A Jump to Heaven's Gate

After hearing the old man curse at him, and understanding a few things the locals had said about his personal appearance (him being fat, having a big nose) he started to regret learning Chinese...

He tried not to let it upset him, thinking it must be similar to America, how in hicktowns, parts of hillbilly Kentucky, people were ugly and racist but in big cities like Louisville, or metropolises like New York City, LA people were more educated and way cooler, generally. It's probably like that anywhere, China included, he thought.

And he wouldn't let it faze him anymore, dammit!

Dammit, he was going to make this work, score a high-paying job in Shanghai or Beijing, and he became even more determined to study Chinese, and his learning only accelerated, being immersed in it like he was, and shortly he knew enough characters to partially read newspaper articles, and he began reading news sites on the Chinese internet.

What he saw, though, online, on the Chinese internet, shocked him. Nearly every other national news article was about America or Japan. About how those countries were conspiring to fuck over China somehow, preparing for war, or attempting to steal an island or other territory, not just Taiwan, which Mainland Chinese had long thought belonged to them and demanded to have returned from America, but the Mainland Chinese also claimed several tiny islands belonging to other countries, as well as a huge chunk of international seas.

He'd noticed the official Chinese news agency, Xinhua (which translated almost to "Newspeak") paid special attention to America's failings, especially mass shootings, religiously reporting any shooting in America, which might have been the reason why so many of his students asked him if in America "everyone has a gun."

As a person who'd become disillusioned and bitter with America, he didn't mind shitting on it, himself, but to be off in a faraway land, and to discover how openly hostile the Chinese State media was towards his country of origin, really gave him a sick feeling.

Having researched China's economy, he'd seen how America and Japan were China's largest trading partners and how much foreign investment in China had lifted so many out of poverty. It boggled his mind that a country so dependent and such a beneficiary of global trade would have such antipathy for the nations it conducted trillions of dollars of trade with...

But his mind was really thrown for a loop when he read the online comments that followed the articles.

Open hatred, venom towards America and open calls from Chinese netizens for America to be attacked, for war, for American cities to be nuked.

Outright racist language against foreigners, especially blacks, which was befuddling considering how much the Chinese were into the NBA. And it wasn't only a few nutjobs spewing such bigotry, it was thousands upon thousands of comments, endless streams of racist posts, none of which were censored or deleted, the whole thing making even a guy from Kentucky cringe.

Again, Taylor thought that maybe this was just trolls or idiots like on YouTube videos' comments or freakish right-wing extremists like Breitbart. He again figured he wouldn't find a lot of those people in a big city like Beijing or Shanghai, and that's where he'd go anyway and where he'd do amazing things after he'd learned enough Chinese.

He was going to land a job at a big Chinese company, make fistfuls of cash, live the "Chinese Dream." Nothing would stop him.

Every morning, he'd eat breakfast listening to Chinese language learning videos; afternoons were spent upping his calligraphy skills, sitting perched over his desk, with his pen to paper, copying Chinese characters, attuned to their radicals and strokes. And every evening, he'd spend hours reading Chinese children's books, reading the pinyin, perfecting and practicing his tones, and then afterwards he'd have conversations with himself in the mirror, saying what he knew or learned that day or reading his learning exercises, dialogues aloud.

And his life got even better when he met a girl, one of his students, called "Apple", a petite, dark-skinned Han Chinese lovely from Gansu province. The raven-haired beauty with a slender body, moon face, crooked smile and sexy librarian glasses. Apple spoke excellent English, which helped their courtship bloom, and she soon enough became Taylor's first serious girlfriend.

He'd been having her over to his apartment, and, after only a couple weeks, she was living with him there...

Taylor imagined marrying her, taking her to Beijing. Them in a ritzy high-rise. Them with kids. Him making fistfuls of cash, speaking perfect Mandarin and working his way up to being a high ranking executive at a company that bought other companies and shit like that. Him on a private jet... Him featured on Chinese TV... Him living his Chinese Dream...

But that whole narrative took a different turn.

When a virus appeared in Wuhan...

八

It started off as an obscure story he saw posted in a China expat group online.

A mysterious pneumonia that'd broken out in Wuhan, near a "wet" market, a market selling live animals for slaughter.

He'd written it off, initially, thinking it was no big deal. There often were small-scale viral breakouts in China, especially related to food, food poisoning. But then, this one, of course, turned out differently, and it snowballed, became an epidemic, and nearly the whole of China, including his area of Beijing, was swiftly locked down; the country transformed into a 1-billion-person prison.

Forced to stay in his apartment, 23 and a half hours per day (allowed out only for a necessary trip to the campus grocery store or for takeout from the cafeteria), and on some days not allowed out at all, made to stay inside for 24 hours a day, his apartment started to seem smaller and smaller, the walls closing in on him.

His girlfriend was forced to leave sooner than anticipated and was removed, in tears, by campus police because she wasn't registered to live in the domicile.

After she returned home, she came clean to her parents about her relationship with Taylor, and her father mercilessly beat and slapped her, bloodying her nose and threatening to kill her if she made him lose any more face and commanding her to never see that "white trash" again...

Losing his girlfriend was a true punch in the dick, and Taylor plunged hard into despair. He missed her deeply, his Apple, her soft touch, her smell, the egg-fried rice she'd cooked him, and how she'd warmed his bed at night, the way her little feet tickled at his legs underneath the sheets...

Losing his Apple, along with the malaise of being locked down pretty much 24/7, led Taylor back to the bottle, in a severe way, after Taylor discovered that although it tasted like wet shit, baijiu was super high in alcohol content and got him sloppy ass drunk.

Not only was his personal life fucked, but things across China deteriorated diplomatically when a theory was put forth, espoused not just by a freak on the internet, but by foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, that the virus was brought to China, purposely, to destroy China, by the US military, and all over China, foreigners were targeted, fired from jobs, evicted from apartments (videos emerged of Africans in Guangzhou forcibly removed from their homes, turned homeless, made to sleep rough), and foreigners were stigmatized, refused entry into grocery stores, and there were scattered reports of violent attacks against foreigners in China.

The hatred, incitement towards foreigners in China that was typically only online, priorly, was now spilling into the public space.

So Taylor, sipping on baijiu, decided it was time to bounce, at least for the time being, and put his China Dream on hold.

Several neighboring Asian countries had already closed their borders to foreigners, and flights back to America were few and far between or outrageously pricey, but Taylor did see that Thailand was still open. Plenty of flights going there, even as China had been locked down.

Taylor booked a ticket and boarded a half-full plane to Bangkok, feeling like an escaped convict as he passed through the airport full of police in facemasks and medical personnel in spacesuits.

九

When Taylor arrived in Bangkok, he wondered why he hadn't been there the whole time.

There was sun, palm trees, and smoking hot babes everywhere, with bigger tits and asses, and the place was sunny, relaxed, and unlike most of the Chinese, who only talked with their faces, the Thais smiled and were friendly, genuinely so, without being simpering, and even people working at 7-Eleven spoke English fluently or knew enough English to get by.

There were foreigners, bars, parties everywhere, and the foreigners there weren't zombies like in Beijing. They were fucking chill and there to have fun, and on his first night he'd hooked up with a Heidi-looking German backpacker girl he met at the airport and they had a wild and kinky fuck, a perfect rebound fuck... The Euro-chick letting him do things no other girl would...

Seriously, why hadn't he been here all along? he wondered over a breakfast slice of pizza from 7-Eleven.

But then he started looking around at teaching jobs in Thailand, disappointingly discovering that the overabundance of existing foreigners, the sagging Thai economy and hordes of cheaper Filipino teachers had resulted in pittance wages, many teaching jobs in Thailand offering only around $700 to $1000 per month and requiring far longer hours than he'd been working.

Looking at the job ads online sent him into a rage. Like, $1000 a month? For someone as smart as him? $1000 a month? For a doctor of neuroscience? For a PhD? Fuck that! That wasn't him. He'd wait out the situation in China. He could still go to Shanghai, make tons of money. This pandemic will pass. Someone would find a cure. Things would simmer down...

But he found there would be no fast fix, and that the situation in China for foreigners just got worse and worse, with more reports of violence and discrimination and soon enough, foreigners were banned from entering China, indefinitely, even those with residence permits and work permits.

Then the coronavirus spread to Thailand, not as severely as other nations, though still enough to close most non-essential businesses.

With nowhere to go, nothing to do, not able to afford a flight back to America, Taylor began to sink deeper into desolation.

Confined to his $7 per night, windowless room in a rundown guesthouse near Khao San Road, he was drinking more than ever.

He'd become afraid of sleep, afraid of the recent nightmare cycle that'd plagued him, the nightmares of naked women in surgical masks brandishing kitchen knives, the naked women chasing him through Jewish graveyards, the graveyards with mutilated tiger carcasses hanging by nooses from fir trees...

To avoid the strong arms of sleep he'd take Yaba pills and spend much of his time at night alone up on the silvered roof of his guesthouse, his limbs feeling heavy, and there he'd smoke cigarettes, and gulp red bull mixed with rum, and he'd sit slouched on a plastic stool, watching cockroaches, lizards, rats in the alley below, how they scurried up and down the pastel ledges and angles and crevices of the neighboring buildings, the dilapidated buildings.

The buildings that were nothing but stacks of boxes and levels and open doors and windowsills. And he'd stare out at the flapping clothes hanging humid, hanging over the iron bars, cages over the windows.

And he'd sniff at the mélange of Bangkok's scents, the fried noodles, the acrid diesel exhaust, and there, on that roof, he'd listen to his ghosts and to the screaming motorbikes passing the void...

十

The four walls of his tiny guesthouse room started to close in on him like his apartment had before.

The white of the paint was all he could see.

Though he wasn't sure he'd ever return to China, he kept up his Chinese studies, if nothing else out of obstinance and spite, and he would try to have conversations again with the mirror. But it was useless. Staring at his reflection, his face was either distorted or stiff as a mask, and its lines, especially those on his forehead, told of age.

To study Chinese, he'd mostly been reading Chinese news, avoiding the politically charged stuff, virus stuff and comment sections and had looked into more local news articles and had been developing a fixation with traffic accidents, of which there were a daily deluge, a consistent supply...

Car accidents. Bus accidents. Buses plunging into rivers. Cars hitting pedestrians. Trucks sideswiping motorcyclists. The accidents involving motorcyclists were the most spectacular, the combination of high speeds and velocity, the motorcycle riders being propelled, flying acrobatically, high into the air, crashing into somersaults on the pavement, their forms ending contorted and crushed and twisted like blood and bone pretzels.

There were thousands of such videos on the Chinese internet, many featuring musical accompaniment, usually racy classical music, and Taylor would spend his hours watching them on endless loops.

Drinking about a 70 cl bottle of Thai whiskey or rum per day, for the first time, Taylor thought of killing himself. Ending it all.

And once he thought of suicide, he stopped fearing sleep, and he found he'd been enjoying his slumber, having pleasant dreams, again in the graveyards, but these dreams were of sunny days in graveyards, of himself naked, himself walking leisurely by deer that were eating, gnawing on the green grass matting the soil around the gravestones, the happy animals smiling up at him, while chewing on the hair of the dead.

Taylor loved the carefree state sleep brought him, and he'd considered how pleasing death, the "big sleep" would be. Never having to worry about anything again. And he wondered what would happen after he died, if there was something better than this.

He'd never been suicidal before. But now it was all he could think of. He thought of ways to kill himself, and jumping was the first that came to mind. Jumping.

Jumping from a building, a tall building, thinking the harder he plunged, smacked and clapped to the concrete, the more powerful it'd push his soul and could launch him into whatever dimension awaited him next.

Daily visions of jumping entered his drunken thoughts, his drunken daydreams. And instead of car crash videos, he became fixated on jumpers, videos of jumpers, 9/11 videos, Faces of Death videos, and he wondered where the jumpers had ended up, which dimension.

The classic Van Halen song Jump showed up on his YouTube playlist, and he'd listen to it, over and over...

Might as well... Might as well...

十一

Watching the Van Halen Jump video, he believed there were secret messages in the video, a message, a code, a cipher, something in Eddie Van Halen's wry smile or David Lee Roth's dancing and Roth's acrobatic dropkicks, Roth's mouthing of "Jump" at the video's end, and Taylor believed that the song was leading him to another place, another world, that Bangkok was a portal to something else, a higher plane, and if he jumped, fell hard enough to the pavement, he really could force his soul to exit his body and nudge it to the next realm.

And he pondered the next realm, slamming spicy shot after shot of Thai whiskey, thinking of the gate, the beautiful gate, leading to the Candyland, the Willy Wonka paradise that must await him behind the gate...

On YouTube he searched for gates, hoping to unlock the code, and he found a video from the group Heaven's Gate, its leader Do, and, enraptured, Taylor heeded the message.

He realized it was a sign, an omen and invitation. Do had contacted him, through time and space and was attempting to wave Taylor to the realm, that Taylor jumping would lead him to the comet Hale-Bopp, the comet Do and his flock had boarded to escape Earth and Earth's crises. Taylor realized that the coronavirus was a catalyst, an invitation, a prodding, a sign to escape and let the Earth wash the species.

Once Taylor sucked dry the whiskey bottle, it all made sense. He knew it was time. And he strapped on his Nikes and stumbled up to the guesthouse's roof.

十二

Up on the roof, standing near the ledge, Taylor saw out through the swampy heat of the Bangkok night, swung his head, slowly, from side to side and gazed out at the neon lit skyscrapers, the buildings' lantern eyes, thinking how one or two of the buildings were in on it, how one or two of those metal spirals of lights were likely rockets ready to blast off and glide into the galaxy, cross the gate...

One or two of the buildings probably had jumpers like him, ready to, or having already jumped and joined Heaven's Gate. Graduated to the next realm. Taylor could see the jumpers smiling and waving at him before jumping, diving gloriously, flying like swans...

Taylor understood. He knew he wouldn't be a football star. He wouldn't be a famous neuroscientist. He wouldn't be a rich businessman in Shanghai. And it was for the better. Humans. The Earth. It was all fucked. Whether by disease, war, a supervolcano, an asteroid or the sun burning out, humans were fucked. The planet would die. Everyone on Earth would die.

But not him. He would escape. This was it, his passage, his route, his tunnel through the galaxy. He'd go. This was it. This was the great thing he was destined to do. He would escape. He would no longer suffer humanity.

He would no longer be a human or a prisoner of Planet Earth. He'd be on a new planet. He'd have a new body. Knowing this, knowing his destiny, knowing the TRUTH, saw him in the most euphoric state he'd ever been...

Taylor, his legs turning into snakes, cranked up Jump in his earbuds, and he sparked up a menthol cigarette, sucked in the minty cool smoke, let the icy smoke fill his lungs up like balloons, rounded his lips and exhaled deeply, shooting a funnel cloud of smoke that morphed into a misty form, a form of an eyeless, gaunt face that hovered in front of him and shrieked: "I will show you sleep in a handful," and then dissolved into sparkly red dust.

Taylor peered below, where the red dust had fallen, and saw a large crowd of foreigners, all with their arms raised or outstretched, some in Jesus poses, some with arms swaying above their heads, some motioning at Taylor to come forward, and the opening keyboard riff of Jump looped and played over and over, and Taylor noticed Do down there with the foreigners, Do in long black robes, beaming with his big hazel eyes, smiling so happily, and he was also motioning Taylor forth, and everyone down there looked so peaceful, so post-human...

Stepping closer to the ledge, Taylor hummed "might as well..." and was about to... When he stopped in his tracks at the voice calling to him from behind.

It was a female voice. The voice of an angel. A sexy southern belle, a Scarlett O'Hara type accent, a drawl that was sweeter than sugar, a voice more beautiful than any sound he'd ever heard before.

Taylor walked backwards a few steps, pulled his phone from his jean pocket, clicked pause on the VH.

Then he craned his neck around and saw a stunningly gorgeous girl, a ravishing 6'5 Nordic goddess, a taller, identical twin of a young, 2010 Taylor Swift, the leggy blond beauty in coal-black short shorts and matching black titty-tight Van Halen red/yellow logo T-shirt, and she was wearing fiery red flip flops and several multi-colored thread bracelets and anklets, and her long curly golden hair was like a halo, her immaculate hair flowing teasingly in the touch of the humid night's breezes...

"Do you have a light?" the beauty asked loudly but patiently, a radiant smile twisting across her thin red lips, her smile so divine it restored a feeling deep inside his battered soul, a feeling he thought he'd lost inside himself...