They watch their own lives from a detached, observer lens, from the position of “beyond”.

You might get butthurt when a guy makes fun of you as a woman, but trust me, they make fun of themselves to an equal, if not more extreme degree.

Nothing escapes the self-referential black-hole that is manhood.

I get why calls Millennial men Narcissists and Zoomer men Psychopaths. The sun cares about its light as much as the moon waxes over its darkness, both insufferable in its own right.

If women are accused of being in their feelings, then men are lost in the clouds. They may be the existential drama queens, but they know how to aestheticize it as suffering cloaked under humour. I find this amusing, but it ticks off most women and “gay” men. While there’s gender differences in the usage of language, this goes to the root of the masculine experience of reality itself.

The OG Metaverse

Before Silicon Valley coined this term at FB headquarters, a mini version already existed inside the soul of every man that has ever lived. It’s a map detailing their personal version of the Hero’s Journey: at what stage are they at, and how are the stats looking at the moment?

Everything, no matter what, can always be represented by some kind of metaphor. It’s why they can’t say they’re just trying something new, it has to be a “side-quest” as if they’re in some RPG. In fact, this game terminology, and by extension war themes, resonate deeply in the male psyche.

It could be fuelled by the masculine ideal of endless striving and becoming. Life is a game, so whether you revolve your consciousness around the Self (Millennial) or actively reject the Self (Zoomer), your point of reference does not change.

Michelangelo is carving the marble, but the man in the marble is him.

The Self is experienced not in an embodied, feeling type of way, like women do, but as a projection out there to be attained.

He’s the subject but also sees himself as an object. But when you’re both the influence and the influenced, it can quickly devolve into an infinity loop.

Despite the risk of pushing you into existential quicksand, I must continue.

The purpose of this internal metaverse is to act as the North Star for your life mission. It starts getting built subconsciously the moment you learn as a boy what it means to someday turn into a man, and this chipping, forming of the stone continues until you die.

But it’s not just a single act, it’s a whole world with its own ether supporting every conviction, belief, and thing you hold dear. Like the screenshot above, seducing women becomes the “Pussy War”, something you had to fight for and win at. For every mundane, universal male experience, there’s a mythological equivalent, but the latter is what gets painted into the metaverse, the story you tell yourself.

Not only does it shape the internal monologue, it also colours your impressions of the world, the external reality. One of its visible markers is humour; its function is normally understood as a bonding mechanism or a disguise for malice, but it goes deeper than that.

Humour as a shield

In Greek mythology, the Shield of Perseus is a polished, mirror-like bronze shield given to the hero Perseus by the goddess Athena. It allowed him to safely locate and behead the Gorgon Medusa by viewing her reflection instead of looking at her directly, which would have turned him into stone.

As a man, everything in your life is a conflict, a test of whether your capabilities match up to the occasion, so you can never really let down your guard. Amidst this endless battle scene of bloody carnage, the quickest and most reliable defence you have access to is humour.

It allows distortion of the object into a harmless image, and protects the nervous system from overwhelm, essentially making life bearable when it’s really hard.

The survival they speak of is not misogynistic, malicious, nor jealous, it’s pointing at the reality of the situation, which is that on special holidays, you’re required by society to play the role of peasant to the feudal lord that is your wife. This goes for Valentines, Anniversaries, Women’s Day, and let’s not forget birthdays as well.

Yes, it’s true that mothers deserve this love and adoration, but it’s also true that for those 24h, every man is a slave to the woman who birthed him, and the woman who birthed his children. If we take a wider lens, you will see that men in marriages are not free at all. Every woman, no matter how pleasant and beautiful she is, presents restrictions on the man by virtue of this relationship, for a link is also a chain. Therefore, he has to live with the reality of servitude at all times, so long as he’s with her.

Such an unbearable reality needs to let out steam occasionally to ensure its longevity, and Mother’s Day is simply one of those occasions for venting with a justifiable cause. On that day, the yoke of social expectations is tighter than ever, and humour is the easiest and safest way to express your true feelings.

To call for repressing jokes like the one in the image, is to deny men reprieve. How do you expect them to fight a forever war inside the metaverse if rest is verboten?

Now let’s look at a recent socially controversial topic:

The USA men’s hockey team made fun of the USA women’s hockey team, who also won their country a gold medal just two nights before. Both teams were winners, but the men’s team still made fun of the women’s team to celebrate their own win.

The author of that post calls it “performative bonding”, which isn’t false, because men tend to do that a lot, but the act is not the deed.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat this, so bear with me.

While both teams won the gold medal, only one of them won against a team of MEN. The concept of winning vs losing is that winner takes all, and I don’t think anybody is so delusional as to think the USA women’s team could ever win against their male counterparts. These are top athletes performing at the highest level, so marginal differences matter. If even one woman happened to be on her cycle during the match-off, that would tip the scales in the men’s favour considerably.

Winning against men is the bigger accolade because the strength of your opponent decides the marvel of the accomplishment. For even though the medal is the same, the feat was unmatched. Therefore, in the male team’s shared metaverse, they’re still the undisputed winners, the brothers who fought together and won, broken tooth and all.

But the story doesn’t stop there, because while arriving at a common goal felt exhilarating, each player still needed reassurance from each other that they’re the undefeated victors, to know that they’re not alone. Out of this bid for connection comes the desire to make fun of the women’s team. It’s the classic “us vs them” mentality that helps to create group cohesion.

By putting the girls down, the guys are establishing to themselves and to the world that their gold medal is worth more, that their position on the podium was exchanged with a mouthful of blood. Objectively, both are winners, but subjectively, in the minds of each male player, there’s only one crown, the one on their own heads.

And why humour? Why the veiled sarcasm? Again, it’s to communicate socially unacceptable truths, without directly stating that it’s offensive to celebrate male and female sportsmanship as if they’re equally impressive.

When you can’t say what you really want to, you learn to hide it in palatable forms a la locker room jokes.

Tone policing will not get you the cultural shift you desire, because you’re still not addressing the core issue, which is that honesty is unwelcome in our current society.

Intimacy in plausible deniability

Besides humour, men also hide meaning inside movie quotes.

They do this much more often than women, so much so that I think it's an innate compulsion with rewards at the social and personal level.

Men are sensitive to story because they’re actively metaphorical about their own lives already. Like how a fisherman will watch the seas differently than a sailor. The waters may look the same, but the target of observation changes.

Movies are useful in that they’re a condensed collection of meta-stories, or archetypal processes of development. Men feel the meta behind the plot, kind of like how women can tell “sage” from “pistachio” intuitively.

What do men do with these narrative arcs?

They store memorable catch-phrases for a rainy day, a special occasion that warrants the use of “here’s to looking at you, kid”. It allows them to express sentimentality without betraying their inner world, or open themselves up for rejection. Ironically, this self-protective move, is the very thing that brings them closer to someone, because by answering one quote with another, you show that you not only understand the essence of the message, but also share cultural membership to the same club.

Intimacy is achieved by demonstrating we’re both avoidant in the same ways.

Women might find this confusing, performative, or just plain show-off, but men know there’s finesse in finding the right lexicon for the right time.

Some might wonder why they can’t just say how they really feel, but you must understand that it’s not a safe world for men like it is for women. We can express the full range of our complex emotional life with no consequences, maybe the occasional “calm down”, but it’s generally a smooth ride. They cannot, so the best way to express feeling without showing weakness is by pulling up Pulp Fiction or Fight Club.

Besides emotional armour, movie quotes have the added benefit of letting the internal metaverse become visible, a brief moment of show-and-tell where you share something cool that you found.

As a man, because you experience yourself as a character in motion, the meta-analysis in the background never stops, and so you notice when similarities crop up in real life. You’re Waldo always looking for Waldo.

This sense of familiarity is the male psyche looking for safety in a world that frankly, hates their guts. They can also find precious moments of eureka when real-life overlaps with a movie from the past. Men are simple creatures, and coming up with a neat, fitting line, is enough to put a smile on their faces. On the contrary, I almost never see this habit in women.

Vulnerability to most men is only accessible via creative routes, which sometimes manifests as superfluous word choice to the untrained eye. But once you see how fate has forced their hand to talk and act like this, you begin to feel more compassion for their existential plight.

Male vulnerability

When men approach vulnerability in the same way as women, they’re actually castrating themselves. Being vulnerable cannot be treated as the telos, or final destination, but only as a means to an end—to maintain the health of the metaverse. It’s a necessary evil that should be used sparingly.

Google will tell you that emotional exposure is good, but what it’s actually doing is creating future liability and giving the listening party bargaining chips for manipulation.

As a man, you’re better off keeping your cards close to your chest, because the more you talk about your feelings, the more feminine you come across. The only time you should open up is with a trustworthy listener, such as a therapist. I don’t think you need therapy, but more so an emotional dumpster that won’t generate bad consequences.

My therapist is a sweet lady but her usefulness is limited to being a non-biased sounding board for me to think out loud in front of. There’s nothing she can tell me that I don’t already know at some level, so her role is more of an excavator and less so an indispensable asset.

On the above point about “deeper connections”, emotional vomit will disgust whoever you’re dating, deter them from wanting to get close to you, and make them think that you need help regulating your chaos. This weakens the connection and makes you appear irrevocably unattractive because it puts your EQ competence into question. The only time this could work is if the other person has a saviour complex where they need to feel needed, but that’s not healthy either so why would you want someone like that?

The second assertion on “reduced anxiety” could have some validity, but I think it’s even more efficient to develop a strong sense of self, which nips the problem in the bud. If feeling better is what you seek, there’s tactile methods that sometimes work better than talking about yourself, like breaking chopsticks, punching a wall, or going for a swim. The body is magical in that it can alchemize emotional energy into physical sensation, while producing beneficial neurotransmitters in the process, naturally alleviating mental tension.

I think it’s easy to indulge in the auto-erotic act of mood analysis; it feels good and you think you’re making progress in self-development, but it’s actually corroding your vitality. The greatest act of self-awareness is realizing that everything that moves you off your zen, or emotional equilibrium, is burning up valuable energy.

Unless you’re spiritually advanced and meditate hours each day, you probably wake up with a limited amount of fucks to give, so use it wisely. There’s no courage to be gained, nor depth to be explored by being a volatile person, no matter how introspective you become after each melt-down.

The last point is incredibly naive. Resilience doesn’t come from being vulnerable (that’s easy), it forms once you accept that even if a trusted confidant backstabs you, all will be well.

Many people, after getting burned in romance, or suffered from unrequited love, vows to never touch the stove again. That’s immature reasoning because although the logic is water-tight—zero exposure means zero potential for pain—it leads to emotional starvation. It’s the idiocy of weaning off water forever because it could contain dirt.

The way to keep your avatar alive in the metaverse is to invest aggressively in its ability to heal, because it’s one of the controllable variables that generate the biggest ROI. We trust our bones to mend after a fracture, but think we can’t take another heartbreak, now isn’t that kind of silly?

Instead of teaching men to be more vulnerable, we should guide them on fortifying their emotional resilience. As a general rule, you should maintain a stability uptime of 99%, with exceptions for justifiable causes such as funerals and breakups.

Take advantage of those exceptional circumstances and truly lean into the feeling, cry it out, and then return to composure. But having regular sob sessions because your wife wants to work on building an emotional connection is retarded.

Part of keeping internal order is learning how to compartmentalize and have strong boundaries. This means keeping the past where it belongs, sifting out the useful lessons, and moving on. Another way of looking at it is that any regret you feel is always smaller than the bullets you dodged.

Suffering isn’t a tattoo you wear, and it’s only insidious if you choose to let it fester like an infected wound.

Mastering this psychological separation turns your soul into kevlar, which will give you the confidence to withstand anything. I don’t recommend being vulnerable as the first card you draw, but if you feel compelled to share your inner self, just know you’re handing the other person a loaded gun and hoping they won’t use it.

Being immortal doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain, nor does it mean you’re indestructible, but it does signify the ability to rise from the ashes.

~Yueyue

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Buy me a rose 🌹

If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

I think we, as women, need to accept that living with a man means you will be doing the lion’s share of house chores, but it’s okay, that’s actually a good thing.

It’s not about equally doing the dishes, it’s about matching your reality to your expectations. I don’t think house cleaning can be divided in an egalitarian manner, for a myriad of reasons outlined later.

If you’re having squabbles over something as mundane as chores, then there’s a good chance the relationship has bigger problems brewing underneath the surface. Maybe there’s an inherent power imbalance that you’re chafing over, or an emotional gridlock making you dissatisfied, and blaming him for being lazy is a way to get that feeling out.

I interviewed some couples in my personal and work life, and in nearly all of them, the woman admitted to cosplaying house maid sans uniform. Some notable tasks allocated to the husband were yard work, garbage duty, car maintenance, and repairs. Isn’t it interesting how men usually get the smelly, dirty, and heavy labours? And yet, the only ones complaining about unpaid labour are women. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather wipe counters than stand in the summer heat pushing a lawnmower around, sweating.

Unless it’s a new relationship, things like division of labour should no longer be an issue. It’s either that the boundaries weren’t set clearly in the beginning, or something has changed that’s upsetting the dynamic’s equilibrium. Asking for what you want is a pre-requisite for getting what you need, and as much as your spouse may understand you, they can’t read your mind.

Women are sensitive

It’s customary for the person with higher disgust sensitivity to partake more chores. Whoever is more hitlerian in cleanliness, wants to kill more dust and grime.

The drudgery against dust, this monotonous everlasting war, what Beauvoir deems a great injustice against women, is just a basic fact of life—things will get messy even if you constantly clean them, especially the kitchen.

If you take an average woman and compare her home to the average man’s, you will find that the latter can live in a slovenly hell while the former cannot. There’s many reasons behind this, from childhood conditioning that girls should be tidy, to innate attunement to details, but this gender gap in cleanliness exists. Putting relationships aside, every individual has a standard of living that if not met, makes them feel intolerable and gross. There’s visual cues that can help to distinguish this metric, but how it manifests in everyday life is usually in who does the bulk of the house cleaning.

If we go one step further, what even is the point of tidying up? To return to order, to have our surroundings not resemble a pigsty, or simply to reduce negative emotion? Even the idea of “thou shall maintain a clean home” can be reduced to making ourselves feel better about fulfilling a basic human decency, an obligation to live on a more sacred plane than animals.

Since women have more negative emotion than men, on average, cleaning is a most productive channel to alleviate this black water. I always feel better after doing dishes because it’s an easy task I can do well, and it gives me uninterrupted time to think. Feeling the warm soapy water run over my hands induces the thoughts to flow smoothly as well.

To loop back to the idea of hygiene standards, if you had the cleaner house before moving in with your spouse, then you can expect to be the house maid, it’s just how it is. People have their natural range of acceptable dust levels, so moving the needle is often impossible, and you can exhaust yourself trying to win a futile endeavour.

In his first marriage, he had the higher intolerance for mess, which meant accepting the brunt of the work, but now, thanks to a woman who’s even more sensitive, the same man can comfortably relax like a sloth.

I see this dynamic in many other couples, except 99% of the time, it’s the woman doing everything. Not only are they sensitive to chaos, they also mind the method used to complete the task—how the laundry is folded can make her lose her mind if it’s not done how she likes it. This creates tension, understandably, because now he associates doing something with the possibility of being yelled at for doing it wrong.

The solution, I think, is to accept that as the woman, chores are on your shoulders most of the time, with exceptions when you’re sick or physically unwell. If the man cleans when you don’t feel like it, great, you guys work well as a team, if not, you need to decide if that’s a dealbreaker. If you can manage your own chaos sensitivity so that an unkempt house doesn’t bother you, then it doesn’t really matter if your spouse cleans or not, because you will get to it when you have the energy again.

I won’t give you tips on how to get your man to do more, because if he hasn’t built that cleanliness habit before adulthood, it’s kind of too late. You can never raise someone’s internal standards from the outside, unless they make a concerted effort to change from within. While you could inspire them to improve for the better, this almost never happens due to force or coercion.

If he’s a tidy person, but still doesn’t do any chores, then it could be that he has a blindspot towards details.

Women’s anxious mental load

The hamster wheel inside every female’s brain is working non-stop, 24/7. It’s usually the woman in charge of the couple’s social engagements, and she’s also the one who tracks the pantry, where to store batteries, all the mundane details of running a household, so of course she’s the first to notice when the bathtub needs a good scrubbing—that’s her forte.

Cleaning is the God-given answer for women to let out their incessant internal monologue, a vent for their psychological nervousness. Whenever I get really worked up about something emotionally, I start rummaging through every box and cabinet—twice. Sorting through miscellaneous junk is very relaxing, hence why women love foraging at thrift stores. We have an intrinsic need to deal with detailed external realities, and get lost in the sensory details of the 3D world.

Maybe if we gamified washing dishes, we could get women interested in doing chores again, since they’re motivated by competition with other women.

This is our playground, and I’m confused why women are so intent to drag men into our domain of expertise. Men have no patience nor inclination to get things looking exactly right. You can show them how to fold a shirt 5 times and they’ll still do it sloppily, not because they’re dumb but because they don’t care. I mean in an existential way, kind of like how women don’t care to learn how to change a tire even though we could figure it out.

Men thinks in binary terms, which is also why they don’t see a million shades of colours like us. Their perception hinges on the axis of relative danger, which is fitting because we rely on them for matters of life and death, like ensuring our personal safety in dicey situations.

What’s a man good for?

Solving problems.

If I’m in a dark alley facing off a stranger with a knife, I would much rather my man handle it than having to wrack my brain under pressure for a safe way out. In fact, I would go as far as to say that in the event of a break-in, I would expect my husband to die for me.

In a world where women makes as much money as men, their usefulness become apparent only when our own shortcomings arise.

In short, men are useful for other things, and we’re doing them a disservice by forcing a fish to climb trees.

Women are better at daily maintenance due to diffused attention spans. We can task switch faster and better than men, but it does mean our ability to lock-in is not as strong. What is running a household if not managing a million little things? Men use Trello boards, but women just use their brains.

We need to bring back Home Economics classes like they did in the 1950s, not that women need it from a competence perspective, but to remind themselves of the intrinsic value they bring to domestic life.

Dignity in dust

Home is the sacred place, a sanctuary for resting your mind and body after a long day, but it needs a loving touch to take care of its upkeep.

My mom sees cleaning as a worthless activity, and feels that it degrades her, and so it does—a self-fulfilling prophecy. She thinks she should be out there girl-bossing, making millions, instead of stuck inside, but that’s a lie she was sold by feminism.

How you feel about work determines your experience of it, which means you can find both heaven and hell in the same activity, it just depends on the person. There’s dignity in every kind of work, except sex work, because in that case you’re selling yourself, and God’s children are never for sale.

Cleaning the house isn’t beneath you, no matter how much money you make. If you really feel like it’s not worth your time from a monetary perspective, sure, outsource it to the cleaners, but otherwise, learn to enjoy it.

I find the act of washing my face and brushing my teeth repetitive and onerous, but I still do it, because I care about my teeth and pores. It’s bad to force yourself to do things you don’t wanna do, but when you can see how it connects to the larger goals, there’s few things you’ll still dread with the same passion.

Furthermore, if you’re a parent, then your attitude towards chores will get modelled by the children. Cleaning may not be glamorous work, but it also doesn’t deserve to be the source of marital strife and misery. It’s up to you to pick your poison: either marry someone who loves to clean, or start scrubbing.

Unless women are ready to go fight part-time in wars, we need to be more realistic and temper our expectations when it comes to how much chores is reasonable for the men in our lives to take on.

Realistic expectations

So far, I’ve outlined the rationale for why cleaning is not only suitable for women, but we’re actually better at it than men. We also discussed how disgust sensitivity decides who does the bulk of chores. However, there’s another decision mechanism I forgot to mention: energy/time-constraint.

That’s one example where the cards were stacked all in one direction—with the party who has more T and time—but what if neither works from home? Assuming you don’t have the funds to spend on outside help, there’s only 2 possibilities:

1. be more tired, but with a cleaner house

2. have more energy, but with a dirtier house

Neither is ideal, but that’s kind of the trade-off when you don’t have enough gold coins to throw at the problem. I’m of the opinion that unless having a dual-income propels you into a new tax bracket and significantly contributes to the standard of living, you’re better off finding a remote job that pays similar amounts, or leave the workplace altogether if you have kids. With sky-rocketing childcare costs, it’s nonsensical paying strangers to raise your kids just to barely break even.

Because cleanliness is an ongoing maintenance concern, expectations should be communicated early on, and both parties need to be content from the get-go. Personally, I think one person cooking and the other cleaning up would be my cup of tea, but you can find whatever setup floats your boat.

Society has its opinion and wants to get its grubby little fingers into personal matters, but at the end of the day, it’s your relationship, and it really doesn’t matter how just some Tik Tok influencer decrees it to be. What happens behind closed doors isn’t anyone else’s business, so you need to find a division of labour system that works for your life. You can slice the cake any way you like so long as the other person agrees wholeheartedly.

There’s an element of reciprocity with having a harmonious long-term relationship, as well as keeping the desire to serve alive. If one of them disappears, that’s when you start to get arguments about dishes.

The desire to serve

If a woman no longer wants to clean for you, then she’s mentally checked out. The urge to tidy up is part of the nurturing instinct, and its absence is indicative of the relationship’s dwindling foundational health.

Does that mean my mom’s marriage is on the rocks? Maybe.

Sometimes I wonder if the only thing keeping her rooted was the lack of financial independence. When they first met 7 years ago, it was evident from the way she looked at him how intense her feelings were, and over the years, I saw the spark fade. In the beginning, he was her “joie de vivre”, but now, she’s comfortable saying that she can live without him. The difference is like night and day. Meanwhile, he thinks things are going “excellent” between them, which is funny both in its inaccurate assessment, and in his false confidence.

Her man was propelled by necessity (lazy ex-wife) to do chores, which my mom interpreted as willingness to serve. It’s only after the honeymoon period cooled off that she realized her error in judgement. It’s hard to say if he intentionally gaslit her, she had the wrong expectations, or worse, that she expected things to change once the relationship matured.

Whatever the cause of the breakdown, she currently thinks he’s a lazy son-of-a-bitch, and her desire to serve has pretty much evaporated.

He expected her to fulfill the role of servant, but she wanted a helper, and the two are in direct conflict with each other. I guess bedroom skills can only take you so far before resentment builds.

Normally, I would say that If you’re so hell-bent on getting chore equality from your husband, you might as well make him wear a basketball around the waist for 9 months to match your pregnancy woes.

However, in this case, because she’s in her 50s, looking after 3 children, it’s not unreasonable for her to expect some help around the house since her energy levels are vastly lower than they were a couple decades ago.

Have kids early

Cleaning after 3 kids in your 50s is very different from in your 20s-30s.

If my mom was single raising 3 kids, she would still be cleaning obsessively, because kids are inherently messy—essentially dust-ball attracters.

She signed up for a lot of work by having so many late pregnancies, and coupled with an unhelpful husband, it probably feels like a string of bad decisions. I agree.

If you want kids, have them as early as possible, while you’re still young. It’s much easier to plow the field in Spring than after the first frost. There’s an ideal season for every part of life, and even if you’re blessed with child later on, the experience will feel more tiring because your body is no longer in its prime.

Given that marriage is being pushed back collectively, and with it, children are getting conceived in the 30s-40s age range, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s adding to women’s stress levels in the household management arena.

Having kids is always a lot of work, but you’ll be better able to meet that challenge by having them early. Regardless of the age range you greet them in, be realistic with what you’re getting yourself into, and never complain about a load you willingly took on.

Women’s expectations and perceptions on the dignity of doing house chores needs a re-valuation in order to make progress on this area of the gender war. Men are great for solving problems, especially during an emergency, and I don’t think that part of them is appreciated enough by the women in their lives. Having a masculine presence does so much to stabilize a woman’s psyche, just by being there, like feeding order to chaos.

In a relationship, if petty things like dishes start to become a point of contention, it’s usually symptomatic of larger discontent under the table, and it should ring alarm bells in your head that all is not well in the kingdom.

Obviously, many men either don’t care or don’t know how to fix their wives’ growing resentment, but that’s a problem to talk about another day.

~Yueyue

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Buy me a rose 🌹

If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

Oh wait, that was my fault.

Let me backtrack.

The original plan after sushi dinner was to visit the Japanese convenience store, because cute snacks are the best. However, en route to the destination, I looked up at the Fairmont Hotel, and pointed out how I always wanted to go on the rooftop, to which he replied, “wanna go?”

No hesitation whatsoever.

I’m the type that can’t refuse a co-conspirator, so we skipped over to enact the plot. We cleared the revolving doors with ease, and found ourselves in a grand lobby, resplendent with twinkling chandeliers. Since you can’t look lost while trying to blend in, we picked a random direction (left), and started moving with confidence. Lugging along backpacks like kids, we looked neither boomer-coded, nor in the right income bracket for this type of establishment, and we could feel the asian receptionist’s eyes follow us as we moved, trying to exude a natural sense of belonging.

Our heart rates quickened with each second we couldn’t find the elevator, and then voila it appeared! But to our dismay, you needed a keycard. Undaunted by the failed attempt, we continued the hunt. For such a large building, there should’ve been one, if not two emergency stair-cases. We found one of them, but it didn’t lead up, only down, so we had no choice but to follow the turns and twists of fate. Quite fitting considering Mike had a tattoo of “amor fati” on his arm.

This rabbit hole landed us in Housekeeping, which was deserted except for the carts full of mixed linen around each corner. We ambled through the labyrinth with no sense of direction, our eyes and ears peeled for any sign of A. stairs, and B. people. Each time a distant door opened or closed, we would turn into stone, count to 20, and then move stealthily like rats. This is essentially breaking and entering, and I’m sure it would land us in the police station, or at least incur a lifetime ban from Fairmont.

Somewhere in the middle of exploring, we almost got caught.

The service elevator dinged open, and a couple of tall burly men in neat little cravats came in pushing a trolley. Before we could slither away discreetly, one of them asked what are we doing here. I can’t lie for shit, so I let the extrovert handle it, and boy was he convincing.

“We’re looking for the elevator.” He said with a straight face. With a honest voice like that, how could you not trust the guy?

The worker believed him, and pointed us in the right direction. Phew, that was close! The hunt continues.

Unfortunately, the second elevator was also no-go, because key card. I debated just waiting until someone calls it up from the top, but we didn’t wanna keep sweltering in the heat so we left. Feeling a bit shaken from the near-hit, our plan switched to one of escape. No more rooftop, now we wanna gtfo before someone catches on from the CCTV that we’re up to no good. But that wasn’t easy either. Turns out leaving the place was a lot harder than we thought.

There was a whole floor of conference rooms. Complete with chairs, pens (we took 2) and jam (3 types). Mike was hoping for a bottle of wine left unattended, while I was eager to find a working hot water tank, because the asian in me hasn’t had tea for at least an hour. We found neither, and instead took pictures on the podium of a networking event scheduled for May 14. As the de-facto event decorator at work, I was appalled at the bare-bones approach here, but I suppose if you have budget to book the Fairmont, there’s probably nothing left over for balloons and streamers.

It was fun to check out the rooms, but we circled back where we started from, and it started to dawn on us that we may never get out of this place on our own. What a frightening thought.

Calling for help wasn’t an option either because we had no way of contacting the reception.

Just as the last of our resolve trickled away, stairwell #12 rose into our field of vision, that holy grail of saviours. The sign indicated it would lead to the lobby. Ok good, that’s what we want. But once inside, I could see that unlike the previous stairs that gaslit us into thinking it goes up, this one actually did ascend! Following the direction of my gaze, Mike asked if I wanna try going to the roof again, and dammit, he just feeds my bad ideas every time. His contextual awareness was 10/10, so I was delighted that he could read my mind. Our mission reverted back to the original one: ROOFTOP.

We made our way up to the 10th floor, with a brief rest at floor 8 because my legs were tired.

Honestly, having started my cycle that day, my energy levels were very weak so it wasn’t a great time to be doing any strenuous exercise, but the mind wants what it wants.

Down a long corridor was a large vertical window, the last barrier between us and freedom. But it wasn’t meant to be, because the lock prevented us from sliding it open any further.

As I nudged my nose on the pane of glass, I whispered, “so this is how it feels to be in the gulags…” He was smirking laughing. I could never tell when he smiles if it’s because I’m genuinely funny or he’s happy to play the fool so I can maintain my self-illusion. Either way, the man was a joy to be around.

Upon reaching the climax of our incredible heist, we turned back after a mission well-done, satisfied that we pushed the boundaries as far as we could without getting this American boy deported on his first trip to Canada.

The first breath of street air was invigorating. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief that we skipped possible ordeals with security guards and their scarier counterparts. After all, law and order was merely bent, and not breached.

At the convenience store, I got some rice crackers, yuzu matcha, and a horde of Japanese tic tacs in peach, grape and lime. Mike had the sad luck of selecting a yucky tasting cherry soda, which he dutifully finished anyways. It really proves his assertion that he’s like a dog/trash-can and basically eats everything, including spicy foods. His gastronomic habit is quite consistent with his personality as a whole in its diffusive schizophrenia.

Despite being short, he had enough fire to fight two men, and I felt completely at ease with him beside me, walking through the crowd.

After the snack stop, we strolled leisurely across Robson st, the busy pedestrian strip, and turned onto Denman, otherwise known as the road to English Bay, the city’s best location for watching fireworks in the summer. While there were no bright lights that evening, we did catch the last blink of sunset, a single brushstroke of orange against a backdrop of tanker ships and windy waves.

I motioned to the washroom, and reassured him, for the 3rd time, that I’ll be back. And then I remembered what happened at dinner…

Sitting in a corner at the bottom level of the restaurant, I waited patiently for Mike to arrive. A couple minutes in, I saw a wildling in a patterned shirt and a mop of curly hair walk within 3 ft of me, then turn around and leave. I was so sure that’s his side profile, given that I had seen him before on live.

Was it possible that he saw my face and decided I’m too ugly? My confidence may never recover. Oh no.

When he finally showed up, I told him this joke and he was delighted. For a guy who self-proclaimed to be the “Sun”, he certainly lived up to my expectations, and kept radiating warmth in all directions for the rest of the night. His auric field had no gaps, but its very existence, the maintenance of such intensity, must burn quite a bit of energy.

With fiery hazel eyes, he had the look of a man searching for something, urgently. I couldn’t look at him directly for too long because it felt like he would eat me alive. Extroverts are always at 100, it’s just how they are.

When he’s deep in thought, the lines between his brows form the shape of an equilateral triangle. I found that detail interesting because even in muscle tension, he exerts equal force in all directions. His true nature is quite non-discriminatory, but his mind works like a threshing machine, constantly dissecting and magnifying every little thing. A classic over thinker, just with two competing operating systems.

He was essentially my ex’s evil, more intelligent twin, since the two were born just one day apart. I’m not surprised given how similar the phenotype overlap was, but the personality differences were like night and day. My conclusion was that crazy manifests in different dimensions, and some are only visible after extended socialization. He was eager to elaborate on his style of degenerate behaviour, explaining how for writing his book, he would method voice-over in dark alleys and scare the homeless folks, lol.

One thing Mike refused to tell me was why he stood outside the restaurant waiting for 30min, instead of sitting inside at a table. I feel like it was a sensitive topic so I didn’t probe further, but behind the answer I’m sure lies a master key of some sort.

The human mind is like the body in that according to acupuncture logic, the locations that produces pain are the key to unlocking energy blockages. It’s always the things that hurt us that reveal the sadness we all carry, just in varying amounts. I think Mike is aware of this on a subconscious level, because he kept asking me negative questions such as “what’s the most hurtful insult you ever got, and what’s the worst date you’ve been on?”

He deduced from my dating horror stories that me going to the washroom was a sign that I’m done with the date, and it became an ongoing joke where every time I went to the ladies’ room, I would promise to return.

I found him sitting on a bench, facing the ocean, mesmerized by the sun meeting the water, lost in thought. He looked so peaceful.

We didn’t walk much further along the beach because the gale had picked up considerably and my body couldn’t take the wind anymore. So we retraced back towards the city centre, but first took a stop at Kingyo, the legendary omakase hot-spot my ex-boss always raved about.

The interior was quaint and cute, and Mike remarked the wood panelling looked hand-cut, always a nice touch in our industrial age. I agreed, while also hiding my surprise that he could be so detail-oriented, since he completely missed the changes in stair design back at the hotel.

It was here that we had the most intimate conversation of the entire evening.

In between bites of the most delectable prawn tempura I ever had in my life, I saw him turn off the glamour for seconds at a time, revealing bits of the human beneath the sunny exterior. He drank sake (again), while I had barley tea, silently kicking myself for being unable to drink on a day when such a suitable drinking friend was present.

Maybe I’ll go see him in Portland some time, and we can get really un-sober.

We talked about relationships, how we endured COVID, and our convo flowed for so long I barely noticed we’re the only ones left at closing time. Neither of us checked our phones, because as far as we’re concerned, time didn’t exist.

But it did, because it’s suddenly last call for food, and we couldn’t stay any longer.

Mike was a great conversationalist. I didn’t have to carry any awkward silences, and he just knew where to steer the topic to make the interaction more fun, because he doesn’t like being bored. What he was doing is kind of like what I do with people more socially disabled than me. As charming as I think I am, he was much more so.

Every now and then, he would effusively glaze me in a half-serious manner. If it had been anyone else, I might’ve gotten annoyed, but because he says things so matter of factly, it gave the words a comically British halo that’s irresistibly flattering. I can see why he’s popular with the ladies.

Considering he’s a lightweight and doesn’t weigh much, I asked if he’s drunk and he said “no, talking to you sobered me up, you’re very stimulating.” I was caught off-guard by the compliment because as far as I’m concerned, I’m the most boring person you could ever talk to. Although for someone like him, I’m probably a grounding, stabilizing influence.

The guy was a real chaos goblin, but he was also very generous, and tipped like a king. Some of that confidence is innate, but I think part of it is also having a stable, well-off family background to lean on. After all, whether you consciously realize it or not, your roots never go away, and having good ones gives you a strong base to bounce back from if things get ugly.

We trekked slowly back to his hostel, and after checking out the interior, he was such a gentleman and offered to wait with me until the bus came. We hugged briefly and waved goodbye. I had a really nice time hanging out with him, and we got along well :)

~Yueyue

p.s. Vancouver boy got me lots of chocolate from Trader Joe’s, what a cutie.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Buy me a rose 🌹

I needed to follow my bliss, no matter what anyone else thinks.

That meant booking 2 months in Korea this summer, with stops in Busan and Jeju Island, as well as culinary hot-spots to satisfy the gochujang cravings in my veins. It’s gonna be a fun time, but I wish I could bring a guy with me on the roa…

Read more

That’s your cue to run away.

Still here? Feeling bold, I like it.

Read more

My dad is 5’6, which is below average in China, but keep in mind that he starved under the Mao regime, so it’s a miracle he’s still alive.

He’s also 120% autistic, which meant talking with him is extremely awkward unless he’s info dumping random facts about Science or th…

Read more

“Women can’t take an idea, an issue, pure. It has to be translated in terms they can understand as women.”

-Male magazine editors in 1960s

Or in other words, women miss my jokes, men don’t.

I’ve made fun of girls on Substack, and they don’t pick up on it because I didn’t say anything mean overtly. At first I thought it was a one-off, but repeated incident…

Read more

I thought he had a limp handshake and no social skills. 5’11 isn’t a bad height, but he carried himself so poorly it seemed like he was way shorter.

Although we got along, I kept my distance while he dated my best friend at the time. When they broke up two weeks later, we started being platoni…

Read more

It would’ve been pointless to try to run, and besides, I’m tired of running.

When the waves hit, it felt like I really perished, so great was the pain. Choking me. Breathless. If I couldn’t breathe, then that’s the end isn’t it? My under-oxygenated brain struggled to think clearly.

All the sorrows of the…

Read more

Yes, Cabin Boy (CB) is the creator of WBE.

All these think pieces are wrong, devoid of substance, because they’re just speculation about a hungry ghost.

I wanted the truth so I flew all the way to Medford, OR, to spend a week in a 1940s cabin with the real deal.

How I prepared:

• watch Evangelion

• read most of his blog and side-blog, so I don’t ask stupid questions

• be open-minded

I don’t think I would’ve been so invested in understanding him if we were just meeting for a casual coffee, but it felt disrespectful to not build at least a basic foundation since we’re gonna be spending so much time together.

This piece is incredibly painful to write, and it was never my intention after we met, but I can’t listen to people make up lies about him anymore. I’m sacrificing everything to tell the Truth about the man behind the curtain.

I hate myself for crying, and I don’t know why.

Give me a few minutes…

.

.

Ok, I’m back.

*sips water.

*one more.

Where do I even begin?

How I planned to murder him? The vital points to strike, the chemical dissolvent to buy (HCl in a plastic tub), and sedative research—done.

Or how I expected him to sell me to a human trafficker? I mean, it’s the perfect place to commit a crime, middle of nowhere, out of earshot if either of us screamed.

Given that a liver goes for millions on the black market, I’m surprised he hasn’t converted to the dark side—could be rolling in cash given how many opportunities he had for meeting young women in clandestine places.

Very extreme, I know, but a girl has to be prepared. Right?

Well, as you can see, I’m still very much alive, and so is he, so neither of us were as crazy as I expected. Low-key disappointed he didn’t activate my kill switch, but that’s okay.

This whole thing was a high risk, high reward bet. A very fitting event given my usual proclivities.

Of course, I didn’t tell the US customs officer who dragged me into Secondary Processing doubts of both my and his sanity. This short, stocky but very jolly spaniard named Paraiso (paradise) asked me endless questions on why I’m going to middle of nowhere Etna for a week.

So I told him the full scoop.

“I know this sounds crazy, but there’s this guy, kind of a notorious figure on Substack, and we’re gonna have a writer’s retreat”. I stammered with full innocence and continued, “I don’t know his real name, or what he looks like, but I do have a phone number.”

I paused, anxiously scanning his tanned face for signs of disbelief at this fabulous but real story.

He was highly amused by my honest but wild tale, and asked, “is he special to you?” I was caught off-guard by the question, and quickly turned away red-faced, “I don’t know yet…”

Paraiso laughed. “Ok no worries. But how do you know he’s not a bad guy?”

I grinned monkey-style. “Just a feeling, but if he kidnaps me…at least you guys have a lead on his cell #, so please come rescue me okay?”

“No problem Miss, we’ll check-in with you if you miss your flight home.”

Before I left, I had to promote our blogs, because sales never sleeps:

My first impression of him was coloured by my fatigue from the long day of travel, with frequent delays and less than ideal interactions with the lovely airport staff who rummaged through my belongings with zero finesse, so I can’t say I would’ve made the same assessment if we had met in different circumstances.

The first thing I noticed was his eyes, they shone like vipers on that cloudless night, wrapped up in a story of mischief and darkness. You couldn’t tell what he would do next, but only that it would be exciting. His energy was pure, ironic considering he’s supposedly a drug addict, but I trusted the vibes enough to go home with him. That was a leap of faith validated by my own intuition about this man’s real character, and the next week proved my instincts right.

This enigmatic man had a dark crown; the true colour was verified in the morning under sunlight, when I realized it was more of a medium brunette. The thing that surprised me the most was that he had straight hair. For some reason, his deviant ways struck me as irreconcilable with such obedient follicles. If the biological predicts the spiritual, then maybe there’s more to him than just WBE.

Two dancing blue whirlpools fixed their target on me, the kind of frigid warmth that can only be seen below Antarctic ice. Looking into them was like reaching for a great unknown in seas uncharted, kind of creepy and fascinating at the same time, if that’s your thing.

The juxtaposition of his soul windows to his corporeal profile was poles apart.

Under the soft glow of the cabin light, I felt ethereal movements where he would almost glide, diffused, like he’s not quite existing in this realm. CB wasn’t a fan of that one harsh, LED lamp, and I’m not surprised given his gentle nature.

One of the first things he said when we stepped inside was that I can use anything I wanted. “Anything?” I teased in a sing-song voice. “Ye-es” came the firm reply. He’s such a flirt.

There were many times during that drive home when I thought we wouldn’t make it. Such irregular mountain roads: curving, winding, narrow, one-way, and let’s not forget it was pitch-black outside—mostly unlit. Every tight bend when he made a screeching halt to avoid flipping over, I would hold my breath and pray. The only consolation was that it would make a good story, posthumously, and probably immortalize us both in Substack’s collective imagination.

However, as erotic as that may be for writers like us, I sternly reminded him that “I would like to live to see tomorrow”, and his only retort was “YOLO”.

Ah, this was gonna be a fun week.

Not gonna lie, night 1 was pretty hot: he was much more pushy than I expected, but somehow confusingly reserved? A cuter, but stronger Bazarov.

This is the story of arrogance meeting brilliance.

Read more

She looked miserable, and my father was the same—grimly stoic. It wasn’t what you typically expect lovebirds to exude on what’s supposed to be the happiest day of their lives.

It’s surprising how long they stayed together, when the end was written on their …

Read more

A few, due to biological frailty, have unbearable menses, and it’s only extreme pain that motivates them to seek a cure, and they do find it in chinese apothecaries.

The rest, however, suffer in silence.

But if they have a man, they complain, moan and bewail the gods for cursing their existence as a woma…

Read more

You could check out Target for their doormat collection.

Nobody’s home so they look outwards for sustenance to fill what…

Read more

I’m deathly afraid of giving bad advice, so here’s the bare-bones of what I have seen working out for guys on their skirt-chasing game.

1. Level up your basic status

This means working out, skincare, diet, having hobbies, social connections.

This is honestly 80% of the work, and it’s boring, and you’ve heard the same advice from others, but it’s the skeleton behind the whole franchise so I have to mention it.

It’s like the lowest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Even if you’re super charming, the funniest guy in the room, she won’t sleep with you if the physical attraction isn’t there. A bloated face with acne and jiggly arms will diminish your chances of landing chicks, it’s just the way it goes. When you’re heavier your BO also worsens, so that’s another thing that makes dating harder.

When I was getting to know this guy, even though his face card was a solid 8 with clear skin, he was definitely out of shape and smelled rancid. I couldn’t run away fast enough.

The nice thing with investing in your physical fitness is that it provides the foundation for building mental strength as well. You start to value yourself more, and that self-respect will translate into her valuing you more too. A little narcissism in a man is like a well-placed garnish on a dish.

So pour time and effort into your body, and it will pay endless dividends, not just in dating but across all areas of life. If you don’t have the discipline to take care of yourself, then you really deserve to die alone without any chance of copulation. Live like you mean it.

Read more

China is irrevocably techn…

Read more

Ok, piggy.

The moderate position on the weight issue is that obesity is bad, but belly rolls are okay, yet this hasn’t slowed down the fatness epidemic across the US. On a recent trip to small town Etna, California, I noticed that rural Americans were just as heavy as their city counterparts, despite the smaller population sample size.

The obesity pandem…

Read more

We met in a parking lot at 9:44pm in front of Trader Joe’s, and I had 2min to decide if he’s trustworthy enough to be my companion in isolation.

He seemed alright.

Straight dark hair coupled with an intense gaze that seized whatever object it focussed on, like a thousand-yard stare charged with red…

Read more

It wasn’t a decision lightly made. If we look at the pros/cons chart below, you can clearly see that she’s gonna have a better life without me:

Pros:

• Backyard

• A dog sibling to play with

• Loving family, lots of attention

Con:

• Missing me

But it’s also true that cost benefit analysis on matters of the heart are made after the issue has …

Read more

He thinks the fastest route from A to B is a straight line, and it is 99% of the time, but not in romance. The true way is going from A to Z, stop for gas at C, circle around D, and then, only then, can you make your way to B. Optimizing Google maps but for the m…

Read more

Akrobaten bridge, Oslo, Norway

11:53am

I was the only person on this pedestrian crossing, a massively white structure interlaced with beams like metal strings. For the next glorious 7 mins nobody else came. Fi-di vibes but more space for elegance. No cars allowed either. Just drinking in the nor…

Read more