KL & the Leaping Leeches (or Mike's take on the story)

KL and the leaping leech

I got the Malaysian flu. Don't know if there is such a thing, but when I got to Malaysia I came down with it. Headache, weak, achy, fever, congested, sore throat… basically every symptom of Dengue Fever I found out about after KL came back from her Hazardous Environment training. Great. Leave it to me to get Dengi-freakin-fever the one time I come to Malaysia (truly Asia).

Well, I didn't really get any better. We stayed in Kuala Lumpur for 5 days and I saw a lot of my hotel and very little of the city. I hear the Chinatown is wonderful. Can't tell you from first hand experience though. I can tell you about the Japanese Embassy. I went there twice to get our Japanese work Visa's. The ladies at the Tokyo office told us it would be much quicker to go through the office in Malaysia than wait on the crowded office in Tokyo. So fever and all, I headed off to the Embassy. It is white and designed by a devotee of the cubist architecture school. Inside they have NHK on the TV. Across the street is a beautiful Spanish island motif building that houses the Mercedes -Benz dealership.

After I got the visas, 3 year work permits permanently stamped into our passports, and KL finished her class we jetted off for Langkawi.

I was feeling better. A lot better. Right up until we took an aero plane ride. This patient took a steep nosedive after the flight. KL, as many of you know, has the energy of 10 men so she needed to do –something-. The hotel, which is the best place we have in our entire lives ever thought about staying, had a jungle trek scheduled for the next day! Good. Go, I say. I would love to go but I am in no shape to march through this 50 million year old rainforest. Go tire yourself out and take pictures. I want to hear all about it. And it only costs 100 ringgits. Hell, go twice.

The next day dawned and KL jumped into her REI convertible pants (they are made of a lightweight material and can zip off at the thigh to become shorts), Gore-Tex shoes, ankle brace, socks, and technical long-sleeved shirt (it wicks moisture away keeping you cool and dry in the heat and has sun-block built-in). I felt better but still not up to the adventure she can't wait to embark upon.

A little more than 3 hours later, I'm sitting on the couch in our room looking out over the rich verdant green of our small patch of paradise. The cleaning crew is doing a number on the room, but I don't want to leave. All at once I hear, "Mike. I'm back but I don't want to come in the room. I want to go to the ocean. I want to go now. I don't feel clean. I have to go now." No, I can't be sure she said all of those things but they're what stick in my head. I have seen my beloved run though a lot of emotions, but the extreme worry and agitation that exuded from her was more than I had ever thought possible. She was in a bad place. Bad things had happened. And as far as she was concerned, bad things were going to continue to happen.

I jumped up and said, "OK. Lets go. Are you sure you don't want to come in?" I asked.

"No. I want to go. I want to get in the seawater. I don't feel good. Let's go now." She responded emphatically.

You know when someone is upset or bothered? You know how in the force of their concentration, agitation comes right out of their forehead? It's like a starving man looks at a Thanksgiving meal. There is a palpable force emanating from them. Almost as if they had another limb. This is how I found my fiancee… standing in the doorway still in her jungle outfit, brows furrowed, lips tight, ears pulled back, worry lines raging across her forehead. She needed to go to the ocean NOW.

We did. I asked her if she was OK. "Noh!" When KL is very upset or emphatic about something and she says No it always comes out Noh. It's a Korean thing. I always hear the h at the end and the force of the No-ness makes me laugh. She was putting a powerful No-ness behind everything she said this day. "There were leeches. I had leeches on me. They were attacking me. I had to pull like 500 of them off of me. They jumped and twisted and somersaulted on to me. They are nasty little creatures. I have to get in the saltwater to make sure they're all gone, OK."

"OK", I agreed.

"Leeches have no value to society," she proclaims. "They don't do any good for the world." I am laughing now. She is so terribly upset. We have the sort of relationship where I can do that. I can laugh at the calamity of it all and it doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. Speaking of asses. "There was this big Australian and when the leeches started attacking he yelled, 'Sarah, there's one on my bum! I know there's one on my bum!' And then he dropped his pants in front of everyone and had his wife look all around his ass." Come on, who wouldn't be laughing now? She tells this to me with a straight face. In fact, a strained face. She is so upset she doesn't even see it as funny. It was horrible. It was a terrifying experience that is still clinging to her. Literally.

By this time she's taken off her shoes and socks. We're down by the ocean. The pants have come off and she's about to take off her ankle brace when she spots the pulsing dark brown mass attached to her right foot. There is a leech sucking her blood from between her big toe and the next. "Ahhh! Off! Offffff! Get off of me!" She screams as she plunges her foot in the water.

"Do you want me to pull it off?" I ask.

"Noh! The AKE guys told us leeches can't live in saltwater and that they will just let go if you put them in it," she explains as she violently kicks her foot back and forth in the ankle deep water.

By this time I am doubling over with laughter. She is so disturbed it is nothing short of comic genius. I wish you could have seen her. To try and get her mind off the little sombitch between her toes I ask, "Tell me about the rest of the trek. Did you enjoy any of it? Did you see any monkeys?"

"Noh. I wish I had stayed home. It was terrible! Our guide told us about trees. For the first hour it was OK, but then we stopped and he told us not to sit on the forest floor because of the leeches. And then he started pulling them off! And I looked down and they were on me! I heard the Australian couple yell and they started pulling them off. They were everywhere. The jungle is most like humans. It kills everything! Only the strong survive, and the leeches were jumping at me. I had to pull off 150 leeches! Stop laughing. It is NOT funny! They were all around me. And I had to pull them off even though the AKE guys told me not to. They said not to panic! Those fuckers have never been in the jungle before with 500 leeches hanging on them! They don't know what it's like. Hazardous Training my ass! Quit laughing!"

Needless to say, I couldn't. This went on for quite some time. I ended up pulling the little blood sucker off of her. It was nasssstee. And for the rest of the day I would look over at her and KL would look at me… every inch of me. She would look me up and down. Searching for the leech she knew was near. Every time something brushed her foot she would stare downward until she was sure whatever it was hadn't attached itself to her skin for a meal. I made leech jokes for the next two days.

I have never seen my girl so out of sorts. She is a well put together woman who does not easily come apart at the seams, but let me tell you, if leeches did it to her I want no, I repeat, no part of them. I'm glad I came down with a case of the Malaysian flu. If I hadn't, I would be sitting right next to my brave and beautiful beloved suffering from a much worse malady... Bdellophobia.

"I don't know if I can wear those shoes again," KL said as she stared down at her Gore-Tex hikers... daring a small black or brown line to move and jump towards her.

I just laughed.