Seratonin

Beyond all wrong-doing
and all right-doing
is a field.
I will meet you there.

- Jalaludin Al-Rumi



What is “sin” for a mystic like Rumi? For anyone who takes it upon themselves to pursue spiritual enlightenment in ways that disregard and often offend religious dogma?

Sin is whatever distracts one from the path of edification. Accordingly, it is impossible to pinpoint what sin is prior to identifying where this path lies. I have many times gone through life like a zombie, satisfying my body without really trying to take that satisfaction and turn it into an energy that can transform my life.

But, what if sin leads to an awakening or an epiphany of sorts? Does that not make it part of the path? Who unleashed the snake Satan into the garden of Eden? Was it not God? Adam and Eve were destined to fail, and so are we. But, one hopes, failure is part of the process.

I am a sinner, and my sins are many. I have hurt, but mostly myself, and as a result the need for change has not been immense. I say, the only sins that remain so are the ones you have not learned anything from.

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I danced my heart out on Saturday. My body swayed and thrusted to the heavy bass and crisp vocals of Lady Gaga as she opened her Monster Ball with the words “Silicone. Saline. Poison…Inject me”. It was all I could do not to collapse from exhaustion, from my severely low levels of seratonin, and it took a few Irish coffees for me to be even standing meters away from her gyrating body under the dome of the O2.

Rewind, it’s Thursday.


By 8pm I was feeling a little anxious. Going out in London on Fridays and Saturdays can be unpalatable. The city is crawling with out-of-town drunken revelers and mad locals alike. Understanding this, and since both Jared and Rodrigo were visiting from NY and Rio respectively, we decided we’d take them out whilst the city is still in good shape. I blamed my anxiousness on the fact that I had a lot of work the next day and didn’t want to stay out too late. But perhaps I should have rethought the guest list in light of this glaring fact.

Most of us 'pre-gamed’ at my place. This is where the madness begins, and as of late the magnitude has been steadily rising. The bottles of Belvedere and Goldwasser came out, but so did the neat packs of cocaine and mephodrome. Drugs have always been around. They always will be. The same can be said for the social stigma surrounding them, for which I care very little. What concerns me, above all else, is my safety. Knowing very well that I am a sinner, I draw a balance between enjoyment and cautiousness, one that I have maintained very well.

But, that night, I began to loose track of how many lines I’d had. Maybe it was my exhaustion, or the need for escape from some of the harsh realities that surrounded me at the time, but I did not stop. At 3am, on the dancefloor with some of my girlfriends from high-school who have been equally indulging, I was on a plane I’d never been before. My confidence was extreme, my awareness heightened. In a moment, I saw him from the corner of my eye, the person I would drag to my cave tonight and consume like a lion ravaging a zebra. I wasted no time in walking up to him and, as I approached him, I realized that I already knew him (Derek). I’d always been interested, but he’d been dating someone up until recently. He saw me coming and beamed a smile. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Back at my place the pace was slow and intense. We both kept doing lines as our hearts raced and eyes took in the vibrant colors. We had sex for hours, sex of an intensity and sensuality I have very rarely experienced. The cocaine delayed our orgasms for at least an hour at a time, allowing us to make the most of every single touch. When we were finished, the sun had come up, for the first time in weeks, there were no clouds smothering it. That’s when I remembered work.

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“Silicone! Saline! Poison…Inject me baby!” Gaga hollered at the sea of people and flashing cameras. I had survived the Friday at work, productively even, but more than ever I felt like a monster. I had no intention of seeing Derek again, though he had consistently called me since that out-of-body experience in the first hours of Friday. I wasn’t going to call because I  felt like a cheap, coked-up stereotype, and all he would do is remind me of this. When did I become this person? Serial sex, extreme indulgence, leaving people hanging in tandem after I promised them the world?

I have sinned. But it remains to be seen whether this sin will be a lesson that justifies all harm or another evening under-rug-swept, eating away at my soul.

Return of a Roundhead

When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be a place where I can lay out events and thoughts in their most raw and exposed form – a sort of therapy, so that maybe one day when I read through posts of periods past I could detect a pattern, good or bad being irrelevant, but perhaps enlightening. Over the years I feel to an extent that I’ve lost that, and fell into the trap of turning this into a Perez Hilton meets Carrie Bradshaw. In other words, dull and pseudo-thoughtful.

 

Now there’s little guarantee that those words don’t actually describe me. But at the very least, going forward, I’m going to resist the pressures of conformity and write as openly as I can. Some of what’s to come may, therefore, be disturbing. As this is generally an anonymous blog, I care little about judgment, however for those of you who know me, consider yourself on a license to view, I plead.

Gaijin

Defiantly, I held my boarding pass and passport in one hand and my carry-on goodie bag (complete with iPod, books, sleeping pills, motion sickness sniffer, eye-mask, moisturiser and a forest of Reese's) in the other, all the while thinking about the 10 days of absolute isolation and estrangement that were to come and save me from two months of cosmic battery.

And "just like that" (i.e. 14 fucking hours later), I was sitting on the Narita Express heading to "downtown" Tokyo. In that smooth gliding train-car, I remembered why I had travelled this far alone. I watched this foreign world go by in high-definition and, looking around me at all the signs, words and even objects that I could not even begin to understand, the excitement started to rumble in my chest. I was, finally, alone and free. I had flipped the coin, and very well. I went from information overload, over-communication, over-exposure and disarray to silence, reclusiveness and Japanese efficiency. Nobody spoke English. My phone had run out of batteries and I refused to charge it for the duration of my stay. My computer was snuggled on my couch in London. What bliss, I was ready for my adventure.

And indeed, I spent 10 days roaming the claustrophobic island between bullet trains, Zen temples nestled in mountains, and one of the most energetic cities I have every visited.

Tokyo's intensity was a shock. There is no "downtown" Tokyo because all of it is super-urban and super-crowded. Every corner is a Times Square, a Piccadilly Circus. Lights blaze down on you from every inch of every building. People move like schools of fish in spectacular harmony. As I understood nothing of what was going on around me, I walked around with my Lonely Planet close to hand (whilst I would usually feel self-conscious about bearing such an atrocious token of the League of Straight Dull Back-Packers, I had no shame in doing so in Tokyo: this city is one place where I was going to stick out as a Gaijin (a foreigner) no matter what I did).

Alas it was spectacular fun. Though I understood nothing, everyone was kind in ways I could not begin to describe, and honesty is central to their culture, so nobody ever tried to take advantage of my glaring ignorance.

About 4 days into the trip, I levelled with myself and decided to cut through some of the BS – bullet trains with full view of Mount Fuji are fun, and I did go through a rebirth ritual or two in Kyoto – but when you get right down to it, nothing says spiritual cleanse like a brand new wardrobe and shiatsu massage.

So, after a killer massage by a highly experienced and disappointingly unattractive masseur, I attempted to go shopping.

As with everything in that city, what was on offer was astonishing. The clothes were unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Camp" took on a whole new meaning. There was real creativity in design, in fabric and in structure. No hang ups about fur, knee high red boots, or silk and studded shirts. But after the third fitting room it started to dawn on me – I'm a fat bitch! I'm an XL Gaijin. Most stores didn't even hold my size. Ok, I'm a European Medium, and an American Small, depending on whether we're talking haute couture or Zara, but my body has never been wrapped in anything marked with an "L" (unless you're talking leather Louboutin). So whilst accepting the fact that I am classified as a cow (a Gaijin cow) in Tokyo, I was not ready to accept that I was going to go home empty handed. Alas, I found a pair of silver metallic "come-fuck-me" half-boots and an equestrian blazer, but had I starved myself for a few months prior I would have come home with so much more. (Stay tuned.)

In any event, after my shopping escapades failed (though truthfully, just browsing the fabulous stores was enough to give me the kick), I turned to my other past-time: partying. I was debating whether I wanted to go to an 'institutional' club or just the local gay hole in the wall. I soon learned that the latter was not a very preferable option for Gaijin, and I spent about an hour in the former before realising that people in Japan still listen to techno at 170 beats per minute and that my ears may actually start bleeding (note to reader: since the advent of minimal techno in 2004, respectable European techno rarely passes 120 bpm threshold). Alas, I hit "Arty Farty", a London Soho-style bar with your average cheesy music collection and 15 year old prostitutes. I looked down at the crowd (I was the tallest one there) and realised, here's another relaxing thing about Japan: I felt zero sexual tension. So I met up with some friends that had been seconded in Tokyo for work and we drank and debauched to the extent possible.

On the Narita Express back to the airport the sun was just coming up. Its rays bounced off of the steel and glass of the buildings on either side of the tracks. My head rested against the large spotless window with my iPod whispering in my ears. The conductor would occasionally make an indecipherable announcement in his soft respectful voice. I did not want to go back to London – to the stress, the sleepless nights and the cold, damp streets. But I knew I did not belong in Tokyo. Though I am lucky I even got to experience this country, it is a parallel universe. I closed my eyes and fell asleep as the train slithered between high-rises.