Originally written April 29, 2007
Home was a fourteen story filing cabinet for tourists and prostitutes in the forgotten pre-war district of Sheung Wan. At some point in Hong Kong’s vast and sorted history, calling this borough a pre-war district had become synonymous with lacking of commercial value for proper upkeep. The ambiance of broken brick single lane street was meant to take you back to historical Hong Kong; which I can only imagine resembled something akin to Europe in the years that followed the plague.
Smaller than a dorm room and more expensive than our three bedroom flat in London, home was where the walls closed in on each other. Turning on one light meant the fuse for the air conditioner would blow out. The chair was missing half a leg. The sink would drain out on to the floor. The pipes below crumbled in my hands like rotted wood. What a shit hole.
Morning arrived after another sleepless night. I had stopped counting the days it had been since I had last slept. After everything we had seen, why bother. I lied in bed staring at the mold creeping across the ceiling. My closest friend. Then it came, a noise I would become very acquainted with, like thunder from above thrown directly at your head, Boom. Boom. The noise, persistent if anything, every few seconds what felt like an explosion would rattle every corner of the room. I could feel the bed shake like it was set off from one our earthquakes. Boom. Boom. Far be it from me to look into my surroundings before committing, but I was living with a gentrification project directly across the street. The heavy machinery pounded away at the foundation, forcing structural beams deep within the island. High above in the air, our building swayed with each passing blow.
Each moment would build up inside me, one more insignificant event bound to set off the red and the black. Marla’s presence among my people, the death trap that I would come back to every night, reality on the other side of the world moving on without me, nothing was scared anymore. This was our life; no one could pretend it was anything more than what it was.
But this environment, an impossibly functioning chaos, it became a part of me that I had to accept. I had become the calm and peaceful center this world revolved around, ambivalent to the concerns around me. I should have been looking for another place to live. I should have been looking for employment. But none of it mattered, I had seen the heart of this island, and it danced the night away with me in brilliant lights.
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