One - Leaving on a Jet Plane

I wake up on the floor lying in a nest of my two remaining blankets. The floor is hard and cold and left my left shoulder and hip feel a bit numb, like frozen jello. I get up, shower and throw my washcloth, soap, razor, and toothpaste into the large plastic lying in in the center of the living room.  One last trip to the trash bins out back, tossing the remnants of this apartment including the blankets.  Then I'm back inside, taking one last look at place. This small, small place with the young Korean girls next door playing their college music and the couple who make love life clockwork above.  I didn't know a man could finish for that long. I walk into my kitchen, the one without an electrical outlet and no ambient light. I take a final wizz in the bathroom. I look at where my futon used to be and thought of happier days, and then think about sadder days. I feel a clustering of tears but before they splatter  throw on my backpack and lug my suitcase out the front door. Door locked, keys slide into the manager's box, and I'm out of the building. Across 51st street and up to the safer BART station, Rockridge, wheeling the suitcase the whole way. I fantasize about a phone call from someone, anyone, trying to convince me to stay. But there is no one, and if there was a someone, our time has long since past. I made sure my friends know my parents were taking me to the airport and I made sure my parents know my friends were taking me. I'm not sure why I did this, outside of it is my nature. My recoil to the thought of anyone doing something for me is only secondary to the recoil of asking someone for help and being rejected. I am moving to Beijing in order to write. No one understands this since I have never published anything before. But it's not that I don't write. I write every day. Have been since I was thirteen when I tried to talk to my dad about nothing all that important but more importantly as an adult and he still treated me as a child. He could only talk down to me or tune me out. So I tuned into a notebook, drawing and writing my way through high school, then college, then work. I have cases of journals which no one knew about and no one ever saw, except for a soul or two that I let in. Three friends at a time, no more, I would say. But if truth be told, it wasn't the difficulty of finding three worthy friends, it was the difficulty of finding three interested people. Jane was one of the few interested and worthy, at least I thought so, and then she became disinterested but still worthy and then over time I realized she was neither worthy or interested. Yet this realization did me no good. I had fantasies of turning my notebooks into Augustan Burroughs esq memoirs but I lacked both the patient and his talent. I somehow helped the sheer volume of my writing would somehow make up for a sheer lack of talent. I couldn't take my notebooks with me to Beijing and I didn't trust anyone with them, so I had them digitized by strangers and stored on a portable hard disk I'm taking with me. After they were digitized I tossed them in the recycle bin, more for the words than the paper. The United line at SFO is crazy busy with what appears to be ill suited luggage and ill suited couples. The ill suited luggage is of the form of square boxes held together with string and duck tape. The ill suited couples are middle age white men with slightly younger, but worn, Chinese women. Who am I to say, right? I mean it could be perfectly fine luggage. Finally my turn in line and I worry that my one way ticket will cause me some special scrutiny and at first these seems so, but in fact it was just because the attendant could not locate my visa. Given that my passport had never been used before I wouldn't think it would be that hard. My visa in order -- officially
I was going to teach English -- my bag was checked and my boarding pass printed. Coach, row 33, middle seat. On through the security gate, a mother of three trying to keep her kids from causing an Airport evacuation. There is a large troop of 60ish women waiting for the flight 888 to Beijing. They are talking about making sure they brought toilet paper since restrooms in China were famous for being paper free. I wondered if this was true. They call my row and I line up with my fellow travelers when an elderly Chinese couple walks directly to the front of the line. The women taking the tickets points them back to the line, which only seems to harden their resolve and after a couple of times of being told "no, wait your turn" they simply try the other line where the attendant lets them pass. I board the plan without looking back. Never look back. I am going to be a writer. A published writer. An an English teacher.