Days Volume Two

* At lest he had learnt a new Thai word, Tahm Peet, mistake. Maybe that was something. Anything. Everything crashed. Fire streaks falling to the ground. The battle scarred regions. The place where we would never be the same again. Shadows were everywhere. He had repudiated the light; for no particular reason except it wasn't him. Perhaps he just wasn't designed for happiness. Stupid things to say. Everything came falling down. Those cheap hotels in decaying parts of Bangkok, my God they were sleazy. Short time. Short time indeed. Well that was the mood he woke up in. Nothing worked, nothing came. In a nice house with a nice boy; and all he could wonder... Johnny Cash droned in the background. Before my time... before my time. If there was any blessed way to escape. Any way to make any bigger mistakes. Any way to encompass change. Things which should have been so easy never were. A time which should of been of peace and joy, haunted by doubt. He could smell his own foreign sm...

* He woke up feeling like a shot of vodka and a cigarette, worried by the mere mortality of everything, and thought: you're just so crazy. The vodka was not a good idea on top of liver disease. The cigarette was not a good idea on top of emphysema. Why would he want to destroy what they had worked so hard to create? This perfect house, this perfect life. The handsome boy who took care of everything. The garden in the middle of Bangkok, so that he never wanted to go out. Suddenly, after being stupid enough to let the boy talk him into buying a car he did not need, he was desperately worried about money. His ideas of wafting away at the Happy Hippy when the money ran out seemed all the more immediate. Calcutta. The dead zone. Honestly John, some days I think a lot about taking myself out, Gary said after flying in from some disastrous situation in the Phillipines. Put it off till tomorrow, he advised airily, as in, I feel like a drink, put it off till tomorrow. Put off disaster fo...

* The red lights on the sky scraper behind them blinked in the early morning dark, a warning sentinel soaring over their house. Strange statue shapes on the corner of its upper tiers gave it a certain Gothic feel, while he could feel every shadow in the streets around, hear every moto-cie as they puttered off to work. There were haunted lovers too, in all those sounds, sheets through the glass, muffled shapes, dignity abandoned. That house could have been mine, if only I hadn't made a mistake. Many mistakes. Pass away, pass away. Unrequited, these things were for another era, or from another era. Harden your heart. What would you tell your best friend to do? Stay away, stay away. And so, little evil on the blessed land, he became someone else in order to survive. He was attracted to chameleons, people who were different every time you looked at them, a princess one minute, a butch little lad the next, masculine, dripping compromise, all bowed under layers of conformity. He had ...

* They say that home is where the heart is. Having no heart, just a sad little collection of collapsing landscapes which passed for a splintered consciousness, the saying had never meant much to him. Oh to be normal. To have a craven heart. But thus it was that he found himself wandering the streets of Sydney after having been away all year, shocked and appalled, well shocked and astounded anyway, at how quiet the streets, how quaint the signage. Ten thirty at night and already the streets were deserted. No wonder I was so lonely here, he thought, and that, briefly, was all he could remember, the long spooky walks at 2am, with the mist dripping from the trees amidst signs of collapse, the well walked dog scurrying ahead, the pain of a restless spirit. Always, always, walking far and wide. There was never anybody there. He sat in alcoves in the cliffs, gentle overhangs, on tops of buildings, in deserted early morning parks, in the way of the truth and the light, holding to some stubb...

* The ocean was inky black, the black beyond dark matter and petroleum spills, when the only light was the faintest sliver of a moon in a starless sky; and everything was absence. This was the dream that kept recurring and he didn't know why. Black on black, uncanny, beautiful of course, in all its mystery and power, the vast sea, a distant shore, a profound lack. The chaos of the Bangkok streets, the busy stalls, the choking traffic, the crowds of office workers so heavy he had to step out on the road to pass their slow moving masses. That was the world he mostly inhabited. Yet it wasn't the world he really wanted. He wanted a different place, as if the beauty of the present was too much to bear without distorting and simplifying it with science fiction clichés. So instead there were times when he cycled back through former mistakes; and other times when the present situation seemed too perfect to bear. It was just that he wasn't used to things going well. Rather it had...

* Well he wasn’t prepared for anything. Look at that face. You could have drunk for 30 years. He woke up in a mood and thought it was best to get out. The visions were all jumbled in on top of each other, the crowded dreams. He couldn’t remember what they were about; except they seemed so urgent, as he woke several times, a mix of Asia and Australia. He was going to be blessed. We were marching forward. Into the abyss. Into a time of stillness and sinking wells. There were so many different ways of looking at it. He could be compromised, answered, all at once. There doesn’t seem to be an answer. Why should I open myself up to attack from that pack of c...s? He demanded to know. Peak experiences anonymous, that’s where he belonged. But how did he recover from half these things. How did he wander through the empty halls and still retain some sort of sanity? Why did they frisk him at the entrance? Nobody trusted anybody here. They liked to boast about their rock bottoms. How they weren...

* He didn’t take the calls. He didn’t answer questions. He was becoming used to his new status. He didn’t have to answer to anybody. Stray winders, stray thoughts, that’s all they were. Nothing clear, but it didn’t have to be. The previous evening they had waited for the rain, plohn tok, to stop before wandering around to the restaurant in a neighboring soi. Today a squirrel ran along the electric wires in the morning sun. His new life seemed astonishingly luxurious, even if it was cheaper than the previous incarnation. Life is long, he had told that demented group, mentioning things about his early years he wished he hadn’t, because everything was about status here and it was important not be seen in lower terms. Come the rain, all would be well. So he acted carefully. Worked hard. Could see the clouds coming and going. Wanted to know, what was the answer? Private gay tours of Bangkok? Wait for the guardian angel to provide inspiration. Come and get cooked. Ignore the ice pipes for...