I have a lot of stories that I haven’t gotten round to writing, and this one’s been on my mind recently.
I lived in Asia for about half my life but did very little traveling while there. A few years ago when I was living in Bangladesh and my friend was in India, we thought it’d be fun to backpack through Manali but a day or two after fleshing out a rough itinerary, we scrapped that plan entirely and refocused our attention to Hong Kong.
Our favourite DJs, Above & Beyond, announced Group Therapy 300 in Hong Kong and we had to see them together at least once — he organised 1, I was at 100, and we were determined to make it happen. We both had a lot going on, personally, professionally, emotionally, mentally, there was a lot, but the prospect of finally going to ABGT together was enough.
I wound up being the first to land and had an entire day to myself before the rest of the group arrived — he got a few friends and his brother to come, too — and I immediately learned that anyone who says New Yorkers are rude has never been to East Asia. New Yorkers are rude, sure, but no New Yorker has ever deliberately shoved past me without saying “excuse me” or ignored my repeatedly asking them to move out of the way (though it’s happened in London, something to be said about passive-aggressiveness/‘politeness’). I might be too protective about New York but not without reason because we’re the first to own up to it if it’s our bad (source: I’m one of them).
With that first culture shock out of the way, I went off to find a McDonalds because Hong Kong’s Mickey D’s is without a doubt ALWAYS worth it. I was going to have to save Tim Ho Wan’s pork buns for when my friends got here.
Suffice to say, we ate our way through the city when everyone arrived but veered off on our own for a few things — two of us went straight to Lan Kwai Fong to hit the bars, two of us spent too much time at the temples and realised that we liked the view from Victoria Peak at night way better before we reunited at... … some bar that I can’t recall. I had a LOT of tequila… where did we go next? I remember finding others who’d descended upon Hong Kong like us for the weekend: a British couple from Singapore; a Canadian West Coaster who insisted on kissing us, full on, on the mouth; an Oregonian looking for an Alicia Vikander lookalike raver girlfriend who was so out of it that he kept handing his phone and wallet to everyone he met.
The next day a leftover pork bun saved my life since my only source of nutrition the previous night was alcohol, and waiting in line for merch all I could think was, “I should’ve tried to smuggle another pork bun in here, somehow.” After befriending more folks from all over while waiting for merch and running into the Oregonian again (he had no idea who we were and definitely had his phone stolen the previous night) it was time.
It felt like magic because it was one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” moments. We talked about going to Group Therapy together but always assumed it was just a plan. It was special because of the odds of us loving something enough to casually pick up and travel for it with the added bonus of spending time together. Like really, what are the odds? Apparently pretty freaking high. It was clearly one of those “we’re just going to go along with it and hope it happens” and it did happen. Looking back, if I ever needed a sign that I should have started manifesting, that was it.
We knew we were going through our own battles at the time but our unspoken (? — there was a lot of tequila) understanding was that we’d worry about it later. We were here, in a tiny island, gorging our faces with dim sum, egg tarts, deep fried wings; seeing each other and being together for those few days was probably my highlight because everything else was falling apart and I didn’t know how much longer we’d have.
I knew things weren’t great and we’d still talk occasionally after the trip. Things didn’t get any better for either of us for a while, and I didn’t have the language to understand it at the time but I realised a few years later that this was a friend who just loved. Not driven by ulterior motives or misplaced intentions, but because he genuinely cared and wanted to give love and kindness.
Around the new year, another mutual friend messaged to let me know that he’d died by suicide a few weeks ago.
That was it.
This momentous thing happened and it felt like things froze… but everything was moving along quicker than normal. Or, it probably felt quicker to me because I froze as I still tried to process.
You expect to know how to feel when something happens a second time because “it happened before so I should know what it’s like,” but you’re never prepared for the impact and the aftermath. I know what this feels like, but I forgot that I did a fantastic job of blocking out the emotions that come along with it.
This wasn’t why I never bothered writing about this story. I didn’t bother sharing the story for… probably multiple reasons that aren’t as deep or profound: I’m never sitting still enough to wait for cohesion; I’m lazy; I’m too critical of my writing and will probably try to edit this later; selfishly, sometimes I don’t want to share. This time it was mainly that. I wanted to keep a memory with my friend for myself before I shared it with the world.
