The reek of capitalism, stale ambition, and cheap Tiger beer. It clung to everything like a bad hangover. That’s what Systematic Asia was built on, a Marriott hotel room in Singapore, twenty-sixth floor, 2608. Original? Nah. But effective. Three hundred bucks a night, back when that was real money. Automatic windows, big bed, bigger desk, Wi-Fi that actually worked. Down below, Orchard Way pulsed with a million fake smiles and flashing lights. Yeah, life was good. Or at least, it was profitable. My personal hub, a transient throne.
When the thirst hit, and it always did, I’d drag my ass down to the lobby bar. Felt like America there, all chrome and phony cheer, with a big American flag draped over some oil painting of Mormon boys. Even the nightstand had the damn Book of Mormon, just in case you forgot where all that clean living came from. I appreciated it. A touch of home in a foreign cesspool.
Two, three weeks a month I lived in that room, launching myself across Asia like a half-drunk missile. Hong Kong for ASI. The Philippines for Dallas Semi. Thailand for Lucent. Malaysia for Vivian. And back in Singapore, UTech was the main conduit for my distributors. ZMC, they were the grunts then, fighting alongside me, or more accurately, fighting for my Universal Tooling plate. Tokyo Sumitomo and Tokyo Electron, those probing giants, they were throwing money at me, begging for my designs. Everything was happening. I was making more cash than a crooked politician.
My Universal tooling plates were everywhere. Customers lined up, wallets open, and I couldn’t keep up. Production was in America, an ocean away, but the money train was rolling. An office manager in Portland, three machinists, several poor bastard assembling shit, and the rest subcontracted. Stress? Yeah, stress was my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Work. That’s all there was. Work and the goddamn thing I was creating. When I flew home, it was a crash landing into a shit-show of a marriage. My wife… just a piece of work. Sexless, joyless, a constant scowl disguised as marital bliss. She’d spend my money like it was water from a leaky faucet, not a single thank you. Like it was owed. Like I was a walking ATM designed for her pleasure. Facts. Just facts. You want two sides? There ain’t two sides to a brick wall.
But I digress. Here I was, overseas, with these Asian executives. All of them, every goddamn one, loved prostitutes, special massages, karaoke with girls. And I, the poor sap, paid for it all. We’d sit in some Thai place, a fishbowl, really, watching women dance. Push a button, call out a number, and number fifteen would come up, turn around, bend over, do some degrading shit. We’d judge them, pick one out. After dinner, I’d tell the cashier, “Number twenty-two,” pay for the meal, and she’d walk out with my buddy, who held the key to my next sale. And then… whatever. It was absolutely amazing.
Lucky for me, I wasn’t into Asian women. Married, too, though that meant less and less each day. And I didn’t agree with it, but who was I to judge? A Mormon, or at least, I was trying to be. All this madness swirling around me. One week, almost home, back from China, production problems piling up like dirty laundry. Eighteen hours awake, sleeping maybe five. I was a goddamn whale, 340 pounds, eyes like bruised plums, sweating through everything. Burning the candle, hell, I was burning the whole damn house down.
And not for money. Not for some empty drive. Pure, unadulterated passion. A high school dropout, a college reject, no loans, no safety net. Just me, pulling myself up by my bootstraps, or rather, by the threads of my cheap suit. The American dream, baby. And I was high as a kite on it.
Then the phone rang. Stephen Holt, a friend, a voice of reason. “James,” he says, “you need to unwind. Self-love. Get something for yourself.” Unwind? I could eat, drink, watch TV all I wanted. “Get a massage,” he says. “Not those places,” I tell him. “I’m married.” He laughs. “You’re at the Marriott, man. American Embassy. Call the spa, get a real massage. Indulge. Make yourself feel good.”
I hung up, thought about it. Never done anything like that. Nudity issues, alpha male bullshit, toes like gnarled roots. But I did it. Dialed nine, the spa answered. A male voice. “Full body,” I grunt. “Whatever you call it.” He offers to send a lady up to the room. Makes sense. Part of the system.
So I shower, pull on a robe that’s three sizes too small for my three-Xl frame, my broad shoulders busting out, my body screaming from all the booze and food. Bing-bing-bing. The doorbell. An older Asian woman, in uniform, carrying her gear. “Lay down,” she says. Belly down, I hit the bed.
She starts in. Shoulders, back, digging in hard. She knew I was a big bastard, put her weight into it. Felt good. Then the legs, the feet, those ugly toes. She’s on the side of the bed, pulling, stretching, thumbs digging into my calves. Knots popping like bubble wrap. Felt like heaven. Then her thumbs hit the inner knees, a nerve or something, and I swear, cloged blood flow was being released in my body. I found myself Drooling. Unbelievable. Heaven in her hands.
Then she went too high. Way past the thighs. Her thumb brushing the old hacky sacks. And again. And again. The hacky sacks, connected to the baseball bat, they started to perk up. My body tensed. I knew what was coming. The blood was rushing. Two months, almost, since my wife had touched me. The wind could blow, and I’d pop a boner. And here I was, buck naked on a bed, with an old Asian lady. She was playing with the poison berries, accidental touches that weren’t accidental. Popeye and Olive Oyl. “Don’t… pause… stop… don’t stop.” Before I could find the words, the courage, she told me to roll over.
And there it was. My flagpole, ready for the flag, standing hard and high, a monument to neglect, untouched by any hand but my own for far too long. Exposed. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to conjure up a brick wall, a tax form, anything to distract my mind from the inevitable, from this dark hour of my own making. She worked my knees, then sped up, a hunter finding its prey. Two hands. A baseball bat squeeze with those small hands, some superpower twist in her wrists. I gasped. “Oh. Wait, wait.” My eyes flickered open, catching old lady Chuw, her face a mask of professional detachment, both hands turning and twisting, her upper thumb rubbing something around the “German warrior helmet.” Ten, maybe twenty strokes, and my toes curled like a dying spider.
Then I heard it. A snap sound, like old pipes being purged, or a flash flood racing down a canyon dry creek. It forced my gaze. The projectile launched out, a wad of pure, unadulterated joy, like a muzzle gun firing, smoke strings trailing from it. And because of the launching angle that Ms. Chuw, the goddamn maestro, was controlling, it rocketed over my head. It landed with a soft thud, a wet funk, above my head on the Mormon Marriott pillow. The trail followed behind it, a cosmic smear, landing over my right eye, over my lip, ending in the middle of my chest. A wad of happiness. I couldn’t stop laughing. Pink eye.
Couldn’t smile but I was laughing. Couldn’t see a damn thing, terrified of my own mayonnaise, disgusted, yet laughing. This little old lady, ten seconds of weirdness, and I had pink eye and a salt tablet on my lip.
She cleaned me up. Funny, laughing, weird exchange. She bowed, nodded. I called my buddy. “Wrong thing to do, man. She gave me a happy ending.” He was shocked. “At the Marriott?” Yeah, the Marriott. Guilt, then. As a husband. But I wasn’t getting any loving. It was living on the edge. A confession, I guess. I went home, told my uncaring wife. “Wasn’t meant to be this way, blah blah blah.” No big deal. Ten seconds of special rub. You’d think it would’ve sparked something, an acknowledgement that I was malnourished, needed attention. But no. Same person. Couldn’t tell if she was wrong, mad, pissed off, or just the same goddamn brick wall she always was.
In hindsight? Should’ve fucked that old lady. Should’ve fucked all of them, like every other executive I hung out with. Cheated on my wife, at least gotten some affection out of it. But back then, that wasn’t the priority. My company was. So, that was the last happy ending I got. Probably my only adultery. Can’t duplicate that double-fisted twist, that wondering thumb, with my nylon socks. Never could.
Yeah, a wad of happiness and a pink eye. That’s what happens when you’re drowning in so much goddamn money you gotta invent new ways to get off, even if it’s just a ten-second ride to oblivion. That’s the real entertainment, isn’t it? The absurd lengths you go to when everything else is just… there.
I loved that life, the whole goddamn circus of it. Never alone, not really. Always some executive, some hooker, some bottle, some new deal. I was the man, the guy with all the answers, the one they looked to. And now? A pink eye. A souvenir from the front lines of my own fucked-up war. Some cosmic joke, that. But hell, I still laugh. What else is there to do?
