The young Buddhist student wore a saffron robe. He posed for pictures. In his fine hands, he held
Next to me were two overweight, over-the-hill, basically, overhung bar flies, speaking in a hallucinatory tone of the final frontier : bar girls, sex shows, scams, easy money, a symphony in the jungle, they cried out. I thought of the Japanese proverb, "the traveler discards all shame." I looked at my new $20 Rolex : it was midnight. My silk shirt was drenched.
I engaged in meaningless conversation. Every question was met with a chuckle. Every story I started, they finished. They had seen worse, they had felt worse. They said "Mr. Bob", the journalist, was up north in Chiang Mai. He had become a village chief of sorts. One more with the curse, they laughed. They suggested I write a story about the transvestite kickboxer who was winning all his/her fights or about the construction mogul who now sold sandwiches to survive.
I declined and excused myself. Outside, I was met by a barrage of guzzling three-wheeled taxis. The pollution set my hair. I decided to walk, stepping over a limbless, hunchbacked beggar. Kids with gaunt eyes and stick legs ran after me, yelling "farang, farang!" I was one of the flockers, meeting the carnal frenzy head on. "Girl, you want girl?". "Good time, sir!" the policeman, decked in full attire, exclaimed.
I entered Thigh Bar, a track-lit club with rickety beats of house. Dark-skinned fragile beauties in colorful swimsuits and high heels danced around greasy poles on an elevated stage. I ordered a vodka orange and threw out the ice. A girl, barely eighteen, with focused eyes, a missing molar and a perfect one-line accent sat next to me. I answered my name and started asking my own questions.
Her name was Chamaya. She came from a village near the Burmese border. Her sister worked down the street at SuperGirl. They were both sending money home.
As I got to know her better, her story took a turn for the worse. Her legs had bruises from a motorcycle crash. Her skin was soft but she had clawed her belly with her nails the first time she had become pregnant, leaving torturous skid marks. In her puppet hands, she showed me her government Health Identity Card, certifying she had been tested for HIV. It was date-marked 1993.
It is much later now, closer to the new century. I wake up from a bad, desolate dream. Skin and smiles, sweat and drink, the wet blanket of artificial lights, the throb of the music. My stomach churns, emptied of its soul.
My Rolex has stopped working, it is stuck on 4:00 A.M. of the night I have just described. A prostitute has finished her shift. She runs towards her Thai boyfriend who has been waiting, sucking on a pineapple. Together, they leave Patpong, walking through the smell of durian coming from street stands, through the empty hands and eyes of desolate beggars, coasting on thin air.
His head is shaved; she has long black hair. Light-footed, they travel to the western edge of the city, passing houses of teak surrounded by gardens, to the noble Chao Phraya River, where they hop on a river bus.
Away from the bustle of Bangkok, delicate hand in delicate hand, Thamin and Chamaya watch as errant birds fly away in the pure morning sky.
