Stories for days.

I sit down in the armchair and rest my camera on my lap. Now what?

Back to bed, that’s what.

Someone knocks on the door – three short, sharp raps. I get up and look through the spy hole.

The girl from breakfast.

She pushes past me as I open the door, no hello, no nothing.

Nice underwear, she says, perching herself on the edge of the bed. I don’t know many guys who wear lilac briefs.

My monkey is limp. The condom comes off, goes into a tissue and gets chucked at the bin. I miss.

The front desk girl gets up and turns the shower on. Steam drifts and swirls through the open door.

I would never normally go for an Asian girl, they’re not my type. But sex with this girl was a whirlwind. More one-sided than not, which suited me just fine.

I try and wave the image of Mia’s face beneath mine away, but it won’t budge. Sex with Mia was for sure less of a whirlwind. More intense though.

Fact: she’s the only person I’ve ever come with at the same time.

Anyway, who gives a shit? Shooting my load is shooting my load. Better with a girl on top of me than into my hand, that’s what I say.

The girl is out the shower. A white towel wrapped around her body, another one piled up high on her head. She walks to the armchair by the window and sits, staring at me.

You were better the first time, she says.

(Of course he was.)

I say, Well that makes two of us then.

Remember my name yet?

Sorry.

She sighs. It’s Akemi.

I say, Akemi, right.

Deciding she’s had enough chit-chat, she bends down to pick up her neat pile of folded clothes. I enjoy watching her get dressed. Deliberate in the way she moves, easing her panties on, then her bra, then her skirt, her blouse, and finally her heels.

She checks herself in the mirror, twirling her hair around back into the bun she wore this morning.

Eyes still locked on her reflection, she says, See you later, then.

You don’t want the thing I stole from you back? I ask.

The door clicks shut behind her.

T

HREE

My phone says 9:10 pm, four and a bit hours after Akemi left my room.

Outside, the city is starting to light up – streetlights, car lights, neon lights.

Aeroplanes drag their blinking red dots across the night sky. Over there, a satellite draws a golden, sweeping line on its way around the earth.

I tried to go back to sleep after Akemi left. It didn’t work. So I just lay on the bed and watched TV.

Old repeats of Quantum Leap dubbed in Mandarin. Taiwanese soap operas in Hokkien with swooning females and dramatic music. Period wuxia films with half-bald, half-ponytailed guys flying through bamboo forests. A late-night news bulletin featuring an old hoarder man surrounded by piles and piles of handwritten letters. Another late-night news bulletin featuring rows and rows of Chinese tanks, then footage of a missile launch, all apocalyptic fire and smoke. Adverts for McDonald’s that look exactly like the adverts for McDonald’s back home.

I speak fluent non-Hokkien, and even more fluent non-Mandarin, so all I’m left with is a bunch of flashing pictures and a made-up commentary in my head.

I get off the bed and take a piss. I sniff. I smell like the inside of Akemi.

Time for a shower, I guess. It’s been a few days.

Thanks for using up all the hot water, Akemi, I love cold showers.

I towel myself dry and look around my new makeshift home – the puke-covered trousers from last night, collapsed in the corner. The used condom tissue, lurking around the wastepaper basket. Crumpled crisp packets of exotic flavours, sprinkled around the floor in between the crushed beer cans.

Wait, there’s still a crisp in this packet.

I munch. Lobster and seaweed flavour, nice.

This hotel room is starting to depress me. I could, theoretically, be doing all this luxurious living in a Premier Inn down the road from our flat in London.

Taipei boils me as I walk.

The smell of rotten eggs. A stench stifled by a nose pinch when I used to visit as a kid with my parents.

It radiates from the pavement, from the buildings, from the toxic exhaust pipes sput-sput-sputtering on the road.

A thick haze covers the city at night, making everything look soft and blurry round the edges.

Mia uses this word I’d never heard before: ‘close’. I laughed the first time she said it: What the hell does that mean?

She told me to bugger off.

Now I get it. The word was created for this place in the middle of summer. A billion little spheres of sweat bubble and trickle down my brow, my nose, my neck, my back, my crack. My feet stick to my socks, my socks stick to my shoes.

Traveller rule number one: explore the neighbourhood you’re staying in. This one here, right now, nothing special.

Beat-up electronics shops, worn-out restaurants, signs of us western raiders: Starbucks, Ben & Jerry’s, H&M.