Chapter 128

I wanted to sleep in a bit but the girlfriend was up early, she had to go to work on this beautiful Saturday. I asked her if I can use the car and go on a little road trip of sorts, but she wanted to drive to work.

“Come on! You have a bicycle, you have a little electric scooter, even on foot it’s about 25 minutes, we walked there and back a million times”

“But having a car makes me lazy!”

In the end I agreed to drive her there and go pick her up later. I’d be massively selfish not to, she came to the goddamn Pudding Airport last week to pick me up in the middle of the night, after all. I picked a CD from the pile, Khaos Mortem by Saccage. Saccage is a great prolific band from Quebec City, churning out aggressive blackened crust punk with French lyrics. I knew (and loved) their first offerings, and this one was just as headbangingly good, especially when played at full volume with the windows down.

Back home, I enjoyed a day of rest. Four of the past five weekends have been spent traveling, which was awesome but it’s also nice to idle and recharge. I watched documentaries, listened to music and read chapters from Plateforme by Michel Houellebecq. It must be the fifth time I’m reading it and I could read it in a loop until the end of time, like all of his other novels. A few years ago there was a bit of a trend where people shared their top 10 favorite novels on Facebook (I’m sure the AI crawling over that creepy site was delighted with all that voluntarily disclosed potentially usable profiling data) and I put all seven of Houellebecq’s full-length novels in there, only half-jokingly, they are all absolute masterpieces. His heartrendingly pathetic characters make me physically cringe in disgust at times but the observations and commentary on the modern world are acute as hell, prophetic even. Plateforme is 20 years old now and some of the predictions in there read as if Houellebecq had a time machine.

At around noon, I ate scrambled eggs and basil sausages, with an amber ale from a Shanghai brewery. I hesitated before uncapping it, but eventually said “Fuck it, I won’t drive this afternoon after all” Then I buzzed my hair. I tried to do the same with the dog and it was a failure, his hair is too fine for my hair clipper and big tufts would clog its metal teeth, and also he wasn’t very cooperative, to say the least. So I brought him to the vet, riding the longboard. It was stupid hot outside, with the sun blasting full force. Fucking hell, it’s not even mid-May.

He must have recognized the place, or maybe the gaggle of vets and nurses hanging out in front of the bay window, because he had to be dragged inside. One young male employee said “Hey, I remember this little guy!” Is he the one who vaccinated him? Or maybe the guy who shoved a Q-tip you-know-where to investigate for worms? Or perhaps he’s the testicle-remover?! No wonder the poor dog was getting all panicky, with his limited intellect he doesn’t understand what a hospital is, he only sees it as a chamber of torture.

At any rate, the clinic was busy, and I could only make an appointment for later in the afternoon. I went home, took a two-hour nap, and drove back there. It took me a while to find a parking spot, and it was a few minutes walk away, almost one quarter of the way home! All my rants about how dense cities aren’t meant for cars and vice versa, well, here I am, adding my own pinch of shit to the already clogged streets. I could only laugh at the irony, especially since soon after the girlfriend sent me a message saying she has to stay at work longer and will just get a rent-a-bike home, so I drove there for nothing.

A friendly attendant in scrubs shaved the dog’s thick fur, and noticed little spots on his skin. A vet came to investigate, scraping some of the scabby parts on a microscope lens, and a few minutes later came back and said “fungal infection”. They prescribed some special shampoo and a spray that we have to apply daily, which means the poor guy will have to wear his cone. I was happy with how he behaved, he didn’t struggle or bark or whine, though he did pee a bit and released a nugget of shit in the pile of hairs, amusing his hairdresser and I.

I dropped him off at home, then set off on my bicycle. For the big hash event we’re organizing two weeks from now, one of my tasks is to find a restaurant for the Saturday post-trail dinner. It has to be big enough to accommodate 60 drunken hashers, a walking distance from the hash bar, and within our pretty meagre budget constraints. I slowly rode around doing my reconnaissance, the area is packed with restaurants but most are too small. I shortlisted three of them, taking pictures of their menus and talking to the managers, then went to the bar where we had a mis-management meeting. The annual Yangtze River Delta Hash is supposed to be a regional event for eastern China, but now a significant number of hashers from much further afield, from Beijing, Xiamen, Tianjin, Kunming, Shenzhen and Chengdu, confirmed their attendance. It makes the thing feel like a continuation of Nash Hash, which is pretty exciting and also a bit nerve-wracking for our little dysfunctional hash chapter.

I got home, made cocktails (one for the girlfriend reading in bed, one for me) and watched the second part of the Brian Pillman documentary. As it turns out, he didn’t die in the car crash like the cliffhanger ending let me believe, but he did get injured badly and eventually died from an overdose of pain pills. He was 35, which means I already outlived him. Scary shit. Every day I’m thankful to be alive and having a mostly good life.