kimcancer

7.

 

A mosquito the size of a grizzly bear could be in my room, and if it were quietly buzzing, the a/c might obscure it. So I cracked my eyes open a tad and saw nothing but the darkness. Though I wasn’t convinced there weren’t any prehistoric creatures living in the bowels of Bangkok’s sewer system.

 

I flipped over, onto my stomach, and stretched into an X shape. My mind moved, and I wondered if maybe karma came back to bite Suge Knight in the ass. Or shoot him in the ass. I remembered that I was in Miami Beach, right down the street from the party where Suge Knight got shot in the buttocks. Yes, oh yes, I heard the police sirens, ambulances, and commotion.

 

The news reports said Suge had been shot in the leg, but I knew a guy who worked at the Shore Club, and he heard the pop, from the gun, and said he saw the assailant, a dude in a pink shirt, opening fire at Suge’s table, and when Suge ducked down, Suge covered his head like it was a Cold War schoolkid drill. And that’s when Suge took a bullet in the butt. 

 

I’m not sure if the person who shot Suge in the ass was ever apprehended. I’d like to think it was Eazy-E’s ghost. A poltergeist, hellbent on vengeance, hellbent on shooting Suge in his big fat ass. I wondered if the bullet was intended for Suge’s back but trailed lower, due to bad aim. Just like a penis, whether in the bathroom, or during drunk sex, guns can be difficult to aim.

 

In movies, people fire guns like clicking off and on a light switch. Remember that scene from Goodfellas where Joe Pesci is shooting at Spider’s feet? Funny as it was, in reality, everyone’s ears would have been bleeding. In reality, guns are loud and heavy. Was it an amateur, shooting Suge, or a rushed shot? Not everyone shoots like Chris Kyle.

 

Who shot Suge Knight in the ass? The mystery was consuming me.

 

It coulda been Vanilla Ice. I saw in the doc that due to a financial dispute between the two, Suge Knight strangled Vanilla Ice, then dangled Vanilla Ice, upside down, by his legs, from a high-rise hotel balcony. Suge Knight then strong-armed Vanilla Ice’s publishing money, took Vanilla Ice for five million dollars! FIVE million <deleted> dollars! That was how Suge got the seed capital for Death Row.

 

Maybe Vanilla Ice blasted Suge Knight in the buttocks. Vanilla Ice, in a pink shirt. I could see it. I could understand it.

 

I once saw Vanilla Ice driving in Miami Beach. He was behind the wheel of a white Suzuki SUV. It was definitely him. Did he drive that same SUV to shoot Suge in the ass? It’s not impossible. Anything’s possible. 

 

Who shot Suge Knight in the ass? It remains a mystery, at least to me. I could google it, but I won’t. I prefer the incident’s shadowy, unimportant ambiguity.   

 

It could have been Biggie’s ghost. It should have been Biggie’s ghost. I remembered a documentary I saw, about Biggie. In it, he sang a few bars of a song, and I was floored by his singing voice. Biggie should have been the next Barry White…

 

A pink shirt, in Miami, that doesn’t narrow it down. I wore pink shirts in Miami. Many people wear pink shirts there. A pink shirt is just a pink shirt. It doesn’t mean the person shot Suge Knight.

 

I knew a Colombian guy who got his arm bitten off by a shark, while surfing in Miami Beach. He wore a lot of pink shirts. But he probably wasn’t the assailant who shot Suge Knight, because if it was a dude with only one arm, that’d be a far easier suspect to apprehend. Probably not a lot of one-armed, pink-shirt-wearing Colombians running around Miami Beach, shooting people. There might be a couple others, but there’s not, like, thousands of them.

 

6.

 

I shifted in bed, sensed a stinging chill, a cold presence, and the hairs on the nape of my neck prickled. My eyes opened, mechanically, like automatic doors, and I saw that lying next to me lay a young Thai girl, maybe early 20ish. The girl was completely nude. She lay supine, and her protruding eyeballs were of an ungodly crimson-purple color, and her slim body, her golden skin was repaired in yantra tattoos.

 

The girl was sobbing and trembling. Then she screamed at the ceiling, bellowed out something in Isan dialect. Jolted aback, I jumped out of bed, and she immediately vanished.

 

It must be another hallucination. I can’t remember the last time I slept properly. I might even be dreaming that I’m awake. Or awake and wishing I was dreaming. It’s confusing, jarring, a jolt to the senses, these circadian disruptions. The whites of my walls appeared as tall as snow-capped mountains, and sudden schools of greenish floaters swam through my vision like flocks of fish.    

 

My ears popped. Then I yawned, sucked in a batch of pensive air, and cautiously crept back into the mothering warmth of the bed and lay atop the covers, flat on my back.

 

I wore only my Scooby Doo boxers.

 

I looked around, both ways, like I was about to cross the street, but I didn’t see the crying Thai ghost girl. Though I could feel that noticeable chill of an invisible presence again. It was strong too. Stronger than ever. It was as if the walls were no longer snow-capped mountains, and were instead cloudy, unblinking eyes of a leviathan.

 

My eyes felt like peepholes, like two cameras, so I shut my eyelids.

 

Spray-paint, street art visions cast across my psyche, animated graffiti visions of Eazy-E in a sea of flames. Eazy-E in sunspots, Eazy-E as a Greek God, Eazy-E atop Mount Everest, collecting solar flares with his sunglasses. Eazy-E in a diadem, floating over Compton like a ghost. Eazy-E flying like Superman, Eazy-E in a spectral cast of gold.

 

Then I cringed, witnessed Eazy-E lassoed and jerked down from the sky, gored by a syringe wielding Suge Knight. Suge Knight in a wolf gray, flat-brimmed Stetson hat. Suge Knight as a werewolf, Suge Knight howling at a full moon, Suge Knight’s eyes full of blood as he sadistically stabbed a crouching, crying Eazy-E.

 

Lizard <deleted> pumping through my arteries, I imagined Suge Knight being an offensive, violently peremptory <deleted>.

 

“Youse a penguin looking <deleted>,” the Dr. Dre song sounded in my mind.

 

I used to memorize gangsta rap song lyrics, sing them in the shower. Gangsta rap is the most authentic form of music, the only art that is real, the only art form that is true to itself, the only art that is pure, the only art that purports to be nothing other than what it is. Gangsta rap is the most quintessentially American music in that it unashamedly, unreservedly, unapologetically celebrates the pursuit of happiness... 

5.

 

A string of fuzzy green floaters slinked over my line of sight, crawling like a neon caterpillar. Then I recalled that Sammy “The Bull” has a podcast. And he’s on YouTube now. Sammy “The Bull” killed at least 19 people. And now he has a podcast. Why do people listen to it? Why do I listen to it? For the same reason I’d watch OJ Simpson give relationship advice on Twitter.

 

The macabre is fascinating. People will always crane their necks at car accidents, plane crashes, Britney Spears, and reality television…

I wonder where he is, Sammy “The Bull”… What if Sammy “The Bull” Gravano were living next door? He’d fit right in, in Bangkok, another elderly expat. Sammy “The Bull”, in a Bangkok whorehouse, getting sucked off right now. I could see it.

 

Then I remembered that I read a book about a guy who <deleted> hookers without condoms. But he didn’t catch AIDS and was disappointed. Then he cut off one of his fingers in protest of Amazon’s effect on independent bookstores and mailed the severed limb to Jeff Bezos.

 

These were the thoughts plaguing me. The thoughts animating me. Like why it’s funny to see a fat person dancing or riding a motorcycle… And what does Elon Musk think about when he takes a <deleted>… What does Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates think of when they <deleted>? I don’t think much when I <deleted>. I look at sport scores and highlights. That’s probably the difference between billionaires and me. Billionaires are serious. They’re probably working, thinking, inventing things, even when they’re <deleted>ting. 

 

I wonder what Sammy “The Bull” thinks of when he <deleted>s. Didn’t Sammy “The Bull” catch Lupus? Isn’t that why he lost all his body hair? These days, Sammy “The Bull” looks like a burn victim or a cancer kid. He’s all <deleted> up, looks worse than Michael Rapaport. Michael Rapaport, “The Gringo Mandingo”, that dude has the face of a hairless cat.

 

Then I wondered if Sammy “The Bull”, when taking a <deleted>, thinks about OJ Simpson…

 

(Then I pictured Sammy “The Bull”, barefoot and in a wrestler’s singlet, an old school singlet, King Kong Bundy style... Sammy “The Bull”, running barefoot in Lumpini Park. Sammy “The Bull”, stopping midstride, Sammy “The Bull”, with his New Yawk accent, berating and cursing at an Asian Water Monitor Lizard, just assailing the creature with expletives…)

 

Anton Szandor LaVey wrote that Martin Luther thought up the reformation while taking a <deleted>. I could never forget that.

 

People always picture Satanists as chopping up puppies, Satanists painting themselves in chicken blood and dancing naked, chanting in front of full moons. But not all Satanists are like that. I had a friend who was a Satanist, and he was an accountant. If you saw him, in his suit and cufflinks, you’d never think he was a Satanist. But he was. 

4.

 

I melted into my indentation. Then I farted, a particularly loud, noxious fart, and stretched my arms and experienced another jarring body tremor.    

 

I worried, worried about the shaking. Shaking is not normal. Was it a stroke? What if… What if it was… ? I might have... How would I know? Who would know? Phones don’t have body-screening apps! I could die right this second.

Anodyne thoughts! Anodyne thoughts! Be that water monitor lizard, I commanded myself. Have a lizard’s skin, integument. A lizard should be stoic.

 

But then another thought terror seized me. What if I grew to 100-feet-tall, and were just walking around as a giant, but not hurting anyone, just yelling, “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on here, I don’t know why I’m a giant! I come in peace!” while the army, crazy people are shooting at me, trying to slay me, treating me like Godzilla. That’s what I felt like, lying there in bed. I was an accidental giant.

 

I breathed deeply; my chest heaved and fell. Anodyne thoughts! I attempted to ponder the fresh and uplifting, like the documentaries my friend recommended about Yo! MTV Raps! And another about Death Row Records.

 

But… my mind kept churning… And I suddenly panicked. What if… I… What if I have AIDS? I’d had unprotected sexual intercourse with a trashy chick from a bar, only a couple months ago. But I read AIDS is easier to catch through anal, and I don’t remember doing anal with her. But just because I don’t remember it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It was dark, and my aim might have been off. I do remember she was surprisingly tight.

 

<deleted>! What if I have AIDS!?

 

Then I thought of the people I’d heard about, in Cuba, artists and street performers who were injecting themselves with needles filled with AIDS blood, in a quest to catch AIDS. “Bug Chasers,” or something like that, was their appellation.

 

There was also a guitarist from an old heavy metal band I like, Ratt, who died of AIDS. Do rats die of AIDS? I should play Ratt at an ear-piercing volume, blast it at the rats in the abandoned Chinese building. Why do I hate the rats, anyway? They spread diseases, though, right? The bubonic plague? Maybe COVIT and AIDS both came from rats…

 

The rapper Eazy-E died of AIDS.

 

Eazy-E died from Suge Knight stabbing him with an AIDS needle, though, right? I think someone told me that. Or maybe Suge Knight shot Eazy-E with a poison dart, a poison dart full of AIDS. I could see Suge Knight, as a ninja, hiding atop a fir tree, blasting AIDS darts at Eazy-E.

 

And what the <deleted>? How come the Ratt guitarist and the boxer Tommy Morrison and Eazy-E all died of AIDS and Magic Johnson is still alive? It doesn’t quite make sense. I guess because Magic wasn’t involved with Suge Knight. That must be it. I don’t know if Suge killed the Ratt guitarist or the boxer, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Suge Knight probably killed a long list of people. More than Sammy “The Bull”, I bet…  

3. 

 

I wormed underneath the covers and pressed my head back into my stack of pillows. The pillows were soft as breasts. My bones heavy, I sank into the springs of the mattress. Tossing, turning, I was trying to position myself right. Yet sleep wouldn’t find me. My mind raced until the urge came back.

 

Sitting up again in bed, I coughed. A dry, hacking cough. There was something in my throat. Something bubbling up from my stomach. There was something inside me. I knew it. If only I had an X-ray machine, I’d know. When will phones have X-ray apps? When will that happen? Probably not soon. We still lack the flying cars I pictured for the 2020s.

 

Coughing more, a body-rocking cough seized over me. Then a cold quiver. Then my body trembled, so much it was like an earthquake. I worried I might have epilepsy. Or Parkinson’s. Or Lupus. Whatever the <deleted> Lupus is, I might have it and might be about to die.

 

Wait a sec, doesn’t Selena Gomez have Lupus? And she isn’t dead. But didn’t she need a kidney transplant? What if I need a kidney transplant? Is Lupus why so many people wake up, in a bathtub, missing a kidney? The more I contemplated Lupus, the more I became unsettled.

 

But I would resist the impulse to grab my phone and check WebMD about Lupus. I would resist WebMD altogether. The NHS site is better. The British are typically better at accepting death. Americans act like it’s optional. A British coworker told me that. And it’s generally true. Just compare WebMD to the NHS website and you’ll see.

 

The NHS site even mentions “farting” as a side effect. Of what, I can’t remember. Maybe it was Lupus. As scary as Lupus seems, I think Lupus needs a scarier name. Lupus sounds more like a Sesame Street character than a disease…

 

I heard an obnoxious falsetto voice in the distance. It was crooning a horrific version of the David Bowie song I’m Afraid of Americans. It sounded worse than a failed American Idol audition. It sounded worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. It sounded worse than Avenged Sevenfold.  

 

Then I smelled a strong scent of gin and lifted my head. Startled and curiously intrigued, I scanned around the room and, standing beside the TV, I saw a bald, heavyset man; he was broad of shoulders, thick in the stomach, and maybe 50 years of age. The stranger stood on stubby legs and had freakishly long arms, arms that dangled like dead animals, arms that reached below his knees.

 

Stranger, too, was that the stranger was naked, and looked like a white ape, with how his bushy gray body hair coalesced, carpeted his pale skin. His simian face was twisted into a taut mask of pain, but once we made eye contact, a toothless smile stretched over his lips. Then he vanished into the darkness of my bedroom, instantly, as if a TV screen were shut off, and the heavy scent of alcohol also disappeared.  

 

Must be the insomnia, I thought. Or maybe I’m dreaming. Whatever it was, I was disturbed by the vision but threw my head back into my pillows. Tried to let the night terror pass.

 

I tried to count sheep. I tried to think anodyne thoughts. But I was haunted, rocked by a bolt of fear, when I closed my eyes and saw the white ape again. He was still naked and was crucified, upside down, to the wall of a Hooters restaurant, and his chest had a surgically implanted, heart-shaped computer monitor that was broadcasting leaked video of corporations chipping human brains, corporations broadcasting commercials into the populace’s dreams, and corporations, raffling off, purchasing face tattoo advertising space.

 

I ruminated on just how much Coca-Cola would have to pay to slap a Coke logo on a customer’s cheeks or forehead… I estimated face tattoo ad prices would vary by country, region. 

2

It was 4:35 a.m. I decided that since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I’d go stand on the balcony, stare at the ether. In the inky sky, I could see whirling patterns passing by, patterns passing into a sidereal distance; vivacious, complex patterns, patterns of colored gemstones, tropical flower banks, Scottish stained-glass windows, mogul arches and suicide doors, peacock designs. The patterns flickered and glowered brighter than animated billboards, then disappeared like groups of penguins trudging into an Antarctic blizzard.

 

The street below was empty, graveyard quiet, save for the gentle rumble of a passing truck or the lowkey buzz of a motorbike. I’d never seen downtown Bangkok so desolate. I recalled complaints about legions of uncouth continental Chinese tourists trashing Thailand, and COVIT seemed like their perfect closing act.

 

I yawned, then sucked in a steamy breath of the outside air. I’d say “fresh” air, but the air is never actually fresh in Bangkok. It always carries a faint effluvium, and often packs a stink; a stink of diesel fumes, a stink of sewer smells, or that distinct smoky stink created by local farmers slashing and burning nearby rice fields.

 

Again, I considered shapeshifting into a water monitor lizard. I seriously began to identify as a water monitor lizard. I saw myself in scales, saw myself with green skin. I saw myself with a forked tongue, claws instead of fingers, and my blood cold as ice water…

 

Night still hung like a cape over the city. I stretched and yawned again, then crossed my arms and leaned forward on my balcony’s railing and saw out to an abandoned building nearby. The building site, the development, was intended to be an audacious luxury condo, aimed at the continental Chinese market, but construction had been halted, and so it sat abandoned and half-built, its windows staring absently, such as the eye sockets of skulls in an ossuary.

 

Nowadays the abandoned luxury condo project was occupied by rats. Infested by rats. Big, ugly gray rats. I’d been seeing colonies of big ugly gray rats scurrying up the half-built building’s walls. Rats running around its hollowed shell. Rats living on its ossified floors. The rats really were gargantuan too, almost the size of small dogs.

 

There were packs of stray cats living on my street, and I wondered if the cats could tackle, maul the rats, do whatever cats do to rats, but I wasn’t so sure. The stray cats were thin, brittle-looking, and some were tailless. And those rats were <deleted> monstrous.

 

The rats seemed to be growing larger, too, by the day. Perhaps the rats were a result of an experiment gone wrong or toxic waste, like the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Somehow I didn’t see any physical confrontation between the hulking, toxic rats and the emaciated feral cats being a fair fight.

 

I imagined a feral cat being circled by rats, torn to shreds, the same way a hornet is swarmed and annihilated in a bee’s nest. Then I wondered if the rats would die of “COVIT.” Maybe that’d do them in. The rats, in an abandoned Chinese building, dying of COVIT. Sounds plausible and strangely inevitable.   

 

I stepped back inside, into the tingly chill of manufactured air, and returned to bed. I’d been experiencing trouble striking the right balance with my new a/c system. It was always too hot or too cold. Never just right…

1

 

The apartment had a grotesque, silent, and almost paranormal presence. As if thousands of glaring eyes were hidden in its walls. This was the premonition that found me upon my initial visit…

 

Moreover, the apartment’s air had a peculiar scent, a certain sterile acidity. Similar to that of a cleaning fluid. And there was an unusual and occasional heaviness to the air, too, a passing pressure, much like the cabin of a descending aircraft.

 

However, despite my off-putting first impressions, the apartment’s pros outweighed its cons. The place was in a prime location, smackdab downtown, only a short walk to a subway station. In addition, it was sprawling, bright, and on an upper floor of a sleek, glass-plated tower.  

But most importantly, it was cheap. Very cheap. The unctuous leasing agent averring that the bargain price was because of “COVIT” (as he pronounced it: koh-veet).

 

So I pounced on it, without hesitation. Scoring a place this big, in downtown Bangkok, a furnished apartment with floor-length windows and panoramic views of the “Big Mango” was having me feel as if I won the lotto. Then I remembered the alms I gave to that young muscular monk at Wat Benchamabophit, “The Marble Temple”, last year, and I supposed my altruism must be paying its dividends.  

 

(That monk was shredded, too, his body cabled with rippling muscles. He appeared more like a pro kickboxer than a monk. Perhaps he was a Thai kickboxer, partaking in a monastic year, expiating his sins, collecting and distributing karma…)

Note to self: Exercise more and practice more Buddhism.

 

Upon moving in, the cleaning fluid smells, declivity, and the ethereal presence remained but dissipated. And I’d been fascinated by the sound I’d been hearing. A sound I’d not heard in ages. The sound of silence.

 

I’d been delighted, enamored with the apartment’s silence. Unlike my last place, on the 3^rd floor of a 5 storey building, here, in my new apartment, there were no hawkers outside my window, no-one pushing creaky carts or cajoling or honking squeaky little horns, and the ambient traffic sounds were merely a distant hum.

 

However, as is typical in Thailand, the silence wouldn’t last long.

 

Noises came forth. Noises crawling like hermit crabs from their shells; noises grinding like teeth in the night. The noises digging up skeletons. The noises casting spells and moving minutes. Noises butt<deleted>ing vampires. Noises birthing phantasms. Phantasms… falling out like popcorn… Phantasms… those chattering dark creatures of thought somewhere between the somnambulist and psychosomatic.

 

It was in this way that an onset of erethism ensued and thus began my descent into perdition.  

 

The perdition began immediately after I’d moved in. An infernal sleeplessness washed in, washed over me, like a nocturnal tide. I’d lie awake at night and sense… something. Something like an urge. An urge, compelling me, seizing me. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like I had an unfinished task, and it was nagging me, the feeling, but I didn’t know exactly what I had to do, which in turn, bothered me even more.

 

The urge would often be accompanied by nausea, and a tightening of the chest, followed by columns of tiny floaters in vertical, horizontal formations. The floaters fluttering by, caking my line of sight, the floaters like little fluorescent bottle caps, flashing neon dots as bright as Bangkok’s cyberpunk skyline.

 

Lying in bed, I’d know the floaters and not know them. I’d experience the urge and disavow it, attempt to ignore it. But I couldn’t. There’d be a tug at my guts, as if a ghostly hand were digging down my throat. I’d feel as if I wanted to vomit. But I couldn’t. I could only muster a pathetic hiss and a dry heave. I longed to vomit. Longed for a pumping of the guts. The longing, it came and went, then vanished. It was transitory as a flock of birds.  

 

After a week in the new apartment, the nagging, the paranormal urges worsened to an execrable degree, and I began not being able to sleep. At all.

 

Day and night were becoming increasingly irrelevant. Whether the orb of the sun, or projected shadows, neither mattered. I was just stuck. I was contemplating visiting a fortune teller. I was wondering if I was shapeshifting into a water monitor lizard, because I was imagining myself as a water monitor lizard. I was seeing myself swimming in canals and crawling up sticky walls.  

 

It was enraging. Whenever I’d try to sleep, I couldn’t. Then I’d hoist my head and check the clock. 4:35 a.m. It was always 4:35 a.m.

On 4/24/2021 at 9:55 PM, faraday said:

Take a look at the link to other stories, which is in their profile....????

 

Thanks! Please do! You know, Farangaday, we can't all write like Murakami. But we can be inspired by his greatness and keep on chucking until the ball is in the ocean. Respek on your name. LOVE!

On 4/24/2021 at 9:32 PM, cdemundo said:

Actually, I thought it wasn't too bad.

Thought I was reading chapter one of the next best seller.

 

Khap khun mak krap! Not like it would sell, but it's all free and will remain so. And that's important in these times, to save money. Save money for the important things, like alcohol. And maybe rent, food. 

On 4/24/2021 at 9:04 PM, faraday said:

 A dreadful use of the word, completely unnecessary.

 

Just that word?! Come on. The entire story was dreadful and unnecessary, when one ponders it, certainly from an existentialist perspective. 

On 4/24/2021 at 9:02 PM, worgeordie said:

Cannot wait for part 3 ........????

regards worgeordie

 

It's already there! Regards to you, my Geordie, soccer ball kicking, fish and chips eating lovable human. You are my fellow man and I love you! 

On 4/24/2021 at 6:52 PM, tonray said:

Didn't your mother ever teach you not to talk to strange expats ? I've mastered the "Acknowledgement nod"...you know when you see an expat in a place normally you would be the only foreigner. I stiffen up the old spine and give the "nod", acknowledging his presence but remaining aloof. It's a required skill for living in Thailand.

 

Your reply is GOLD! Yes, the farang nod. Such a necessity. Crucially necessary upcountry, but not so much in BKK. Or at least so I thought. I'm going to remember your wise words. Thank you. You are a beautiful human being and I love you. 

On 5/3/2021 at 6:11 PM, Kwasaki said:

Have you anything new. 

 

Sure do! Thanks for reading! 

But then the stranger started getting weirder. Going on and on about his money problems, how he couldn’t eat, how he had absolutely nothing, and I suspected that this was likely a hustle. He probably made a habit of this, hitting up other foreigners for cash, likely because he’d dropped all his monthly pension bucks, as some expats do, on booze, or gambling, or maybe hookers and booze.

 

Or perhaps he was one of those unlucky souls who’d fallen in love with a bargirl from Nana or Soi Cowboy, only to discover she was already engaged, or even already married… Perhaps he was one of those unlucky souls to discover this AFTER he’d already paid for the marriage ceremony, bought her a house, forked over a hefty sin sot... Poor <deleted> maybe never read Stephen Leather's Private Dancer...

 

Of course he could just be poor. Maybe Puma didn’t pay well. Many Thais often think that any foreigner in Bangkok is rich, but that’s not always true. There are those with limited means who live in or venture to foreign countries. Then there are even some who venture to faraway lands and turn to begging or busking, playing guitar on the street for cash; “beg-packing” as it’s sometimes called.

 

But this guy, he looked too old for beg-packing. I couldn’t see him staying in a hostel, singing or dancing or begging on the street. Or maybe he just couldn’t carry a tune, or didn’t play guitar, I don’t know.

 

Really, I’m guessing he <deleted> away his cash and then guilted others, in food courts, to fund his meals, so he could splurge on more important things to him, like hookers and booze. I concluded this summation, too, while glancing at his neatly cut helmet of gray hair, and, most notably, his clothes.

 

His clothes were too clean. Observing his pair of blue jeans, marshmallow white sneakers, and plaid polo shirt, it struck me that his duds were stainless and wrinkle-free. This being such, obviously he wasn’t sleeping rough, camping in the park, eating lizards, like some of the “beg-packer” hippy types I’d heard of, seen online, those hippies with their dreadlocks and pungent potpourri stinks of body odor and patchouli oil.

 

It was close to Easter, and I noticed that the German wore a crucifix. So I asked him if he went to church and if he could talk to a priest, get help. I’m sure there are plenty of priests who’d help a person in his self-described dire straits.

 

(Although a cynical side of me suspected that possibly he’d already been using the priests too, had probably eaten breakfast at the church.)

 

He vaguely brushed the church suggestion off, saying the church nearby was “closed,” which I’m sure was a lie.

 

(When he said the church was closed, I couldn’t help but be reminded of certain shady locals, usually short fellows with smiles too big for their faces, the bloodsuckers who approach tourists outside the King’s Palace in Bangkok, telling tourists the “temple close today,” in order to set the tourists up for whatever scam…)

 

Then I suggested the German talk to his family, to which he replied that he had no family left. They were all dead or estranged. “25 years in Thailand, hard to keep in touch,” he bemoaned.

 

It most certainly is. That was no lie. And herein sits a cruel example of expat life. The loss of ties with one’s homeland and all in it and the reality that one is in a country, like Thailand, an ethno-state, where an expatriate will always be a foreigner, a guest, and can almost never achieve citizenship, or even permanent residency. Especially a person like this German guy. A guy with limited means. A guy with few to no Thai connections. A guy so broke and down on his luck he must rely on the pity of others.

 

Seeing where all this was going, I knew it was time to split, and I swallowed down the last savory bite of my spicy noodles and rose to leave. But before I did, I decided to make merit and plucked out 50 baht from my pocket, and handed him the folded purple bill, patted him on the back and wished him the best…

 

My encounter with the German made me think of how lonely the escapist dream can end. The dream of spending one’s final days in a tropical paradise. Then that dream turns into an old man dying by himself in a crappy apartment or guesthouse. An old man slumped atop a toilet, like a Far East, far-less fortunate version of Elvis… Or an old man supine in a messy bed, beside a bunch of empty booze bottles, his bloated corpse discovered by a cleaner or a landlord because of a neighbor complaining of a rotten stench…

 

And I wondered about my own 40-square-foot furnished apartment... Had anyone died there? Had anyone died in the bed I sleep in? How would I know, either way, and what would it really matter… Anywhere one goes, someone probably died, in that place, sometime throughout the course of human history…

 

(I don’t believe in ghosts, anyway, but at least my apartment has a nice spirit house outside, so if anyone did die in my apartment, before, maybe they’re living happily in the spirit house, with the other ghosts, just in case any of that is actually real…)

 

Pondering the long-term expat plight further, like, maybe, though, for some expats, I guess it’s not always a terrible, lonely ending, dying in Thailand.

 

Perhaps, for some, it’s a perfect way to retire, to end things, enjoying their golden years, in golden sunshine, in a warm exotic place. Heck, maybe they find a cute local lady, make buddies at the bar, and have heaps of fun times to close out their spins around the sun. There’s a beauty to that, for sure, and I respect that. I’ve seen several older retired fellows in Thailand, often appearing to be ex-military, and they look happy as can be. And good for them.  

 

But then there’s the German guy. The cautionary tale. The way not to do Thailand. The way not to do life.

 

Honestly, however, most of what I got from this encounter was a potent reminder of why it’s better to wear earphones and avoid talking to random strangers in Bangkok.  

The stranger went on to tell me he’s from Berlin, Germany, and had worked for Puma for 25 years, all here at a factory in Thailand. His English was perfect, only slightly accented, and not in a cartoonish Nazi way, but more in a sophisticated slow drawl.

 

For the first couple of minutes, we were having the typical expat conversation, about travel, nice places to see in Thailand, the best islands, all that.

 

But then the dialogue turned dark. No, he wasn’t a pedo, thankfully, or not that he disclosed. But he’d obviously gotten himself into an unfortunate situation.

 

He mentioned something about trying to get his pension, that he was relying on it, and that the German Embassy in Bangkok refused to help him receive it. And that now he had no money. And that he’d gotten into an argument with the staff at the embassy and they’d asked him to leave the premises. And that he was thinking of going back there tomorrow. To kill someone.

 

Laughing it off, figuring (and hoping) that it was the sarcastic, black humor of the northern European variety, I chuckled and spat back, “nah, definitely don’t do that,” and kept at my noodles, trying to plow through them quicker so I could get away from this situation, before the German divulged anything incriminating.

 

I started worrying a bit, too, thinking, like, <deleted>, what if he really does walk into the German Embassy tomorrow and stabs someone… What if I read about that in the Bangkok Post… Should I call the cops? Would the cops in Bangkok even do anything about such rantings, possible threats? The “Boys in Brown,” the coppers here, aside from collecting “tea money,” aren’t known as the most proactive of police forces…

 

Of course, too, I was thinking the German might be one of those deranged foreigners in Thailand I hear about jumping off a balcony, another farang joining the Pattaya Flyers Club… He definitely looked the type. There was a discomfiting, quiet rage to him, and he reminded me of the old flick, Falling Down, that variety of older white guy fed up with the world and ready to kill.

 

I’d read on the CIA World Factbook that more Americans die in Thailand, per year, than anywhere else in the world. But I’m not sure about the Germans, where they die the most.  

 

Normally, though, in Thailand, random violence is rare, and violent crime committed by foreigners is even rarer. Normally, from what I’ve seen, in Thailand, foreigners are more of a threat to themselves than anyone else.  

 

In fact, at this very shopping center, there was an Italian, an older fellow, too, who, not far from where we sat, had done a swan dive from a fifth-floor ledge, landing splat, face down in a mess of bone and blood, on the ground floor, giving that day’s shoppers a most unforgettably gruesome spectacle.

 

Oh, and this stranger definitely had that look; the German looked like a future suicide case. And speaking of his look, he had a certain shiftiness to him, a really dishonest face, with a jawline that was almost too squarish. It was almost like his chin and his jaw were too small for his skull, giving him a certain unnerving, creepy appearance, almost like a bottom-feeding fish, like a fish you’d see only at the deepest depths of the ocean.

 

Although he wore brown-tinted eyeglasses, I could see that his blue eyes were bright and small, small and beady, like two blue dots punched into his skull, which rendered his countenance even more sinister, and his skin was bad too, reddish and leathery, speckled in uneven clots of scraggly white body hair, and he had wrinkles in his forehead that ran deep, like cracks in stone, and they were loud wrinkles, too, wrinkles that told stories, stories of woe, stories of sleepless nights, stories of too much booze.

 

Again, I tried to put aside my prejudices. Look, I’m also a guy who escaped the cluster<deleted> of my home country to travel, roam, explore, have fun. I’m also a guy who found a job in this crazy beautiful tropical land. And I really don’t care about what others do in their personal lives. As long as they aren’t pedos, as long as they aren’t violent pricks, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone, who am I to judge. Right?

 

A red flash from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I craned my neck, saw a muted flatscreen TV hanging from a wall nearby. It was showing a news story about a Czech billionaire who’d died in a helicopter crash, during a ski trip in Alaska.

 

The German joined me, glaring and gasping at the ghastly images of smoky black and gray ‘copter wreckage strewn over a jagged white hilltop.

 

The German sighed and then commented on the horror of being in a helicopter crash. What it’d be like, as a passenger, inside a helicopter going down. The claustrophobia and fear the passengers felt in that helicopter cabin. The passengers, confined in that metal box, plummeting from the sky, their weight heavy with gravity, their screams, and what must have been going through their minds in those final minutes as their bodies rocked and swayed and shook and the emergency lights flashed and beeped. He wondered if the doomed passengers had resigned themselves to death, if they were saying final prayers, or if they were thinking they’d survive the impact…

 

After taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly, he exclaimed, “Then whack! Lights out. His money meant nothing,” and the German clapped on the table to punctuate.

 

A moment of silence followed, and we both turned our attention away from the TV. The profundity, enormity of his words sank in, and I wondered if the isolation of the pandemic, the lockdowns, if that’d made me even more socially retarded, made me into a total jerk, made me figure this guy all wrong, guessing him a chomo or boozer. What if he was alright after all?

Easing into the tuk-tuk’s backseat, Bird looped her arms around my neck. Her head was thrown back and her face was hanging like a half-moon over her pill blue surgical mask. Staring at me pensively, her hooded eyes thinned.

 

Fake lashes fluttering, she tilted her head sideways, and shoved me off her, playfully, and muttered a Thai curse word as she whisked her raven black hair over her right shoulder.

 

Then she lowered her mask, revealing puckered, pouty pink lips. It surprised me she’d even wanted to breathe, with the pandemic and all, not to mention the city’s atrocious air pollution. Sukhumvit Road’s toxic vapors were their usual gnarly, rendering respiration akin to sucking on a running tailpipe.

 

Coughing at my hands, I felt warm wet droplets of breath and noticed that, for some unholy reason, I wasn’t wearing a face mask. I rarely leave home without one. Even before the pandemic I’d always wear a mask. Bangkok air necessitates wearing a mask. It’s deadly, the Bangkok air. Albeit it’s not as deadly and terrifying as the roads…

 

The roads, oh, the <deleted> roads. The roads in Thailand are a damn warzone, a chaotic jungle of rubber, concrete, and steel…

 

But traffic was too clogged to be malevolent. It was moving slower than a retard on Xanax.  

 

Bird’s pink lips curved into a smile. Her teeth white and thick as pearls. Then her shimmering smile slowly died. Her face shifting from a smile to scowl and her opal eyes dropped as she whipped out her phone from her ass and flicked the Oppo on.

 

She then started stabbing at the Voodoo Doll app, happily slashing and cutting her ex-boyfriend’s threadbare body with a variety of kitchen knives. The poor <deleted>’s pudgy mug had been photoshopped over the doll’s head and his contorted face seemed to be quivering.

 

Sneering devilishly, she muttered, “He no love me…” in her singsong Thai accent, hitting a lingering down tone on that last vowel. She shoved the phone back down her ass and dug out a hot pink motorcycle helmet from under the seat, strapped it on and lowered the mirrored visor. I could see my reflection in it. My face flushed crimson and my forehead crinkled under my silver cowboy hat.   

 

I was wondering why the <deleted> we were in a tuk-tuk, anyway. I never take one of these things. They’re mostly for the tourists. I’ve been in Bangkok for 7 years. I’m no tourist. Though, in the eyes of the natives, because I’m a “farang,” a paleface foreigner, I always will be, in a way, a tourist, no matter how long I stay…

 

Looking forward, I spotted the driver slumped at the wheel. The skeletal, late middle-aged man, with a face reminiscent of a Thai Snoop Dogg, was gurgling, spitting up chunks of what looked like purply pieces of puke.  

 

“Hey! HEY! Who gave coronavirus to the tuk-tuk driver?” I squawked as I gawked, suddenly gasping as I felt a surge of acid scratching at the back of my throat.

 

Then I swung my head to see Bird on the back of a nearby motorcycle taxi. She was waving me over, like a traffic cop. Jumping out of the tuk-tuk, I threw the driver a 100 baht note, in case he didn’t die.

 

Then I mounted the motorcycle, sitting behind Bird, and I snuggled up to her. Hugged my arms around her soft, slender hourglass frame. My arms on her tender hot flesh, I felt a rush at the silky touch of her bare midriff under her baby blue half-shirt. Her light brown, milk chocolatey skin looking so damn delicious I could eat it.

 

I was a happy cannibal. And we rocketed to high speeds on that bike, the driver ragging on his 2-stroke engine, the engine buzzing like a chainsaw as we weaved furiously through the idle traffic, the way only motorcycle taxis in Bangkok can. Traffic laws, which are arbitrary and mostly voluntary in Thailand anyway, seem to apply even less to motorcyclists…

 

Our exhilarating, roaring motorcycle ride was wildly fun. Its usual art. An oeuvre suicidal, brilliant, efficiently quick and kamikaze, filled with fits of starts and stops, skillful maneuvering, near collisions, frenetic speeds, and welcome whaps of face-cooling air…

 

(My buddy Crazy Carl said that Thai drivers, particularly the motorcyclists, motorcycle taxi drivers, most all believe in reincarnation. So they don’t fear death. Their thinking being that they’ll just come back anyway. Crazy Carl said some must look forward to death, because being a motorcycle taxi driver in Thailand probably sucks… He said the ones happy in this life are those carrying protective amulets… Always try to ride with a Thai motorcycle taxi driver who’s wearing an amulet, Crazy Carl preached…)

 

When we reached the hotel, which was on a side street in lower Sukhumvit, I noticed Bird was gone and that the motorcycle driver had no head.

I paid the headless motorcycle driver and, in the process, found my money had bloodstains on it.

 

The headless driver waied me and zoomed off into the humidity of the night, a gigantic plume of black smoke spitting from his exhaust pipe, almost as big as a mushroom cloud. The smoke was so thick and dark that the glittery neon skyline in the background appeared as if it were an impressionist oil painting.

 

The hotel was cold as a morgue. It was a dimly lit, teakwood cave, full of tiger-skin rugs, rainbow sashes and pink frilly drapes. The hallways looked to be an intricate complex of tunnels that didn’t seem to end or start.

 

At the front desk, the hotel staff were foamy brown blobs. Floating about, they were dressed in traditional Thai attire of golden pantaloons, colorful sarongs, and pointy hats with tips like temple spires.

 

A short fellow checked me in. He had a heavy black garbage bag over his head, with slits cut out for the eyes and mouth. He was like the Thai version of the Zodiac Killer.  

 

Zodiac’s bony arms twitching, he spoke to me, telepathically, in a Tony Soprano-ish New Jersey voice, imploring: “Look, don’t you never wrong a Thai woman. They’ll cut your dick off while you’re sleeping. My sister, she sliced off like four dicks. But she don’t throw ‘em in the duck pond, like youse always hear, yanno. Nah, she’s saved ‘em. Keeps ‘em… Trophies in a glass case…”

 

I rode the complimentary hotel Segway through a maze of winding hallways, and the Segway braked, automatically, when I arrived at my suite. Right after I stepped off, the Segway zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZzzzzz-zipped away on its own.

 

I slid my room card, hard, and the door beeped a Black Sabbath riff. Then I turned the L-shaped handle which caused the cherry red door to shatter into more than a million fragments resembling rose petals.

 

Inside, I found Bird already there.

 

The room was small, painted peach pink. It was practically a cabin in a gay cruise ship. And in its center, it had a jacuzzi without water instead of a bed. Inside the jacuzzi were stacks upon stacks of heart-shaped valentine pillows, and I kicked off my shoes and jumped into the jacuzzi, eased in next to Bird. A Muay-Thai kickboxing match was on the wall-mounted flatscreen TV.

 

Bird slung her arm around me, and I took a good long look at her unmasked face. She looked like a man. It occurred to me that she must be a ladyboy. How could I not have known?

 

Normally, they’re not my thing. But it’s been a while since I did anal sex. So I thought of giving it a go. Even in Bangkok it’s hard to find a woman willing to do free, consensual anal sex, and if this one wouldn’t do it, well…

 

The only ladyboy I’d been with was many years ago. I met her in the back of a bar, late at night, in Pattaya. I was stumbling drunk, and I can’t remember how or why, but I know she gifted me thrilling, toe-curling head in a toilet stall. It was like an out-of-body experience.  

 

But immediately after I jizzed in her mouth, she retched, crumpled, and hugged the crapper and hurled. And I was so freaked out by her vomiting that I yanked up my pants and ran away.

 

After that, I remember eating fried scorpions on the beach. Then I passed by a pack of violent ladyboys who were beating and robbing a middle-age German tourist on a side street. Then I vaguely recall passing out, sleeping rough, in the doorway, in front of (what I believed to be) my hotel because the front door was locked, and no one answered the doorbell.

 

That was my only ladyboy experience.

 

It was late. I was drunk. And I couldn’t see that ladyboy’s face too well in the dim lighting of the bar bathroom.

 

But this one, next to me, in this pile of red pillows, I could see. I inspected every inch of her face’s symmetry. It was mannish. She had a real square jaw. She definitely looked far too much like a dude for my taste.

 

She cuddled up closer to me, eying me ravenously. She might have a female body, but it seemed as if she still had a male brain and a male sex drive. The way she was looking at me, it was like a starving man eying a piece of meat. I started to realize what life might be like for women, dudes glaring at them this way, every day, and I made a mental note to try to be less of a perv in public. Or at least wear sunglasses more.

 

We’d been locking eyes for a few sultry seconds, but I couldn’t take it. She was too manly. I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t bring myself to try anything.

 

So I swung my gaze back to the TV. On it was now cockfighting.

 

Two torsos, with large erect penises, dueling and clanking them at one another. And then the scene shifted to another style of cockfighting, that of chickens.

 

This piqued her interest. Still staring intently at me, she said, in that nasal honk, singsong accent, “Papa, he have rooster. He go boxing, boxing rooster. He love rooster more he love me. More he love mama. Mama want kill rooster.”

 

Hey, I could understand. I spent a few weeks on a road trip in Isan and myself had wanted to kill a few roosters. The feathered <deleted> things crying and wailing and cockle-doodle-doo-ing all night, outside.

 

I’d plotted horrific ways to kill the animals, too, dreaming of grabbing an AK-47, going John Rambo and cold smoking those RAH-RAH-RAH-RAA-ROOOOOO ass feathery <deleted>. Or kidnapping the creatures and throwing them into a river with concrete shoes like a mob snitch. I was imagining all sorts of <deleted> that’d throw PETA people into paroxysms.

 

In the end, I settled on ear plugs and simultaneously cranking the loud AC and ceiling fan. Ear plugs are essential equipment for living anywhere in Thailand, really…

 

Bird was getting antsy. She was clearly upset I’d not been returning her advances. I could see her, from the corner of my eye, frowning. And she upped the stakes by slipping down and off her black miniskirt.

 

She was wearing mesh, see-thru gray panties and through them I could spot a hairy <deleted>. She was post-op. Almost definitely no anal sex, I figured. Dammit, this night was the pits!

 

“Why you no love me?” she whispered, running a meaty hand, playfully along my arm. Her long purple nails sharp as talons.

 

And she scooted up closer, her soft, fragrant hair brushing delicately at the nape of my neck.

 

Then she pressed her big perky tits to my chest, grinding towards me, closer and closer, her flat little nose now nudging my cheek.

 

And closer, closer, she got, our bodies locked. She was practically wrapping herself over me like a blanket, her minty hot and humid prickly pulses of breath tickling at my ear, touching me in tingles.

 

Okay, I pondered, I can close my eyes, hit it doggystyle. This is some cyborg pussy, this post-op <deleted>. I gotta try it. Only live once, right?

 

I sprouted wood, just thinking of how artificially tight the constructed <deleted> could be. How, with the right technology, it could be even better than anal.

 

Horny as a porn star, I shut my eyes, pressing them tightly closed, and my heart throbbed as I clenched my teeth and shifted my body facing directly opposite hers. I felt the warmth of her body heat, her big fake silicone tits pressed to the thunderous drum of my chest. But when I went in for a kiss, her hard tits and body heat melted into a void of cold conditioned air, and I fell face first and plopped into the pile of pillows.

 

Opening my eyes, I saw nothing but red.

 

She was gone. But where to? I rose to my feet, my eyes darting in all directions as I jumped out of the empty jacuzzi. Then I searched the whole tiny hotel suite. But found nothing.

 

 

Looking into the bathroom mirror, I saw that I was in a big banana yellow chicken suit.

 

One might think it’d be too toasty in a chicken suit, in the tropical heat of Thailand, but it was actually rather breathable and cozy. I supposed the material to be silk.

 

I hurried out of the suite, into the hotel hallway, and jogged along the twisting cave-like corridor, looking for my ladyboy. But she was nowhere. The halls, empty and quiet, felt like The Shining.

 

I trudged into the lobby. It was empty too. Frustrated, I went full retard and <deleted> trashed the place. Kicking over tables, tearing up paintings. Cursing at the top of my lungs, I picked up and flung a desktop computer, sending the monitor and mess of wires crashing through the hotel’s front window.

 

Then, on the front desk, a tablet computer appeared, chirped, and vibrated…

 

 “ZAAAAAAAAWAAAAAADEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…”

 

On the tablet’s screen was a QR code next to a flashing photo of a torso in golden pantaloons.

 

But still no Bird.

 

No sign of her anywhere.  

 

Stepping outside, into the muggy air, I bent forward, held my hands to my knees, and drew in a series of deep breaths. Next to me was a seven-foot-tall spouting penis fountain that was illuminated neon pink. And I paused to ponder a whir of white noise.

 

Then I saw out into the alley, where a hunchbacked old man, an unshaven, balding, fat farang, stood with his arms outstretched. He was in a green Singha singlet, and had on baggy mauve camo cargo shorts that were soiled, <deleted> dirty as a Wuhan wet market. On his feet were cowboy boots with spurs that appeared to be shooting fire, as if they were afterburners.

 

His head thrown back, the fat farang was staring intently at the smoggy starless sky, howling like a wolf.

 

He then lowered his gaze, spun around and tossed an empty beer bottle at me, and the glass bottle exploded as it shattered on the penis water statue, casting a bolt of white lightning, followed by a burst of pink smoke.

 

Once the pink smoke cleared, a neon orange orangutan stood in a mountain pose, in the near distance, staring at me, menacingly.

 

The orangutan, walking on its legs, like a man, had a malicious expression on its face and lurched forth.

 

I backed up, slowly, purposely, wondering what sort of defenses the hotel had against orangutans. And the beast only picked up its pace, and ran, full steam, in my direction, baring its fangs, its huge gaping mouth salivating, wet at the ready.

 

It was far too fast for me to outrun. And in mere milliseconds, it was feet away, chasing me recklessly through the streets of Bangkok.

 

The Orangutan and I were as motorcycles, roaring like jumbo jet engines, ripping through busy Sukhumvit sidewalks, bashing into pedestrians, knocking over street vendors. And as I attempted to hurdle over an elderly monk, I inadvertently karate kicked a street side cooking cart, sending it flipping over, boiling water and red-hot cobs of corn shooting like shrapnel, maiming passersby.

 

A motorcade of motorcycle taxis, riding at Mach speeds, whizzed past us like missiles. And I jarred towards an intersection, but a tuk-tuk barreled forth, blocking my path.

 

So I stopped to face the wrath. And I spun around to punch my pursuer. Seeing the enraged orangutan, an arm’s length from me, I did my best Floyd Mayweather, planted ten toes to the ground and launched a left jab at the beast’s ugly mouth, which was big as a canyon and flying at me with the speed of a bat.

 

But as I threw that slicing jab, the orangutan shapeshifted, forming into a swarm of hornets, which disbursed, into the stink of Sukhumvit Road air, and there the hornets became mere directions of night.

 

From behind the remnants of the swarm stood Bird, jutting her square chin. Scowling, she clicked on her phone, causing an explosion, a bomb BADA BOOM pink fireball. Then I found we were back in the hotel room together. Supine, we lay like bodies on a heart-shaped bed.

 

Both of us in white hotel bathrobes, Bird lay panting. Her eyes leaping from her skull as she swiped vigorously at the Voodoo Doll app. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next is UBON JOE!

Because Thailand ROCKS! Hot babes, sun, fun, and tasty food and beer, chill people. 

Smart lady

If at first you don't succeed, climb a TREE

Life returns

They should be lashed with a cane, like they do in SINGAPORE!

Never doubt the power of an amulet, or a ladyboy. Or a ladyboy with an amulet. Happy times will return to us. Be well and enjoy the sun! 

Break out the tuxedo and let's DANCE!

You must really hate him, Dean. You want to see a 53-year-old man fight. You must want him to die. All so you can count your money. EVIL.