A Place

*

Shockingly malformed, distant in intent, hidden behind so many layers of desire and defence, there wasn't any way anybody could get to him. So the comfort of a sleeping face, lithe form, just the presence of another human being, could come as a shock in later years when the defences had collapsed and new ones had failed to form; or new ones had formed only to be washed quickly away by changing circumstance. This was the sentence and the freedom; a way of being that had lasted most of a lifetime and now2 was nothing at all. Incredibly chaotic, outer circumstance had only acted to reinforce the buttresses, the sad gleaming of the outer walls; so when he reached out and touched him and the young man gave that funny chortling laugh he was already familiar with; it was in an entirely different era and entirely different place. There was no way back. There was no way to tell stories to old friends; because in the wasteland that had become their lives they had all died. It wasn't just a decision not to grow old. Not to suffer the indignities of age. Each death had brought with it a gale of tears, of uncomprehending relatives who knew their wild child had run completely off the rails, but never understood why.

So when the sex worker threw up in his bathroom and passed out with a wave of his finger around his ear, too much whiskey, bashing his coughing chest from too much smoking, he recognised in these complete abnegations, in the leacherous eyes that left their stain across everything, the past when he, too, had insisted upon complete unconsciousness before anything could happen. He wasn't providing a professional service. He was a street boy on the way to suicide who had discovered instead a way to a better life. The less you give the more you get. So consciousness was divided and a great hankering, for life, for adventure, for a better more stable present, was swamped out into a place where the walls ran with an evil kind of fungi and the dank, appalling circumstance that was their destiny inflicted itself right into the walls of the bar, the voices, or were they spirits, that came jumping out, that terrible pandimonium that could only be calmed by another drink, and another and another, as the men circled and the drinks multiplied on his table, it was impossible to keep up. I'm so horny I could fuck a monkey, one of his friends declared; and the old queen ostentatiously put his money away; affronted by being compared to a monkey. So they just laughed and drank more and more and more. There would always be another old queen where that one came from. The queue was endless.

The question was how to manipulate it all for best advantage. And so in later life when he watched the workers with their numbers hanging from their jeans; their cheerful smiles and affectionate embraces; for show of course but somehow not always; it didn't matter, or perhaps it did, that he treated them kindly and paid them well and things flashed forward into another place, when quivering old men dribbled in the local cafes and even the old, sober, supposedly spiritually evolved thought nothing of inflicting their aging frames on some young thing. That was the game. That was the place they were in. That was Asia, where money, true money, bought anything; where the crowded streets contrasted so dramatically with the astonishingly comfortable wealth of the upper echelons; where beauty could be bought but also used as if an accessory; where the ugliest of Westerners walked the streets with good looking women, where the days passed in indolence and the tourist numbers subsided; and as always the hounds of God were hunting, finding beauty in pathos, tragedy in image, the tiny boy, barely two years old, resting his head on the stairs while his mother begged above him with a newborn.

And where astonishingly good looking girls hawked their stuff, strutting on high heels, waiting for Christmas, waiting for the walking ATMS, the farangs, to come along and make their life different, to pay them the idealised 3,000 baht a night, more than most of them would ever dream of paying, over the mark, the best looking girl in town price, where Mr Right would take them back to his hnice big comfortable hotel room where she could preen herself and do the business and the streets where she hocked her foxy box were a million miles away. Where she could cavort in new clothes in front of the mirror and where those ancient voices, the stirrings in those dark streets, not just the stirrings of evil spirits but the threat of evil itself, of poverty, of old crows hiding in the shadows so the clients couldn't see how truly ugly they were, how long ago it was that they lost their beauty, all of that, the future they saw all around them, was a million miles away and could never happen to them. The easiest way was entrapment. Marriage. Even children. Love. As if love had anything to do with it. And then the gold came pouring in. And the stupid men splurged their life savings. And the old hands laughed, or told wry stories, about what had happened to yet another idiot westerner sucked into the maelstrom of cheap beer, cheap girls, cheap love.

If ever there was a way out he had never known it, not as a young man and certainly not as an old frame; a walking skeleton slowly coming back into his own body, such as it was, shocked at the Rip van Winkle like feel permeating the days; why on earth had he been so unhappy; not unhappy in the normal fleeting sense, sad to his bones and creeping through the day, barely able to stay conscious such was the weight that pressed down upon him. Moving slowly. Sloth like in the jungle. Except this jungle was made of fast cars and crumbling streets, grey upon grey with the corner bars and the local dealers the only highlights, where dysfunction was the only choice, and while he continued to operate he could only stare at the young men so comfortable with their bodies, their girlfriends, their jobs, their cars, while he couldn't find comfort in anything but another wasted moment and another attempt at altered consciousness. What a stupid silly tragic waste it had all been. Shame guilt regret remorse, the usual package, had nothing on this flick of dust that had been the days of one passing human, and so he took what he should have taken a long time ago; affection remastered in the early morning hours; sins of the flesh which no longer held the shame of the past; that terrible divide he had crossed so quickly and completely; none of this was the way the world operated now. Everything had changed. So to bask in the glory of simple pleasures, to find redemption for his soul in the human form, all of it was masterful, triumphant, a choice to laugh.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/SEAsia/Story/STIStory_510979.html

BANGKOK - 'RED shirt' protesters yesterday forced their way past outnumbered police and into the offices of Thailand's Election Commission (EC), demanding that it decide speedily on a long-delayed complaint against the ruling Democrat Party.

The move by the red shirts of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) upped the pressure on the government a notch.

UDD leaders yesterday also vowed to stay on at Ratchaprasong at the heart of Bangkok's most upscale retail and hotel district, in defiance of government orders to disperse.

The movement, which bills its protest as a 'class war' against the old aristocratic elites, received a boost yesterday evening when a civil court dismissed a petition by the government seeking the authority to arrest protesters who remained at Ratchaprasong.

But in its ruling, the court said the military's Internal Security Operations Command Centre (Isoc), which is the lead agency under the Internal Security Act, already had the power, so an additional court order was not needed.

The red shirts who barged past struggling police into the lobby of the EC building were unarmed, and there were no reports of damage or injuries.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iwhLMhi-zBiFGBUPoe3_8Zfuy1TQ

Thousands of defiant anti-government demonstrators have fanned out to other parts of Thailand's capital, ignoring police orders to end their occupation of Bangkok's paralysed commercial district.

Their major target was the Election Commission, where columns of "Red Shirts" threatened to storm the building unless the commission chief met them for talks.

The protesters, mostly farmers from impoverished provincial areas, have sworn not to let up their pressure until the government of prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva steps down and new elections are called.

Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader, said that the demonstrators would maintain bases within Bangkok's commercial heart and the separate historic quarter of the city - which were first set up on March 12 - but also branch out to other locations.

He also issued a threat to big businesses, saying they would be "in big trouble" if they did not sever their connections to the government.

The weekend protests forced the closure of at least six shopping centres and saw tough security measures brought in at nearby five-star hotels.

Economic losses are estimated at up to £9.8 million a day. Doors of the shopping centres as well as many offices and banks in the area remain closed.

Mr Abhisit has repeatedly refused demands of the Red Shirts that he immediately dissolve parliament and call new elections, despite protracted protests in the capital and unsuccessful negotiations last week.

Army spokesman Col Sansern Kawekamnerd has warned the Red Shirts not to enter other nearby business or residential areas, and said the government has barred them from 11 major roads in the capital.

The PM said the protesters have violated the constitution, but so far the government has refrained from using force against them despite pressure from segments of the Bangkok population fed up by business losses and disruption to daily life.