The Disorienting Express

I’ve had three beautiful young Asian women reach out to me on Facebook this week. They’re photo walls are full of images of food in swanky settings with champagne and each one of them have very impressive job titles at globally recognized companies.

It’s so flattering that they took time out of their busy beautiful and extravagant days to take an interest in me.

They’re probably impressed that I wrote a book and that I knew Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary. I mean, I’m sure these men’s influence spread to Asia’s current younger generation and they weren’t just part of a niche segment of the PsychoNaut counterculture of America some 50+ years ago, right?

Right?!

Shit.

Just as that hard reality sets in that these beautiful 30-something affluent Asian women with high-powered jobs who seemed interested in some random middle aged GenX American man with a mortgage struggling to change careers while competing with a massive Millennial generation of Digital Natives who have already forgotten more about Social Media Marketing than I have time left to learn, they each asked for my WhatsApp number.

I tell them that I don’t use WhatsApp due to its data security issues and they vanish.

I know these are really just young male Chinese Incels in front of a screen in a vast warehouse in a dark corner of some Chinese village with a name I couldn’t pronounce who get paid for wooing unsuspecting middle aged American men into giving them data but, just for a moment, one precious moment, I’m internationally interesting.

Like those hours between buying a lottery ticket and the numbers being called (or the WhatsApp number asked for) I imagine what I would do with the winnings.

But alas…

So long, Nguyễn and Zhou and… and… Yeah, no. I don’t think I have those characters on this keyboard.

Anyway, we’ll always have those 15 disorienting minutes when you ladies, rather, you pimple-faced Chinese boy virgins made me feel important and wanted.

谢谢你。