Days Volume Two

* The full orange moon hung low and heavy over the Chiang Mai houses, in those moments before night turned to day. If the hounds of God were hunting, so were many other elements in the vortex. Never Say Die danced jerkily at Spicy at 5.30am, just as drunk in the pre-dawn as he had been at midnight in another part of the city. Thai Lady, Thai Lady? cooed the girls he walked past and he waved or mumbled, just walking. Cruised and cruising, already this city was alive with that peculiar mix of people going home from the clubs and workers stirring early, the wreak of the garbage truck mixing with the sound of the tuk tuks and the restaurant workers beginning preparations for the day. Near the Chiang Mai gate men collected the white trumpet flowers as they fell from the night tree, having bloomed briefly and now about to perform an entirely new service, financial, sacrificial. Just like the girls, and sometimes the boys, in the late night bars, as one gorgeous stick insect pole danced fo

* Well, there wasn't anything to be done. Bar Restaurant Beer Orgy Slosh read the sign; and if everything was lost and he destroyed every opportunity; here on the darkened ways; in the streets in the early hours; in fabulous life, then equally he feared any easy way out. He listened to every other story. They came laughing. He was in despair. I don't smoke weed, he said, making a smashing gesture with his fist curved into his other arm, the reflection of an hysterical story of events decades old. As if anything mattered. The work load was insurmountable. The Death Of Stapo. Hence the courage, hence the change. The death of everything that had gone before. Let go of the past, let go of the future. Let go of all ordinary sins; ailments; anger, sadness, fear. The monk splashed holy water upon them both. It was too cruel and he didn't have any answers; so they hung in the space between desire and action; killing time in restaurants, farangs on holiday, lounging away the id

* Well, what was to be done? This was a landscape of Hockney paintings and gentle slides, of whispy looks across manicured lawns, of wasted afternoons watching the gardener go about his duty, of old friends splashing in the pool and little thought but for ultimate indulgence: what perversion can we think of next? You've never had a blow job till you've had one from a katoy, a ladyboy, the gangster declared; and they all grimaced, oh no, I couldn't, we couldn't. It's just not the blokey thing to do. They're nice people, the gangster declared, they're good to hang out with in the bars. Oh those bars, they were everywhere. So they went out to celebrate Peter B's 26th birthday in Chiang Mai, and the woman running the bar, the Sugar Bar, the Heh Heh Bar, the Whatever Bar, asked about him: Pappa? Heh! he said. As in watch it! But it was true. What was this old f... doing hanging out with these young dudes; and how things had changed. Once he had always been

* Entirely by accident, he rounded a backstreet corner and there was the hotel he used to stay in; way back in the 1970s when Chiang Mai was a picturesque town in the northern provinces of Thailand, nestled at the foot of the mountains. Now the ringing of the rickshaw bells, the most ubiquitous sound the town had to offer, had been replaced by the sound of traffic, the tooting of horns, the roar of cheap tuk tuk engines; and most of all, here in the imperilled past, the troubled present, the swamp of dislocation, the sound of regret at wasted lives and wasted days. If only it was possible to grow younger by the day. Here they kept their peace. The THC bar had no THC. The place was full of ghosts. Well no it wasn't, it was full of 20-something backpackers doing exactly what their predecessors had done 10/20/30 years ago, sitting around, checking each other out, flirting subliminally; here in the dark, here in the nightfall, here in the mystery that passeth all understanding. E

* It was awful. And yet at the same time it was truly exultant; as he came slowly back into his own body. There were wild ways. He stood on the rooftop bar. He saw the city spread beneath him. It took him back, back, to the 1970s and Penang, when he was the only Westerner in the penthouse bar, or whatever it was called, the bar that took up the entire floor of one of the only high rise buildings in Penang at the time. He often went there. There was that dark, slightly musty, over-airconditioned feel; and the whiskey splashed down his thirsty throat, and groups of gangsters, or were they businessmen, drank in their dark corners at their dark tables. He was splashed into infinity while below the city and its lights swirled into musty enthusiasm; and everything was glorious. On the way home, drunk, the tuk tuk drivers would shout, in that universal chant he loved so much: Hey Johnnie, you want something? Well of course he wanted something. Didn't he always. And now, almost 40 yea

* * If there, if sweeping up the wall, a tide of universal disgrace, colourful, always colourful, while the lone man fits alone in his room, abandoned, disgraced, isolated, the subject of a frantic search, but nothing can change the inevitable. That's what they said. It was awful. He should never have left. He feared the worst. And yet away, away, up through the seething traffic, across the polluted air, over the concrete arches of the sky train to the skyscrapers beyond, all of it was impressive, imposing; and finally provoked nothing but despair. Because he was overwhelmed. Simple as that. The cruel times weren't over; but he had never been so sane; not since, as a frightened child he had run down long forgotten suburban streets; and could feel the rustle of terror in every leaf, and knew that to return home meant yet more beatings, more fear, and worse, perhaps, than any physical violence perpetrated against him, that terrible isolation. Nothing would be so bad again

* They were everywhere, these walking holes into a treacle like black past, skeleton eyes, black holes to another dimension. He could see them everywhere; across crowded car parks, across traffic jammed streets, staring out trapped windows; wishing, wishing only for life, for fun, for positivity. Because everything in their dismal lives had been drained away. It happened again. They haunted at the edge of sight, they told a different story to everyone else. A man showed up before the meeting. I am drinking, he announced. That much was obvious. I wanted to thank you for my 32 days sobriety. I am working my butt off for my wife and child. But I cannot stop. I just wanted to thank you. Sit down, sit down, the old timers said. But he refused. After Alex it was all too much. The doctors told him if he kept drinking he would be dead within three months. He wouldn't last three months; that much was also obvious. And so, what a crying shame, all these bloody lunatics, crashing in and out,

* In the long running war, with the future of mankind already stolen, they stood at the turning point. And Alex walked out of the hospital against medical advice, surely not long after he had sat with him until 5pm, watching the crowded Thai hospital emergency ward, the dying Thais, the fragile old figure next to him, the concerned daughter, perhaps in her 40s, the useless mother, no doubt distressed at the state of her husband; or that this, too, would happen to her, soon enough. This death in a public ward. Opposite an old monk lay dying; and further down skeletons lay sleeping under thin sheets. And Alex, too, snored quietly most of the time he was there, or mumbled quietly. It was just a bit of research. Huh, research. Where the dark forces well up from the soul and the sick, bleak treacle that ate through all our lives swamped through the room in a great splash; where he mumbled incoherent over broken glass, the smell of whisky soaking into the floor. He couldn't rescue him an

* It was time to call in the FBI. There was Alex in chaos all over again. Less than 24 hours after we had organised his room to be cleaned by a long suffering, well tipped maid, it was once again a tip. Worse than a tip this time. An empty bottle of Vodka. A smashed bottle of no doubt half drunken whisky. And a bottle of rum, through which he was progressing. It was about 20 hours since he had last seen him, after Alex had spent most of the day lounging on his bed, taking off his clothes, putting them back on, a big, sweaty bloke. So much for clean sheets, he thought. Everything in the room was chaos; as if Alex had been looking for something; a blind grope, for money, for alcohol, for anything of value. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing was of any importance. No dignity remained. Alex could suffer, he could die. No one would notice. No one but him and Gary; the most fragile and unconvinced members of that strange fellowship; the reformed, flickering in and out of the real world, the s