Painful It Was So Bright

*

So he knelt down on Patpong before the monk, with the two go go boys by his side, there between Super Girls and Super Pussy, and thought: it doesn't get much more dislocated than this. He had sought strange experiences and ended up in the company of rent boys. Not that they weren't good company. They often were. He fought through the thickening fog, the strange curtains, strange branch like structures beating on his face as he ran; and to think he had paid for this experience. Darkness wasn't here, it was more like a shattering ethereal light, painful it was so bright. So completely abandoned, so completely departed from his old life, he watched with a certain fascination as the falang, the foreigner, sat in the corner of Hot Male Station and made various proffers on the boys; 1,000 baht he began at, Aek, I like, no, sorry, I have boyfriend, Mr Yung, too trisy, Mr Tong, no, I don't take customer, and settling on a butch little boy, well butch by Thai standards but nonetheless pretty, who looked entirely distressed, indeed extremely unhappy at the thought of going off with the old man in the corner. The man offered him 2,000 bath, near enough eighty dollars on the current exchange rates, to which he demanded four, raising four fingers in the air. Three is enough to buy the best looking bodies in town stay till morning; almost no one gets four. The falang agreed instantly. This one he wanted.

He had a belt slung low and all the accoutrements of a teenager, Western or Eastern, and still looking very unhappy about the whole situation, and barely old enough to cope, he went back on the dance floor and embraced his equally young girl friend, whispering in her ear, explaining what was happening, telling her he wouldn't be all that long and he would be 4,000 baht richer and they could eat for the week, pay the rent, live well. She cuddled him affectionately, supportively, and he went back to the foreigner in the corner; and smiled for once at some joke the customer and the mamma sahn made, and shortly after they left. It was just another bit of theatre on another day, well early morning, at Hot Male Station. The club filled rapidly after 2am as the boys without customers came down from X-Boys and Bangkok Boys and the other clubs; and they danced till dawn because that's what they liked to do, nocturnal creatures. They clicked his glass because he had covered the cost of drinks and they all knew him as Aek's friend, the one with the condo who had paid Aek out at the bar, perhaps a dream for many, and the shadows danced and climbed in his bewildered head; sober, so effing sober he bummed a cigarette, only the second time in six weeks, and sat outside and watched the goings on. The security guard embraced him pointedly and the others joked: you have new boyfriend now. The same operator he had met last time said: welcome back and repeated his previous claim, this is Bangkok, you can take home anyone you like, you can take home three boys, you want me?

He finished his cigarette and went back inside, where the party continued. He remembered everything and nothing. The impossibly trissy boys continued to click his glass. Dry away the tears, went the melodramatic disco song. A snatched remix. Aek was dancing, having had a rare whisky. The man, and he was a man, he oddly fancied most in the entire place was getting seriously pissed, and once upon a time, in a different, parallel life, he would have got pissed with him. There in the shortfall, there where the mattresses thudded to the ground, falling from on high on to dusty floors. Once twined in a brief engagement, now everything was committed, or was it trapped. He didn't know. He wasn't used to comfort, a tidy house. Take care, went the saying, and some of these boys took it seriously. They really did take care, in every sense. So it was a brutal thing: you take care of me, I take care of you. He just didn't do happy very well, but was attracted to the theatre of it all most of all. Even that frightful queen Alex from Washington, who had shown up at meetings in recent weeks and where everything was an affectation, a limp wrist, a knowing fall of tone. They swapped rapid notes. Alex had found his way to Babylon, a sauna where he hadn't been and had no intention of going, the world being far from ready for his naked flesh, certainly at his age, although Alex was 70 and seemed to feel no shame. He had had a quadruple bi-pass or something; scars over his chest, and had upset everybody at the gay and lesbian meeting near the Malaysia Hotel when he said: I've seen how Robbie lives and I don't want that.

Robbie was one of the former owners of Studio 54 in New York and apparently much loved by his coterie of friends in Bangkok. Far from snorting coke till dawn, these days he did good works and was passionate about helping Burmese refugees. Education, learning English, was one of the ways these people helped. Whether anyone really appreciated all these westerners dedicated to good causes he sometimes doubted; but they were there, everywhere, and in a Buddhist way of thinking, they could earn merit if they liked; that, in itself, was a good thing. He had thought Robbie was just a generic term for white man; as in, I can see how all the expats are living here, idly, aimlessly, their unfocussed, pleasure seeking lives, and I don't want that. He didn't realise, at first, that he was referring to a real person. But then after the meeting Robbie turned on him and said: I've got a bone to pick with you. What do you mean, I've seen the way Robbie lives, wandering around aimlessly. I walk and jog a lot because I need to keep fit; so you often see me out and about. What do you mean? He thought it best to exit at this point, as did everybody else, but he contineud to watch the drama through the glass; loved a spat, loved the theatre. And yet even though Alex had behaved so badly, and was so obviously such an appalling idiot, he nonetheless kept finding himself talking to him, running into him in the street, sitting next to him in a restaurant, and he was always greeted with a: how are you dear? To which he usually replied, at least in the last few days, I've got a splitting headache, I've given up coffee. And Alex would listen with great fervour to his casually droppped exploits, his long fingers wrapped around a glass in an attempt at elegance. Where is that, where is that? He would ask.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.google.com.au/news/search?aq=0&pz=1&cf=all&ned=au&hl=en&q=gillard+RAT

ANALYSIS - Tony Wright

Julia Gillard did a credible job this morning of trying to limit the damage of continuing leaks.

But the paranoia within her party about who is doing the leaking - and more to the point, why - remains at fever pitch.

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While many suspect an embittered Kevin Rudd or his supporters are somehow behind the leaks, senior Labor MPs and officials privately believe this is far too neat and convenient.

Kevin Rudd would be pulling so much ire on his head that he may as well kiss goodbye to his political career within Labor.

More complicated and Machiavellian motives by others are suspected.

One theory is that enemies of Rudd are working far behind the scenes to place him in the frame - and thus destroy any chance he might have of returning to a senior frontbench position, as promised by Gillard. The theory continues that two or more ambitious Labor MPs are planting leaks that would appear to come from Rudd.

Under this scenario, Ms Gillard and her senior allies would be infuriated by the belief that the former PM was prepared to wreck her campaign and reputation: so infuriated that Rudd would never be considered for the foreign affairs ministry he so desires.

The result of that would be that a desirable frontbench seat would be freed up for an ambitious plotter.

One current minister and one less senior Labor MP are suspected by those who place credence in this theory.

The problem with it is that such plotters would risk blowing their entire party's chances of retaining government.

They would need to believe that Ms Gillard was going to lead Labor to victory whatever damage she might sustain, or to have such a narrow focus on trying to destroy Rudd that they were prepared to ignore the bigger picture.

The other conspiracy theory under quiet inquiry is that a very senior minister wants to expose Ms Gillard as hypocritical, arguing positions behind closed doors that are far from her old leftist views, and then publicly embracing social policies that others fought for.

The strength of this theory is that only a very senior minister would be privy to conversations during high-level decision-making on such issues as paid parental leave and pension increases.

Its weakness is that such a figure would hardly put in jeopardy the government they serve.

It could destroy their own career.

But what if such a figure was so unimpressed by Ms Gillard - and perhaps didn't mind if Kevin Rudd got the blame - that they had decided their political career was no longer worth pursuing, anyway?

The fact that such thinking is occurring among a number of well-placed Labor government figures makes clear that the content of the leaks are not the biggest problem facing Julia Gillard.

Suspicion and Byzantine conspiracy theories swirling within the party itself have the ability to do greater damage.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7913088/Wikileaks-Afghanistan-suggestions-US-tried-to-cover-up-civilian-casualties.html

Fresh evidence suggesting that US-led forces attempted to cover up civilian casualties in Afghanistan has emerged through leaked military documents.

They include an internal account of a disastrous operation by US Marines near the city of Jalalabad in March 2007, in which 19 unarmed civilians are said to have died and up to 50 injured.
US commanders later accepted that dozens of Afghan civilians had been killed or injured in the shootings, as the marines extracted themselves from the scene of a suicide bombing in which one of their number received shrapnel wounds.
But the original incident report makes no reference to the carnage, noting only that the servicemen had “returned to JAF (Jalalabad Air Field)”.
The “war logs” also detail how US special forces arranged for six 2,000lb bombs to be dropped on a compound in Helmand Province in August 2007 in an incident in which up to 300 civilians were later claimed to have been killed.
According to extracts, an internal US account of the operation states that efforts had been made to ensure that “there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area”.
It adds that commanders believed that “high value” Taliban targets were meeting in compound.
The records log a total of 144 incidents involving Afghan civilian casualties, in which 195 non-combatants are said to have died and 174 injured.
They include at least 21 cases allegedly involving British forces which are said to have led to the deaths of at least 26 people, among them 16 children.
The disclosures have led to allegations that coalition forces may have committed “war crimes” in Afghanistan.
In London, the British Ministry of Defence said it was examining the leaks.

Picture: Peter Newman, taken from the top of the State Tower, Bangkok.