A Gift To The Gods

*

There were rivulets of something resembling peace, there in the ether, with far-off the canyons and other places. He didn't remember the things he thought he would remember all his life. You were probably in black out most of the time I was talking to you, Peter said, the difference is remarkable. Well maybe so; he didn't know, he put his medallions aside and thought, said in fact, only half in jest: no wonder they call this the millionaire's meeting, you really are the women who lunch. Sandy had just declared she couldn't possibly go to the movies to see Inception because she would be in Shanghai for the World Fair. What a life these people led; indeed most everybody he met had a story to tell, living in Bangkok, posted, departed, returned, abandoned. There was Robbie, adopted as a young boy by an American couple in Seattle; drunk now, judging by the look of him, for a very long time; and having said these things, could he think any different; when they went to Swiss Cafe for lunch, all in 199 baht, and everything was a saving grace, everything matched everything else; they sat briefly in the Balcony, because he tried to explain with little success that he had done his sociology thesis on bars and retained an ever-lasting fascination with them, even sober, even this late in life, even happily shacked; as he was, kind of.

Disloyalty will not be rewarded my son; keep faith with those who keep faith with you. Sneaking doubts will do you no good. Dreams of wilder times must remain dreams. A boy in every port, well perhaps that was permissible, there's only so much sainthood one foreigner can withstand in this fetid climate, with allures and temptations and easy sex all around, with the smell of the sewer always at hand, when overflowing drains were just a blanch away every piece of drama had to be soaked up for later release. He struggled to say the word "theatrical" in Thai, to explain the word he was looking for without a dictionary. It proved fruitless; and no amount of explanation could elicit any other response than "beautiful"; as if this corner piece of luxury, the chairs and tables outside on to the streets, the attentive waiters looking for their tips, as if all of this was anything but a discarded moment, a source of drama, attention and amusement, however brief. Because he liked to watch the other queens, young old and indifferent, in all their shocking and ridiculous poses, doing exactly what they did best: posing. While an old man sat in a corner smoking a giant cigar. And the waiters, one of whom in particular he had come to know quite well from his days in another establishment, smiled at him warmly, really for the first time, signalling only one thing: he was pleased, in that very Thai way, you are happy I am happy, that he was pleased to see he had a new boyfriend.

The rest of these quiet days passed in doing chores, trying to increase his number of laps on the rooftop pool, going to a meeting, gan-paht-gahng, renting knock-off movies of all the latest shows in the street, where the boys always kept changing and he was warned not even to carry one he was returning because he couldn't make the English, passah-angkhri, work on Robin Hood. They moved because the police were always busting them, and yet, of course, they remained as popular as ever because they undercut the 7-11s and were readily available, there in the street, cheerful. You could buy anything here, literally. even if your taste didn't run to the perverse. There was always a pile of the latest releases. In Panpit Plaza, the hi-tech computer centre, the shops selling the knock-offs worked happily alongside signs warning of the dangers and illegality of cheap copies. Everything went. Copyright was a Western notion, or so it seemed. And he could hear the voices feeding in the night, he could hear the lurking discontent wondering where it was going, he could hear the possibilities opening up and closing like some strange undersea anemone, and now that everything had passed him by, his two month bender receding in time and space and place, overlaid not just by the passing days but by the hot-water bottle of a current boyfriend, he knew he had been deeply stupid, deeply hoodwinked. None of it mattered. He would give anything for those flashes of intimacy; there in between the torrents of liquid desire; the beauty in the fabric of everything, as they splashed a cap of the newly opened Black Label whisky on the ground, a gift to the gods, to good fortune.

Tom Waits told his story. He moved quickly. Baby, I always take the long way home. But the long way home meant something different to him, hardly the warmth and shambles on the outskirts of town, young love, ramshackle desire, instead it meant a juvenile nightmare against green he had always sought to escape; and finally, all these years later, it was nothing but a distant memory, something that had happened to someone else, a different version, a different self; while the women who lunch debated on whether to order a second dish of pasta at the Swiss Cafe and those people who were supposedly supportive weren't supportive at all, it was just a figment amongst millionaires, an easy desire. Jim, if that was his name, talked of the marvellous accomplishments of the Thai builders in building his dream home, somewhere in some cool valley amongst the rice paddies. He didn't want to go anywhere. He liked Bangkok. He liked the crowded streets. He liked the way he could walk to the local Cafe Anan in his pyjamas and nobody noticed; they were all too busy at that hour of the morning going about their own lives. There was a tiny smattering of foreigners in the streets now, it being the European summer, and the stores along Silom were at last seeing a few customers; but even then there seemed to be more space than there should be; far fewer foreigners than usual; so when he wandered off the main street into the back markets off Soi Piphat one woman kept going, as he shopped for breakfast, "farang, farang", "foreigner, foreigner", as if he was from Mars. He commented to the merchant he was dealing with, who just rolled his eyes. As if to say: There is no end to the level of people's ignorance. They're all from the village. In the end he just laughed and repeated the words back to the insistant women: "farang, farang", foreigner, foreigner. A stranger in a strange land. All before breakfast.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/22/2960668.htm?section=justin

Federal Labor campaign spokesman Chris Bowen has moved to hose down reports that Kevin Rudd is in line for a key job as a climate change adviser at the United Nations.

News Limited papers are reporting that the former prime minister is being considered for the top-level job, which would force him to leave Australia

The issue of Kevin Rudd's removal as prime minister and his future role in a Labor government is threatening to become a major distraction from Julia Gillard's election campaign with other reports also emerging today about an alleged deal between the two the night before he was toppled as prime minister.

The reports of a possible UN job for Mr Rudd come after he attracted huge media attention while touring a school in his electorate of Griffith in Brisbane yesterday.

The newspapers quote an unnamed source who says Mr Rudd could be made a special envoy or an ambassador reporting directly to the UN secretary-general.

They say the United Nations "refused to hose down speculation" on the appointment.

Mr Rudd was in New York last week and met the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

But Mr Bowen says that when Mr Rudd lost the leadership last month he said he wanted to stay in parliament.

"I'm aware the Kevin Rudd has said that he is recontesting the seat of Griffith and wants to remain a member of the House of Representatives," he said.

"I'm also aware that he is very well respected internationally, and perhaps this sort of speculation is unsurprising.

"But my understanding of the arrangements is that Kevin Rudd has indicated he wants to stay in parliament and he will stay in parliament should he be re-elected by the people of Griffith."

Campaigning at a primary school in his Brisbane electorate yesterday, Mr Rudd ignored questions from the media and said only that he would be campaigning on local issues during the election campaign.

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/NATO-Insurgents-Behead-6-Police-in-Afghanistan-98910339.html

NATO forces in Afghanistan say militants have beheaded six Afghan police officers in northern Baghlan province.

A NATO statement said the killings occurred late Tuesday during an insurgent attack on a school, clinic and local government building. The statement said police successfully repelled the assault, but that during the attack, insurgents overran a police checkpoint and killed the officers. The alliance condemned the incident as "brutal" and "barbaric."

Also Wednesday, the Danish military said a roadside bomb killed a Danish soldier and wounded another in southern Helmand province.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said a probe into the killing of two U.S. civilian trainers by an Afghan soldier Tuesday showed it was the result of a "verbal argument."
Another Afghan soldier was killed in the crossfire and the shooter, believed to be an Afghan army trainer, was shot dead at a base in northern Balkh province.

In another development, the Taliban denounced Tuesday's international conference on Afghanistan's future. A statement posted in English on the group's web site said "the futile gathering" showed that the United States lost the initiative and is unable to resolve the Afghanistan issue. The statement said that whatever actions are taken in this regard have already been doomed to failure.

Picture: Peter Newman.