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; because as life grew older less and less mattered; too many had died; and in these terrible states his eyes swept up across the cityscapes; and yes, he was simply overwhelmed. Hordes of people flickered along the sidewalks, mounted the motos and whizzed through the appalling traffic, climbed the stairwell to the train, queued outside the street stalls. There were people wherever you looked. Fragile strings of consciousness, of fate, of cruel and bypassing indifference, of a terrible place in a terrible time; all of it emoted like some intelligence behind the fabric of things; multicoloured in the beauty of the landscapes, it was simply not something that could be handled by any one human being; by any ordinary soul. And so if desolation sometimes stalked his every waking hour; equally he stared in astonishment as the ATM spit out thousands of baht; and he smiled, grimly, at the world he had entered, a world where he could aford to live, debt free.
Yet there was nothing unique about this. Asia was full of old men on pensions, retirees, people who by some strange demographic osmosis came to settle in the cheapest and most comfortable places. The Thais smiled. They led you to your seat. They clasped their hands together - sawa dee kahb. And they held out their hand in welcome. As the black moths, the night girls, yelled out as they passed, kahb, kahb. Mister mister. In the old days Hey Johnnie you want something meant something entirely different. Now the tuk tuk drivers ask if you want something; and all they mean are girls. Girls; as if a massage parlour was hard to find, for Christ's sake. As if the town wasn't full of westerners cheerfully drinking themselves to exultant oblivion in the arms of some of the world's most beautiful; and cheapest; hookers. As if the crawling Aussie Aussie Aussie of the Kangaroo Bar meant something. As if he really wanted to love them long time, cheap cheap. As if the thought didn't fill him with horror, to go where so many have gone before.
And so in an aching place; and a laughing place; he wondered how they had ever survived. How could anyone shoot so much speed and still be a functioning human being? No wonder they suffered health problems as they grew old. No wonder he looked at all the sex tourists with a kind of benign, amused contempt; for their peccadilloes and lusty avenges made up for his own lack of action. Let them dance. Let them drink. Let them lust into the long night. The three men sharing a room next door all brought girls home in the middle of the night. How does that work? Orgies on demand? Everyone doing everyone? The Thais getting louder, drunker, as they drank through the long hot afternoons. He marry me next month. Look, look, the girl shouted, showing images on yet another mobile device.
It wasn't that he didn't care. It wasn't that he wouldn't have stayed if he thought it would make any difference. Reach out. Reach out and be consumed. So all the dancers, all the girls, all the boys lined up with numbers hanging around their necks, all the brothels reminded him of a different place, an ancient place, Chiang Mai before the tourists and the traffic, when this once charming town was filled with the ring of rickshaw drivers and flowers hung from every wall. Now there's MacDonalds and Starbucks and even in these dying days of the tourist season enough farangs to make you wonder: how does any culture survive this onslaught; here in the past nights when he sought entirely different things. When oblivion was the only solution. When a dance was just a prelude. When he couldn't care less what the ending was, because there were no happy endings. When he was the boy at the end of the fishing line, waiting for the fisherman to return.
And so he feared the worst for Alex. And there remained no word. And death stalked every other fate line; even his own. And survivor guilt trumped shame guilt regret and remorse; and tender concern over fragile, incidental friendships swam way way up across the bewildering, pastel coloured cityscapes, and he knew no deep or bewildering concern; just a shrug in the face of the onslaught. At least he had tried to do the right thing; even if it didn't matter anymore. And the hordes of Asia, and indeed even the messengers from his own past, took no notice at all as yet another life slipped away; indifferent consequence, indifferent to fate, indifferent to life.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/24/health.care.main/?hpt=T1
Washington (CNN) -- Senate Republicans on Wednesday launched an attempt to amend or kill legislation expanding the recently enacted health care reform law -- part of a GOP pledge to use every parliamentary tool available to undermine the measure.
The amendments also are designed to force Democrats to cast unpopular votes in the run-up to this November's midterm elections.
Senate Democrats easily defeated the first of the amendments, which challenged provisions in the bill involving changes to Medicare funding.
Also defeated were attempts to send the measure to committee for reconsideration -- which would effectively kill it -- and other amendments intended to strip provisions from the bill. There were at least 11 other motions or amendments to be considered.
The Democrats' so-called fixes bill was necessary to get a reluctant House of Representatives to pass the Senate's health care reform measure Sunday night.
The House's narrow approval of the measure allowed President Obama to sign it into law Tuesday, giving the president a victory on his signature domestic issue. But in return, House Democrats are now expecting the Senate to sign off on the compromises included in the fixes bill.
The compromise package would add more than $60 billion to the overall plan's cost partly by expanding insurance subsidies for middle- and lower-income families. It would also expand Medicare's prescription drug benefit while scaling back the bill's taxes on expensive insurance plans.
While Obama is pushing to get the measure to his desk, Democrats have acknowledged they are concerned that the Republicans may succeed in changing the carefully balanced package.
Any changes would force the package back to the House for another vote.
Also Wednesday, Democratic senators complained that Republicans had shut down committee hearings for a second straight day as part of a strategy of obstruction in protest of the health care bill.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, told a news conference the GOP tactic was delaying work on vital issues.
"It's unconscionable," said Levin, who as chairman of the Armed Services Committee was supposed to conduct a hearing with a top U.S. military commander in Korea who had flown in for the hearing. "Out national security cannot be held hostage to disagreements over a health care policy."
McCaskill had planned an oversight hearing on problems with contracts to train local police departments in Afghanistan. She said the Senate rule that allows the minority party to block committee action was "really dumb" and should be dropped.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/25/2855974.htm?section=justin
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has appeared on a Melbourne gay and lesbian radio station in an attempt to explain his recent comments about being "threatened" by homosexuality.
On a recent 60 Minutes appearance Mr Abbott said he felt "a bit threatened" when asked about homosexuality.When asked to clarify his comments a few days later he said homosexuality "challenged the orthodox notions of the right order of things".
Mr Abbott took to the airwaves of community radio station Joy FM this morning and was quizzed in a wide-ranging and lengthy interview on gay adoption, gay marriage, discrimination laws and homophobia.
He conceded his comments to 60 Minutes were a "poor choice of words".
"I think blokes of my generation and upbringing do sometimes find these things a bit confronting," he said.
"But the truth is, as we get older, we mellow.
"People close to me are gay and I'd like to think it hasn't made me love them any the less or treat them differently."
Mr Abbott, who once trained in the seminary, says while he was brought up traditionally, he strives to take people as he finds them and is in favour of gay relationships being celebrated and recognised.
Neither the Coalition nor Labor support gay marriage.
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