The crazy dreams are back. This time, I go to a giant outdoor meat pie festival with my family. It's basically a big farmer's market where every stand sells meat pies. On the way out of the festival, my family stops to get doughnuts. Addie and I go inside to pick up doughnuts while Mom and Dad wait in the car. I get a maple doughnut and a chocolate doughnut for dad, they get a cucumber lime doughnut. As we leave, the police show up and starting shooting at us, so I run and hide inside in the nearby gym. Inside of the gym, there is a full blown orgy going on. Christina Applegate comes up to me and starts sucking my dick. Eric Andre sees us and walks over so Christina has to take turns. Christina then invites me back to her place to swim in her pool. Damon Waynes is there and the three of us hang out and have a pleasant afternoon.
I wake up feeling like complete shit. It's 7:30 and school starts at 8:00 today. This is Sunday, my huge day where I never get a break. I just can't do it. I'm too sick/exhausted/depressed. I call Josie, tell her I'm sick and can't make it to work, and fall back asleep.
A few hours later, I wake up to my phone ringing. I ignore it. It rings again. I ignore it again. It doesn't stop ringing. I finally relent and answer. It's Josie.
"I am downstairs, come down now. We are going to the hospital."
"I don't know if I need to go the hospital. I'm just sick, I should go to the doctor."
"The doctor is at the hospital. I am waiting for you downstairs. Come down now."
I throw on some pajama pants and a long sleeve shirt. I'm not trying to impress anyone. When I show up downstairs, Josie is waiting for me on her scooter. She is shocked by my appearance.
"I'll call you a Didi."
I think Josie was going to drive me to the hospital on her scooter but was scared off by my pajama pants.
When I arrive at the hospital, Boss Lady is already waiting for me. Josie and Laura soon show up after, so I guess the three of them are going to be with me through this whole ordeal.
The hospital is almost completely empty accept for one ancient Chinese women sitting at table near me. She looks like she is 120 years old and the Chinese are usually much older than they look. In China, hospitals have lines so for the entire morning I am following this old woman as she is dragged from station to station. (She can't walk and doesn't have a wheelchair, so two attendants just grab each arm and pull her as her dead legs drag across the floor. I have no idea how she ever got there.)
I got to one room where one doctor looks in my ear. Then I go to another room where a doctor has me open my mouth and looks in my throat. I go to a third room, where a nurse takes my blood pressure. Despite being incredibly inconvenient, the process is fairly streamlined. I think the only reason this took more than ten minutes was because I had to keep waiting for the old woman to be dragged away.
Throughout this whole fiasco, Josie, Laura and Boss Lady are screaming at each other in Chinese. I wish I could report back to you what they were arguing about, but I really have no idea. It may have been about me, we were at the hospital because I tried to play hooky, but that might be self centered of me to think. Either way, I couldn't make any of it out. I don't speak Chinese.
Next, I'm sent to a fourth station where my blood is taken by another nurse. The Gaochun nurse is not nearly as good at drawing blood as the Nanjing nurse was.
The four of us sit on a bench and wait for my results. The three women continue to loudly argue while I read my book. It's a Chuck Pallichunuckinuck novel called "Survivor." It's about a guy who escapes from a death cult and then starts his own spiritual movement. It's kind of funny, but it's very testosterone-filled. I don't really recommend it. I was reading it for research for my movie with Tommy and Ryan, but I don't think it really helped much.
When the doctor finally comes out, he goes straight to the three women and shows them my medical files. In America, my mother isn't even allowed to see my medical files. But in China I have to let three strangers see the intimate details of my biology because I don't speak the fucking language. This makes me very uncomfortable. When the doctor leaves, I pull Laura aside.
"So what is going on?"
"The doctor said something about your blood, they want to look at something else."
"What?"
Laura walks away. My mind begins to race. Holy shit, I have AIDS don't I? Esther gave me AIDS, I'm such a fucking idiot. I shouldn't have had sex in China, why did I have sex in China. The doctor comes back out and talks to the women again. Laura walks back up to me.
"He says it's just a cold."
"Oh, good, yeah, that's what I thought."
"Don't worry. You are fine. Maybe they will take you out for dinner when you feel better."
"The doctors?"
"No, Josie and the boss."
"Oh."
I would rather have had dinner with the doctors.
The doctor gave me a prescription for some pills. Josie says as soon as I feel better to stop taking them. These pills are, apparently, very strong and I shouldn't take them if I don't feel sick. I say okay and Josie calls me a DiDi back home.
As soon as I walk in my apartment, the depression kicks in again. I can't do anything. I feel like an idiot and a loser. After just lying their for an hour, I decide to try to take a shower and shave, but I had forgotten that I was out of razors. I also check my pockets and realize my passport is missing. I remember I gave it to Josie at the hospital at some point so I text her and she still has it. I feel so controlled by these people, I really hate that.
I decide I need to get out of the apartment. This same scenery isn't helping my depression and if I just get out and move around a little bit that might cheer me up a tad. I had back to the one mall in town and go into the bookstore where I pay a cappuccino and a giant 4,000 piece Lego pig. I wanted to pay yoga gear or rain shoes or razors or slippers that fit my feet, but the mall has none of these things. So I just got the Lego pig.
As I leave, I decide to head to the apple store. I have been thinking about getting an apple watch to inspire me to exercise or getting a tablet so I don't have to take my laptop when I travel (I always bring my laptop so I can blog but never end up blogging.) The prices for both are fairly high and I am worried about not being able to get them to work due to the language barrier, so I buy neither of these either.
While I'm at the apple store, I get a call from a guy screaming at me in Chinese. I say I don't speak Chinese and hang up on him. He calls me back and I still just say I don't speak Chinese. As I'm leaving the Apple store, Josie calls me.
"I ordered you some porridge, the delivery man is outside your apartment, can you let him in?"
"I'm not at home."
"He doesn't have a keycard so he can't get up the elevator. Can you let him up?"
"I'm not at the apartment. I went out for some fresh air."
"Well, what should he do with the food?"
"I don't know, I didn't know any food was coming."
"Okay."
I hang up. The delivery man calls me again and continues to scream. I say I don't speak any Chinese again and hang up.
I decide to head back to Old Gaochun street before heading home. It is absolutely packed and the Chinese B.O. has really decided to come out today. Children are running up and down the street with tiny live crabs tied to string. One child dangles her live crab in front of a cat who paws at it. (This seems mildly like torture, but crabs are basically insects and I don't feel like I can say anything to anyone here.) I head back to the shop where I bought my turtle and buy a second one so I can make my desk look more symmetrical. I also buy a sick ass fidget spinner (I think I showed you that early, I'm sorry. I don't remember what I've told you and what I haven't at this point.)
When I get back to my apartment, a bag with a bowl of porridge is hanging on my doorknob. I guess Josie and the delivery man figured it out. I really wanted to tell the delivery guy to eat it himself. I take one bite of the cold porridge, and it's pretty disgusting. It's basically oatmeal with chicken in it. I decide it may be healthy though, so I put it in the fridge in case I want to heat it up later. I then drop all my stuff down and head out to Nanjing. Tonight's the night of my not date with Fernanda and her friends at Mai Pizza.
I get to the restaurant about 10 minutes early, but seems to be impossible to find. While wandering around looking for it, I see Fernanda who also seems completely lost as well. She is with her Ethiopian friend, Maki, who may be the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Maki. Have you ever heard a more beautiful name? Maki, however, seems to have no interest in me whatsoever. That's fine, I get it.
We finally bump into another one of Fernanda's friends who has been to the restaurant before so we follow her through what looks like a private gate and find the place. It is absolutely empty.
The decision to eat at Mai Pizza was mine. Mai Pizza is the name of one of the Nanjing groups Waz added Fernanda and I to and they are constantly holding events. The thread seems to never shut up. But the only event tonight is some Rugby game, which four Australian guys in the corner are yelling at.
Fernanda's friends show up. They are all Brazilian. (Fernanda is Brazilian too. Are you happy now?) So her side of the table mostly talks to each other and speaks Portuguese the whole night. This leaves me to talk with the other leftovers, one of the Brazilian's Chinese boyfriends, a Iranian guy, and a crazy Russian girl who keeps loudly talking about how terrible the restaurant is in front of the waitress. The Iranian guy is completely unintelligible but seems nice enough. The Chinese guy is very nice, but I think wished he was at home with his girlfriend later. (I found out later the Chinese guy thought I was also Brazilian and just spoke English really well. I was wearing my Brazil sweater, so it sort of makes sense.)
I ordered a gin and tonic. Everyone else ordered iced teas. Nothing is cooler then being the only guy drinking.
I looked at the menu and everything seemed very big and expensive, so I ordered some poutine. The menu said Canadian approved and the poutine was the first thing on the menu, so I assumed it would be pretty good. Fernanda and Maki both copied my order. When the food game, it was incredibly salty. Neither Maki nor Fernanda could finish it, though I finished mine. Maki was pretty pissed she had ordered such a terrible dish and I think she blamed me. I really wanted to try to flirt with her because she seemed so pretty but I don't think it's a good idea. God, it would be nice to meet someone who is interested in me.
Before I knew it, it was almost ten. I had to rush out to make sure I caught my train home in time and the crazy Russian girl was headed to the same subway so we walked together. As we walked, she told me all about how great it is to be Russian in China because the Chinese love Putin. I didn't really know what to make of or how to respond to any of this. We then headed onto our different trains and went out own way.
I thought the train from Nanjing to Gaochun ended at 11, like all the other subways everywhere in Nanjing. But I was very wrong about that. The last train from Nanjing to Gaochun is actually at ten, so I should have left the restaurant an hour earlier. (I was only at the restaurant for two hours, this means dinners in Nanjing are virtually impossible.) As I mentioned earlier, Josie had taken my passport at the hospital earlier that day so I didn't have any form of ID. And to top it all of, my phone was dying.
I desperately texted Fernanda that I had missed my train and didn't have my passport and I didn't know what to do. My phone died instantly. I decided to head in a direction and hope a hotel would accept a photo of my passport when I showed up. I began to walk. For two hours, I walked. The night got later and later. I had no music nothing. I was in a very industrial area, so there were no lights or people. I checked every bike to see if it wasn't properly locked up, desperate to change my mode of transportation, but no luck. And no hotel in sight. I was supposed to be quit again, but this seemed like a particularly bad situation so I bought a pack of ciggies and began to chain smoke as I walked. I eventually found myself to be in some sort of subur. I continued to walk. And then, off in the distance, I saw it. A Vienna international hotel, this was one of the places I had stayed in when I first got to Gaochun.
Inside I asked for a charger and began to recharge my phone. Fernanda has texted and was worried, I told her I had found a hotel so things should be good. I asked the hostess for a room and she asked for my passport. I showed her the photo on my phone. She shock her head. I typed out my situation on my phone translator and showed it to her, but she just shock her head again. I told her I was desperate and asked if there was anywhere nearby I could spend the night. She told me there was an internet cafe up the street that I could try out.
The internet cafe asked for my passport as well. They kicked me out as soon as they saw I just had a photo on my phone.
Out of options, I decided to head back to the train station. I didn't want to wander the streets all night, I have a meeting with Tommy and Ryan early tomorrow morning and some sleep would be nice. I had often noticed people sleeping at the airport before a flight, maybe there would be a similar situation at the train station. Having a little juice in my phone now, I found a much quicker route back to the train station and walked back in about 30 minutes.
At first, the train station seemed abandoned but on a second glass I noticed that's just because everyone had already settled down for the night. The station was actually fairly full. There wasn't a single open seat in the whole station. I lied down behind one of the benches, used my backpack and tried to get a little sleep. But the station was full of mosquitoes and bugs, I felt myself getting bit constantly and the floor was hard. I drifted in and out of sleep for what seemed like hours. Then I check my phone. Only one hour had passed.
I headed to the bathroom to take a piss. Behind me, a stall door was open and a man was shitting. I saw a man shit. And because we are talking about squat toilets here, I mean I literally saw poop coming out of a man's asshole. The man seemed completely unfazed by me, but I felt scared for life.
I went back behind my little bench and lied back down. I don't think I ever really fully fell asleep, but at least I was indoors. I didn't have to sleep in the park, I didn't get arrested for wandering the streets at night, I actually got to lie down a little bit. My night could have actually gone a lot worse. Plus, how many American's can say that they have slept in a Chinese train station? I bet I am in a pretty small company there.
Isn't strange that I have felt depressed all day and now that I have actually put myself in the worst possible situation, I'm looking on the bright side of things? I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's definitely something.