Much Was Not Working

*

The shame guilt regret came early. The remorse was always there. That was how they captured him in the end, up a blind alley with the dark warehouses shadowing over. He always seemed to get sick in Pnom Penh. The place was always an assault. You should have followed your own worst instincts. Anything would be better than this; these muffled conclusions as he walked out of people's lives; stopped being the joker the courter the founder the father the eccentric and evolved behind closed doors; while the city was quiet because it's Khmer New Year today and most businesses are shut. In Thailand the buckets of water fly. In a crazy attempt at humour he lapsed into complete and total der silence. There wasn't anything worth talking about, not when so many others could do it for him. An anthropological study, these things. He woke up with a start at 2am to find a Khmer taxi girl nestled next to him. Two dollars for a ride. He had left the door to his hotel room open, easy to see the view over the congruence of the Tom Lesap and the Mekong. The present state of the Mekong has nothing to do with drought or the Chinese sucking it out before it gets t to the border; it's climate change, the government has declared; another gambit for money. She was dark and wore short jeans and God knows what you would catch getting off with her; and he ordered her out of the room. OK you give me 10,000 rial - $2.50 - she said.

As he hadn't invited her in and was worried about being robbed; he was insistent. She went and sat out on the chair outside without too much resistance - she was only small - but with the whole don't you want me? flounce; as if, what's wrong with you, many men want me; it's the middle of the night and who cares what compromise we reach; but if there is one power western men have in Asia it's to choose their own sex workers. No, he repeated. No. There was no sign of a security guard. It was New Year's Eve and much was not working. The power, she has enormous power my friend, Anthony Hopkins said in Wolfman, but there was no moon out and for once no one seemed to be in the street. He went back into his room, locked the door and bolted it. There wasn't any way he was going to get the pox at best; and as they drove the dusty, shabby streets of Toul Kourk, past the train line that doesn't work; past the abandoned sidings; past the smells of a town with poorly functioning infrastructure; and they could see the taxi girls in the shadows. Hard way to make a quid. They hid in the shadows and took anyone off the street until the sweat and the buildup became too much; and he had woken to find her there. Set up? She didn't look that old. Everything was a set up here.

They went out past the rifle range where westerners pay good money to shoot AK47s on a rifle range of some kind; just want to shoot something; and down the open trailing fields, garbage filling gutters and waterways; a drowned but desiccated world, and he saw the scarecrows slumped up against the front gates; westerners in a tuk tuk, with everything out of tune and out of place, with his 18-year-old daughter he was saying goodbye to shortly as she went back to Australia and the heartache was a cruel thing and the destiny flowers; the arched and difficult world into which they had been born, here as they bounced out past the airport in the blinding heat on the road to nowhere; and he put his headphones in his ears and forgot to talk back in the ceaseless prattle over the sound of the tuk tuk, with no consequence, no danger, a curse upon you, zigzagging from one place to the other, from pointless excursions down roads on the outskirts to traffic choked streets moving from one indulgence to the next, shop to cafe to shop, the disease of more he snapped when his dearest ex decided she had to travel half way across the city for a passion-fruit mint drink from The Metro and couldn't live without at least three of them. There wasn't any way out of this but a downward spiral; anything to block out the noise; the guilt of the situation; the tolerance of diversity.

He felt no tolerance at all as Bob Dylan soared over the endless roar of the ratty little tuk tuk, and the girls kept forcing him to turn off the headphones because there was something they just had to tell him; and she was an embarrassment on two legs and he just imploded; and even then, in the whimsical air, couldn't the story be better told? Why did she have to be so graceless, so full of words? Eyes like decals and a voice like an iron file, as Augie March puts it. And he woke up to find someone sleeping next to him; not of his choosing; and nice as the flesh can be the taxi girls are nothing but trouble; stay away from them he was warned. He took in the situation in an instant. She stretched her legs, displaying her assets. Not every man. He jumped up and looked at her, startled, calculating. This was not the place to be. Cambodia. He suddenly realised; out there where the great rivers meet and people walk along the river side at all hours, communing, socialising, hunting, spruking. There was a price for everything. He did not like forced sales. Out, come on, out, he insisted; and she looked at him like, I will do anything, don't think I'm not experienced. That's the problem honey, he thought as he shepherded her out; checking that his wallet was still in his pocket. Thank God he had taken it out of the drawer, he thought, noticing later that the few thousand rial he had left on the desk was gone. Lucky that was all that was gone, he thought.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.pri.org/world/asia/thailand-s-political-crisis-escalates1946.html

Foreign tourists ran for cover in Bangkok this weekend as bullets flew in the Thai capital’s old quarter. The violence in the streets was the worst in Bangkok in nearly 20 years, as anti-government protestors demanded the resignation of Thailand's Prime Minister. They won a political victory on Monday, when Thailand’s election commission recommended that charges of financial irregularities be brought against the Prime Minister’s party, which could lead to the party's dissolution. Still, the streets of Bangkok remain turbulent.

Opposition supporters known as "red shirts" shouted slogans and waived red banners. Some carried empty coffins with framed pictures of their slain colleagues. Bangkok is under a state of emergency, so this parade and other demonstrations by the red shirts are illegal, but that did little to deter the protesters. On Saturday, their anger met with deadly retaliation when a street battle raged between thousands of red shirts and security forces. Twenty-one people were killed.

The Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, blames people he calls terrorists for inciting the violence.

But red shirt supporter and university professor Toom says the Thai leader isn’t fooling anyone. "I think more people will come and join the red shirts because they can see what’s going on. They want Abhisit to dissolve the Parliament. That’s all they want. They want a new election. They want true democracy."

The red shirts claim Abhisit came to power illegally with the help of the military, and doesn’t speak for Thailand’s poor. Red shirts have camped out in the capital for weeks, sleeping in the shadows of luxury malls and hotels.

Abhisit met with red shirt leaders last month to hear their political demands, but no deal was reached on when to hold elections. The red shirts then began to crank up their campaign of civil disobedience until Abhisit declared an emergency and sent in soldiers.

Abhisit spokesman, Panitan Wattanyagom, says the soldiers fought back only after they came under fire, though it’s not clear who shot first. Nor is it clear when there might be talks to resolve the crisis.

"The Prime Minister is open for negotiation," Panitan said. "The situation should return back to the beginning, where there is no law breaking, there is not attempt to block certain intersections. If they’re still breaking laws on the streets then it’s difficult for him to sit down and talk."

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