爱我在晚上卖给你，到了早上就不存在了: The End of the (Silk) Road

UK is 999, obviously.

USA is 911, I know that much – it’s the name of a TV show. Get up, get get get down, it’s a joke in your town, you know? What even is the number for the emergency services in China?? Will they even have an English translator. Hej was only recently boasting of her 100% perfect social credit score, was I about to sully that pristine record with a silly reprimand for drunken escapades??

But… what if she is dead? Or lying, incapacitated in a pool of her own blood? She barely knew that Lee guy, and he has now ensured that she has lost all of her mental capacities and suddenly has her all to himself. The powder is being sprinkled into her Hoegarden now, Lee’s eyes narrowing and his teeth bared in a mocking smile.

I never want to see her again. I never want to even consider her again. I no longer wish for her to be an entity that enacts molecular changes on the surrounding world. She doesn’t deserve to exist. But I don’t want her dead. Was I the last person recorded seeing her alive? Do I tell the police the full story of the night?? How many laws had I broken myself??

Ah, the Gods are cruel game players: they make you hate someone with every betrayed, disappointed sinew of your pulsing muscles, and yet they make sure that their death would be incredibly inconvenient. Is this irony? I feel like this might be irony. It’s one of those big A-Level English words, definitely.

Longtime readers of this blog (‘The Real Ones’) will be sick to death of Hej by now. I detailed by love for her and how our relationship was cruelly cut short by my debatable decision to attempt suicide. I chronicled our split; her marriage; her marriage being torn apart by domestic violence; our unlikely reconciliation; our plans for her to come to the UK on a spousal Visa; her change of heart; my marriage; my marriage being torn apart by… maybe… domestic abuse…

…which brings us up to where we were two weeks ago, when I was about to visit Hej in China for the first time in close to a decade.

Well, almost up to date. One thing I’ve never covered in this blog is Hej’s slide into alcoholic disorder over the past five years or so. Hej’s disorder is very similar to the one that has been destroying my brother Mizdow’s lie for the past decade or so (which I don’t like talking about: I feel it is Mizdaw’s story to tell). Or, y’know, the type I had which eventually led to my suicide attempt. It’s a whole thing.

Hej isn’t a “washes teeth with vodka, Jägermeister on toast for breakfast” type of alcoholic – she can go many, many days without a drop or even a thirst for alcohol. The sort of alcoholic that (and, again, I speak with experience here) can allow you to convince yourself eternally that you’re not an alcoholic. But once she starts drinking? She only stops when lifelong relationships are forever shattered. Or at least, she’ll carry on for a few more hours after the shattering, before finally the horror of events catches up to her and she passes out in a stranger’s bed. I was that person for close to two decades, so I like to think I have a certain experience in the area.

These binges would frequently black out Hej. She would frequently have sex with strange men during those black outs. She would frequently have no memory of these incidents. She would confide in me each time, from four thousand miles away. She knew that she couldn’t have these conversations – expel these demons – to anyone that she knew in China. She always knew that I would understand exactly what she was talking about, she knew I was the only person she knew that could possibly empathise.

I would often spend these conversations offering definitions of what constitutes rape.

It wasn’t all black outs and impossible consent though. Hej had spent the last few years legitimately exploring her sexuality – even if it was almost always fuelled by alcohol, is that really any different from the rest of us?? She would fall in love with people, she would fall in lust with people. She once had an extended affair with a man who was married with children. It was only then that I questioned her morals, pointing out how the Hejuan I had once been in love with would never countenance such blatant disregard of the trust she once honoured so deeply in relationships, and that I couldn’t imagine her losing such self-respect that she was happy to be some bloke’s bit on the side. I explained how a woman whose independence and confidence I so admired was now merely a 小三. Yeah, proper wokescolded her.

But she knew how fair I’d been in the past, she knew how much I respected her and how non-judgemental I’d been. Once she saw how disappointed I was, she broke off the affair. My opinion, my feelings, meant so much to her. Perhaps, though, I was still hanging on to an image I had of Hej that didn’t really exist anymore.

But everything would be sorted out once I got to China again. Hej was always confident that once we were together again it would all make sense. Everything would just fall back into place like May 1st 2013 had never happened.

She didn’t want to leave China. It would mean running the risk of being ostracised by her strict Hui Muslim mother, who would allow her to either be in a relationship with either another Hui Muslim or to die alone, with no other option allowed. Family is incredibly important to Hej, to an extent that I never truly understood or respected. It’s a Western chauvinistic attitude that I make an effort to apologise for as much as a can. More importantly, flying across the world would remove Hej from her nieces and nephews that she loves so much. And anyway, she’d bought a fucking house since we’d last seen each other, and would complain about she was stuck paying the mortgage for another five years!!

She’s just bought her own personal, beautiful, newly built, high tech, spacious house in the city centre on a teacher’s salary which she will pay off completely in five years’ time. Or she can come to the UK and join me in getting absolutely rawdogged by a private landlord, until next year at least where the next rent increase is likely to push us out and leave us desperately seeking a different type of scum to overcharge us for a human right once again. Tough decision.

That Mao guy gets a lot of bad press, but…

But maybe… I could go back to China…?

For the longest time this would have been my dream, but my reticence to do so had always been for the same reason that I’d had to take a air ambulance ride back from Urumqi hospital in 2013: I am a sick sick man – probably one facial skin graft short of being officially designated a ‘Medical Marvel’ – and without the NHS I simply couldn’t afford to keep all my vital organs from prolapsing out of my eye socket for longer than a couple of months. Over the years that this return trip had been on the cards though, Hej had begun to talk about how I could be added to her Chinese medical insurance, potentially rectifying the one reason I hadn’t moved back to China as soon as I potty trained myself again for the second (of three) time.

Of course, all this time that I’d been decrying my lack of medical safety net in China, I’d also started studying immigration law and was now OISC L2 in both Immigration and Asylum (with a level 3 exam at the end of this month which would essentially make me a solicitor). These expert qualifications in British immigration law that I’d worked so hard for would essentially be useless if I moved back to China – and I really didn’t want to go back to teaching – so the various push/pull factors had been radically reconfigurated in the past decade. Now, it would take a pretty substantial reason for me to justify moving back to China, even if it was my favourite country in the world*, but… Well, let’s see how this trip goes…

(*this isn’t a fucking travel blog. It’s more of a philosophical reaction to decaying imperialism. Why is China the best country in the world? Because I fucking said it was, that’s why, and by now you should have really learned to trust my opinion**. You’re getting some photos and you should feel blessed that I’m giving you that much

**’To Pimp a Butterfly’ 14th best album of 2015? Yeah, sounds about right. ‘Glass Riffer’ by Dan Deacon was #13, and I don’t want to be the one person brave enough to rank Kendrick’s decent effort higher than that)

Oh. And I also invited my Mum. Which, across the trip, I decided was a bad idea, then a terrible idea, then a useful idea, then a bad idea again, then a decent idea, then probably bad overall, until eventually being glad that she had been there to witness the macabre cabaret unfold.

We arrived in Shanghai on Sunday the 28th July. Hej and I hugged at the airport when we first saw each other. But that was the last time we shared any moment of affection for around ten days. Actually, define ‘affection, because even after those ten days… We’ll get there, spoiler alert.

We spent the night in Shanghai (Hej and my Mum shared a double room, I had the other one), before travelling to Wuxi to stay at a friend’s house for a few days, as that friend happened to be staying in Canada when we were in China (Mum took the friend’s room, I took the son’s room, Hej slept in the living room overlooking the skyline). Over the first two nights in Wuxi, after Mum had gone to bed, Hej and I managed to have snippets of actual conversation. Only possible after Hej had drunk enough to become less self conscious, but before she got too drunk to think and talk rationally.

She told me that she didn’t have the same feelings for me anymore, that seeing me again hadn’t awoken those overwhelming sparks of love that she said she thought it might have done. I told her that was fine, that we had both grown so far apart, had both grown into different people these past ten years. I said that it wasn’t something that we could force, and that we should see how we feel over the next two weeks. I reminded her that she had said exactly the same thing when I had last come to visit in 2015, but she said it was different this time, that she was more sure. She asked if I remembered her telling me about the Han guy she was seeing. I said – honestly? – I wasn’t sure, as they all seemed to blur into each other. I asked if she liked the Han guy, to which she replied “I don’t know. What is it to ‘like; someone anyway?”. This made me roll my eyes to such an extent that my optic nerves intertwined with each other like a pair of Walkman headphones left at the bottom of a gym bag. At my age, I’ve little time for even “What is love?” emo/GCSE English/Haddaway failed attempt at profundity, but to profess to not knowing what liking something means??

Or maybe it was just a superb way to avoid the question?

And things were… weird… between us. I wasn’t expecting the two of us to be interfusing with explosions of kinetic and unbridled passion, but the atmosphere between us was like we were two old acquaintances pleased (but not overtly so) to see each other at the strange work conference in a happy (but not overtly so) coincidence. We didn’t seem like former lovers who had both been important in each other’s life but fate had torn apart, but two data entry operators who happened to have shared a desk at Fujistu for a couple of months back in ’08. There was no real sense of Hej being particularly overjoyed to see me, no affection at all, no sense that there was ever anything substantial between us, and that it had been a few weeks or so since we were last together, rather than close to ten years. We would share handfuls of sincere words after she had drunk a certain amount, but all on other occasions she was far more interested in her phone. Whenever I suggested any sort of shared experience as basic and banal as watching a movie together, she wouldn’t be interested. She didn’t seem to have any interests anymore that extended past her phone and a can of craft beer.

Those first few days were also a bit of a physical disaster for me. I am already, as previously stated, a complete medical dumpster fire that only happens to be held together with needles, pills and suppositories. On the plane journey to China I’d made the (in retrospect: debatable) decision to wear flip-flops paired with newly crafted shoe lifts that I only picked up from the hospital the day before we flew. That first plane was several hours late, which meant that us needing to catch a new connecting flight in Dubai and then search for Hejuan in Shanghai airport required a lot of running around. The increased stress on my foot. combined with frequent changes in air pressures, just lead to the skin at the bottom of my right foot just… coming clean off. So there was that open wound to attend with; my foot and ankle swelling up to such an extent that I could now only wear the flip-flops I’d bought for the flight, because my actual shoe no longer fit my gargantuan right foot; me necking painkillers like I was Judy Garland getting ready for a dentist’s appointment was the only way that walking wasn’t a complete impossibility. Combine all of this with the fact that sleeping for those first handful of nights was near impossible because fuck me, you guys, South China is so fucking hot, and the “tired and emotional”* pressure cooker was beyond breaking point that first few days.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, click on the below picture of a photo of what my mangled foot looked like:

(*did you know that “Tired and emotional” was actually a thing?? I thought it was just a phrase that entertainment execs and agents used when an intense ketamine binge emboldened their teenage pop star client to flash their genitals live on children’s television while furiously screaming that the Jews were making them do it)

Pain, pain, pain, pain, heat, pain, pain, emotional confusion, pain, pain, pain, heat, pain, emotional confusion, heat, heat, pain, confusion, pain, heat, heat, confusion, confusion, pain, heat, confusion, pain, confusion, confusion, confusion, heat, pain, pain, pain…

Then, close to midnight the night before Hej’s birthday, I realised that the expensive (by China standards) hotel room that I’d paid for us all to stay in so she could live her dream of overlooking the Shanghai skyline on her birthday was actually on the ground floor. I’d fucked up. I was going to ruin her birthday. I had long pictured her beaming face as she stared out across the illuminated sky, everything she had ever dreamed of coming true. Maybe, subconsciously, I had also bet on that moment being the one that would unlock the old Hej that I used to know, the secret code word that would activate her real persona and break whatever spell had taken her over, the solitaire game that would awaken the Manchurian Candidate that lay dormant within her. I would talk to the hotel the next day and explain the mistake. I sent them late night texts to the hotel like I was some jilted lover reaching out for one more chance. And in a way, maybe that was exactly what I was. I double texted like a motherfucker.

But… what if I couldn’t change it…? What if, after everything, I just had to watch the disappointment wash over Hej’s face as she tried to come to terms how much I had let her down and how I’d ruined everything? I just couldn’t face that. I made quick calculations in my head and realised that I had to at least prepare her for the disappointment, the blow wouldn’t be as crushing and as devastating if she was at least prepped for the tragedy. The hotel was originally planned to be a surprise, but fuck it, she needed to know about this failure!!

Like I said: heat, pain, confusion – tired and emotional.

So, close to midnight, I left my bedroom and went to see Hej as she slept on the padded floor next to the window so she could overlook the Wuxi skyline as she slept. I told her that I’d made a mistake, that I’d fucked up. She thought I had somehow been drinking. When I told her what I’d done, her immediate response was of intense and angry disappointment. Even as I tried to stress how I would fix it, how I would make everything better just like I used to, she interrupted with six simple but damning words:

Why do you always do this??!

And that

fucking

killed me.

And I started crying. Like a little bitch.

The whole situation suddenly opened up inside my mind. Why did I always do this? Why do I always ruin everything? Why did I always have to ruin everything with all these dumb emotions and feelings? Why did I have to start this whole fucking thing in the first place?

I had very irresponsibly fallen deeply in love with this woman, I had introduced her to my entirely hazardous drinking levels that I had since found unsustainable myself, and then just up and tried to commit suicide. I had infected her with trauma that was never likely to be resolved. And I had played a part in convincing her that there was little meaning to life. She had tried a relationship with me – categorically against the wishes of her parents and her Hui culture – and that had ended tragically. After me, she eventually decided that it was time to conform and married a Hui man handpicked by her parents, and that only lead to domestic violence and failure. Hej is a big believer in symbolism, in signs and implications, so as far as she saw it she’d tried each way to be happy, and neither had worked. So what’s the point in believing in anything?

“I told you!”, she shouted, “This is why you should never expect anything to be good! You will always be disappointed!”

That nihilism hit me hard as well.

I tried to ask why things were so strange between us, when we were both so enthusiastic about seeing each other again in the months – years! – leading up to the trip. She simply answered that we were both different people. Which was…

true

I guess.

Remember that diary I started keeping to record my unhappiness with my marriage? At that moment, with my emotions fried (plus the pain, and the heat, and the confusion), I felt the need to add another entry for the first time in more than three years to at least try and compartmentalise my disorientation. I’m posting it here because there were so many thoughts spinning around in my head at the time, and this article is already 3000+ words and I haven’t even made it to the main part yet!:

Tired. Emotional. I also didn’t sleep that night worrying about what piece of shit hotel we’d be forced in that next day, and all the money that I might lose. Oh, and also the pain. And the heat.

The hotel wasn’t a fucking problem, by the way. They just moved us into the top floor of the hotel as soon as I asked, So I was really glad I had that minor meltdown.

And after that night of the long knives we shared, things actually improved markedly between Hej and I. I think Hej was worried that any affection she showed towards me would be interpreted by me as some sort of invitation for sex, which she was absolutely not ready for. But that night I had made it clear that I was expecting nothing of the sort, I had affirmed how it was her being and her personality that I was struggling to reconnect to, and suddenly Hej realised that sharing smiles and laughs with me would not automatically lead to me pulling my dick out and slapping it across her leg. The hotel was perfect, we had an expensive meal high above The Bund and watched the lights of the city turn on at dusk before slowly powering off around 11pm. It was pretty magical. We were having a good time as two actual extremely close friends.

And I shared a (twin) room with Hej in Shanghai, and watched her drink herself slurry each night, though I wouldn’t be able to stay up as late as her. She pointed out my painted nails as a reason for not having feelings for me, saying that she wanted a “Real man”. This didn’t actually offend me, just further outlined how different we both were. She had a similar reaction when she saw me sing along to Chappell Roan, so there’s really nothing I can do with that. We spoke about her recent issues with perhaps problematic men that she had met in perhaps problematic circumstances. She talked of how hard it was to find a man who respected her like I did. I said that she’s not going to meet a man like that while drunk in bars. She pointed out that she had met me in a bar. I had no comeback for that.

I introduced her to Lua by Bright Eyes, a song I am always reminded of when trying to catch taxis turning their lights off late at night, as we had been after our meal that night. She would listen to the song constantly from that point on. Lines like “Love I sell you in the evening/By the morning won’t exist” were maybe hitting a little harder now.

We then got a plane from Shanghai to Urumqi, Xinjiang, and then an overnight car to Ili, Hej’s hometown. Before we left, Hej had made sure In understood how any public display of affection in her hometown would be frowned upon, and I understood. I respected her culture. I respected her.

Hej had a friend called Lee who was able to drive us around Yili to show us the sights, and at the end of the day we all ate some predictably stupendous local food. Hej and Lee got pretty drunk at the meal, but whatever, I had long accepted that was what it was. Out of nowhere, Hej asked us if we had sexworkers in the UK and if it was legal. We answered as best as we could, saying that it’s a difficult one, and that there is still a massive problem with sex trafficking. Hej spoke about the girls at Karaoke bars/KTVs in China, who were ‘willing; to let people to go further and further’ the more they spent at the KTV. I’d later find out that Lee owned a Karaoke bar himself. Did the question from Hej arise from Lee attempting to justify his own work to her?

Eventually, the idea of going to a club after the meal started to be discussed. Mum wouldn’t be joining us, and if I didn’t agree to go then Hej also wouldn’t allow herself to. I could tell that she really wanted to go, but I definitely did too. It would once again offer small reminiscences of our previous time together, and would be a nice blast of nostalgia at least. Lee was also coming. Cool.

In the taxi to the club, Hej was drunk enough to whisper to me the truth that Lee was the Han guy that she had told me about that she had been kind of, kind of not seeing. I didn’t know what to do with that information at the time, and before I had time to process it we had arrived at the club, with an insane amount of stimuli that would ensure I wouldn’t have any space in my brain to consider anything.

The club was like something from a Michael Bay movie: astonishing light displays; were multiple bursts of confetti, hookahs were offered; every person in the club wanted to clink my can of Red Bull; and every patron was treated by the attendants like we were P Diddy in the early 00s taking well deserved breaks from multiple sexual assaults. The music was dogshit, of course, but I was completely sober so could think critically, and never have the chance to talk to the DJ and request a spin of Black Eye by Allie X. It was initially quite a rush, I have to admit. It was a lifestyle that I could never hope to be able to afford in the UK. A lifestyle that I kind of find morally repugnant, admittedly – even if we were in a fucking capitalist country – but to be afforded a glimpse like this was at least a curio.

A curio. But a bit of a gross, exploitative one. Remember how I said that it was like a Michael Bay movie? Well, you know how Michael Bay shoots women?

There was a slight… ickiness… hanging over the club. There were maybe a dozen young, scantily clad women walking around the place, each on their own, that I initially thought to be patrons. Then I thought that maybe they were some sort of promo girls to encourage more drinks and similar commodities to be purchased. I was kinda right with that second guess.

What these girls were doing was going table to table offering lapdances for money. This was not the type of club that I’d usually go to. Because of the shit music, yes, but also because of the fact that it was basically a strip club. If I let myself focus on the club outside our table – which I quickly learned not to – I would see old, fat, Chinese Harvey Weinstein (Harvey Weixin?) types drooling out of their bloated mouths as they waved bills at women the size of their last KFC meal grind aggressively against their bookie’s biro dicks. It was fucking gross. This was not (and has never been) ‘My Scene’.

Sigh, OK, let’s make this clear: (you can skip this if you want)

Take them back to productive work, bring them into the social economy. That is what we must do. But it is difficult and a complicated task to carry out in the present conditions of our economic life and in all the prevailing circumstances. There you have one aspect of the women’s problem which, after the seizure of power by the proletariat, looms large before us and demands a practical solution

V. I. Lenin, Conversation with Clara Zetkin, 1920

Mate, I’m a Marxist. Sex work* is mentioned three times in the ‘Communist Manifesto’, and neither Marx nor Engels are huge fans. You could argue that the lap dancing taking place in that club was not the same sort of ‘sex work’ that Marx and Engels were referring to. In fact, you could even argue in Marxist terms that strippers are actually performers that technically own their own modes of production (their smoking hot tooshes) and so would actually be more ‘petit bourgeoisie’ than anything else. But trust me: these girls were grinding against men’s fat stubby cocks through their jeans with the supposed goal of making them spaff inside their pants: it was exactly the sort of ‘sex work’ Marx and Engels were referring to. Let’s just ignore the horrible facts – let’s ignore the study that have found 73% of prostitutes** were physically abused as children, let’s ignore that even after decriminalising prostitution between 75 and 80% of the prostitutes in German and Dutch brothels have been trafficked, let’s ignore how 70% of every trafficked person in the world is a woman and that 83% of those women were trafficked for sex work reasons – and concentrate on the fact is that sex work is sex with the ability to consent removed by economic coercion. Sex work is a form of oppression based on the miseries of a class based society. I’m not a fan.

(*actually, specifically ‘prostitution‘ is mentioned, and many Marxists would even object to me using the newly fashionable term ‘sex work’ as it risks normalising and sanitize what remains commodified sexual violence, usually towards women. I’m going to use the term ‘sex worker’, partially because ‘prostitute’ conjures specific images which I may not be referring to, and partially because some people will get way more offended at me using the term ‘prostitute’ than they will anything I write here, so it’s a tiny compromise to make sure the most reactionary readers aren’t immediately turned off from at least considering the points I make. If I don’t watch my language, I’m could risk losing all the faggots and the retards who care about that sort of thing

**see? I’ve had to use the term ‘prostitute’ there because I’m referring to a specific type of sex work, and the fact that liberals want to refer to street prostitution under the same banner as strippers and high school girls who feel compelled to charge people a tenner a month to see their tits on cam is a gross oversimplification of an extremely nuanced discussion. Like if we termed both jewellry shop workers and diamond miners in Angola as both ‘Mineral Workers’)

No. In a perfect world – or even in a better world – most sex work would not exist, especially prostitution. There would be more equality between sexes that would extend to sexual adequation and eventually there would be no need for the commodification of sexual violence. Once there’s been a  revolutionary transformation of society that upends the capitalist system of exploitation and replaces it with a society in which each will contribute according to ability and receive according to work done, then eventually nobody will feel economically coerced into dangerously pandering to the sexual needs of a stranger.

But, guess what? We don’t live in that perfect world (yet)! We live in a world where we’re all economically coerced into doing gross shit for strangers. Sex workers are frequently exploited, often abused, many times enslaved, but the market is there, and the economy is fucking them harder than any of their clients will. Some of my friends are sex workers – some of the brilliant artists I’ve interviewed are – and it’s not even in the bottom 80% of jobs that I think are most disgusting (if someone tells me they work in finance I actually throw up in my mouth). It is a pretty gross and exploitative industry, but the sex workers themselves are those being exploited and are absolutely our comrades. The main issue I have with sex work is that I don’t want to partake in it because of how exploitative and rapey it feels, and that’s not going to bring down the sex work industry. I also don’t necessarily support its abolition within the framework of capitalism – while people are forced to earn money to survive, and poor people are needed in order to support the imperialist core, then sexwork and prostitution will never go away. If all prostitutes, whatever their situation or origin, were offered financial support, access to housing, mental health treatment, vocational training, and if undocumented victims of trafficking were all naturalised, how many would still choose to remain sexworkers? That would be a start.

Oh, and all you liberals with your ‘Hooray for Sexwork’/’Sexworkers are Girlbossing’/’You’re All Like Julia Roberts in that Movie’ placards, and your insistence that there should be no difference between sex work and any other work: how would you honestly feel if you found out that your friend, your relative, your partner was paying £20 a week to OnlyFans models or frequently visiting prostitutes? Would you think “Ah, no issue there, they’re simply a frequent customer of a standard service. I hope they give out loyalty cards”? Or would you think “Gross. They’re using their money to pay for sexual exploitation”? How about if your daughter became a sex worker? Be honest!

Liberals support the idea of sex work as long as it remains in the abstract, involving faceless clients whom they subconsciously consider subhuman. They will happily applaud the (usually) female empowerment involved in sex work, as long as they put to the back of their minds the gross and exploitative deed themselves.

OK, I’m done…

To describe prostitution as sex work and a prostitute as a sex worker means to give legitimacy to sexual exploitation of helpless women and children. It means ignoring the basic factors, which push women and children into prostitution such as poverty, violence and inequalities. It tries to make the profession look dignified and as a ‘job like any other job’

—New Vistas Publications, originally printed in People’s March, an organ of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

If you knew me at all (at all), you might not be able to offer a deep Marxist analysis of the reasons behind the ick, but you’d definitely know I would not be the kind of bro who’d appreciate nothing more than some chick jaggling they tiddies in my face and grinding their cooch across my sheathed penis, You might even consider me something of a prissy little naïveté when it came to sex work. I’d never been to a strip club simply because it seems like the most awkward thing ever to sit there politely while someone jiggled their boobss in my face simply because an agreed upon monetary transaction had been insured. In fact, even though I’ve never had sex with a prostitute either, I’d probably prefer that if I had to choose – at least I’m a lot more confident what I’m expected to do in that situation! My friends actually paid for a prostitute for me on my stag do for my first marriage way back in 2005, but all I did was drunkenly talk to her about how excited I was to get married. I’ve never actually asked how much she cost, but I hope it was a lot, because she was a lovely chat.

So, soon after we entered the club, Hej bought me a lapdance. And then, after I obviously wasn’t feeling that, she bought me another one straight away, Then, after that obviously wasn’t rocking my boat, she bought another one immediately. Thankfully, she obviously thought three lapdances was the limit.

You might be ready to call me a gross hypocrite now, I understand. No matter how unenthusiastically I received these dances, I still received them. I didn’t roughly push the first young girl to the floor as soon as she mounted my hips like I was a pommel horse, loudly lectured the entire crowd on how sex work only promulgates the oppression that women suffer in class society. I should have politely finished my Red Bull, passed out a few copies of ‘Women and Class’ by Mary Davis, and then made my ethical exit*. But please try and understand the quandary I was in: I may have my issues with sex work, but as I previously stated I have always found sex workers to be lovely people who are merely being exploited like we all are. I put my hands in the air, I kept my eyes firmly on those of the sex worker, and I let the women just earn their fucking money. I eventually made up my mind that Hej was just playing some perverse joke in order to embarass me, so by the third lapdancer I just tried to relax and let her do her thing so that no more workers would be sent in. You also need to remember that I am actually English, so at the end of the day I’m always going to go with the path of least likely confrontation.

And, by the way, these young women, who were all young enough to be my daughter’s problematically aged college girlfriend, were all smoking hot. I took a photo so you could understand exactly what sort of smokeshow we’re talking about, but I warn you, don’t open this photo in public!!

(*the opposite of a ‘French exit’, because the French are always antithetical to ethical behaviour)

Afterwards, Hej asked me if I’d enjoyed it. I explained that, actually, Hej, it was a little bit fucking awkward don’t you think?

To which she angrily replied that, if that was the case, it was a waste of money.

Wh…? What…? What was happening? I was supposed to enjoy that? That was some sort of gift for me?

I didn’t recognise the Hejuan who would have no qualms about going to these type of bars. I especially didn’t recognise the Hejuan who would have no issue with me using sexworkers. And I especially especially didn’t recognise the Hejuan who would buy that sexworker for me as some sort of… reward…?

My mind was spinning, what were the sexual politics at play here?? What did this mean for Hej and my relationship?? Was this something that friends did?? What on Earth was she trying to tell me?? Were these sexworkers distractions for me?? Was I now supposed to let Hej indulge with Lee a bit now?? Shit! Lee was here! What the fuck was that all about?? Is this now a date for them?? Had she just bought herself a pass?? What was going on here??

It was suggested that we go to a karaoke bar. Oh God, yes please, let’s just get out of this place and let me sing a couple of Prince songs in a nice room with Hej.

Yeah, of course Lee was coming,

Oh, he owned this karaoke bar?

I mean… OK. Fine.

Now, you might not know this, but I fucking own karaoke. I eat that shit. My karaoke is lit, no cap. It’s on fleek, you dig, daddio? And as soon as we entered I was straight on Hurt by Johnny Cash, a song I had unintentionally introduced to Hejuan the previous time I had visited China all those years ago, and sung in a languid baritone that I could imitate flawlessly. Mate, my performance was so good that people be believing in resurrection because they be thinking Cash be back from the dead. I am the resurrection and I am the light. It’s a good job that there weren’t more women in the room when I sang it, as it would have made them all so wet that we’d all be at risk of drowning and… Oh, maybe I speak too soon?

Soon after I’d finished the greatest tribute to Johnny Cash’s memory since that viral TikTok trend of The Chicken in Black, around twelve young women entered the room. OK, I thought, cool. We were in Xinjiang, China, Westerners like myself were still a bit of a novelty, especially in one of the less touristy places like Ili, it was quite common for people to be curious to meet their first white person, perhaps to even commemorate the oddity with a photo. No problem. All to happy to say hello. And to attractive young women?? Yeah, Marxism doesn’t stop me from being a lecherous old creep having a fragile ego that still needs bolstering now and then.

I was asked to pick one.

To… pick one?

Yes. Pick one to be with.

I… what?

They were all escort girls. And one was obviously going to be bought for me. Can’t… can’t I just sing some songs…? I don’t suppose you’ve got Terrence Trent D’Arby’s Who’s Loving You cover…?

I refused to choose one. I didn’t want one. Because of course I didn’t. What was even happening right now?

I refused again. And again. I didn’t even like looking at the choices, I didn’t want to see their faces, I didn’t want to subconsciously start inventing back stories and situations and motivations and desperations. I didn’t want to start thinking who needed the money more. And, admittedly, I didn’t want my penis to start thinking about who it would want. Seriously, I fucking hate my penis sometimes.

After it became obvious that I was never going to pick someone, a woman was chosen for me. A Kazakh woman, 21 years old, probably selected because she had the best English.

And, listen, this woman was lovely. Obviously very good at her job, extremely pleasant and kind, fun to be with. Probably the only innocent party in this entire story. I didn’t stay long enough to ask her backstory; I don’t know what life events and decisions had lead her to that point; I don’t even know if she was a Chinese national and was in the country legally. She was extremely good at her job and I hope that she is fairly compensated for her good work at the bar.

However, at the same time, I ask you to consider: What the fuck is going on??

You’ll notice how I said that I “didn’t stay long enough”. But I didn’t leave immediately. My brain didn’t quite process what was going on. And, as an Englishman, my automatic initial reaction was to try and make the best of things.

So I sat with the Kazakh woman for fifteen minutes or so. She was very good company. She was very good at her job, I watched her sing a Justin Bieber song incredibly badly, but undeniably adorably. Her and Hej did some Kazakh dancing that was obviously pandering to the perverts (as all dancing is, let’s be real). My mind was mush, I was at least a couple of hours behind reality trying to work out what was happening right now.

While my escort was singing Bieber, I noticed Hej and Lee canoodling in the corner, and things started to feel very weird.

I excused myself to the bathroom. It was a squat toilet, so that was never going to be the real reason I went there. I took a breath, I looked at my discombobulated face in the mirror, and tried to properly formulate what exactly was happening here.

Hej had paid for three lapdances for me. In her addled state, she may have thought she was distracting me from her so that she could concentrate on Lee. A date that I had enabled by agreeing to go out that night, giving her plausible deniability that she wasn’t just taking a chance to go out drinking again, And whatever she did with Lee was now sanctioned and approved, as look what filthy shit I had been getting up to with those lapdancers! It was now officially ‘That Kind of Party’. When we got to the KTV, she had procured one of Lee’s ’employees’ to ‘accompany’ me. I was to be with the Kazakh girl. Hej was to be with Lee. At dinner, she’d already spoken about how these women at KTVs work. What they offer. How much had we spent on drink at that bar? What was the Kazakh woman expected to do?

I had never felt so disrespected in my life. And I wasn’t the one expected to have sex with a man 20 years older in exchange for drink vouchers.

I exited the bathroom and asked to be taken home.

In the taxi back, Hejuan kept slurring questions about what the problem was. We were all out to have fun tonight, and yet for some reason I had decided that I was a prude?? On the way back to Hejuan’s house, I just kept explaining how it was impossible to explain to her while she was in this state, and that if she didn’t already understand what my issue was, that perhaps it was something she’d never understand. On the short walk from the taxi to the entrance to her building, I finally snapped and outlined exactly how awful the night had been, how I’d been just been dragged on a fucking date, how nobody who actually knew me would act like she had done that night, how I’d never been afforded such little respect in my life, how I’d always treated her with respect and now I was wondering if she even deserved that.

“You enjoyed that one lapdance! You put your hand on her leg! You are just a man!!”

Was this another aspect of buying those lapdances for me? Did Hej just want to prove that all men were pigs? That I was as bad as the rest of them? That there was no such thing as a good man, so she may as well keep wallowing in the slime.

I am absolutely not a good man. For many reasons that I would have happily laid out for her. She didn’t need to force lapdances on me to prove that.

I didn’t get a chance to explain this though. As soon as Hej let me into her house, her and Lee went straight back out again.

Fine, I thought, fuck you. And I went to bed. And I sent her angry messages on WeChat. Because I am not a good man, I’m an angry little boy with a bruised ego.

I know, pretty cringe. And perhaps a bit of a tell that I thought my trip to China was somehow going to ‘save’ Hejuan. But that was the line under the night, perhaps under our relationship, and I could now go to bed.

Only… Hang on… How well did she know this ‘Lee’ fellow? was he actually going to take advantage of her?? Did I owe it to Hej to stop that?? At what point am I just patronising her and denying her own agency?? As a sober person, shouldn’t I be going bar to bar, club to club stopping all women on dates with men?? What am I supposed to do here??

The anger didn’t completely subside, but it absolutely got overtaken by worry. What if the absolute worse case scenario was taking place right now? I messaged her at around 5am. I tried calling her multiple times up for next few hours. What had actually happened? Was she safe??

I worried myself almost to the stage of vomiting. At around 9am I got out of bed and had a shower. Still nothing. When do I call the police? When do I have a responsibility to do that? Was I being ridiculously oversensitive? Was I making things worse with my lack of action??

At around 9:30, Hej messaged to let me know she was still arrive. She was staying at her ‘friend’s house. She’d be back home soon and we’d visit the Sayram Lake that day like we’d planned. She eventually turned up. She bought me a coffee, which I really appreciated. And we went to the lake. Lee was our driver, of course.

And this post is almost eight thousand words already.

The next few days were… fine. Well, they were pretty fucking wonderful, as we flew into Kashgar and experiences more of perhaps my favourite province of perhaps my favourite country in the world. But this was only possible from me avoiding the massive 大象 in the 房间 that was my ever complicating and perhaps eternally frayed relationship with Hejuan.

On that first night in Kashgar, Hej got a little drunk again so we could actually talk. She seemed the most honest she’d been so far, but I discovered with Hej that there was potentially always another layer of mistruths and disinformation ready to be unpeeled the next time she got drunk. She had met Lee about a month ago. She met him in a club, and he had offered to walk her to the bathroom to make sure she was safe, which Hej really appreciated in a massive win for ‘bare minimum’ men everywhere. She had got drunk and had sex with him on that first night, and ‘maybe’ another time since. She still wasn’t forthcoming on the subject of whether she actually liked Lee or not, but she was at least honest enough to admit that before I had arrived she had decided to focus on Lee, as a simple boyfriend (who she would refuse to term boyfriend) or even a FWB actually in China would just be so much more convenient. This had translated into her complete lack of affection to me, less I get the wrong impression I guess. Lee was Han, so her mother would never allow it, but whatever, right? I wish she’d been straight with me from the start, but here we are.

The next day, our final day in China, I bought a beautiful handmade notebook with a rhino on the cover (in reference to the rhino ring that I wore on my finger that Hej loved so much). And I wrote a letter to Hejuan in it while I sat in a Kashgar coffee shop. And I filled every page. I outlined exactly why I felt so disrespected, I noted how her drinking was getting out of control, I said how her living so recklessly is bound to end in tragedy, and that I’m not sure if I had the emotional bandwidth to worry about that while four thousand miles away. If something happened to her, would anyone even let me know? I told her that we should probably put the breaks on our relationship for a while. Potentially forever.

At least… I think that’s what I wrote… I used pen and paper like a fucking medieval scribe, and then I didn’t even take photos of what I’d written! Sometimes I wonder if I care about this blog at all.

I put it in Hej’s bag, and said she wasn’t to read it until we parted.

And that was that.

…

…

…

Except, for fuck’s sake, we actually had sex that last night.

Jesus fucking Christ, Alex!