How I saved the world part 4

Don’t laugh at this, goddamnit. The pain and misery of our fellow humans is, ultimately, not something anyone should be laughing at. I am fully aware of the hypocrisy of that statement. Maybe you all think that I’m good for nothing but tossing out an endless stream of incoherent nonsense and non sequiturs. And perhaps I deserve such a reputation. But please, just for a moment, listen to what I have to say with an open mind. Pretend, even, that I am not the person telling you the story. It is the story of your brother or sister, your friend, your special someone; it is not the story of a human being so decrepit, so degraded, so inconceivably cruel and self-centered as me. For to even imagine such a thing so reprehensibly vile would cause the universe to implode in on itself.

I am not a particularly handsome man. Perhaps at one time my abs did not resemble a sack of corn, my eyes not droopier than a Dali painting. That is no longer me, to say the least. Nor am I a particularly kind man. Some might even call me downright insesitive, cruel, forlornly abject. I am not a rich man. I teach some kids at a kindergarten in China. The money gets me by. I have an ipod, an lcd monitor, a bunch of homosexual looking fish in a shiny tank. I’m not left wanting of frivolous possessions. This is certainly not to say I am right, though. If you can’t afford to wipe your ass with the face of Mao, you aren’t rich in China. I am, if anything, an intelligent man, but Einstein certainly never had a harem of beautiful women wiping his ass with the face of Mao.

She, on the other hand, was a pretty girl. An exceptionally pretty girl. The kind of girl that makes you glad you bought the stain-free kind of Dockers. Tall, leggy, that long, black, shiny Chinese hair. Chinese men would threaten to cut out my intenstines and feed them to their dogs merely upon seeing me with her. And they eat the fucking dogs here. She was so beautiful, it didn’t matter whether or not she was rich, intelligent, or even kind. But oh, she was kind. Kind, loving, compassionate, and decidedly monogamous. I could have peed on her while she was wearing her favorite dress and she’d still cook me dumplings for dinner. I, of course, never did anything to physically abuse her, but there are worse things a man can do. There is a strange sort of mindset here whereby a beautiful woman such as herself could still define herself by the purest kind of love rather than a quantitative measurement of conquests. I believe that, perhaps, I held the most beautiful thing in the world in my hands, and upon recognizing it was filled purely by the desire to suffocate it, debase it, drain it of every last ounce of energy leaving a dead, rotting cocoon. I am a sick and twisted man.

I remember thinking, while watching her cry, that she was at her most beautiful when crying. Not tears of joy, but that other nasty kind. The kind of tears that can only flow when a nasty boy says something heartless. I always forget to call her. I show up an hour or two late. I just want to sleep. I never say anything nice. The accusations are all true, of course, but I can only think about how she’d look naked right now. I kicked her out of my apartment in front of all my friends. I threatened to sell her computer on ebay in 48 hours if she didn’t come and pick it up. I said I wanted to see other people. I said I never loved her, that she was a bad girlfriend. She begged me to give her another chance. She actually got done on her knees and begged me, a man not so handsome, not so rich, downright cruel, to give her another chance. And all I could think was, apart from her naked flesh, was that if she couldn’t recognize the kind of man I was, she deserved every second of sorrow she would have. Then I walked her to a cab and paid for a ride home. A true gentleman.

I’m afraid there will be no more saving the world, for me at least. It is the end of an era, an epic saga not lacking in drama, suspense, comedy, horror. The power to save the world is in your hands now. You have seen the consequences a man faces when he does not embrace the beauty he sees in the world, what happens to a man when he sucks the box of beauty dry, still trying to get the last drop through the straw, the sound of the box collapsing in under the weightlessness of the newly created vaccuum. Do not be this man. Be the strong, be the man who says “I do not drink juice from a goddamn box!”, be the man who doesn’t crack stupid jokes in his hour of repentance. Honestly, there isn’t any room left for more of me.

Holy crap. I never thought I’d meet anyone who can use someone so thoroughly.

tl;dr

IT’S A TRAP!

…so, you got your fish tank now? shifty eyes

You look kind of nerdy

Especially your hair

So did you ever end up seeing a therapist for your extreme sociopathy?

Okay, but be honest now. When one describes oneself as “decrepit,” “degraded,” and “inconceivably cruel,” isn’t that just a kind of false-faced, exhibitionistic ego-stroking, in some sense more arrogant than praise? Furthermore, as someone who has frequently pointed out political and societal subtexts in current events, do you suppose that there might be some kind of colonialism in this story? The literate, sophisticated Western man abuses the sheltered, wifely Eastern woman, but he realizes the essential futility of life and she doesn’t, so he allows himself to look down on her.

Zepp likes to suck the souls out of people as if they were a cherry Icee on a Midsummer’s day. :slight_smile:

By the sounds of it I think Zepp gets other people to do the sucking.

Aha, he’s a Gary Stu.

I like Cherry Icee’s :smiley:

Oh uhm topic.

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So zepp, aside from your deep internal monologues that you post on the internet (does that make them external :O) do you think about your actions? Do you even have feelings about what you have done? Do you have a psychologist?

Other then that, There is no further questions. We stand down.

People like zepp are the reason I get called cynical.

You should sitck to the fish, Zeppo.

You guys shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.

And what makes you think we should believe you when you say that?

Then you cycle endlessly like an ATI video card in Blackwing Lair and a BSOD is imprinted into your brain. You are left as nothing more than a shell of your former self, a tool for the self - indulgeance of various ruminating animals that may wish to leisurely prey upon your dilated and available orifices.

Taking the story at face value,

They’d be right, but it’s probably not your fault. Your backward mentality, always wanting to “burst the bubble of joy,” sounds like a psychological issue. Being locked up in your room all the time in a highly foreign country, with no exercise, not much time in the sun, an unhealthy diet, no friends to joke with – it’s no surprise that you took out your bitterness on your girlfriend. You’ll probably remain bitter until your lifestyle changes.

Also, I’d recommend making up with your girlfriend if it’s not too late.

Well, it seems my story has caused a bit of latent discussion. I suppose I should come clean and, as Sinistral suggests you should not believe everything you read on the internet, confess the story is not autobiographical. So why did I write it? Well, I will admit that I am often tempted by the desire to, as SK says, be the literate, educated White man taking advantage of the clueless Chinese girl. It would be so easy to do, and when I first arrived in the country I did fall by the wayside a bit. I am currently in a pretty nice relationship with an intelligent lady studying at one of China’s top universities to become a simultaneous English/Chinese interpreter. Pretty cool stuff, and I totally respect her for taking on such a difficult project.

So where does all this shit come from? Unfortunately, it is something I see happening on a daily basis. Oh sure, there are some success stories I’ve seen. My Wushu teacher, a rather fearsome lady, is happily married to an awesome British guy. An American friend of mine has been living in China for 12 years happily married to a Chinese lady. But for every one success story, there are 99 cases of Western guys doing exactly what I wrote about in the story. I don’t personally think it’s imperialistic. I do not think there is anything innate in the Chinese (or Asian, I’m not sure, I haven’t spent any significant enough time in an Asian country outside of China) woman that causes her to fall in love so quickly and totally, and many Western guys just don’t seem to understand what they’re getting into. It is pretty much a societal thing. Though China is still a patriarchal society with girl babies being thrown into the streets or given away to other families as virtual slaves in hope of having a male baby, the most important thing to a Chinese man is that he does not “lose face” as we say. And there are very strict rules regarding what he is allowed to and not allowed to do in a relationship in China.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton of premarital sex and dating and whatnot going on in China, but the society has created two classes of relationships. There is the “relationship”, whereupon both parties enter into an agreement that it’s for the long-term and the guy will not just dump the woman for someone else. He might cheat on her on the side (or vice versa), but it will all be done very hush hush and marriage is all but inevitable. Then there are what are basically relationships of convenience. Only a man wealthy enough can enter into these. I have met Chinese businessmen with over 100 of these relationships all over China. They spoil the girl a bit, maybe pay for her university and expenses, buy her a car or something, and in return she’ll spend the time that he’s in her city together. IT must be made very clear what kind of relationship it is before entering into anything.

Now, most western guys are only here temporarily. They are either studying, working for a while, etc. You would thus think that if a girl were to enter into a relationship with such an individual, she would realize that only the latter type applied. As SK suggested though, the average Chinese girl does not appreciate “the futility of life” we will call it. The guy will do a big no-no with the girl, something that is taken for granted in our culture but that would cause even a wealthy Chinese man to start looking for a wife in a different circle of people or even a different city. That big no-no is saying he loves her when he has no intent to take the relationship to the next level. I love you is pretty much “I will marry you at some point” in this culture, and the girl will most always assume this is the case. Thus, you get the situation described in my story.

Though I do love reminding myself how much Manus hates me (my happiness level is directly related to it), you might want to remember that any story I write called “How I Saved the World” is probably not that autobiographical. Yes, I have done awful things in my time, but really, I am not awful enough to crack the terrible jokes I made in this story while confessing those things. Perhaps you will find this post a bit sexist or even culturally insensitive to Chinese women, but any serious discussion of Chinese culture must take into consideration the often blatant racism, sexism, and nationalism presented by Chinese culture.

I still nevertheless believe you should make a little booklet of these things and try to publish them. I believe I made a point of that in another thread, because you’re pretty good at it.