White Buddha: ESL, Melvin in China

"Wasn't he at a high school in Lanzhou where they made him sit in an office, from 9 to 5, every day, during the summer, when no students were around, with nothing to do, just sit there, and then later the administration tried to force him to join a construction crew outside, paving a road?"

"I saw him post how he went to this training center in a far-flung province near the border with Russia. He was the only white guy in a town of one million people."

"The teacher at the training center before him, Derek, this tall handsome white guy, was a local celebrity, and everywhere he went, people asked if he knew Derek or where was Derek, and if he could play guitar, sing like Derek, and how much it fucking pissed him off hearing about Derek all the time."

"Then his boss asked him to sing and dance during his lessons and he spazzed and cursed out the boss and got beat down by a bunch of bao'ans and passersby and was in the hospital for a while with his jaw wired shut."

"I worked in a small town in Japan that had only one other white guy. First time we met he had a go at me, jabbed his finger in my chest, saying how 'HE was the only one allowed to be a white person here.'"

"His honorary White Monkey status infringed upon. Hashtag Fuck You."

"Oftentimes bumping into another foreigner in Asia, especially in a place with few to none, is a conversation starter in itself..."

"At least warrants the polite hello, 'I'm a foreigner so are you nod'..."

"Hey, that Russian border town place, Derek guy, dancing, mob beating thing, I thought it was Thomas that happened to..."

"AIDS Thomas? The skeleton looking, jaundice, gaunt motherfucker?"

"Nah, not AIDS Thomas, the other Thomas, the one who talked to himself."

"Schizophrenic Thomas, dude with the nose hair. I remember him..."

"I thought Canadian Thomas was the one with the nose hair..."

"Canadian Thomas? Wasn't he the one who got extorted by a girl he'd been dating? Like she wanted $20,000 from him after he refused to marry her..."

"Then her uncles started showing up to the school, threatening him, and the girl broke into his apartment, claiming that she'd saved a condom, and had impregnated herself and would press rape charges and she bit his ear when he tried to throw her out and he put her in a headlock, flung her out the door, and was later arrested for assault and spent a week in jail and afterwards did a midnight run."

"Yeah, Canadian Thomas was my neighbor. I saw the cops knocking on his door after he bailed... He fucked one of his college students, too, and broke her heart, was telling her 'she's the one' and all that, took her virginity. I hear he's in Korea now..."

"I remember Canadian Thomas saying how he'd taught with that Laowhy86, C-Milk, YouTube vlogger guy, at a college in Inner Mongolia, and that C-Milk would fuck tons of the students, and the two of them had a contest to see who could fuck the most students that semester."

"Canadian Thomas talked about fucking students all the time... Even loudly in the hallway of our apartment building... And you couldn't get away from him either. He'd corner you, start talking, and just not stop."

"Schizophrenic Thomas was like that too. He'd corner you in the hall, talk and talk, not let you go... I did all I could to avoid him..."

"What happened to Schizophrenic Thomas? Where's he now?"

"I'm not sure."

"I know AIDS Thomas started a restaurant in the Philippines and had gotten married to a Filipina lady, but she divorced him the day after she got her Green Card."

"So then he went back to Colorado and was working in a factory. Or living in the woods, in a tree, I think."

"No, Melvin was working in a factory. A packing plant or something. He's been back and forth between China and Portland several times."

"Melvin got his ass beat by security guards. I know he did. Somewhere."

"It was one of those times when a foreigner hits on a Chinese girl in a bar or public place and the local males in the vicinity begin slapping and kicking at him."

"It's never one on one. Ask Wendell Brown."

"Mainland China bars, dark and evil places..."

"I'm shocked Melvin didn't wind up like Wendell Brown... Melvin would go apeshit, constantly, in public places, people on the street, random people, especially bicyclists or motorcyclists who passed too closely to him."

"Which is everybody."

"Or people not covering their mouths while sneezing. Or picking their noses..."

"He really fucking hated when people smoked in elevators. He'd go ballistic over that."

"Pretty much every China thing, he'd spaz out over, but he stayed, year after year."

"He never developed the healthy love/hate relationship with China most longtime expats have..."

"I made the mistake of telling him to chill one day when he screamed at a random bicyclist. He went off on me about 'lecturing him' and we stopped hanging out, but were cordial, after that... He lived across the hall from me and I'd see him and hear him going in and out of his apartment, at all hours, always slamming the door."

"I remember seeing him winding up like a pitcher and throwing imaginary baseballs in the hallway."

"He'd throw imaginary baseballs or shoot imaginary basketballs at random times when I talked with him..."

"Last time I saw Melvin was at the cafeteria... He snuck up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned around, he was grunting and twitching, crouched down, arms spread, in a defensive basketball stance..."

"He never slept. Seriously, I don't think he slept at all..."

"Didn't someone he raged at tell him to learn to meditate or do yoga?"

"It was me. I told him Buddhism or Sam Harris. Both preferably."

"That must have really driven him mad. He told me he fucking hated Buddhism."

"His apartment was so filthy. Way past normal single guy, bachelor shit. I don't understand how someone could live like that."

"You'd think he'd be cleaner, too. He'd go off about discipline, posting quotes from David Goggins on his WeChat. Then he was overweight and living in a pigsty. I can't understand it."

"He'd always come by my apartment unannounced. Just banging on the door. Police knocks."

"I wouldn't let him inside my apartment. I'd be afraid to..."

"He often complained to me about none of the other teachers having any 'social skills' and our school being a 'social desert'..."

"He alienated everyone by the time he left. I don't think he had any friends, anywhere."

"One of his students told me that, during a lecture, he asked his students if they could help him make friends with local people. They told him 'no', laughed, and thought it was a joke. But I think he really meant it..."

"A class I shared with him told me Melvin misspelled words on the board quite frequently and would shout down any student who'd mention it or attempt to correct it..."

"Another student of his said she'd politely suggested he relax a little in class because his 'enthusiasm was scaring a few of her classmates.'"

"So next time he had that class, he demanded to know 'who had any problems with his enthusiasm', asking anyone who had a problem to raise their hand. None did. They remained quiet. And later he said to me how annoying it was that students rarely spoke in his classes."

"Really can't see why they didn't want to help him make local friends... A headscratcher that..."

"Probably didn't help either that he'd teach students curse words, literally snatch phones from their hands, and yell and curse at them, start arguments, and hit on females, send strange messages on WeChat..."

"Those aren't qualities that'll endear you to most people, no..."

"He seemed to desperately want friends, seek connections with others. Like he'd talk to random people, strike up conversations and invite 'em to eat, coffee, but then there'd always be a falling out, he'd flip over something."

"And all his social media posts about him being 'lonely.'"

"He always needed to be the center of attention."

"He was easily triggered by fat-shaming. Think he'd be used to it after so long in China."

"Lots of expats in China lose weight because they get so tired of being relentlessly called a fatty by the locals..."

"He sure said 'bro' a lot. Completed nearly every sentence with it."

"That fist bump thing he did was so 2012."

"Constantly snapping so many selfies, that guy. Always of him running, too, how many kilometers he did that day. Maps of his running routes. Posting shit like 'While you were off in dreamland snoozing, I was running a half-marathon.'"

"He never slept."

"That would explain the puffy eyelids."

"He never flossed. His teeth were gunky and gross as fuck..."

"He always wore the same two shirts."

"Those faded Jordan brand t-shirts and raggedy old Nike basketball shorts every day, even to his classes, and even in the dampest, coldest days of winter."

"The ayis always shuddered when they saw him wearing those shorts in the cold."

"Where do you think he found that neon green vest, you know, the type traffic cops wear?"

"Stole it off somebody he killed."

"He'd wear that neon vest running through campus, with these bright orange shoes he had, and his big ass bald head all bobbing up and down... You could see him coming from a mile away."

"Like a rhinoceros. A rhinoceros attacked by a paintbrush."

"Damn, he ran a lot. Walked so fast down the street too."

"He was always gonna get 'ripped.'"

"I think he said he used to be about 300 pounds, though. What was he like, 5-7 and 240?"

"It was mostly on the belly."

"A pretty squat, muscly fuck, otherwise..."

"Could have been, should have been a lumberjack."

"He looked like a lumberjack."

"Lumberjack Shrek."

"I never saw him without his phone in his hand. Dude was on it all the time and got so pissed if you'd didn't 'like' his posts on social media or reply to his texts quickly enough."

"He was always pissed off..."

"Our building managers, those ayis, despised him. He was arguing with them nearly every day, and they'd ignore him in the hallways when they saw him... And then he'd get mad that they ignored him..."

"Same with the office staff... He'd fight with them, too, over the littlest things, like how a secretary rolled her eyes at him or wasn't friendly enough... He'd show up to the office once a week or so, airing his latest list of grievances..."

"He had a crush on this secretary there, a married lady, and he was messaging her daily, trying to have her come to his apartment or buy her dinner, and he was so upset when she declined his invitations. Posted on his WeChat that people in China are 'incapable of normal social relations.'"

"This other admin, this pretty, tall lady, who he also flirted with, had to get her boyfriend to tell Melvin to leave her alone and later Melvin and her boyfriend almost came to blows..."

"He once got in a shouting match with a grad student intern over the office staff being tired of Melvin always losing his apartment key... Later he tried to date that same grad student and got mad when she turned him down and asked him to stop flirting with her..."

"He'd hit on all the ladies at our school, relentlessly, random women on the street..."

"Pretty much everyone at the shops on campus couldn't stand him. The women most of all. He was always using broken Chinese, the same couple phrases, to try to pick them up. His go-to pickup line was asking if she was a 'chir huo' (a foodie)..."

"But when he said it, he mangled the tones and made it sound like 'che huo' (a car accident). They'd awkwardly giggle, and he never got their WeChat."

"They called him 'White Buddha' because of his bald head and big belly."

"His students called him that too."

"It was a running joke around campus."

"Really a good thing his Chinese was so shit. Think of how many more fights and confrontations he'd have been in if he knew what the local people were saying."

"Seriously, never learn Chinese. One guy I used to work with had left teaching, went into business, was making bank, but eventually left after he learned enough Chinese. Said China is way better when you don't know what people are saying. The dude got laid a lot too..."

"Shit, even Melvin got laid from time to time. Amazingly."

"Sure did. He hit Tinder and Tan Tan hard."

"Told me his strategy was to machine gun swap on every profile and carpet-bomb dick pics to hundreds of girls..."

"Said sometimes Chinese chicks would reply, saying they thought he'd be bigger."

"They think all white dudes have porn star dicks."

"Must be like a black dude with a smallish dick. Chick pulls his pants down, expecting a hog, is unpleasantly surprised..."

"Are there black dudes with small dicks? I've never heard of one..."

"I've not seen enough black penises to say. Porn and hearsay are my only reference..."

"Whatever the case, Melvin did get ass."

"But he'd only pull these really large ladies."

"I'm not hating. Some people like the BBW. Cushion for the pushing."

"And some ladies in their fifties..."

"I think he's the only white guy in Asia who ever fucked a lady 20 years older instead of 20 years younger."

"I don't think he ever had a girlfriend. Maybe the only white guy to stay in China longer than a year and not have one steady girlfriend for like at least a month or two."

"A Mongolian lady he'd spent a weekend with wouldn't return his calls... I told him that maybe she just didn't like him and he should move on, find another, plenty of fish, you know, and he got legitimately pissed, asking, in all seriousness, how it was possible for a girl not to like him... Thought he was going to physically attack me. Never talked much to him after that..."

"Honestly, I'm not sure he ever had a long-term girlfriend anywhere..."

"That one Russian chick, wasn't she his girl? She was hot."

"She looked like a hooker."

"Nah, supposedly she was a businesswoman."

"And she ghosted him after one weekend."

"He was broken up after that. Had a panic attack. Had a student bring him to hospital, got a CAT scan, reckoned it was a heart attack. They sorted him with psych meds."

"Think he said he'd had a panic attack like that at another school... Was freaking out, on about how, if he died, no one would know, no one would find him... Had a CAT scan then too..."

"Didn't he have a thyroid thing?"

"Yeah, this big lump on the back of his head, atop his neck. Kinda like a tumor. Scary, that."

"What the fuck is a thyroid? How do I know if I have one?"

"ESL teachers don't have thyroids."

"Was his thyroid what made him so... animated... all the time and quick to rage?"

"A rage-aholic maybe."

"He'd really wear you out. Being around him for more than a couple minutes was totally exhausting."

"He was an alpha-male. And proud to be an alpha. Talked about it with everything, 'Gotta be the alpha, bro.'"

"As a kid he said he was bullied relentlessly and was on Adderall from age 10."

"Everyone in his, what he called, 'white trash' hometown picked on him. His stepfather threw a glass of milk at him and always called him a 'fag' because he liked reading."

"He said his mom was married six times and fucked an 18-year-old student of hers."

"It was probably him..."

"He liked reading, really? We were talking lesson plans and he didn't know what syntax was..."

"I saw him posting about making outlines for short stories. Said he was going to be a writer..."

"He posted a poem once about how he was pissing sitting down..."

"In Melvin's apartment he had stacks and stacks of books, classic novels, Infinite Jest, top-notch, cream of the crop literature, many of which I'd read, but when I asked about them, he'd read none of them. Not one. At all."

"He was from Portland and had never read Fight Club. Or ANYTHING by Chuck Palahniuk. How the fuck does that happen?"

"He was no alpha-male."

"An alpha doesn't call himself an alpha."

"His becoming an alpha story. That was classic. Inspirational. He should do a public speaking tour, like Jordan Peterson."

"I never heard his becoming an alpha story."

"He'd be dramatic telling that one."

"So one day he finally fought back against his childhood bullies. Snapped. Bludgeoned some kid, picked up a math book and smashed it over the kid's face, again and again, and, after that, he got into self-help audiobooks, PUA forums, and alpha-male websites."

"Then he found his swagger."

"Bro..."

"One time he came by my apartment, unannounced, late at night, crying. He was on about how he'd never be a father, never be married, never even owned a suit..."

"Not sure it matters so much, the whole marriage, kids thing. Like can you really leave a legacy? Does it matter so much..."

"Just think, where we sit, here, this whole planet, Earth, the solar system, fucking everything, everything will someday be gone... Swallowed by the sun, a black hole, incinerated by gamma rays, a neutron star, a mushroom cloud, a supervolcano, humanity overtaken by AI, the CCP, killer robots... Global warming... Us all bashed into oblivion by an asteroid or a comet..."

"The whole concept of time is flawed."

"There's matter from the Big Bang in your DNA."

"Nihilism is the only truth."

"There's no such thing as death, really."

"There was no such thing as Melvin. We imagined him. A collective delusion."

"Oh no, Melvin was real. Never told anyone this..."

"But after a big mass shooting, I can't remember which one, he confessed to having planned a school shooting attack himself and being into mass killers, that he understood them. That he thought of going back to his high school, with an AR-15, bushmaster rifle, the kind from Sandy Hook, him gunning down everyone, his footprints in their blood."

"Or maybe he'd hijack a plane and crash it into his high school. But then he started laughing about it, and I'm still not sure if it was a sick joke or not. I hope it was a joke, like the Louis CK, Parkland kid thing."

"As long as he's not jerking off in front of people..."

"I know he jerked off in front of someone. Somewhere. It happened."

"He jerked off in front of a bao'an."

"He jerked off in front of a cleaning lady."

"And she grabbed his peter and finished him off for a cool 50 RMB."

"He told me he was into studying plane crashes. Said he curated Wikipedia pages about them..."

"I was done with him after the Christmas party incident... Albert went through all that trouble, booked the restaurant, bought turkey, real turkey from Hong Kong, actually fucking turkey, in China, which is no simple task."

"Then about 11 of us got there at 6 and soon after the food was served. I remember Melvin saying he'd be there late because he had class, so we made sure to save a plate for him."

"But when he found out we started eating without him, he flipped out in our WeChat teachers' group, and decided 'he'd go elsewhere.' How 'we must have really been hungry.'"

"Told me later, casually, no hint of emotion, that he stayed home alone on Christmas night, doing sit-ups and eating microwave pizza."

"The nerve, to think 11 people would all wait to eat, for another hour or two, only for him. Malignant narcissist, that guy."

"I mean, I know he was fighting a war in his brain; he was mentally ill, was bipolar, probably, for real, but to be that much of a dick, on Christmas, nonetheless, and post a shitstorm online about how 'everyone must have been really hungry.' Yes, we were hungry. Fuck that guy."

"I think he posted more negative comments about our school on more China ESL forums than anyone ever."