Life's Simple Mottoes

*

There were thousands of them, thousands of them, camera eyes cruising high over football fields packed with shy boys bad at sports, high over ancient villages and inserted into the middle of packed carriages on the Bangkok sky train, watching everything, seeing everything. The distant heart had fractured long ago. The boy showed him porn movies on a mobile camera and suggested a threesome with a lady; claiming, despite his evident popularity, he was too poor to afford a lady himself. They numbered them in cages. He remembered his shock when he first saw it, those sad girls behind glass in the dark club, in those days when all he wanted to do was get smashed and his memory, already torn to shreds at the youngest age, grasped at darkened images for a record that would never be made, a story that would never be told because stories required narrative, structure, characters, events, time sequences, beginnings and endings; and this was only one fractured image following another, set against a terrible, gathering, growing despair he could never understand as the fabric of things thickened and ran into evil black and the sky loomed lower and lower by the day. Already the full harvest moon which had blessed the Chiang Mai nights, had made them so astonishingly beautiful, was half burnt out, fuelling hell in the sky and longing in his heart.

Circumstance was forcing him to move when he didn't want to move; and a terrible crime that had been committed long ago was dismissed without charge. Backpackers walked medieval streets. Melodic Thai music spilled out of radios. A chaotic heart had turned to chaotic longing, yet they were so easy to buy and he was not a demanding client. You are a good customer, the maitre d' said. You are a nice person. They happy. You happy. You not alone. I don't want that. And laughing; I want to watch. They all seemed to want to watch. The boy mimicked filming from behind curtains at the planned, or was it fantasised, threesome; and later, as they went out to the clubs for another bout of too loud music thumping through their aging brains Gary asked: aren't we too old for this? Of course we are, he replied, but what does it matter. Even if we live to a hundred we'll be dead soon enough. Yeh, he said and shrugged. He had seemed young only to a woman in her eighties. The skies were a billow of discontent; but earthly pleasures could change everything; make their brief time on board this planet seem momentarily worthwhile, even the jokes that spilled back on themselves. I got off with a Thai massage lady this afternoon, Michael boasted, I'll have to tell you guys all about it later. But later, in his absence, they just joked: gees, that must have been hard. What are the chances? One in a million?

The boys danced with the girls at Spicy, which didn't get going until 2pm and filled rapidly with all the workers from the various girly bars scattered through the city, and drunken, oh so utterly drunken Westerners danced through till the dawn; shadows, they were so plastered, slobbering on the lithe form of elegant strangers; the Thai girl wiping her chin in disgust when the handsome, drunken lad tried to kiss her; miming kicking him in the balls when he wasn't watching; as if he would notice anything anyway. He took digital pictures of them in the crowded disco and they shied away; and then he asked another to take a picture of him with the ice queen; who pretended, ever so briefly, her hand draped down the side of his leg, to be his. The thump of the music never stopped. You want Thai lady, the lady boys cooed as he walked home at 3 am, assuming he was too drunk, it was too late, for any dumb westerner to know the difference. Massage? a boy asked; and he felt like demanding: are you 18? But instead he waved dismissively and kept on walking; already satiated; for a price, everything had a price. That's what Peter McQ had always said. Everything has a price. You have to decide whether you're prepared to pay it. Every action has a consequence. Every bender brings you closer to death; or closer to the streets. Are you prepared to pay the price?

These were actions at the end of time. We'll be dead soon enough, he kept repeating, dancing amongst drunken crowds, passing from one realm into another through distorted consciousness, being clear of purpose and sacred of intent, wanting only the best for everybody involved. Triumphant joy should not come at such a price. Multinationals peddling cigarettes made entire populations ill; and the fashion times were dismissed in rising health budgets. How as it possible to addict entire populations, millions, tens, hundreds of millions, and this was legal? The rarefied pleasures he had so often sought were now of a different era. The people were healthy, happy. Handsome Thai men embraced their beautiful wives; their gorgeous, well behaved, well cared for well protected children clustering in family groups. A man alone is a danger, a potential predator. Even the travel agent commented: you travel everywhere alone and he smiled knowingly: not everywhere. She laughed and didn't question. They had already had their jokes: she was the most beautiful travel agent in Chiang Mai; she was the woman with the blue diamond. Some Western men couldn't walk past a single Thai woman without making comment: oh how they must tire of it; these gross farangs, these idiots. He watched the bar princess wipe her cheek from the slobbering kiss of the drunken man; handsome but blind blind drunk, barely able to stand; all those with amorous intent tonight line up here and die.

The Hamburger Hot Dog Chili joint took Gary straight back to America in the 1950s and after they passed it earlier in the night moved heaven and earth to get back to chili onion dogs and paradise, the black and white tiles, the red stools, the dated signage: Wally's, converting vegetarians since 1979. Who's Wally? he asked; franchise, replied the Thai man in stilted English. Even the Volkswagen combi van bar was quiet as they watched bar girls trip up the road towards Spicy. This would be illegal in America, Gary said, my God they would shut it down in an instant, the open walls, alcohol on the street. And they agreed: their respective countries, stifling, grossly over regulated, boring to their very soul, couldn't lay a patch on this. Asia's magnificent, Gary declared grandly, just look at this, he said in a wave which took in the lights reflecting off the canal, the late night restaurants, the music pumping down from Spicy, the tuk tuk drivers lounging in their vehicles, waiting for the late night revelers to call time. If everything was closed and shuttered in their states of origin; if Asia offered a myriad of delights and carnivore forms, blanket pleasures and visual stimulus wherever you looked; then the silence of their own countries offered a suburban terror both of them knew only too well. There was no desire to return. You'd be mad, your money would go nowhere; Gary said. And he took up the reigns of opportunity; and rode with the pleasures of the flesh. Treat them well. Pay them well. Everyone is happy. Life's simple mottoes. Dark angels fled in the morning air.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://australianetworknews.com/stories/201004/2863779.htm?desktop

Thousands of anti government protesters in Thailand have spent the night in the commercial heart of the capital, Bangkok.

They have threatened to stay until Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva calls elections.

On Saturday they forced big department stores to close and paralysed traffic when they crowded at an intersection.

The Reuters news agency reports while the rally was mostly peaceful, tempers flared when a Porsche ploughed into a row of parked motorbikes.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jgwYsF3lkTwwtBMfWGQHHWnqCC6Q

Thousands of anti-government protesters have occupied the commercial heart of Thailand's capital, forcing the closure of major shopping malls.

The government first ordered them out before the end of the day but as the deadline passed officials said negotiations would continue.

It was the fourth weekend demonstration in Bangkok by the mainly poor, rural protesters known as the Red Shirts, and the group said they will not leave until the prime minister dissolves parliament and calls new elections.

They poured into an area of the city lined with hotels and shopping malls as they attempted to force prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to meet their demands, after failing to oust his government through peaceful mass marches and negotiations.

More than a half-dozen shopping malls, normally packed with weekend shoppers, and office buildings were closed for security reasons as about 10,000 protesters gathered in the area, according to police spokesman Piya Utayo.

He said the total number of demonstrators, including those in other parts of the city and on the move, reached nearly 55,000.

The government first gave the protesters until 9pm local time to disperse and sent senior police officers to negotiate.

The talks broke down after the Red Shirts refused to leave and police General Panupong Singhara Na Ayuthaya, who led the negotiating team, said they would resume on Sunday.

"If the government wants to arrest us, they would have to arrest every single one of us," protest leader Veera Musikapong told the crowd, saying they would remain indefinitely.

The news agency says protesters smashed its windshield and scuffled with the 18 year old driver, a member of a prominent family who was rescued by police.