Chapter 186

I woke up around 9, refreshed. My shoulder hurt a bit, not sure if it was from sleeping on the couch or from doing a lot of handstands in capoeira sessions or both. I drank a lot of water and then took the dogs for a walk. The Hutongster has a dog too, she’d been very nice to my dog so far, I kept them apart at first in case she’d get territorial and aggressive but she’s a sweetie. We walked all the way to Hou Hai, a small lake I’d been to a bunch of times, one of the cute sites in that area of Beijing, and then back home.

The Hutongster sent me a message saying that one of his neighbors complained about foreigners going to his apartment without a mask, and asked me to wear one when I go in and out of the alley. So aside from shitty insulation, shitty plumbing, shitty electricity, tiny size, high rent and insalubrity, another inconvenience of living in hutong apartments is having xenophobic cunts as neighbors?! If it was my apartment, I’d tell them to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut and mind their own goddamn business, and might even get my dog to shit on their doorstep, but the Hutongster just moved in and wants to keep it harmonious, so from then on I was abiding by this request and fishing out my shitty little fayssah mursk from the depths of my shorts pockets.

I chilled in the apartment for the rest of the day, eating fruit, drinking beer, catching up on this diary and watching YouTube videos. Sometimes a man needs that. Around 5 I got on my way to go have dinner with a friend on the other side of the city, I considered bringing the dogs but eventually decided against and took the subway. My old coworker (not the Zimbabwean; another guy) was waiting for me, we rode rent-a-bikes to a restaurant that serves oat noodles, one of his favorites and something that I’d never tried before. The small doughy cylinders are dipped in either a tomato and scrambled egg sauce or a garlicky mutton stew, and it’s pretty damn delicious and filling. We stayed there for about two hours, having a conversation about a variety of topics, and of course we drifted towards political discussion. We don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of topics, to say the least, but I enjoy our civilized (if at times heated) debates.

It was raining heavily when we came out but I managed to get a taxi. I made it home, relaxed a bit and then The Hutongster walked in, exhausted from his fifteen-hour work day. He cracked a beer, ate cold leftover pizza, took a shower and went to bed. I watched the new Rick And Morty on my laptop and also crashed.