Confounded by rigorous belief, patterns of thought that he knew not, Henrietta is talking about how she's going to have a black cousin because her uncle David is having a baby to Laura, who's Cambodian. She's nice, most blokes would be eternally happy, but he was never one for the single life, or a single woman. She's on the plane back to Pnom Penh and before the fuel has finished burning in the sky doors are shutting and the boys are off to the nearest brothel, the squirming trails of activity, the girls, professional hostesses, gazing in concern if you're not immediately hooked up, satisfied. This is all for you, she said, with the streams of crowds parting around them, the boxing rings, the groups of Westerners, the Singha and Heinekin beers crowding on to the tables, people from everywhere, absolutely everywhere; in a sex industry astonishing for its size - and diversity.
There was just about anything you could possibly imagine; from the middle aged tourists having foot massages to the marauding gangs of Aussie boys out to get pissed and party, party, party. One particularly ugly gronk from near the German border says, within sentences of having introduced himself, the girls are fantastic here, they even let you piss on them. Oh great, that fulfils every sexual fantasy. As if the clouds and crowds and teeming life really meant anything. It's the 75th anniversary of the Harbour Bridge this Sunday and I have to be at Observatory Hill at 7.30am. It will be a long day, while my skin crawls and the bright dizzying flashes of the harbour wash across us. Pad in hand, pose in hand, we'll get through. He didn't know where the enjoyment had gone.
I still keep thinking of Pai, of Thailand, of how nice it all was. Perhaps it was just being on holidays with a good exchange rate; when Calcutta comes to mind, they'll jump a hundred foot for a rupee, Sada Street and the Fairlorne; or however you spell it, the faded elegance and the little stories that you couldn't really repeat; not here. Crossed Wires has gone; completely gone; the blog I was following of the mentally ill gay boy who saw himself as a disciple of Burroughs and wrote, really quite well at times, of his wild escapades drunk in the bars of border country; outposts, fringes; going off his scone in porn theatres when someone older, uglier and fatter than himself approached; of the desolation and mental illness; he was always taking something to put his head on right; it's all gone now. He was pretending to be something he was not; crunchy in milk, and when he put up a post of what he really looked like; when people twigged that his photograph wasn't really him and he suffered a bout of honesty, it all seemed to unravel. He was always threatening to take everything off the web and turn it all into a novel. Perhaps he's dead.
THE BIGGEST STORY:
ABC:
PM 'angry and disappointed' with Santoro
The Prime Minister says his Minister for Ageing, Santo Santoro, had no choice but to resign after failing to disclose dozens of share transactions.
John Howard says he is angry and disappointed Santo Santoro breached disclosure rules in relation to up to 60 share transactions.
"This incident is embarrassing, I don't like and I don't mince words, I don't like it at all," Mr Howard said.
"This is a very annoying thing to me, I'm angry about it and I'm entitled to feel both annoyed and angry."
He says Senator Santoro had no alternative but to quit after inquiries from the Prime Minister's office sparked the latest revelations about his share holdings.
Mr Howard says his Government is not falling apart, despite the resignation of a second minister in a fortnight.
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