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  And that’s all we are. Numbers, fucking numbers. You may be the 6,763,215,895th person born, and I might be the 6,763,215,896th person born on this planet, but what hardships have we experienced?

  A lost relationship…the loss of your job…a car accident or a dishonest contractor working on your house?

  I sit there in the white-armed plastic chair watching a ponytailed girl from the countryside in green polyester pants and tan shower sandals, shooing the deformed beggar from the restaurant. The only money he got was from me, he stares back at me, as if I am able to stop his ostracization.

  30

  As usual, my suspicions are correct. Xian wants Drew and me to meet his pals, the number three guy at the Hanoi People’s Committee and the number four guy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Apparently, they have a business idea they want to pitch to us.

  I’ll listen and go along for the free booze and food, but I know my time in Hanoi is coming to a close. I may not be a quiet American, but Thu Duong, my remaining tie to Hanoi, is gone. Never again will I find myself in the uncertainty of wanting permanence, of wanting to touch her, stroking her silky black hair and smelling her fragrance.

  The Vietnam I came to seek was always in my head tied to a mythical woman who would change who I am. The damsel slipped away in the middle of the night in my dreams of life elsewhere. The longing of an embrace is what I seek in myself. The permanence I am after is in me. I feel that now, yet the only permanence is change: Change your habits, change your routine, change your behavior, all the psychologists say. But never once do they tell you to adjust your inner compass and focus on what you want. Instead, they train their focus on making you become a “productive” member of society.

  What a crock of shit! Cog number 6,763,215,896 is acting out of line.

  A puffy gray cloud cuts across the crescent moon as the light pollution drowns out the stars. I stand outside a swank restaurant in the Old Quarter shaking hands with Drew and Xian.

  “Let’s go inside. Quan and Chinh are waiting for us,” Xian says.

  We follow Xian into a warmly lit interior with crystal chandeliers hanging above every table. Wealthy people wearing formal jackets and dresses talk above the endless clanging of silverware. Not a setting I want to be in.

  Pretentious at best, Xian introduces us to Quan and Chinh. We shake hands and take our seats at an antique French table. So much for the spartan virtues of “Communism.”

  Quan has perfectly cropped dyed black hair that swoops across his forehead, while Chinh is wearing gold-rimmed glasses that draw attention to his pockmarked cheeks. They order snails and expensive cuts of beef for us to eat.

  A waitress wearing a golden áo dài seemingly levitates to our table and pours us glasses of imported beer.

  Waiting for the sales pitch, I focus my attention elsewhere. Foreign diplomats make toasts and drink champagne. I’m sure their toasts are not about bilateral ties with Vietnam.

  I look down at my lime-green button-down shirt that smells like two days of sweat. My washing machine broke and the repairman won’t be able to fix it until tomorrow.

  Out of place as I always am, I focus back on the conversation at our table. Chinh raises his glass and makes a toast.

  “To future opportunities,” he says.

  I keep my laughter inside and we all clank glasses and dig in at the marbleized slabs of beef. The meat melts in my mouth as I chew. I look over at Drew, who raises his eyebrows. The pitch is coming.

  “Thanks for coming tonight,” Quan says. “We have an exciting idea that could make us all rich.”

  “Xian has told us a lot about you,” Chinh continues. “You both are excellent teachers who know IELTS well.”

  Drew and I nod in confirmation and I look at Xian whose face is flush from the beer.

  “We want to open a school in Hanoi that prepares Vietnamese students to study at universities in New Zealand,” Quan says and takes a sip from his beer.

  “We have investors, but we need people to operate the school. That’s where you two come in.”

  I look at Drew, then back at Quan and Chinh. “That is a great opportunity, but we need time to think about it.”

  Drew nods his head. “If we were to leave our current jobs, we would need a significant amount of money.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Chinh says and raises his glass for another toast. I guess in the hopes of lifting our “spirits” to the task of running their school.

  “Take some time to think about it,” Quan continues. “We weren’t expecting a decision tonight.”

  The rest of the meal is made up of small talk about my background and Drew’s background. Both Quan and Chinh seem impressed by our knowledge of Vietnam and our desires to leave our cultures behind. More beer and beef are delivered to our table by the lovely golden-clad waitresses.

  A man could easily fall in love with any one of these angelic waitresses and write a fantasy of love drenched in the reflected light of the crystal chandeliers. But I have no delusions. I’m sure all these gals are mistresses to some foreign diplomat or CEO in Hanoi. Beauty like this always follows money, and we proles are stuck trying to find the proverbial diamond in the rough amongst a sea of plain-jane office workers and country girls who came to the big city to eke out a living to support their families back home.

  Nothing has changed for millennia. And so we go at it daily with the hopes that one thought or action will change our station in life. Yet it never happens, and eventually the weak will settle down with an office worker or some countryside girl.

  Nothing can change that unless we meet a woman who has an indescribable sense of elegance and creativity that shakes the core of our being, that makes us beg, crawl and howl like a dog. Until that happens, I’ll continue to post myself up in some new and unknown place and look for meaning. It’s the only thing we can do. Life happens whether you let it happen or not. The only thing we can do is to trust our internal compass no matter how right or wrong it is. So go ahead and howl and bark like a rabid dog and gnaw at the foot of your muse!

  Trust me. Life will happen.

  31

  It’s another Saturday night, and I find myself in a karaoke ôm place with Mark, Mair, Big Tom and Murray. Another week of classes finished and another week closer to the end of my existence in Hanoi, I down my shot of whisky and look over at Mair and roll my eyes. Mair laughs and raises his shot glass towards me.

  A gaggle of girls wearing sequin dresses come to our table with fruit and side dishes. Our entertainment for the evening has arrived; we sit around the green horseshoe couch with the girls sitting between us.

  Colored lights swirl while Mark pages through the songbook and selects “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton. The cheesy keyboard version of the song plays, set to images of people paddling boats along the Perfume River.

  Mark downs his whisky in one shot and croons, “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?”

  One girl refills our shot glasses, while Murray grabs a cute girl with shoulder-length hair and pulls her onto his lap.

  “This is why I came to Hanoi!” he shouts.

  “You’re damn right!” Big Tom howls and pulls a different girl onto his lap. The other two girls look at Mair and me, and Mair and I cross our wrists, making an X as if to say no thanks.

  “Beyond the door, there’s peace, I’m sure.” The lame lyrics continue from Mark’s mouth.

  How could anyone write such rubbish? Sentimentality deserves no place in the world. People become bumbling sobs with one sad story after another.

  “I must be strong and carry on.” The insult continues. People love mediocrity and strive for it.

  With no desire to push beyond the illusion of a solid reality, people marry, get “good” jobs, have children and buy things in the hopes of finding meaning while ignoring others who go street to street begging for money in order to buy their next meal.

  Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, every “ism” is the same. Nobody
gives a shit about anyone outside of their immediate circle of family and friends.

  Lost in thought, I finish my shot of whisky and hear a loud commotion as everyone runs toward the door chasing Big Tom and Murray.

  32

  Outside on the street under a lone streetlight, Big Tom puffs his chest out and pushes Murray off of his motorbike.

  “She’s my girl. Mai’s my girl. You better leave her alone,” Big Tom shouts.

  “Fuck you! She’s a whore. She doesn’t belong to anyone!”

  Murray gets to his feet and brushes the dirt off his elbows.

  “Go fucking ask her who pays for all her stuff.” Big Tom pushes Murray again.

  “What the fuck are you saying?” Murray shoves Big Tom against the light pole.

  “That’s it, asshole! I brought you over from Korea and all you can do to be grateful is to take my girl home!”

  “Come on. Seriously?” Murray pleads. “You’re upset about some fucking country girl who fucks men for a living?”

  “Fuck you!” Big Tom takes a swing at Murray and hits him in the chest.

  Murray sends a wild uppercut in the air missing Big Tom’s chin, while Big Tom pushes him against a rolled-down aluminum shutter of a closed shop.

  The rattling of the shutter alarms the neighborhood.

  Lights turn on from second and third floor apartments to see what the raucous is about.

  “Come on, guys,” Mark says, putting himself between Big Tom and Murray.

  “There are tons of other women to put your dick into.”

  Big Tom shoves Mark out of the way. “This is how we settle it back home!” he shouts.

  Murray then lands a blow to Big Tom’s chest that doubles over Big Tom. “Take that, asshole!” Murray lands a shot to Big Tom’s head and knocks off his glasses.

  Mark again tries to separate the two, but Big Tom gets to his feet and punches Murray in the mouth, busting his lip.

  Mark again tries to push Murray and Big Tom away from each other. “If you two are going to act like junior high school boys, then go ahead and beat the shit out of each other. What the fuck do I care!”

  Murray then pushes Big Tom against the storefront and hits Big Tom with a couple quick punches that send Big Tom to his knees.

  “Come on, Mai, let’s go.” Murray grabs the stunned girl, who probably has never seen two stupid white guys fight over her, and starts his motorbike.

  “What are you waiting for? Hop on,” Murray says. Mai hops on the back of Murray’s motorbike.

  I shoot Mair a quick look. “Did you see what I just saw?”

  Mair shakes his head in disbelief and Murray zooms off into the darkness with Mai on the back of his motorbike.

  33

  Walking into the staff room earlier tonight, I noticed one less nametag on the mailboxes. Murray is gone. He got fired, not for being a shitty teacher, but for stealing Big Tom’s karaoke girl. Yet another reason I must leave this school and leave Hanoi.

  My sanity waxes by the day, and I carry this image. I’m on a train platform waiting for my train and I am the only person who is moving. Everyone else is frozen in place.

  I look at my watch. Its hands are frozen, too. A sense of fright and excitement looms. Time has stopped, and I am at this weigh station, trying to move forward in a place where every train and every person has stopped moving.

  I see a nomad, almost thirty-one years old, with thinning hair and a beard in a cracked mirror hanging from a platform pillar. The man I see in the reflection looks confused and lost, searching for meaning in hopeless relationships, self-sabotaged dreams, drugs and alcohol.

  The platform I stand on, or rather the imaginary stage I stand on is strewn with flowers and rotten vegetables. Its curtain, red, faded pink and full of cobwebs, smells like mildew and sweat.

  All the women I have run from are in the audience laughing at me. All the people close to me that I have run from stand with their arms folded. I see myself there in the audience, too, silent and glum.

  Why do I do this to myself? Why do I run from myself? Why do I keep asking why?

  Everything exists and it has existed for eternity, and when we die we will all return to eternity. The universe has always been this way.

  Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. All those old Catholic clichés pop into my head. The guilt never leaves — the eternal gift to all of us recovering Catholics.

  Bless you, my son, bless you, my daughter, for I have sinned. Nothing I can do can make up for the sacramental scars I have inflicted on myself. Spending nights in the company of “massage” girls, going home and grabbing whatever drug I can put into my body, hoping for that great escape that will never happen.

  The only great escape is death, and nobody even knows if that is an escape.

  Nothing is certain and everything is uncertain. Tomorrow may never come, and tonight may never end. I take a hit of opium, but the questions remain. The abyss stares at me and mocks me.

  “You’re nothing but a piss artist. Go ahead, run from yourself. You’ll never get further than where you are at now.”

  34

  Back in the Labyrinth, the NGO crowd of people dominates the first floor. Middle-aged men all wearing khaki pants, tailored shirts and expensive watches talk obnoxiously above the chatter and clanking of beer bottles about hydroelectric dams, bridges and newly designed roadways.

  The path to “development” always centers itself on infrastructure, building better roads and better dams to provide a better means for developed countries to steal and exploit the resources of developing countries. All these NGO workers start off well intentioned after getting a master’s degree in developmental studies from some prestigious university in some well-to-do country, believing their actions working for UNICEF, the Red Cross, JICA or any another NGO make a difference. Then reality sets in. Power, corruption, greed and personal ambition take over.

  Microfinance, large infrastructure projects be damned. When one can build their résumé in a place like Vietnam with “successful” projects and initiatives, that lucrative position at the World Bank or the IMF becomes closer.

  I take a sip of my beer and look down to the first floor at the gaggle of self-righteous economic hitmen. The unseen army of the West and Japan. It will never end until every last country has been drained of resources and exploited.

  “I’m so sick of these pampered jackasses. I’d love to piss in their beer.” Mair shakes his head in disgust.

  “Too right,” Drew agrees and we make a toast.

  “To hell with development!” We laugh and finish our beer.

  I stagger down the narrow wooden stairs against the exposed brick wall, and order three more bottles of beer from Mao.

  Iggy Pop’s “Funtime” plays on the stereo. “Talkin’ to Dracula and his crew. All aboard for funtime,” blares over the din of crew cuts talking shop about this or that “project.”

  I pay Mao for the beer and make my way back upstairs. Mair and Drew are engrossed in conversation.

  “You can’t keep trying to romance these psychopaths,” Mair chimes. “They only care about money and status.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “I saw Phoung here the other night with one of those NGO pricks,” Drew answers. “Every time I get feelings for a girl here, they seem to run to some rich guy or NGO knob end.”

  “You need to put your dick into one of them and stop smothering them with gifts,” Mair says, flashing a look at me.

  “They don’t appreciate nice guys. If you don’t tick off any of the boxes on their imaginary checklist, you might as well try to fuck them and forget them. You keep doing your head in,” I say and take a sip of beer.

  “Baby, baby we like your pants. All aboard for funtime. Everybody we want in,” Iggy Pop’s voice cuts through the clatter.

  “Words of wisdom there from Iggy,” I say.

  “Man, you guys don’t get how much I like Phuong and how much it hurts to see her with another guy.”


  “Come on, Drew,” Mair says. “What does she have besides her looks? What do any of these girls have besides their looks?”

  “We’re just English teachers. You should make your money, have fun and move on.” I take a sip and look over at Drew who has his head in his hands.

  “Listen to Mike. If you take away their beauty and take sex off the table, what do these women have? What do you have in common with them?” Mair asks.

  “I can give them a better life back in England,” Drew answers.

  “A better life? Do they even want that? They all seem to want to marry a wealthy guy, have kids and impress their family and friends,” I reply.

  “It’s their country. We’re just white guys who teach English. We are a dime a dozen. We come to Hanoi, and we leave Hanoi. Do you want all the bullshit of supporting one of these girls back in Ol’ Blighty?” Mair asks.

  “I thought Phuong was different,” Drew answers. “She made time for me, and we had a good time together. I thought it was going somewhere.”

  “She’s going somewhere. She’s going to the richest guy’s house, and she’s going to make her nest there. Find someone who is into doing the things you like to do. Don’t waste your time chasing beauty. It always ends up being ugly.”

  Wise words there from Mair. I’ve spent almost two years here, working and not working, chasing beauty and chasing my buzz, only to have nothing other than money to move on to the next place. This place will become more modern and will get wealthier, but its core values will always remain. No matter how advanced a country’s economy becomes, its culture lags behind stuck in the fields, farms and factories, while rich locals, foreign investors, foreign companies and NGOs reap the benefits. More production and higher prices for goods and services will always nullify higher wages and a higher standard of living.