He didn't mean for any of it to happen, didn’t think the situation through for a second, it never occurred to him that a relationship sealed on the first morning with four shots of Vodka before breakfast might be fraught with alcoholic doom. Sober for weeks, he was starting to feel at least partially sane. He had no thought of becoming part of a tribe-let of marauding Thai boys, haunting karaoke bars – once classy brothels, now decaying dens packed with cheap girls and the smell of Thai men; on the hunt, always on the hunt. Oh they’re so naughty, the dry old queen – his alter ego – sighed. My money, their whiskey and girls.
He would wake up sandwiched between sex workers of various genders, hands groping everywhere, the grunt of someone coming in the bathroom and think: nothing could be more beautiful.
Swishy girls and high pitched boys; after cruel abstinence, time spent afresh and anew, woken, from a long sleep, if not at the end of his life then older, much older than he had ever expected. Die young stay pretty had happened to a lot of his friends, but not to him.
Dropping earnest recovery, he had walked out of an AA meeting at the Plaza Hotel on Soi Seven in Bangkok and straight into the arms of liquid desire.
It started this way: his mate Ian was a jolly chap with no apparent source of income who dedicated his affluence to hedonism. He parked Ian in the Biergarten opposite the AA meeting, declaring he would be back in an hour. Ian could hardly have looked happier. From morning to night there were never less than a 100 girls in the Biergarten, all of them available. They varied between charming and drop-dead gorgeous; 500 baht girls went elsewhere.
I'll buy you a boy, Ian had declared cheerfully earlier in the day, anything you want. A girl or two for me, a boy for you. If you don't see a girl you like. Never sure about you.
I'm not really up to it at the moment, he protested.
Oh don't be ridiculous, Ian snorted. This is Bangkok.
I keep picking up these swishy, horrible boys, he confessed. They make me feel worse – sleazy – they never stay very long; and the girls – they just can’t raise the mast right now, I don’t know why. They’re so gorgeous some of them; and they’ll do anything. And I just can’t.
Ian snorted yet again.
All was moving in a discordant accord; he was deeply concerned and mortally frightened. He wanted to be inside everybody's life, inside every moment of history, to be at one not just with this universe but all universes. Ancient voices sprang up strong inside of him, harking back across the centuries, to times when he was a warrior, a guardian, a court official, a lonely drunkard in an English village; a once-young man disgraced.
Re-entering the Biergarten to collect Ian, he realised the number of girls sponging drinks had risen with no sign of decreasing; he whispered: let's try somewhere else. On the way to the Merman show – naked boys underwater – they ended up on Soi Cowboy, yet another red light district dedicated to foreigners.
And so the drinking began; it would be a full two months before it spluttered to a stop.
They settled on a go-go bar, and he thought, oh eff it, I'll just have a few beers and go back to meetings tomorrow. Never confess. What they don't know won't hurt them. The girls twirled around poles and danced naked above mirrored floors; the mama-san organised some of the more delectable to come and flirt with them but nothing quite worked. I’m getting myself a boy, the thought kept repeating as the alcohol began to pulse through his veins.
So they abandoned the hetero-commercial tumult of Soi Cowboy and headed to the Boy Zone. Touts for Bangkok Boys, Beach Boys and X-Size all vied for their attention.
Ian was one of the planet’s most heterosexual males and the Merman show was Gay Bangkok’s most glorious sleaze; his presence was a classic act of Australian mateship. As in, “I don’t care if you are a poof. I’ve never been to a gay bar before, but if you want to watch naked boys with erections swimming in a tank, no worries, I’ll have a beer with you.”
The show was seedy, the boys tacky. They swam naked with condoms over their erections, then strutted about flapping their large appendages against the clients in the hope of a tip or a trick: he and Ian exited the bar. Ian was shaking, flummoxed; they sat down in a makeshift bar next to a gaggle of cheap massage boys.
Patpong, Patpong, Ian kept saying, I need an antidote. I need to perve at some girls, get those dicks out of my head. A man of the world finally ruffled; shocked to the core of what he had thought to be a broad minded being.
But he was a hunter now; gone were the days when he could sit in any gay bar in the world and the drinks and drunks would queue up. He wanted action. But the previous mistakes – swishy little boys, thieving AIDS infested pricks who went through his wallet but who, much to his despair, he liked anyway – made him cautious.
I'm not leaving till I pick up a boy, he announced, watching the flouncing little queens at Bangkok Boys gesturing with their eyes. Too camp too camp; not what he had wanted. He sat there, still drinking; suddenly Ian stood up and headed back down the gay soi. That's the end of him, he thought, he’s drunk as a skunk in the wrong part of town. God knows where he's going to end up. Music continued to pump out of the bars opposite, boys continued to flounce and gesture.
Some minutes later, much to his surprise, Ian returned with a handsome, straight looking young man. What about this one? he demanded, having decided to cure his mate’s indecision. Another round of beers in an already disintegrating evening and it soon became obvious this was not a boy who was going to say no to a drink. They talked briefly and negotiated a price - three thousand baht stay till morning. Pay above the local market price; that got their full and undivided attention. Pay them well treat them well they’re happy you’re happy, went the local mantra.
And suddenly they had a new Thai friend, Baw, who spoke enough English to laugh with them in a nearby restaurant, soaking up the alcohol with a bit of food, but of course with another round. Ian headed home. Leaving Baw. And unlike every other boy, Baw just never quite left.
The next morning they had four generous shots of Vodka each, polishing off the Absolut Ian had left in the room at the atmospheric Romance Hotel, ever after known as “the cheap hotel”, where their happiest early days were spent. Out beyond the last Skytrain Station, where criminal gangs roamed a barely lucid earth; where his own fear of movement left him living stationary in a working class Thai neighborhood, the only foreigner lining up for morning coffee; where he sacrificed himself for the consideration of others.
And so it turned out that he was suddenly not alone; after the years following his divorce, years bringing up the children alone, never re-partnered. He had never slept alone until his late 40s, after that always. And so he was vulnerable to the cyclone, the fatal obsession, that overtook his life.
He would stare at the boy, handsome and personable, in bars, cafes, nightclubs, with the first drinks of the evening and the final drunkenness of dawn, thinking, I can’t believe I’ve been there. In the end he wasn't thinking anything at all.
Quickly dragged up to a remote province to meet the family, the village boys all came on to him. The handsomest boy in the village declared earnestly to him at three a.m. in school boy English: I am very sorry not to sleep with you tonight. Then back to Bangkok, happy together in that room at The Romance, even with Baw’s girls. No marriage made in heaven; it was a time together which only he would wish would last forever. The Thais just didn't think like that. Sufficient unto the day.
Then they headed to one of the islands, Koh Chang, less developed than Phuket or Koh Samui. Bars lined the beach, he hated every last one of them, the backdrops to an insane and dangerous bust. A kind of honeymoon became anything but, their drinking spiraling out of control. Suicidal drinking, no alternative, Baw plundering the local girls with gusto. You don’t mind?, a local bar owner asked. Boys will be boys, he said, world weary, heart foolish. He regularly woke up sandwiched between a boy and a girl. And then the blackouts, just like in his twenties. Heart haywire: Western love, possessive love, crashed up against the flanks of a straight Thai boy and a communal sense of love, sex.
Oh you are so handsome, or so beautiful, he would say; and always they kept saying, I come your room, no problem. He hadn't had so much sex since time began; it was simply impossible to come more often. The offers often came with amazing good will; of course a tip was expected… Crippled and alone, so sad, so unbelievably sad, with the world and its beauty nothing but a melancholic backdrop for ever greater dissolution.
Devastated, pretending good cheer, he met some English lads at an ATM at 7am one morning. They invited him to the last bar open on the island. He woke up two days later and two thousand dollars lighter, with no idea of what had happened. The scene repeated itself, blackouts merging into each other. Days when he didn't know where he was, didn't know who, didn't care if he died tomorrow. He had done everything he had ever wanted to do; all obsessions realised, sad days and wasted lust. The dream fell apart as he should have known, should have realised it must.
Finale: after having got drunk across half of Thailand, they returned to Bangkok, to the streets, the brothels, the karaoke bars. Regularly waking up with two boys, both called Baw, and often enough with a hooker as well. Much to the horror of the management, until generous tips got them saluting again. He knew deep in his heart how pathetic he had become. An old man trolling the beach, the streets, the bars, looking, looking, for love, for fun, for the sole object of his desire; and knew, too, it was crazy to be like this. As if he hadn't known all along that things would end badly. Crimes against humanity, against nature. Ending in a Godless place, horror dripping in the heat, self-abnegation reaching fatal depths…
It took months of not drinking to recover from the escapade, to once again take control of his life, of marching through evening storms. Of other boys declaring: I go now.
There is a Thai saying, bad things are a good thing, because after the bad comes the good. Maybe that was the only truth he could take out of this situation. Paradise dawns for a brief time, paradise is in the day, not in the heart; in the heat of the sky and the dawning shreds of being.
He stumbled back into meetings, sometimes having had half a dozen shots of whiskey just to get there.
You have a cool heart, he’d been told when he first arrived; and back then it had been true. In the end it was exactly as he thought. He would have a much better time if he changed his attitudes. And in the end that is exactly what he did. Finally happy with another boy he declared: I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been there.
He knew he shouldn't go to see Baw again; that toxic siren luring him onto the rocks, now that he was domestically ensconced with a boy who didn’t drink, smoke or take drugs. But he did anyway, as if seeking an end to the story. Baw was living in a large cheap apartment block, one of those typical Thai arrangements, four to a room. They smoked. They didn't drink but he might as well have. Things went awry very quickly. Indeed he went back several times; and their heads were winding through the clouds and their teeth clenched, instant ecstasy, dripping crystals... And finally he had the very clear thought: I leave you to your fate. Even after that final visit the calls were frequent, urgent; every instinct told him: answer, rescue, be kind. Instead he threw his phone in the bottom of a drawer and left it there for a week. And indeed, left the boy to his fate. And embraced his own.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-offers-bush-deal-as-julia-gillard-mandate-slips/story-fn59niix-1225912101882
JULIA Gillard's claim to government on the basis of winning the two-party-preferred vote in the election has collapsed, with the Coalition overtaking Labor last night by almost 2000 votes.
Tony Abbott has begun preparing to capitalise on his gains with plans to give a greater share of government spending to rural and regional Australia to appeal to the three rural-based independent MPs whose support he needs to form a government.
As horse-trading to determine the nation's next government finally began yesterday, newly elected Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie staked a late claim for recognition from the major parties, declaring poker machine reform and a new Royal Hobart Hospital were the issues he would consider when deciding which major party to support.
But Mr Wilkie said the only guarantee he would provide either party was that he would not block supply or support any "reckless" no-confidence motions.
More than a week after the election, the Coalition has 73 House of Representatives seats, Labor 72, with four independents and one Green.
Seventy-six seats are required to form government.
After the election produced the nation's first hung parliament since World War II, the Prime Minister asserted Labor had a right to govern on the basis that it won more of the two-party-preferred vote than the Coalition.
Last Monday Ms Gillard, pointing to Labor's lead, urged Mr Abbott to accept its importance. "It is clear that the government has attracted the majority share of the two-party-preferred vote," Ms Gillard said. "What that means is that the majority of Australians wanted a Labor government."
But the Opposition Leader argued after the election weekend the Coalition had a greater claim to legitimacy because it won 500,000 more primary votes than Labor. Last night it had extended its lead on primary votes to more than 618,000.
Yesterday, as the independents converged on Canberra for formal talks, counting showed the Coalition edging ahead of Labor on the two-party-preferred count.
By 10.30pm last night, with more than 80 per cent counted, the Coalition was ahead by 1909 votes after the AEC removed eight seats from its two-party count on the basis that the major parties did not run first and second.
In a stunning measure of the closeness of the election, the Australian Electoral Commission website had the parties locked at 50.01 per cent for the Coalition to 49.99 per cent for Labor with close to 11 million votes counted.
While Ms Gillard made no public appearance, her spokesman said last night the most important resolution was the delivery of "stable and effective" government.
Coalition sources said the shift in the vote would increase the legitimacy of Mr Abbott's pitch to win the support of three independent rural MPs - Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor - to form a government.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/election/julia-gillards-slip-is-showing/story-fn5zm695-1225912081380
ONE of Julia Gillard's major claims to form a new government vanished last night when Labor lost its majority of two-party preferred votes.
The tally - after preferences are allocated - is now 50-50, and it is possible the Coalition could pull ahead later in the week as more postal votes are counted.
The Prime Minister has argued that one strong reason for the return of her government was that Labor had the biggest share of the two-party preferred vote.
But at 6.30pm yesterday the Australian Electoral Commission reported that that majority had disappeared.
Labor had 5,336,972 preference votes to the Coalition's 5,336,911. That gave Ms Gillard a lead of some 61 votes, but the split was rounded to be the same for both sides.
The seat tally of 72 each, plus a likely supporter each, and four independents, remains unchanged.
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Richard Torbay: Voters show again their disdain
On the Monday following the election, the vote was estimated at 50.7 per cent for Labor and 49.3 per cent for the Coalition. The vote collapse was in part because of changes to the count implemented by the AEC, which yesterday withdrew the preference flows from eight seats because they were not classic Labor v Liberal contests.
One of those was Grayndler in Sydney, held by Labor.
This brought about much of the ALP vote slump.
However, the eight seats were equally divided between Labor and Liberal victories, and there is a claim that the national result is thus not greatly affected.
Coalition sources claimed it was possible that postal votes, the last to be counted, would so favour the Liberals and Nationals that the Coalition would be able to grab the two-party preferred majority as well as boasting the highest primary vote.
Picture: Peter Newman.
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