Silver Streams

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Well it kept replaying, that final horror day, the final hours of their dying relationship, sandwiched in that hotel, the blinds closely drawn. Nobody ever emerged until after dark unless it was an urgent mission from God, no elaboration needed. Otherwise he stayed there, him and the two Baws, with the day crawling by outside and the ancient clusters, those gargoyles fabricating themselves in the air, those twisted spirits hanging high above, waiting, waiting, for the final denouement, for the time when they would say: no more. This is not possible. But it never happened, not in his lifetime; not in the lifetime of their merry, troubled, tragic dance. The ice was the only thing that excited them. Men on the prowl at night, they went haunting through different places, through the Karaoke bars, where the boy came to talk to him, you want something? You want me? Dancing, smiling, bursting into another eruption, the bottle of Black Label prominently on the table making it easy to impress the girls. How would a boy like that be able to afford Black Label. Obviously the foreigner. Everything was derelict, yet gifted. They had already been everywhere, men on the prowl, hunting through time and space and bars, go go bars, brothels, everywhere, looking for what they weren't quite sure, but nothing worked; ice queens turned them down, yabba f...ed 500 baht girls couldn't care less what happened, it had all happened before.

One final bar; and so they ended in a place where the first Baw had worked as a doorman, and once again another clip joint, more expensive girls, all smiles to start with, fawning over the foreigner, but he wasn't the one that wanted them, and when they both held his hand in the street it was part ultimate nightmare, part power of money, part chaos, nothing planned, not what he wanted, time could stand still and they would still pore over him because he was the one with the money and it was obvious the Thai boys weren't. But if he was so interested in them what was he doing with the two boys. Anyone could have put two and two together; and come up with you're twisted as all f... But instead they all sat there awkwardly in the hotel room, despite the mammasan's assurances that the girls were happy to work together, happy for group sex, happy to do whatever we wanted; which they weren't. Totally f...ed up, one of them repeated, having picked up the phrase somewhere along the line, partying foreigners who could throw themselves to the four winds in Bangkok and sometimes never come back, these walking wrecks you could see in the street, black eyes, broken arms, a beer can in hand, cigarette hanging out of their mouth, their stained skin and ageing hair a million years old.

Fish boys ejaculating on silver streams, the windy smell of rotting oranges, wooden frames where twitching bodies hung in the desert breeze, heat, heat, everything strange, these were the ancient Burroughs images which had haunted him all his life, and yet here; handsome, smiling, they laughed at him. He had his ear phones in on the back of a motor ci the previous night and when he thought he heard the driver say something he took the ear plugs out of his ears and asked: what? Nothing, nothing, the driver replied, just sing a song, sing a song, happy, happy. They laughed together as if nothing could be more natural. But when, in the West, did a lowly driver tell you how happy they were; how they just sing a song and be happy because life was there to be happy, and nothing could be more natural than to have fun, high or low, successful or not, moneyed or poor, none of it mattered in this joyful, clammy heat. He saw them on the doorsteps, the tableaux of handsome young men who grinned at him as he passed. Hello John, one of them said, and he turned, not recognising the boy; and said to Peter: I wonder if that was a lucky guess. All was not lost. The paranoia had dissipated, the black canyons etched under his eyes slowly returned to a more normal depth; and while he fretted about money; I never want this to end, I'm happy here, he thought, there were ways to be free. He just hadn't worked them out yet.

So it was that he ended up alone in the hotel bed with a Thai prostitute he had no interest in whatsoever; when she had somehow convinced Baw he should leave and wait for them. I will take care, she promised, lying as always, because these fowl plump bitches always lie. Oooh, not hard, she said, jerking it around for five seconds; why not? Of f... off you stupid whore. They left. They didn't do anything they had said they would do, or the mammasan had said they would do. He could hear the other Baw banging up against the bathroom door, which wasn't part of the deal either; and later he paced that floor paced that night unable to sleep; and while the other Baws finally called it a night and went to sleep, he paced the city, went to a meeting, went to the Duke of Wellington, drank Stella Artois and let the day slide away; without sleep, without sex, with nothing but ice and alcohol coursing through their veins, these things were meant to be derelict, another waste of time, waste of 10,000 baht, leaving a sour taste and total humiliation, because these were young men, young studs who could f... everything and he couldn't; and in the end it ended up costing Baw a damn sight more than 10,000 baht or the miserable little commission he no doubt picked up on the other end; because that was the end of it. He wasn't putting up with it any more. And even though he gave him a handsome sum of f... off money; that was it. Never again. Never. One step too far; amongst a million steps too far; and he was gone. Gone from him. Gone from the clouded heart. Gone from the good times. And apart from a final Jack Daniels and coke at the airport, his wallet snapped shut. He was finally free of the obsession which had nearly killed him.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/blogs/the-bishops-gambit/whatever-it-takes/20100707-zzaa.html

One of the many brutal lessons that Kevin Rudd should take from his short tenure as Prime Minister is that the style of political management adopted by Labor Premiers is not suited to national government.

In broad terms, State Labor's style of government is defined by an obsessive focus on the management of the daily media cycle to the point of manipulation, with shameless spin and personal vilification of opponents being the standard tools of trade.

Or as Labor luminary Graham Richardson put it so succinctly, Labor will do "whatever it takes" to retain power.

Some of the more skilled exponents of the Labor style have been Labor premiers Peter Beattie, Bob Carr, Steve Bracks, Mike Rann and Brian Burke.

Some Labor Premiers enjoyed relatively long tenure from the embrace of this formula.

However in a now familiar pattern, the factional bosses decide when a Premier's time is up. A change to a "new" leader is engineered and presented as a "new" face of what is magically a "new" government.

Running a state government is enormously challenging and difficult;however by definition it does not involve the range and complexity of issues confronting a federal government on a daily basis.

The pool of media in State press galleries is generally far smaller than the Canberra press gallery.

It should be far more difficult for a prime minister to seek to gloss over issues and problems through a total reliance on media spin.

Kevin Rudd was a skilled media performer who used the full range of State Labor techniques to build his popularity as Leader of the Opposition.

However, it eventually caught up with him as he tried in vain to talk his way out of the fundamental failings of his government.

At this early stage of the Gillard Government, it appears that the new prime minister has adopted the Labor standard, reminiscent of the early weeks of Kristina Keneally's installation as the first female Premier of NSW.

The focus was on glossy magazines and photo opportunities to distract the public from the unsightly dumping of a sitting prime minister by the factional bosses.

It is clear there is much more effort being put into presentation than into substance.

Take for example the announcement of a "deal" with the mining sector.

It was carefully stage managed, even to the point of letting the media know that champagne was delivered to the Cabinet room to celebrate the end of negotiations.

Ms Gillard announced that her deal on the mining tax lowered the rate, lifted the threshold, excluded all minerals bar iron ore and coal, exempted over 2,000 mining companies leaving just over 300 companies in the net, and yet that it would still collect $10.5 billion of the original $12 billion in tax revenue.

'http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/world/asia/07thailand.html

BANGKOK — Declaring that many parts of Thailand remain unstable, the government on Tuesday extended by three months a state of emergency that gives authorities broad powers to restrict political meetings and detain suspects without charge.

Critics, including the tourist industry, criticized the move. Some called it part of a crackdown on dissent at a time when Thailand appears to have returned to a largely peaceful pace following months of protests in Bangkok led by the so-called red shirt antigovernment movement.

“There are still some groups of people trying to eliminate the government,” said Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban. A government committee charged with security had found that “terrorist situations were occurring in many areas nationwide all the time,” Mr. Suthep was quoted as saying in the Thai media.

Mr. Suthep did not elaborate but government officials have pointed to recent failed attacks on fuel storage facilities and a homemade bomb detonated in front of the house of a key member of the ruling coalition as proof that the emergency decree remains necessary.

The government’s order on Tuesday lifts the state of emergency in 5 provinces but retains it for three months in 19 others, or about a quarter of the country, including Bangkok.

The government first declared the state of emergency in April because of the street demonstrations, which escalated into clashes between the country’s military and the red-shirt protesters who were demanding greater political participation for the lower rungs of Thai society. Nearly 90 people were killed and 1,800 injured during the protests, which climaxed in a military crackdown and acts of arson and rioting in late May that, taken together, were the worst urban violence in Thailand’s recent history.

Recent attempts at national reconciliation by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva have been rejected by the leaders of the red shirt movement, many of whom the government describes as “terrorists.”

Chalerm Yubamrung, a member of parliament for the opposition Puea Thai party, which is linked to the red shirts, said the extension of the emergency decree was politically motivated. “It obviously reflects the fact that the government is trying to do anything to prolong their time in power,” he said.

Picture by Peter Newman taken on his recent bicycle trip through Laos.