These were the divided times,so infinitely beautiful, as they rallied around the gallows you could tell he had no shame; he was just a child, 20 years of age, and as the Deep Dark Woods echoed softly through the house Michael, who he had known for 30 years, since they were young and thoroughly wild 20-somethings dancing on what some might have thought was the cutting edge, up down and around, and these chronic distemperaments, I wouldn't go out tonight John, they had said, crammed into the smallest room in the house; why? do I look a mess? he asked. No, no, but you can't go out every night, you have to have down time, if every dismemberment, every flash of time came back to haunt, it was such bad timing. Just as he opened the gate to let out his old boy and the girlfriend that lad was now totally obsessed by, perched like youthful triumphants on the bike he had paid for, the new boy pulled up in the silver car he had also paid for. The timing could hardly have been worse, oh what a difference five minutes can make, and there was a frozen uncomfortability, and he thought, this is ridiculous, I'm the boss, I'm meant to be running the show, my terms, up to me, and instead he was tip toeing around trying to avoid upsetting someone with the mental age of a 12-year-old, in a duplicitous world of garbage strewn relics parading as human beings, elaborate scams over next to nothing, pitiful things, not now, you take care, he said, and didn't mean a word of it.
It wasn't the money, the 3,000 baht the girl had cheated them out of, that mattered, though in the process of the escapade he had learnt two new words - Go Lop - liar, Cam-moy, thief. He had said no to the idea of the girl coming out to meet Michael at the airport because he didn't want his old friend to feel trapped. Then she was meant to come around in the afternoon; was it only the day after they had gone down to the bar in Paht Pong, Bangkok's oldest and much faded red light district; played pool, picked up a girl. Oh how sweet they were. He always tipped them well, never took them home. The times were so right. It was one of those classic bars where most blokes feel instantly at home; and Michael, affronted or confused by the go-go bars he had marched him in and out of in rapid succession, avoiding the 300 baht drinks during the rapid survey, immediately relaxed. The big Cambodian girl instantly enveloped him. He was always kind to her, played pool for 200 baht a game and gave her the winnings. Oh how the time crawled by in these infinite places, when he hadn't slept, had no desire to sleep, could hear the rhythmic sound of Michael f...ing upstairs, come, come like the geyser you used to be. He complained about getting old; and yet he had never thought of Michael as getting old. He remained forever in his mind the 20-year-old with the good looks, swinging dick and hysterical sense of humour. Not to mention a gift for story telling.
Michael had always been enormously popular with the ladies; and a randy little sod. He thought it was his duty to f... every attractive person on the planet and did his best to fulfil his responsibilities. What did it matter now? Michael was even blinder than he, requiring high powered glasses to see almost anything. So the spare bed rocked. In his own bed an upset, frozen lad lay sleeping, or tossing and turning; after having accused him of chasing boy boy boy. He didn't chase anything, he couldn't be bothered any more; but it seemed impossible to explain his restless insomnia and roaming of the city; so very beautiful in the early hours when he was most awake. It was all too much. He had probably ruined everything. They set up the the table outside as a picnic, with a table cloth, set up the music outside, all very romantic. The girl finally showed up quite some hours later, big enough even for Michael, and certainly on the face of it seemed charming enough. Everything seemed in order. The courier departed with a 100 baht tip. The evening progressed. He decided to go out and leave them to it. Michael made the mistake no Thai man would have made, of leaving 3,000 baht on the dresser just to make clear she was being well re-numerated for her services. Suddenly she was just all to sleepy after a couple of the red Spy drinks the girls all seemed to like, and simply had to go to sleep. Michael, being a naive and old fashioned gentleman, let it pass. An hour later the lady simply had to dash home to take care of her 11-year-old son, although quite what care he would need at 3am was difficult to ascertain, pocketing the 3,000 baht as she exited.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11377
Kevin Rudd was caught up in a snowstorm of denial this week. "This is all just water off a duck's back. I could not care less." Bollocks he couldn’t.
Nothing could’ve delivered him a firmer, more winding blow than confirmation that American diplomats are officially reporting back to Washington that Rudd is (and this list of quotes is not exclusive) an abrasive, impulsive, control freak, prone to mistakes, making significant blunders and blurting out snap announcements without advance consultation.
Oh. And that, since the beginning of this year, his own party has been talking about getting rid of him.
There's a good reason that most former leaders leave politics as soon as they are deposed. It's because, eventually, details are revealed that irretrievably compromise their further work in the public sphere.
The casual remarks Rudd passed about the inability of the French and German military to do anything more than folk-dance and barbecue sausages may have been long-suspected, but now they're out. This will irrevocably cruel his already-damaged pitch as far as the Europeans are concerned.
That little ‘phut’ was the sound of the last remaining bit of goodwill evaporating. The verbal apologies the US has now tendered to the former PM aren’t even worth the paper they’d be written on if anyone bothered to note it down.
And China? Under Rudd our once-close relationship had disintegrated. Nothing released this week has done anything to patch it back together.
The reality is that Rudd can now be treated as little more than a continuing (international) joke, with Australia as the punch-line.
You won't find this written in any diplomatic cables of course, because then it might be leaked and that would be embarrassing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11376
WikiLeaks challenges journalism-politics partnership
By Antony Loewenstein - posted Tuesday, 14 December 2010 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
Who can now say that the WikiLeaks cables detail no new information?
It was only last week that ABC TV’s 7.30 Report featured a story with supposed foreign affairs experts, including the Lowy Institute’s Michael Fullilove, who largely dismissed the significance of the document dump. Within a few days these men were all proven wrong.
Now we know Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib sends confidential information to the Americans. He’s not alone.
Crucially, however, our media class aren’t asking the next obvious questions.
The Australian’s Paul Maley argues that communication between politicians, journalists and diplomats is part of the daily job.
“It is no surprise the Americans were talking to Arbib,” he writes, “They talk to everyone.”
And yet the senior Murdoch journalist doesn’t understand that the general public are rarely told about such meetings. What is discussed? What are the agendas? Is there transparency in such dealings? And who is telling what information to whom? Who benefits and what stories are not being told to avoid embarrassing somebody?
The cosiness between these players is exactly what WikiLeaks is aiming to challenge. Why shouldn’t the voting public be privy to whims and wishes of the American government and their relationships with key government ministers, individuals voted in by all of us? If Arbib was warning the Americans he thought Rudd may fall, why wasn’t he telling his constituents, the ones who put him in office?
The fact that the US had followed the rise of Julia Gillard and approved her views on the American alliance, Afghanistan and Israeli aggression is worrying though unsurprising.
Night in Chiang Mai.
