Days Volume Two

* They had long wanted to talk about the chaos that had enveloped their lives in a sixty day period; the time between visa runs. And so they did. With the boy's new girlfriend, a result of a strange series of coincidences which he himself had accidentally initiated, while he was bound by a time frame of pretending to be home all night to his current boyfriend. They both had new partners, in other words, and life had moved on dramatically. Sometimes sophisticated in their calls, sometimes barren in their hopes, theirs was a new found glory. Tum pid=plahd went the line, I make a mistake. I don't love her 100 per cent, the boy admitted. Sometimes only 60 or 70 per cent, sometimes 80. Well we all make compromises, he said in a too wordy English, which meant much of what he said was not understood. If you gave 100 per cent you would be giving your life away, surrendering to another. Something like that. Choirboys in quicksand, went the song, In the land of hungry ghosts. Choirboy

* They were crucifying themselves, swirling in, regulation upon regulation, ache upon heartache, sea breeze in an infinite dawn, all that was breaking, heart open, crystal shore, these places were the beginning of new things and old, and he emerged like some primordial life form coming out of the swamp, almost laughing as the water streamed from him. I'm just a garden gnome alcoholic, the next three speakers said, the only time he ever said what was truly going on in his head. So instead he became friends with Maria from New York and they made jokes about the library card set - as in, I knew I had to do something about myself when I lost my library card. Fell off a bar stool. Got done for Driving Under the Influence. He could hardly be marshalled into believing. That just wasn't the way to corral him into anything. Neatness freaks and Jesus freaks. Dusty streets. I might go back to morning meditation. Or splatter myself against the sky, he said to Jaan on the Skype system. T

* In Bangkok, you're always right at the borderland of the mundane and the supernatural. I mean, here's a city with fax machines and smog and expressways and buildings shaped like giant robots and the world's highest concentration of shopping malls and all that, but the twentieth century's just skin deep, scratch it and you're in the primeval past. I love it. Keeps my mind working. I was musing on all these things as I gazed at the sleek, sleeping young body of.... S.P. Somtow The crisis was real enough. The ancient battlefield was dying off now, the fizzing lights cascading into the mud disappearing into another neuronal network. But every waterfall cascading down cliffs was full of faces trying to get out; shrieking, sometimes, swirling in the froth, just trying to escape. We were cemented in our positions. Fragile in intent. Sitting in backstreet sois. Easy companionship. Every corner store, every tiny restaurant, offered easy conviviality. The rain buck

* The beast in me Is caged by frail and fragile bars Restless by day And by night rants and rages at the stars God help the beast in me The beast in me Has had to learn to live with pain And how to shelter from the rain And in the twinkling of an eye Might have to be restrained God help the beast in me Sometimes it tries to kid me That it's just a teddy bear And even somehow manage to vanish in the air And that is when I must beware Of the beast in me that everybody knows They've seen him out dressed in my clothes Patently unclear It's New York or New Year God help the beast in me The beast in me Johnny Cash These were the battlefields, lit up, trails of light blazing in flaming tracks, shocking in their intent, dismal in their finality, the ruined fields, the overwhelming sense of disappointment. And yet it was these very same battlefields which marked an entirely ruined consciousness. The lights were all cascading downwards, barely lighting

* This was what we imagined. A blighted past where nothing made sense. We caught you. We transfigured you. We were riding high above the infinite, a view across all the channels, all the grating ice, all the dips and fur-roughs, the channels which stretched forever, the alien sky, the places where we weren't now but loved so much. We wanted you, so much. We loved you, so much. We were caught amidst these strange inter-laces, lattices, places that meant nothing and everything, profound, oh my God I love you so much. Please rescue me. I could see the troughs. They were just stretching, like some European surrealist painting, into a distance we could never imagine, into a place we could never despair, or paint our own despair, pinpoint what was a stupid agony, that frivolous panting which was meant to be everything. No, I not give you so much money. No, I not so stupid. No I love you mak mak, and yes, it was the most stupid of things. Yes, I want to go sing karaoke in some stupid b

* Infinite. But that didn't stop the pain. The pleasure principle had already died. His friend got drunk on "Margies", as he called Margaritas, his favourite drink; and then headed off with the girl to the Electric Blue go go bar, where his friend took his latest girl in a queue of girls, downed tequila shots and pole danced with the go go girls until they were too drunk to stand. They'd written the chorus: We were choir boys in quicksand In the land of hungry ghosts Amongst all the back slapping and bleary late night toasts On the streets of Bangkok, Irish pubs and Sunday roasts We were choir boys in quicksand In the land of hungry ghosts. They were crucified before they had even started. Nothing worked. Every excess had been surrendered. They were too old for it now. Taking care of pappa, that's how they thought of it. Hardly erotic. Tip tip. Good natured as they were. Flesh on flesh. Yabba pscyhotic girlfriends cleaning guns. Does it work? he asked. Y

* The images were fleeing like rats into a grey ether; and he wore the distended, ragged tiger t-shirt with pride. It cost him 200 baht and already it was falling apart. But he liked the distended red Asian tiger and the word "Answers" crawling across his chest. As if there were any answers. As if the flight of the tiger through the smoky sky held anything but a sense of infinite strangeness, of Asian nights and infinity and a clarion call to right the wrongs. He wasn't shattered or bereft, confused or blinded. Wounded by life, perhaps, by worries that marked the fall of innocence, by a thousand creeping sensitivities that blurred into one enormous vague out. Oh pretty boy, come hither. As if it meant anything. As if they hadn't already been where everyone should go. To the end of the line. Not to Absolut, but absolute, there in the peak of indulgences and the singing of modern songs of discredit. He couldn't be sure what was happening. Fool if he succumbed to

* I couldn't be seen like that. Not gasping, not panting. Not just desperately wanting everything to end. Not able to achieve a heightened place. Money saved at every turn. Bangkok brothels mounted in corridors, each to be explored. He couldn't care less what the consequence. I love you. I miss you. These things were dancing on a very fine pin. I love you; when the whole of the city beckoned; redolent with glory, puhm poohey, plump, chubby, an observation of status or derision. I love you, that is what I have come to know. We were going to make the swiftest break, the most immediate of corridors, sweeping, beautiful. Dizzy, you bet you. Spewing out of those Colognes, out of the swirling spear, out of the elegiac ear piece, out of Christmas and New Year, out of wind tunnels and constellations not just of exquisite despair but mind numbing beauty, as if consequence was the only answer, as if we said too much just by being here. As if he lied and lied and lied. Just to to be th

* The herd mentality was back, if it had ever left; gassap gassai, restless, the boy said, and everything moved away in rivers, across time, through the channels that pummelled through walls, the flash of a thigh, a sunny smile, a gesture, a path not taken. It was never going to be the same. There were a hundred ways of viewing these things. There were crises that never made the point, misshapen faces, and he knew that a destiny awaited him he did not want to face. There were flowers in the garden, faces misaligned, communist bodies marching in concord, trimmed hedges, beds of orchids, hanging trees, crows perched up high, watching every move, harbingers, and even while he sat a turtle crawled across the grass and tried to nuzzle into him. You're not well, you're dizzy, someone said, and he knew it to be true. They couldn't much match what was happening to him. All across time, things were fleeing, bright spots, pain etched out of wilderness, thighs flitting through the