re post:

Hammer dropped
The night had gone on in a bit of a polite asking about old friends and family type of vibe. Nice to see you after so many months. Small talk. Pat on the back. Constantly looking for opportunities to cheers and clink glasses. 45% natural, 55% awkward. Mast and I were at a bar littered with foreigners, I was in the doldrums after making my girlfriend (his former classmate) cry because I was in a depressing mood an hour before, and I was counting just how many foreigners there were in Shanghai.

"More and more..."
"Yeah."

We finished our well priced Belgian brews and he said let's get out of here. We'd gone through the formalities, lightly touching on dangerous subjects related to failed business partnerships and "cunning"friends from our old Shanghai Jiao Da days. Touched on but certainly not delved into; the delving perhaps will never happen in our lifetime but sometimes I wonder...

After some Korean small food and Budweiser, the conversation, in that way that only happens after a certain amount of inebriation, shifted to the more serious side. We talked about T-Gun, Justin, dreams, and what success was. Now, Mast had already talked to me back at the Kaiba (bar littered with foreigners) with helping me settle in Qing dao. He made it somewhat clear (he's never 100% clear to the point that when he is 100% it tends to steamroll you) he could help me with a job, visa, whatever. Still, even when discussing the hard facts of my potential move from lady Shanghai, I had never felt serious about the conversation.

At the Korean bar, it was different. I felt like he was leading up to something. I knew it. I looked into the bottom of my glass. It was cut at the bottom, fanning out in crystal shards that drew the light from the ceiling, through the skim at the top of the golden beer down through the bottom. I played with it as Mast talked about the best and worst qualities in men he'd met throughout his life, and how good and bad bosses ascertained talent in these men.

I looked up, into his eyes, as he said the words: "Do you want to know what I think about you?"

"If I am talking about you, your qualities. The good ones, you have many. But the bad. I can tell you that your eyes have no enthusiasm. You look like a child who doesn't know what he wants to do."

His words only hurt because they were absolutely, without a bit of error, true. Maybe it was that easy. Maybe he was saying what was obvious...but then that would only make it apparent to the world.

I was silent a long time after he said that. Mast was the same one who had told me some two years ago "You Chinese has not improved that much," when we were at Jiao Da. His words meant something to me now, much as they did then. I told him, well he was following his dream, that was what motivated him.

He swiftly said, "No, real estate is not my dream, not at all. Even when I was at Jiao Da, studying everyday. I did it with all my heart. Not because it was my dream, or my motivation for my future, but because I do the best at whatever I am doing, at that time." My small retaliation had failed.

For as far back as I can remember I have been an underachiever. Since middleschool, when grades began to slip. I've spent so much effort trying to catch up in the social sphere of things. I didn't know the value of an internship in college. I didn't even speak with my mentor about what I could possibly do with my major when I switched to international relations. I switched from creative writing, the subject I tap only now as my passion. What did my creative writing professor tell me during our meeting freshman year? "To make a basketball allusion, I'm Larry Brown, and you're Allen Iverson. You have the talent, but you don't have the work ethic."

Quitter. Underachiever. Loser. I've rarely put myself 100% into doing anything in my life. I measure myself with anyone and I find the way or ways to come out well below them. In many ways I'm afraid to be alive.

I wanted to fight someone, while Mast closed the bill. I wanted to go down into that dirty hole, that romance with the unclean, that booze swilling, drug induced semi-fog where ones destruction was foretold and the only thing to do was to meet it with a half-sneer.

The last thing he told me I remember, before all the brotherly goodbye stuff, was this:

"If you don't know what you're doing in Shanghai. Then leave. Don't waste time."