Chapter 22

We crave connection, yet yearn for solitude. We judge others freely, while preaching empathy. We prioritize possessions over genuine relationships. This inherent contradiction is what makes being human so ironic.

For years, I've distanced myself from those who embody this dissonance.  They prioritize expensive gadgets over simple gestures of friendship. They preach understanding but lack self-awareness.

As I approach 50, peace of mind reigns supreme.  I actively avoid negativity and surround myself with those who uplift me.

The irony lies in our shared humanity. We all carry emotional baggage, myself included. While I cannot fix others' problems, I commend those who seek help. The stigma associated with mental health is slowly fading, and that's a positive step.

This journey of self-discovery, from self-medication to embracing professional care, has been a long one.  I'm grateful for those who supported me and for the growing awareness of mental health issues.

Chapter 21

At least one single person out there appreciates you.

Someone once told me that even if there's a single person who appreciates my work, I should not stop what I do.

But there's another side to this: some people become demoralized if people don't appreciate their artistic expressions. So the practical advice would be to do the things we love to do for our own sake. Just for the sheer joy of doing it.

I think both these views are okay as long as we don't depend on these to make our inner self happy.

I was friends with a guy on social media who told me that his spirit is lifted only when someone gives a comment of appreciation to any of his artworks. This is a dangerous attitude.

Aark said that our old artworks should be preserved because it may have something that benefits someone now or in the future. I am glad I didn’t delete anything from my old blogs. I now keep them as archives so that my history can be kept as a record for the next generations to learn lessons from them – if there are any.

I don't know why I am still blogging though. I do get so many comments of appreciation from complete strangers. They say they are my fans. And there’re, of course, the followers. I don’t block them until they spam or try to scam me.

Just yesterday a friend said he likes the kind of new ideas I drop out of the blue. May be he read my blogpost about the rights of the centipede and was amused I was a supporter of wildlife rights although support for the protection of the natural environment and conservation of living ecosystems are not new for me because I have been advocating for them during my time as a journalist before becoming a part-time stringer.

Another friend said that he likes my opinions about society and culture.

I honestly don't know where the creative ideas for journalistic pieces and blogposts come from. I once painted a picture of a surfer surfing off the coast of my boyfriend’s island but I don’t know whether the inspiration came from although I could say that the stranger was kind of my muse.

I think human creativity and emotions are mysterious in their origins.

Recently on two consecutive days I passed by Vaan and he gazed at me for longer than necessary. I could tell that there was no hatred in his eyes. I didn't stop to talk to him. He was my past. Our sexual friendship was good while it lasted. But it was in the past. I had moved on.

Ayany one day passed by me on foot. He looked at me for a while but there was no hatred and neither did he stop to converse. He was also my past.

I started following him on his Instagram after he recently won an award in a surfing championship and I found out that he had neither blocked me nor removed me. But neither did he bother to follow my Instagram as a courtesy in return. So, in order not to appear that I was stalking him, I unfollowed him.

This is in contrast to a 22-year-old Ukraine surfer who followed me on his own initiative. I was old enough to be his grandfather so I removed him although I didn’t block him. He is a celebrity and out of the thousands of his followers, I was amused that he came looking for me specifically and followed me and therefore I didn’t remove him again. I guessed I was someone special for him for some reason I didn’t know. But may be after seeing my posts he figured that in another part of my life I did bodyboard which is in fact kind of riding waves. I now give likes and comments to his posts and he is kind and generous to give likes to my comments on his Instagram posts.

In the end, we humans just simply don't know the origin of our creativity which when expressed becomes art and we are helpless and hapless when it comes to controlling our feelings and emotions. May be that is the tragedy of what we call the human condition.

Chapter 20 [Modified on May 20, 2024]

How many friends should I have? Or to be precise, how many people can I properly accommodate in my life?

I read somewhere that a person cannot give quality time and attention to around more than 150 people at any given time. In the same report I read that corporations now have divided their departments into sections of workers not exceeding more than a 150 employees at any given time.

I found this information to be true as far as my life is concerned.

I sat down one fine morning in front of my laptop. I checked my Facebook page and was horrified to find that there were more than 1.6k people on it. But I am to be blamed for that. Due to the demands of my job, I had to do a lot of networking. For instance, I need all those half a thousand people on my LinkedIn in order to land freelance projects.

Or so I thought until a friend related to me a harrowing time he had as a result of a dubious contact from his LinkedIn network.

But Facebook and LinkedIn are altogether two different forms of social media platforms, I reminded myself. Facebook is something private such as a virtual meeting place for you and your family and close friends. The photographs and videos you share on it are for the eyes of them only and not even to be allowed to be viewed by "friends of friends" because they are not directly my friends.

So I cleaned up my Facebook and not so surprisingly the number of true friends on my Facebook fell below 20. I decided that hereafter I will post on my Facebook Wall in public mode the things I want to make public - such as my left wing agenda and its accompanying ideals. All other "strangers" can "follow" my Facebook as long as they don't spam or try to trap me in a scam. I still felt the need to post my liberal ideas as publicly available material on my Facebook because, in addition to being a stringer for a newspaper published on the mainland, I was a voting member of a left wing political party.

One other thing I noticed is that I hardly land freelance writing projects from my networking on social media. Indeed, there was an inquiry only once from a private individual from my homeland who asked me the rates at which I do translations but I didn't hear from him again. He messaged me through LinkedIn.

In actual terms, I got work from people who know me directly or indirectly as in they might contact me after been referred to them by a friend of mine.

As for LinkedIn, it's true that the folks there are professionals who network in their true identity to look for work and all sorts of jobs. But like Facebook and Grindr, among the people on LinkedIn included predators.

Coming back to my friend's harrowing experience regarding his suspect LinkedIn contact, my friend, who is from an outer island told me that once when he visited the mainland, the contact invited him to a guesthouse. He told me that when he went there, there were ten gangsters waiting for him in the contact's daily rented room. He said they forced him to give all the cash he had in his wallet before they would let him go. He gave them the 10,000 bucks he had on him. They threatened him that they will gag him and torture him in ways that there would be no external injuries visible on his body. If there's a positive side to this, just scream at the top of your voice in the hope that your next door neighbor may hear your cry in distress, or better, it may attract the attention of the receptionist or housekeepers. These gangsters obviously don't want to attract attention because they don't want to get caught and therefore want to extort you quietly.

Now there's a dodgy side to this story I felt. You are not supposed to meet strangers in their rooms at guesthouses to discuss business. You go to a restaurant or cafe to have a chat and work out the details of a potential venture between you and the client.

I asked this friend why the hell he took the risk of going to meet a complete stranger in a guesthouse room. He gave the excuse that he was not expecting gangsters waiting to ensnare him.

When I told him I don't buy his story, he told me that it was a LinkedIn contact and therefore he didn't feel an elaborate trap was waiting for him. I guess because it's LinkedIn and not Grindr, I told him I believed him.

I told him I hoped he would be careful from hereon.

I have friends who have been entrapped by strangers more than once who prey on queer men on dating apps such as Grindr because gangs perceive gay men as easy prey. I asked one of these friends why they continue to take risks in searching for casual sex through such suspect channels: his reply was that he would rather die than live like a coward. I told him not to take attempted murder lightly because I myself was a victim who was lucky enough to escape with my life. And let's not even mention the post traumatic depression some of my queer friends are going through because of such assault even on the streets in broad daylight. I told him that if his community does not treat sex workers as legit workers, he should go to a country where prostitution is legal. Somewhere where he and his sexual partner were legally protected. He told me his community may take hundreds of years to arrive at such a juncture and that therefore he can't wait. I advised him to save money and go abroad to a country where sex work is legitimate and therefore he can have sex to his heart's content without any fear. A three-month vacation of purely sex seems to me worth it once a year. And it wouldn't be costly.

The Grindr stories are real but my friend's LinkedIn story is doubtful. I think he went to the guesthouse because he was looking for gay sex and inadvertently was ambushed by gangsters. The reason why I found it hard to digest his gangster story is that though this guy never came out to me that he was gay, all our mutual friends told me that he is homosexual. Seems I am not part of the Venn diagram in his gay network.

Chapter 19

Loquacious.

What a strange sounding word. A new word I learned while reading John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer winner "A Confederacy of Dunces". It's found on page 51. The guy committed suicide because, among other things, nobody would publish this novel.

"The tragedy of the book is the tragedy of the author - his suicide in 1969 at the age of thirty-two. Another tragedy is the body of work we have been denied. It is a pity that John Kennedy Toole is not alive and well and writing. But he is not, and there is nothing we can do about it but make sure that this gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy is at least made available to a world of readers," said Walker Percy in the foreword of the book.

I am looking forward to reading his "The Neon Bible" too which was published posthumously. 

Seriously, capitalist proprietors need to set their priorities and learn to appreciate art even if they think it won't sell. Perhaps as Francis Ford Coppola said of his movie "Megalopolis", which he self-financed with 120 million dollars, and still is yet to get a distributor other than the entrepreneurs of IMAX, studios need to go beyond looking for ways to only escape from debts.

Loquacious. 

I thought of this word out of the blue today because I am told by my family that I am becoming loquacious. Only my immediate family seems to have noticed it. 

Recently a friend walked out on me while I was having coffee with him at a cafe. We are both movie buffs but for some reason I wasn't in the mood to chat about movies that day. He should understand that mood swings do affect humans. But he had said "If you are not talking, there's no point to hanging out. Let's go home". He didn't wait for me to settle the check; he just left and to date hasn't bothered contacting me again. Should I consider him a true friend though we were besties in high school?

My dad told me my sister recently pointed out to him that I have recently become loquacious.

"You were always the quiet one. Why this change? Is something bothering you?" my dad brought up the issue over breakfast.

It was just the two of us. My mom and sister were away for work. My dad is a househusband, so this was a father-son talk.

Afterwards, the whole day I kept wondering what made them think I am now talkative. Why hadn't I noticed that about myself?

It's true I discuss movies with my sister because lately it's just me and her who go to the movies. My parents stopped going though they were a regular at our local cinema, sometimes going to a Bollywood movie more than twice. They said it's now not convenient to go to movies at their age.

I admit that even last night I shared the knowledge I had about the upcoming movie "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" with my younger sister. I told her about an interview I read on Yahoo! that director George Miller had outdone himself after "Mad Max: Fury Road" which I had watched countless times. I told my sister that Anya Taylor-Joy had only 30 lines in the whole 2.5-hour movie and that she felt strange spending so many days silent on the movie set without talking much with the rest of the cast and crew.

I remember one night when my sister talked to me nonstop for over two hours discussing the stuff she was passionate about: Neil Gaiman, Japanese anime, and Korean television series, etc.

Now who is the talkative talker.

It's true that when I go to cafes to have coffee chats with my friends I tend to talk a lot but those occasions demand it. We hang out to catch up and that means we have to say everything that needs to be said within an hour or so. So I don't bother keeping quiet when I meet friends. That incident where my high school friend abandoned me may be an exception and not the norm. Perhaps I should practice silence at home then, even if it means not making conversation just for conversation's sake; talking just for the sake of talking. At least I have a few friends who are not tired of chatting about movies. They are true movie buffs like me.

Chapter 18

I thought of taking a stroll around the island at twilight. Just to clear the cobwebs from my mind.

I saw a star twinkling on the horizon. Just that single one. There was still light enough to block other stars from becoming visible.

I then realized that not all the twinkling lights are stars. There are planets, too. Could that "star" I was gazing at be a distant planet? Could it be reached within a couple of million years if I travel at close to the speed of light? Assuming I will not die until due to an accident or someone trying to murder me, could I blissfully enjoy such a long journey? What kind of hobbies would I need to engage myself in if I wanted to prevent myself from becoming dead bored? And most importantly, what would I find there? Another company of sentient beings? Or my dead boyfriend somehow alive and transported to that place because it is THE Good Place? What is the Good Place anyway? Are those beings looking at me right now and wondering what Earthlings are thinking about them? Do they wonder if there are sentient beings on Earth just as I wonder whether there are sentient beings there, too? 

Suddenly I felt very lonely. May be because I felt I am of no significance in this Universe which might, just might be infinite.

Chapter 17

One day I will be gone. Like everyone else. My nanny, who is my aunt, died three years ago. I haven't grieved. Maybe I am emotionally dead. Or maybe not. I discovered some of my mother's Nepal chili seedlings dead. Don’t know why. Death is so unpredictable. And because of death, our lives do not have any purpose or meaning. Death renders our lives insignificant.

Chapter 16

I jolted awake, drenched in sweat. Lucid dreaming, my usual coping mechanism, had failed me this time. The dream wasn't vivid, but it left me deeply unsettled. It wasn't a nightmare either, something more disturbing, outside of my control.

Years of mental abuse and alcohol use had taken their toll. I knew my subconscious was damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Yet, I clung to hope, determined to salvage what I could for a functional life.

Calming down, I recollected the dream. It felt less scary now, replaced by a sense of desperation within it. I wondered why.

My warped logic, a product of years of mental abuse, had led me to believe alcohol was the answer. Therapy had been a revelation, exposing the source of my struggles.

My life had been a distorted reality, built on delusions to shield me from harsh criticism and unfulfilled dreams.

Initially, I was surprised at my ability to function. Despite emotional detachment, my sharp, albeit cold, logic allowed me to navigate social situations, even manipulate them. Loneliness, my vulnerability, made me susceptible to manipulation in exchange for companionship.

The true awakening came later. I discovered a unique ability – a visual perception of my moods, like colors shifting in water. I could track their transitions, yet controlling them remained a challenge.

I understood my moods, their triggers, and their impermanence, yet a disconnect remained. I couldn't simply switch emotions, leading me to cognitive behavioral therapy, despite the therapist's vague diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type 2.

Rewiring my mind for a firm grasp on reality was an uphill battle.  Perhaps my damaged brain circuits struggled to connect emotions to my clear perceptions.

My friend Brah offered another perspective: the inherent need for connection, despite its messiness and uncertainty. Even with baggage, relationships offered comfort, explaining why most people seek them, with asexuality being the exception.

Maybe, just maybe, this underlying need for connection was my true illness, and the disturbing dream, a mere symptom.

Chapter 15

My forced circumcision.

My uncle-in-law’s almost fatal violence against my aunt who happened to be my nanny.

No human warmth I felt until Yuwan came into my life. My first love. My very first boyfriend. 

I feel all are hostile. Especially people. What a word. So sanitizing the cruelties of my species. Sapiens may be a better word. Or let’s just call us Monkeys Wearing Clothes. I can’t trust any of us since we are also creatures. Animals. Within a food chain. Man may not bite a dog but definitely only few of us chose a vegan life. Perhaps my dog may bite me one day after behaving peacefully initially like a croc. 

Why do we group into a society? Why do we assign governments to control our affairs? Because otherwise there will be external chaos? In addition to the inner turmoil of the self?

I still have a remnant of effeminateness though Athee taught me how to walk like a man. How to carry myself like a man. Performing masculinity. Just as the gangsters do.

My campiness led to my social ostracization. Which made me unable to relate to men. To date I haven’t been able to identify myself with any of my countrymen. Do I really need to feel sorry for this? Migrate to another community permanently? Settle on the Moon for forever and never ever go back to Earth? 

I don’t have any countrymen to look up to. No mentors. For me it’s like a one man’s fight against a society. A society of Sapiens brainwashed by Organized Religion. Brainwashed by thousands of years of tradition and culture. Including a highly toxic patriarchy.

I am God. Scientifically and quantum-wise. So that makes me a god literally as well.

Learn to compartmentalize my mind. Always be calm. Breathe. Just breathe. And let your body relax. 

Don’t hurry or rush through anything. It will result in the loss of relaxation of the mind and the body. Remember the negative effect that has on you. Breathe.

Chapter 14

Does it matter what anyone thinks about me? I have reached the state of Dr. Manhattan. I have seen Gaia. 

Empty your mind. Don’t waste thoughts. Don’t think. Concentrate on the one thing that you taste right now.

Don’t intrude into the lives of other people. Don’t go looking for love and sex. Intrude into society as little as necessary.

Never let you lose control of your breath. Just breathe. Always keep the mind focused on breathing and relax your shoulders and dorsal. 

Earn an income that will make ends meet. Then do what you have to do until the time of Death. There are no answers whatsoever. 

What are my coping mechanisms? Disengage yourself from the psychopaths. There is nothing for you here – land or people-wise. Unless miraculously your exact replica may turn up – one who is in tune and in touch with your thoughts and Life processes.

Is this the only ‘you’ or ‘Life’ you have or are living? Think of quantum level happenings, if that helps. Better just accept you don’t have answers, proofs, and leave it there.

My big problem is how to ban or ignore the stress, depression, pain, inability to face Nature, Existence, as they are. Without the help of alcohol, I feel I am not in my conscious ‘normal’ state. What’s wrong with me? Is there something missing in my brain? Is there a big mental block in my mind? If so, what is it trying to hide?

Chapter 13

This is not a state of bipolarity of the mind. This is reality. I may have realized an absolute truth but it shouldn’t matter because we are in the system – the Universe – and therefore, limited by our tangible senses.

Let go of everything and everyone because it doesn’t really matter.

Anxiety attacks are linked by the same thread as to relaxing in a Nirvana-like state of mind. Recognize anxiety attacks and its state. Let go of things and calm down. Focus on the weirdness of Existence. My boyfriend doesn’t matter. Count how long the panic attacks last. Remember how nothing really matters in the Satori state of mind. Remember how visual and sexual things are in the Nirvana state. That’s the ultimate happiness. 

Remember you are trying to force your brain to naturally release serotonin. Remember how that helps in bringing the Nirvana state – making problems appear that they don’t really matter. It’s a happy, calm state of mind that also ushers in visually aesthetic beauty.

Remember you might die today. So, does anything really matter? Do you really think ‘problems’ are ‘problems’ that should cause you stress? Live in the moment. Don’t think. Don’t overthink. It just unnecessarily drains mental energy. Remember: even in the space of five minutes, like the duration of a song, so many things will branch off in the mind. That’s a lot of unnecessary energy wasted. 

Me, Ashyd, Aak, and Aak’s wife’s friend Aul went to the temple and we visited the adjoining graveyard. The sight of the graves in the cemetery made me value Life. Its uniqueness. Its shortness. And how nothing else matters. The fact that I am alive and aware, this sentience, should be the ultimate cause of joy itself.

Chapter 12

Today I am marking my fifth month on the Moon base I am assigned to. Life in quiet solitude is awesome. The silence totally agrees with me.

Last Tuesday we started building a houseboat to wade out to the middle of the freshwater lake adjoining our sector. It’s slow going but we are a team of six – me, Ifah, Sham, Hasyn, Umom, and Ishif - yes, Ishif who regularly have me perform fellatio on him.

We decided to call our houseboat the ‘Queen Mary’. I suggested the name because I have a thing for drag queens, crossdressers, and of course, all those Lady Boys from Thailand.

The others thought ‘Queen Mary’ is a good name although I didn’t tell them why I proposed that name.

Everyone in my sector knows I am gay and they don’t have any problem with it. But don’t be mistaken: homophobia still is not a relic of the past. As long as there are Sapiens, humans will always have those conservatives walking among them.

Chapter 11

On some days early morning, Ishif would come to my room and request a blow job. He has a girlfriend back home on Earth and during the early days I asked him why he wanted me to perform fellatio on him. He said it’s one of his most sexually arousing fantasies to have his cock sucked by men. 

Lately he had me finger-fuck him while he cummed into my mouth. I don’t know why this new sexual fantasy arose in his mind. 

On some days he would pay me two visits – at dawn and at dusk. While he would shoot a load of ejaculate into my throat during our dawn session, it would be a dry orgasm he reaches during our dusk session. I guess because he is 19, he is young enough not to wait for 24 hours for his testes to replenish itself with another day’s worth of semen. 

Just out of curiosity one day I looked up the phrase “dry orgasm” from a Google Search on the Internet, and here’s the entry I came across, pun intended: “You feel the physical sensations of an orgasm, but little or no semen is released. Many men say a dry orgasm feels like a regular orgasm, while some may have reduced sensation.”

Chapter 10

Today is my 550th birthday. I am immortal but not a vampire. I could still die if I am killed somehow. But I won't die of a natural death.

The magic of human immortality came about with the discovery of the immortal jellyfish. Cell regeneration through transdifferentiation finally did it.

The concept of human immortality was explored in many cultural productions including the movie "Jupiter Ascending". It's a movie I have watched countless times.

Human immortality rendered childbirth meaningless. Those few who still stick to the sentimental value of having a bloodline legacy migrate to Mars which has also been terraformed. But only relatively few people migrate to the Red Planet, our Earth's habitable neighbor, as also reflected by my own reservations.

Why I chose to live on the Moon is because I need to easily visit my family and my boyfriend who chose to stay on Earth. And to be brutally honest, it didn't appeal to me to settle on Mars due to the 9-month journey that takes to travel to Mars which is 225 million kilometers away from Earth. In fact, the distance can be greater or less than that depending on where Earth and Mars are in their orbits around our star, the Sun. And while a one-way trip to Mars would take about nine months, if I wanted to make it a round-trip, all in all, it would take about 21 months as I will need to wait about three months on Mars to make sure Earth and Mars are in a suitable location to make the trip back to Earth. So Mars is the choice for only those who want to permanently migrate and settle on the Red Planet and never return to Earth taking all these troubles into consideration.

Some of my friends say that I live in the past. That's true. I live in the past, in my youth, if it could be called that due to my immortality. I still fondly cherish all the memorable moments of my younger days. This may explain why I still perceive that Coldplay's "X&Y" is the greatest album ever made. And this may also explain why I am so out of touch with the linguistics of Gen Z and Gen Alpha - the generations that were born after me. Maybe I will undertake an online course to study Gen Z speak and Gen Alpha speak. Otherwise I may have to live the rest of my days as a dinosaur which has completely lost touch with my contemporary times.

Strangely enough, even the late blooms of the 21st century have not completely transformed in at least the cultural aspect of semiotics. Proof: as society progressed into the 21st century, attention shifted from Gen Z—individuals born roughly between 1997 and 2012—to Gen Alpha, the group starting from 2010 onward. These generations are distinct, each shaped by the technological, societal, and global contexts of their upbringing. In that sense, I can still afford to be a dinosaur that can adapt to the society of the year 2500 AD.

Chapter 9

When did I realize I was homosexual, some friends ask me.

You could say I was like the protagonist in the movie "In and Out". I was living in a state of self-denial until one day when I was 29 I spotted a well-sculpted shirtless body of a surfer on the beach of a South Asian country.

I was spellbound. I stopped while I was in mid- conversation with a friend. I forgot what I was going to say from that point.

The surfer had a golden glow to his body caused from the setting of the yellow sun.

I was familiar with all kinds of porn but this was the first time my loins stirred at the sight of a handsome man. But I wondered: why this particular hottie? Why not other cute surfers? I guess Mother Nature too works in mysterious ways.

The thought crossed my mind that if I had the opportunity just to kiss his pinkish lips, I would give up the whole world and everything in it just for a taste of his mouth.

It's been years and the memory is still fresh as if it happened today morning.

I still feel a pang of poignancy at the thought that he is not in my life, that he was just a temporary bird that happened to cross my sight as he flew his way through his personal life.

The event led me to go on a rollercoaster ride through India's Hindi movies containing beautiful South Asian men. I began to harbor fantasies of dancing in gardens with pretty Bollywood men singing songs with them although I didn't understand a single word of Hindi or Urdu.

Thereafter, I found more meaning to watching homosexual pornography. I started having fantasies of being engaged in fellatio and sodomy with erotic South Asian men.

Once this realization dawned on me, I started actively seeking homosexual men to enjoy sex with.

Chapter 8

What is my earliest memory, some friends ask. I don't know. Some say humans start remembering their life events from the tender age of three. But I am not sure about that. I only remember one day a man taking me into his arms and his bushy beard engulfing my forehead while there was a bright flash of light which almost blinded me and caused me to shut my eyes purely by reflex.

It was some years later I came to know that the man was an uncle of mine and that the rest of the other men in my family chose to keep themselves clean shaven. The bright flash was from a camera as my uncle posed for a photograph with me.

It was also later that I came to know that those who grew beards were due to them following certain faiths, cultures, and traditions. Thus, perhaps, they sported beards in order to attain a certain sense of belonging to the religious community of their choice.