JACK

                                                       4

It was six-thirty in the morning and Casino Everest was almost empty except for one crowded five-card stud poker table and several women cleaners with mops and dusters and a dozen or more of the senior black suited Casino Everest staff watching an obnoxious and very fat Thai lose more than fifty thousand US dollars in less than an hour.

         That was over three million Nepalese rupees and the idiot was obviously not fucking pleased about it.

         The Maoists had that day taken control of Nepal and overthrown the Monarchy, after more than two hundred and forty years of royal freeloading, and they had tossed out a stupid King who shouldn’t have let them get so much power in the first place, because he had his head stuck up his ass while the poor stayed poor and the rich made sure they stayed fucking rich.

         And to top it all off a plastic cup dispenser, in a Casino making millions for the two quarrelling partners, one American and the other Indian, mainly from rich Thais and Indians, because Nepalese citizens weren’t allowed in, was busted.

         Can you believe it?

         Sure, it was a bloodless coup, a democratic vote by a country scared shitless that if they didn’t vote for the Maoists the years of terror and bloodshed in the streets would go on.

        That’s democracy and if you think it’s essentially any different from democracy anywhere else you’ve still got your own head stuck up your own ass, or somebody else’s.           

         The Doc made it very clear he wasn’t happy about having to drink water from glasses as they were slobbered in by everybody else and did anybody really give a fuck if you got AIDS or some other such thing?

         Life isn’t just cheap, it’s worthless.

         There was a tension in the air, the entire country holding its collective breath, as if waiting for an orgasm, and a feeling that death was very close, always just peeking over your shoulder, like some frustrated sexual pervert

         And for me, it was.          

When you are dying you’re a voyeur of your own past sexual exploits, the gaps often filled in by fantasy, or the remembered sexual experiences of others or you’ve read about, but, often, the problem is you can’t do much about them.

         You don’t have the energy, or the inclination, to masturbate.

         You just want to sleep.

         Let’s talk about death, or, more accurately, dying.

         You can pretty much discover who the fuck you are by finding out what the fuck you don’t like talking about, and is the reason both sex and death, for most of the pre-programmed and neatly packaged little ass-holes you see every day, is taboo, and has them scuttling out the door like cockroaches pretty damn fast, which, if, like me, you’ve had a whole fucking lifetime of listening to the same tired old shit they’ve been pre-programmed to repeat ad nauseam, is good, but get them on politics and religion, that have no authenticity at all, and need no individual thinking, because, remember, hardly any of them have ever had a single original fucking thought, or idea, since the day they were pissed up a wall and dried out, they can prattle on all fucking day.

        Religion and politics tell you nothing about anybody, but sex and death do, because they aren’t pre-programmed and neatly packaged, and you have to think about them, and you’d rather not, and not so much because you don’t like talking about them, but because you don’t like having to think for yourself.

       And that’s the difference between an authentic human being and all the clones you meet every fucking day, and see in the mirror, and what makes you eat like a fucking horse, or watch fucking TV, or dash out to rub yourself up against all the other clones doing the same thing.

        Thinking is not what you want to do, right?

Don’t assume I dislike people, or I’m an angry old man just because I’m dying. I like anything authentic, but I dislike clones, and I’m an angry old man because I was an angry young man, mostly about too much technology producing machines that replicate themselves, or make other machines, clones of each other, assembly line style, imitated by society, making assembly line cloned humans, pre-programmed and neatly packaged, products of the technology we have created.

       I dislike anything fake, whether its people, art, music, literature, so called blockbuster novels, most TV, films, whatever isn’t authentic, keeps the mind from thinking for itself, and expressing itself.  Not that I dislike technology, in itself. We need a little, but it’s taken over, and virtually the only difference, these days, between, say, an assembly line pre-programmed and neatly packaged washing machine, and a human, apart from the fact that a washing machine is usually more reliable, is that the washing machine is a hard machine and a human is a soft machine.  

       Death isn’t the horror many people fear it is.

       When the average person goes to sleep at night, with the normal expectation of waking up in the morning, there’s no fear, right?

       When you have a terminal illness, and very close to dying, you sleep, wake up, then sleep again, but, one day, you don’t wake up again. The point is, you didn’t know, this time, you wouldn’t wake up.

       Death always comes as a surprise, no matter how much you expect it. It’s just a matter of going to sleep, and not knowing, this time, you’re not going to wake up.

       Not a lot different from living, really.

       You expect certain things to happen, but never know when. Blackjack works in much the same way. In fact the game is probably a better reflection of life and death than anything else.

       You can be very lucky, or very good at it, and win a million dollars, or unlucky, know nothing about the game, and shouldn’t be playing it at all, unless you’re just playing for the fun of it, and don’t mind giving your money to the Casino for the fucking privilege.

       Take this as an example: if you bet, say, $10, with a bankroll of $500, and want to win $100, then quit, the odds are 4 to 1 you’ll succeed, over a period of about five hours, before losing the entire $500.  Go for a $40 win goal, with $10 bets, and a $500 bankroll, and the odds go up 11 to 1 in your favor, or go for a $30 win goal, and the odds are 14 to 1, or go for a $20 win goal, and the odds are 19 to 1 in your favor.

        You see the fucking problem?

        Lose and you lose more than you win, and you can’t decide to play fewer sessions, and quit before you lose, because it could happen anytime.

        Everybody dies.

        Nobody gets out of this game alive, no matter how good they are at it, or lucky, and, if you’re not too good at it, or very unlucky, well, too bad.

        Sex has always been a problem for me. I don’t mean getting it, or not. That’s never been an issue for me. I’ve always been very good at getting it, and very lucky, and never once turned down an opportunity. No, I mean society’s attitude, based on pre-programmed ideas about it, and, by that, I mean, largely, women’s borrowed attitude towards men.

        Although not a well read shit ass psychiatrist, or some kind of New Age kiss ass sexologist, experience tells me that women don’t really understand one vital fucking obvious fact about men.

        Men lack an off button, the sleep or hibernation mode, to their libido, that most women have.

        Women, for example, if they lose their sexual partner, and, let’s not forget that many women are naturally monogamous and most men are not, or they find themselves in a situation where sexual activity is either limited or non-existent, they can turn off the desire, turn on their sleep or hibernation mode, and give sex hardly any thought at all, until they find a new partner, or the circumstances are right.

         A man has no such sleep, or hibernation, mode.

        His libido is pumping away all the time, and is why men need porn, usually when they can’t get sex, or even when they can, and most women don’t. So why disparage him for that? You wouldn’t blame him if he lacked, say, height, right?

        Sure, men could have a lot more discipline about sex than they sometimes do, and, I guess, men who lack height could walk around on tiptoe, but that’s not really feasible, and you wouldn’t expect it, so just accept that men and women are different in this area, and don’t blame men as if they were deliberately doing something fucking bad, just by being what they are.

        We don’t make as much fuss about eating or, rather, overeating, as we do about sex, and, in the West, and now creeping slowly East, overeating is the number one cause of heart problems, and other ailments, that kill you.     

        Why are we so afraid of talking about sex with as much openness, and ease, as we talk about cooking, and eating, describing culinary delights, often with abandon, but can’t talk about sex, at least in so called decent company, in the same way?  Why is the word cunt, or cock, fuck or screw, bad, and the word cook, eat, food, not? Words can only tell you about a thing, not what the fucking thing is, only its outward form, not its essence.    

        Words are labels we stick on things, and, if you read, or hear, them in a language you didn’t understand, you wouldn’t be offended, because they would have no meaning. Words have the meaning we choose to give them, they are, essentially just sounds in the air, and, if you have a problem with them, you can be sure the problem is not with the word, but with you.

        You’re a clone, pre-programmed and packaged, not an authentic human being. Most ills, imbalance, physical and psychological, are sexual. Sex is the most powerful creative energy, in humans, and, when it’s in imbalance, and I don’t mean the ‘lets not talk about it in public’ brigade of so called fucking moralists, I mean the Michel Houellebecq soulless sex, or the constantly frustrated desire for it, can be the most destructive.

Just three months earlier I’d been bed-ridden in a rented house in North India with an oxygen mask strapped to my face, barely able to breathe, and waiting to die.

        I’d had a relatively good life, living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease from two almost fatal bouts of pneumonia, the first when I was just eight years old and the second when I was twenty four, aggravated, of course, by constant smoking.  

        Now I was almost seventy years old, and considered myself fortunate I’d already lived even this long, knew I couldn’t live forever, although I almost had, and settled with the thought of dying, with a few authentic friends around me, in the country I loved, and where I’d always intended to spend the last days of my life.

        End of story, right?

        It should have been.

        Then something happened.

        I’d been having trouble sleeping with the C.O.P.D, and occasionally deliberately overusing the oxygen together with one or two mild pain killers and sleeping pills.

        I heard a voice.

        Mine, of course, but disembodied, or, somehow separated from the self I recognized as me. It was 2.30 am. I was listening to the insects outside the window hitting the glass, as I kept a small blue night light on all night that attracted them. It was about the only entertainment I had left, as I’d stopped masturbating several months ago.

        There was nothing but shit on TV.

        ‘If you could do one last thing, what would it be?’ the voice said.

        This time there wasn’t the usual lengthy nightly discussion I was used to having with myself.

         The answer was immediate, and took me by surprise.

       “Win a million US dollars playing Blackjack’ I said.            

         The idea was erotic, almost orgasmic, the kind of feeling I hadn’t had for months, like a small miraculously, and surprisingly, still glowing ember of a dying fire.

         Blackjack was a game I knew well, and I was very good at it, one of the few games in a Casino that could be beaten, and I had fifty thousand dollars I didn’t know what to do with, as I was dying.

        But, maybe, not in my condition, even though it was just a matter of sitting.

        I would have to get well, and fit.

        The next thing I knew it was dawn outside and I remembered having a dream about fucking a fourteen year old girl in a really short denim skirt, no pants or bra, which she pulled up, spread her beautiful legs, and used her fingers to pull her little tight pussy wide open while I eased my hard cock as far up her as it would go.

        Girls have an inborn instinct in this area, and is why they dress the way they do, move like they do, then have the fucking nerve to complain, to each other, but love it, when men get turned on, and no matter how easy she is its never free. Its money, a relationship, marriage, or whatever.

        It’s the way they grow up, emotionally and physically, and are brought up by their mothers, who did exactly the same fucking thing, and why the girl has a mother.

       What does a twelve year old boy have in his pockets? A plastic toy, a couple of marbles, chewing gum, right? What does a twelve year old girl have? A little purse, with money in it, make-up, a mirror, and, these days, because they mature a lot faster than boys, a condom, just in case, and to show to their girlfriends, and giggle. 

       This dream girl was just like that, loved being fucked, didn’t like condoms, she said, because it wasn’t much different from using a dildo, wanted to feel real hot throbbing flesh inside her, then have it explode, pumping into her, and cum bubble out, run down her thighs, and touch it, lick her fingers, knowing it excited me, and have me fuck her again, and again, if I could do it, until I was done, then she’d relax, touching her hard little nipples with one hand, and her dripping pussy with the other, smiling at me, laughing really, I suppose, a beautiful little mongoose, having just devoured a rat, in this case, an old man, and regurgitated the skin and bones.

        But, what the hell, she was a damn good fuck, and, if I had any choice in the matter, it’s the way I’d like to die.

        Then I was at a Blackjack table, the dealer smiling at me, waiting for my decision.

         In the morning I felt good, better than I had for a long time.

         I suddenly liked the notion of saying fuck this, getting off the oxygen, on my feet, and giving up the thought of dying, at least for a while.

         I started to write again.

        ‘Okay’ I made a deal with myself ‘Get off the oxygen, get out of bed, and we’ll go to Nepal’

         It was as simple as that, but difficult to do and needed determination but I could do it, and, as I was dying anyway, what the hell, let’s give it a try.

         First, simple breathing exercises with the oxygen then unaided pursed-lipped breathing to strengthen my lungs while I searched the internet for every scrap of information I could find on C.O.P.D. then gradually a little walking.

         Over the next few weeks I started jogging, at first only around the garden, then half a mile, three times a day

        The disease can’t be beaten, but the end can be delayed, but it takes work, and it’s often painful but my promise to myself to go to Nepal one last time, and the chance of walking away with $1 million, as my final swan song to life, drove me on.

       Three months later, I bought a ticket to Kathmandu.          

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