Where In The World Is Evan?

**********************************************************************
**********************************************************************
LEGAL DISCLAIMER

By clicking (more…) you hereby declare that you know and understand the following terms:

1. You understand that all the material here is fictional and a product of the imagination, even if it is depicted as true events. Any resemblance to any person(s) living or dead is a coincidence.
2. You understand that nobody was harmed or abused in the writing of these stories, and that the stuff you read here is purely fictional and that you have no misconception about the fictional nature of these stories.
3. Acts depicted in the contents inside may be legally, politically or morally wrong, so if you enter, you enter on your own discretion and your own judgment, and you will not hold the site, the owners of the site or their associates responsible in any shape or form for what you think is morally, politically or legally wrong.
4. The presence of stories or links to stories does not in any shape or form reflect any endorsement or any kind of opinion about the work to which it links to.

**********************************************************************
**********************************************************************

I know it’s been a while since I’ve made a post on my activities, but the last couple of months have been something special. Being so far removed from my former life in Australia it is hard to gauge accurately how much I have changed in this time, however, I can say with confidence that those of you who’ve know me for a long time probably would not recognise the person I am now.

When you meet people while traveling they know nothing about you—who you are, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, etc. This allows you to express a side of your personality that your friends and family wouldn’t otherwise know. When you’ve known someone for several years they form expectations about who you are and how you’ll behave. Most of the time this is okay, however, it does inhibit personal growth. We end up having many faces—different faces for our family, friends, colleagues, lovers, etc.—to deal with this conflict. When you travel, however, you’re free to behave however you want. If you offend people, or if they don’t like you, it doesn’t matter because you never have to see them again. If they think you’re the coolest person they’ve ever met then maybe you’ll hang out for a few days, or even travel together for a while, but in the end you’ll probably never see them again also.

This allows you to reinvent yourself, to affect personality types, and generally play around with how you present yourself. I guess for my part I’ve reinvented myself several times over. This may sound conceited, and indeed it sounds so to me as I write this, however, it’s probably an accurate assessment.

What is the point of all this crap you may well ask yourself? The answer to that is rather complicated. Perhaps the primary reason I’ve not been sending regular updates is that I don’t want an external perspective, and the disapproval, approval, commentary, etc. that comes with it. After last Saturday night, however, I feel that I need to purge a little. I guess by putting it all down in writing I’m hoping for some sort of perspective on my own behaviour.

Here in Chengdu my main friendship group comprises O (an American), J (a Briton) and Sergio (a Spaniard). Over the last two months our weekend revelry has been progressively escalating. Last Saturday was to be our last night together as a group, as I am leaving Chengdu tomorrow and O has already left. The day began back at my apartment where I’d been sitting around all day watching movies and smoking pot. Around 10:00 pm we all set out to a bar called M98, where we are very friendly with the bartenders—we often end up dancing on the bar, while drinking free drinks all night. The bartenders there had told us the preceding night that they could hook us up with some ecstasy. Unfortunately when we arrived they all signaled that they couldn’t get us any at such short notice. Feeling a little bummed about this turn of events we settled in with a few rounds of beers. Meanwhile I got an SMS from Cathy, a Chinese girl that I had beeon seeing on the side for a couple of weeks—my girlfriend and I had that sort of arrangement. She messaged me to say that she was downstairs in the Mix—a dance club—with some friends, and did I want to come and join her.

I guess at this point it is probably worthwhile to describe Cathy a little. Imagine a Chinese version of one of the girls off the OC—she’s a 20 year-old gorgeous semi-professional model with far too much money, given to her by her obscenely rich parents. She’s never had to do a real day’s work in her life, and consequently has no conception of the meaning or value of money. But I digress…

None of the other boys were interested in joining Cathy at Mix due to a rather boring encounter with her and a friend of her’s that Sergio and I had had the preceding weekend. As such I headed down there on my own, with the intention of staying for 10 minutes before returning to M98. When I arrived Cathy had bough a bottle of Ballantines 12 yo Scotch for the table, and everyone was drinking heavily. After my 5th or 6th drink of scotch and iced-tea I noticed that one of her friends had splashed about 3 grams of ketamine onto the table and was cutting it up with a credit card in the middle of the club! This was okay, however, as Cathy is good friends with the owner of Mix, so none of the bar staff batted an eyelid. After snorting one line of special K, I excused myself to go back and check in on the others. When I returned to M98 Sergio and J were gone, and O was chatting up a Chinese girl, so I went back to the Mix. After another couple of drinks I snorted another big line of K. Cathy then announced that she wanted to go to a club across town to meet up with her brother. I agreed and we set off. On the way I ran into Sergio and J, but they weren’t interested in coming with me. By the time we got into Cathy’s car, however, the second line of K had hit me and I was totally wasted; pressed up against the window of the car. When we arrived at the new club I was feeling good enough to walk (thankfully ketamine has a short lifecycle in the body). In the elevator heading up to the club both Cathy and her sister warned me that their brother was a little “closed”—said while pointing at their heads. I guessed this meant that he was closed-minded and that he wouldn’t approve of a foreigner kissing or groping his sister in front of him. In hindsight I realise that what they really meant was that he was a total fucking sociopath!

Stepping out of the elevator we entered a series of plushly decorated labyrinthine corridors with nothing but VIP private rooms—imagine a small room with wall to wall leather couches, velvet drapes, a large en suite, a kick-arse sound system, a huge plasma TV on one wall, a karaoke set-up in the corner, and a pretty waitress sitting on a stool by the door. Arriving at her brother’s room we knocked and entered. Obviously she hadn’t told him about me, because when I entered everyone gasped and started to whisper “foreigner” in Chinese. I was promptly seated between two of Cathy’s friends while she and her brother entered into a loud argument, presumably about me. After a few minutes the argument ended and Cathy went off into the corner of the room to talk to her friends, while her brother came over and sat down next to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and with totally false sincerity he smiled and offered me a drink. From out of his pocket he produced a plastic bottle with what appeared to be coca-cola in it. Still being stoned, drunk, and wasted on ketamine this only seemed slightly strange. After pouring me a drink from this bottle he then grabbed a beer off the table for himself. I downed the drink—it tasted like plumb liqueur and soda water—and he got up and walked away.

A few beers later he returned and pored me another drink from the special bottle. Prior to this I’d seen him give other people drinks from the bottle, but no one got as much as he was giving me. I downed my new drink and went back to drinking beer. A few minutes later one of his friends produced a glass plate and started cutting up lines of what I though was ketamine. It didn’t really occur to me that these were different people to the ones at the Mix, and that this may not be the same stuff I had had earlier. I snorted one big line off the plate and almost instantly felt an intense buzz unlike anything I’d felt before—after describing the effects to Sergio, the next day, it seems that I’d snorted cocaine. A little while later Cathy came over and sat next to me for the first time since we arrived. She saw the special bottle in from of me and with a concerned look on her face she asked me if I’d drunk from it. She then indicated that it had a shit-load of ecstasy powdered and dissolved in it. I started to panic and checking my watch to try to figure out when I’d taken my first drink and how long I had before it kicked in. For one reason or another I soon forgot about the possibility of over-dosing and went back to drinking beer :-/

This is where my recollection of the night starts to get a little hazy. I’m not a hundred per cent sure on the chronology, but at some stage her brother returned and when I wasn’t looking pored another glass of the spiked drink into my beer. He then toasted me; it wasn’t until I’d downed the beer that I noticed that now familiar plumb taste. Very shortly after—or perhaps before—the brother brought over the plate of coke, and when I tried to wave him off he forced the straw up my nose, held me in a head-lock and made me snort another line. After this he walked off, leaving me propped up in the corner of the room. It was at this point, while very drunk, still a little stoned, still high on the K, and buzzing unbelievably from the coke, that the huge dose of E that I’d been tricked into taking started to kick in with a vengeance! I have a crystal clear memory of my complete conviction that I was going to die of an overdose. Staring out at the room around me I was unable to move any part of my body except my eyes—I was unable to signal for help. I can’t say how long I sat there contemplating my impending death, maybe an hour, maybe 5 minutes, but subjectively it lasted for an eternity.

At some later stage Cathy and her sister got up and motioned for me to come with them. At this point I realised that I wasn’t going to die and struggled to my feet. Taking painstakingly small, considered steps down the maze of corridors I finally made it to the elevator. Spilling out onto the street I recall clearly Cathy asking me where I wanted to go now. It’s strange because I can recall the exact words she used, I recall knowing what each individual word mean in isolation, but having no fucking idea what it meant as a sentence. After several unsuccessful attempts to communicate with me I was able to signal that I wanted to go home; using a business card from the hotel next to my apartment. They then drove me home and left me on the street in front of my apartment. I went inside, curled up into a foetal position on the couch and stayed up all night listening to music. At 9:00 am I had an inspection of my apartment by my school, as I was supposed to move out that day. Around 11:00 am I was still very high on ecstasy so I smoked a lot of pot to take the edge off it and went out for lunch with O and J—Sergio having disappeared during the night, with a busty French girl he’d met at the Mix. In the end I didn’t get any sleep till around 2:00 am on Monday morning—when I had to smoke myself to sleep to end the drug induced insomnia.

Having now written all this down I’m less sure why I’m posting this story than when I began. Perhaps I’m hoping that someone will disapprove strongly of the decadent hedonism that has ruled my life for these past two months—a disapproval that is lacking from my friends here in China. Alternatively, perhaps I’m hoping that you’ll all react the opposite way and validate all the self-destructive choices that I’ve made. But mostly, I guess, I just wanted to get it out of my head, by writing it all down.