the strong, spicy, tomato drink before setting off on another urban trail of 5 km, this one with one beer stop every kilometer where we have three minutes to finish our beer and keep going. Some people showed racist behavior (walking so fast that both their feet leave the ground in a hopping motion, I think it’s called “renning” or something weird like that) for the first one or two segments but then were too bloated and walked the rest.

We went around the city, parts looked like a giant shopping mall and others were some kind of slum with old crumbling commie buildings and a pungent garbage smell. The last leg was alongside a canal with beautiful flower trees, and at the fourth beer stop, a guy named C3PeeHoles took out his bagpipes from his backpack, assembled the whole thing, and started playing. It was glorious. I’ve always loved bagpipes.

The last stage of Rusty Man was a potato sack obstacle race, and in the name of equality, it was rigged so that a girl would win it. A lot of the men were instantly disqualified for bogus motives, the reason for my disqualification was that I carried a handheld fan that I got at an advertizing booth and that is something a “poofter” would do. We were encouraged to obstruct the way of the incoming potato sack hoppity-hoppers, instead I took one of the stragglers in a fireman’s carry and ran towards the finish line, clumsily and drunkenly zig-zagging through. I must have zigged when I should have zagged though, because I bumped into a girl and she fell down, hurting her knee. Woopsy.

The circle was also quite fun, with all the shenanigans of the day thus far. I called a punishment on myself for hurting that girl’s knee, and got my buttocks whipped a few times. Ironically, the girl’s name is 狗s (Goes) Down Ruff... she was limping a bit and was initially mad but forgave  me and we laughed about it later.

The Rusty Man hares were all wearing kilts, and to ensure they were wearing it the proper way, a few female hashers lied on the ground before the kilt wearers walked above them in single file. One of them had shorts underneath, so under chants of “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” he got durian beer sprayed on him. Another notable moment was when someone proposed that, after all the “nipple shots” from the night before, one of the female hashers does a “scrotum shot”. The mad lass did it. A guy named Gobblin’ King is a big fan of hot peppers and had stopped at a market stall as we walked through halfway between two beer stops, getting a bag of threatening-looking peppers. People were dared to eat one and I did, in one bite. It was sweet at first, but the capsaicin crept in, it was a bit painful.

The day drinking continued, and to my great joy, I saw they hadn’t cleared the brunch buffet yet. The food was all cold but it didn’t matter, the hash browns and bacon felt great in our beer-filled stomachs. Eventually I had to leave, gave a round of goodbyes, and went to take a shower in my friend’s room before going to the airport, sharing a taxi with two other guys who also had flights around the same time.

Of course the damn flight was late, it’s a wonder why I expect any different. I sat on a massage chair, getting my back and shoulders kneaded by the robotic bumps and listening to metal and grindcore tracks. We got on the plane about an hour late, and as I was walking in, I got yelled “HARRO SIR PUT ON YOUR FAYSSUH MURSK” at. Fucking hell. I looked in the depth of my bags for a SLUGF and feigned to put it on.

I was falling asleep, my head resting on a makeshit pillow of a raincoat stuffed in a drawstring bag, when one of the flight attendants told herself “Hmmm, look at those glasses, would be a shame if they stayed unfogged. Also the lower half of his face is not all clammy with sweat, that’s unacceptable!” She nudged me awake and spouted the same “HARRO SIR PUT ON YOUR FAYSSUH MURSK” phrase they had to memorize in their training, along other things about seatbelts and the names of beverages.

I said before that I applaud the efficiency with which the Chinese government and population handled the pandemic, and I stand by it. That’s because it was done seriously, rather than the half-assed horseshit measures put in place in Quebec and elsewhere that don’t contain the virus at all and just cause seemingly endless inconvenience. So that’s why this mandatory fayssuh mursk in the airplane grates me so fucking much, I can say with authority (because I have more than five brain cells) that it does absolutely fuckall. Case in point, they gave us snacks. So even if just being shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of strangers in an unventilated space didn’t do the trick, does anyone really think the virus would just go “Oh wait, I won’t propagate while they’re chomping down on their cookies” if someone in there was infected? Fuck this moronic shit. Epitome of zealous retardation.

At least this gave me the opportunity for a ruse. I had my bag of roasted green peas on the reclining table, and would eat one every several minutes while reading my Kindle, which seemed to satisfy the bored shurgwaydingers pacing up and down, looking to sate their Napoleon complexes. Also, a significant number of passengers had it in the chin strap position and didn’t get bothered. At some point though, my seat neighbor politely asked me to let her go to the toilet, and I forgot to get the almost empty bag of peas out of the seat pocket after she squeezed past. This time three of them came, one was wearing a suit, perhaps he’s their leader, the Head Shurgwaydinger or Shurgwaydinger In Chief perhaps. “I’m eating!”, I protested, but it was denied. I admitted defeat, and sheepishly put the face diaper on. I’d rather not go to jail over such trivial shit.

I emerged from a restless sleep when we touched down in Shanghai’s Pudong airport. I originally had a flight back to Wuxi, a much shorter distance from home, but it got cancelled and they put me on the 11 AM flight. That would have meant missing Monday’s hash festivities, so after a bit of consideration I got it refunded and flew to Shanghai instead. I thought about taking an early morning train and make it to work with enough time to go home and shower, but the girlfriend said she’d drive there. Isn’t she awesome?!

We embraced at the arrivals and walked to the underground parking lot. I got behind the wheel, after assuring her I hadn’t had a drop of beer for the past eight hours (but barely). The two-hour drive home in the middle of the night went by quite smoothly, there was very little traffic but heavy rain, I drove prudently. I see it as a worthwhile sacrifice to the weather gods, I’d rather have rain on the drive home than during the hash weekend. The front of my right shin felt extremely numb after this long weekend and all the walking I’d done, so it was a bit painful to move it around and press the pedals. I wish our car had cruise control.

The girlfriend soon fell asleep, I had music to keep me company: an excellent groovy and melancholic sludge metal album by Aulnes, and the mysterious black metal EP, which turned out to be from an American band called Windfaerer. Both of them played twice and when we got close to the city and Sleeping Beauty yawned and stretched awake, I accepted to take the metal out of the stereo and put one of the CDs left by her parents, the previous owners of the car. I was bracing myself for, well, music that Chinese 55-year-olds like, but it was a compilation of American music from the 70s, Sound Of Silence, Take Me Home Country Roads, California Dreaming, stuff like that, so it was pretty nice.

I hit the sack a bit after 3. Short night ahead.