Days Volume Two

* Triumphant tinkling. Rivers coursing through veins. Shadows flickering. Entering a hyper-real world. He watched the tiny frogs jump across the green green grass. He watched the monitor lizards, or whatever they were called, primitive, moving at the edge of the lake in Limpini Park in the heart of Bangkok. He walked past boys town and thought of nothing but the pleasures of release. Come hither, come sit with me. There wasn't any easy answer. The citadels of capitalism, those giant glistening malls, were coming awake again. He was shadowed by a past he had entirely eschewed; and if he tried to make sense of anything it was a voice crying on the phone: dad, come home, come home, I've got no one to talk to. But shadows were everywhere and nowhere. We will help you. You have proven yourself; you have been here every morning; and each watch, each trial; pain is temporary like life itself; each adventure into a different realm, different heavens in different skies, meant the jou

* The old woman pulled on her plastic legs as he passed her in the street. The armless beggar looked up optimistically. The blind man played the accordion as his son led him through the early morning throngs. A handsome boy stood beside the monument at the front of Limpini Park and; and catching his sly glance as he walked rapidly by gave a big grin and opened up his arms. I'm available, it won't cost you more than 500 baht, and I guarantee I'll make you very happy, the grin said; but as he barely had enough money on him for a morning coffee and there just aren't many frustrated Western males in Bangkok, he just kept walking. A hundred meters on he glanced back, and again the boy opened up his arms in a gesturing, warm embrace. I promise I'll be fun. Well no doubt dear boy; as he listened to the tinkling of the sky and the sound of the orchestra as it drifted through the park, and the hum of the traffic as a policeman gestured him and other pedestrians across th

* There had been so much trouble. And yet now he walked past the dahling, dahrling, good night dahrling bars and went home cheap comfort; watched the English German match at the local English puib, The Duke of Windsor, sitting on iced water and wondering: where did it all go, how did it happened. He loved being out all night and suddenly he was sleeping an unheard of five hours a night and not getting up till 5am. It was all too crazy these chiming times, when he had shown up drunk as a skunk at AA meetings and could hear the weather men chanting: I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you. You are no longer protected. The divine hand has ruled you out. You are a very funny man and you destroyed yourself. Those will kill you faster than anything, James had said in Chiang Mai, pointing at the cigarettes. It was eight days since he had had one. Sometimes he didn't think about having one for an hour or more. Sometimes he could barely resist the pull. Sometimes, if he wasn't

* The call came and he did not return it; that one he had dared to love so much and forgave so much; for no other reason perhaps than that he too once roamed the streets and put up with the mauling of men two or three times of his age; I can do, I can do, he would say bravely; this time by a boy who didn't smoke, drink or take drugs and who, instead of being entirely nocturnal, as the other boys he had known had been, but just as no Thai ever comes alone; nor did this one. It's a classic Thailand thing; being dragged home to meet the family by rent boys and working girls; and many a western male has found themselves shaking hands with mother and father. Oh by the way I'm screwing your son/daughter for money. It never seems to come up, so to speak; they are embraced whole heartedly; as if they are relieved you don't have two heads and they can share in your money. The Buddha shines upon them in so many original ways. This time it was a tiny house on the edge of a r

* That languidly handsome boy who's haircut he had paid for only a fortnight before accosted him in the street; and promptly, holding his hand insistently, followed them to the go go bar where they were going to watch a show; Bangkok Boys, the biggest, as they claim, go go boy bar in Thailand. Baw, the second Baw, whispered in his ear: I can get ice, nahm keng, big packet, 2,000 baht, I bring my girlfriend, we can smoke, we can all sleep together, I f... my new girlfriend, you can watch, us all four, we can sleep together. And in another life; only a short time ago, he would have been defenseless against the promise of heightened joy and things he never thought possible. But the new boy was having none of it; shaking his head as if the mere thought of an orgy on ice was too ridiculous, crazy and insane for words and why would any sane person want to do such a thing. The go go boys paraded their wares; there was only one amongst the dozens he might have picked; with the tatoos cu

* Still he puzzled over how it had happened, these moments of idiocy, and yet in his heart he knew the answers all too well, and did not want to commit them to paper or to memory, or to public view, those fragile moments when he and the dog were the only people awake on the planet; well in Sydney, or so it seemed, as he walked the Redfern streets and Wilson Street in particular, passing, passing, by the sleeping cars and the nodding junkies and time out of mind, when he stopped going to the clubs and stopped sleeping with people - any people - and when a man not meant to be alone tossed restlessly for two hours before giving the idea of sleep away as a bad toss; as no way he could function. Now God had sent him a boy who slept eight or twelve hours a night, they love their sleep Thai men, and the boy looked at him askance when he realised he had been out since 5am and only come home to wake him up for college; still he was sleeping more than was his due, more than he ever had; and e

* There wasn't anywhere else he wanted to be; and although he fretted about the cost the truth was he had spent the equivalent of a months rent in an upmarket apartment in a matter of days, during those lost days, lost time, when anyone who saw him later expressed concern and would say: oh my God, I didn't realise, I didn't know that about you. You seem so normal, so happy, most of the time. So he sat in the cafe down the road having his one morning coffee, now his only chemical extravagance, where Thai pop blared out its catchy melodies and the swishy boy with diamonds in his ears served him with a pleasure that made all the customers laugh; and walk away beaming, while the handsome boys making the coffee also looked entirely adapted, entirely a part of their own world, and he, as always, was the only falang. The only foreigner. He met up with James from the Epoch Times in Sydney, who had met an American Thai woman and was now living in Bangkok with their two year old

* Looking across the conjunction of the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers, everything seemed possible in this part of the world. He was no longer lonely; and his instant notoriety only added to the confusion. Jerking haphazardly down the boulevarde. Dropping by the Happy Pizza. Face grim with pain, eroded with laughter, painted with cigarettes; he was up and down all night getting off the fags while irritable tension coursed through his body and the boy slept, as beautiful in his mind as ever. Pay them well treat them well. It was a successful formula in almost every sense; except the impact on his wallet. He woke up determined to be a millionaire; so he could maintain a lifestyle beyond his means, so he wouldn't have to go and live in Calcutta, as he kept threatening to do. Much of the humour was lost in translation. But they could tell, they woke up with boners a mile long, they could tell. They never did anything they didn't want to; which could be very annoying. Languid, the