The End Time

*

These were the end times, the end of days, that's what he had always been taught, that the fabric of things was collapsing. There were bottles of water and food stored in the cupboards, preparing for the days when the streets outside would turn into rioting mayhem; when fundamental services would collapse; when the very essence of what was real would begin to disintegrate, overtaken by malevolent spirits, by the dark chaos of the dark lords. The fact that they lived in a quiet suburban street, far from the inner-city and very far from any crowds, much less any scent of a riot, didn't seem to factor into this terrible fear of the future; the belief that their only hope of salvation was to bow down before an all powerful Lord, to submit in complete subjugation to His will, His power. It didn't make a lot of sense to him. The worst beating he ever got was when he declared he didn't believe in God. That was love and justice for you. The day of his first suicide attempt he remembered looking up tearfully as the blows reigned down, beaten for being late home. There was always an excuse. Escape became his only option; and escape he did in every possible sense, returning home on Monday mornings before school at 4am for another beating, the belt laid out neatly on the table, his father full of self-righteous anger, or was it hatred, because his father knew he had been out with men, turning tricks, partying. The private detective had told him that.

These were the days of terrible release and terrible collapse; and to be transported from there across time, across space, to a lush paradise where melodic Thai tunes played in the morning and the current boy systematically tidied the already tidy apartment, it was a lightning eye, a lesson in collapsed venues, in folding time, in stepping across decades, across futures, across life-spans. The world hadn't ended. Indeed here, where children scurried through the alleys and every village teemed with young life; with indolent men; with earnest, laughing women, where the city streets were crowded with bustling stores every morning, the crowds queuing for their particular delicacies, the coffee shops packed with office workers, the day already warming into a cloying, luxuriant heat, it was impossible to believe anything was coming to an end. Indeed, if not for him, for many the story was just beginning. They took their time. They arched through space. Was it really an exercise in automatic writing; a private confessional? Every form represented beauty, even in the early hours, and the startling crowded life of Bangkok echoed of a resurgence in spirit, a banishment of dark forms, a luxuriant life, fecund, pleasurable, the gusts of torrential rain, lasting barely half an hour, preceded briefly by winds and darkening skies, claps of thunder and everyone dashing for cover as the skies opened; this wasn't an end time; this was just a beginning.

Yesterday, restless, he daren't say bored, they went to some Thai markets Sah Nam Ruhan, and were shadowed by the very things that had haunted them, clambering out of taxis, worried about money, that his perfect life would end, because if life had taught him anything it was that nothing lasted, the good times were as fleeting as the bad, pain as temporary as life itself, and so once again he was the only falang, foreigner, in a sea of Thais, accepted graciously, as always the subject of great curiosity. He always seemed to be where there were no other foreigners. It was a function, he guessed, of sleeping with them. This place specialised particularly in good massages for half the price of Silom; and so even with the tips and the taxi fair they probably came out ahead. His Vietnamese masseur was particularly pleased by the size of the tip, four dollars, and while they waited under cover for the rain to stop gave him an extra half an hour, his strong fingers kneading his old, ancient shoulders as he watched the random clusterings of the Thais around him, the warm, welcoming girl might well have been the subject of propositions and tips, ample, generous of spirit, that's what they had liked; beyond those dark times they didn't want to remember, didn't want to speak about, the deflowering of a virgin for 2,000 baht, they hadn't known, what a terrible way to begin, he thought afterwards, before blotting out every coherent thought with another half a dozen shots of whisky.

Those days were over and the transition to sobriety was well under way. One cigarette in 30 days; pity about the one; although it was old Peter who had taught him, cigarettes are the first line of defence, and at 2.30 in the morning at the disco Hot Male Station, with the Mamma San from X-Boys surrounded by her frolicking worker bees and the sex gods lounging at the door, he had thought, I'm going to bum a cigarette off her and that's that. She looked so much like she was enjoying her menthol. It wasn't infinite, these times; they just replayed because some of the boys truly were hot and the images of handsome men kindly shepherding the drunk, ugly, fat, incoherent European to a seat stuck in his mind as a place where he didn't want to be; was glad not to be. Yet it hadn't been that long ago when the liquid despair coursed through every vein, and while the indolent Thais occupying his hotel room went to sleep for the day, he just kept on going, wandering the streets and the bars and keeping up odd appointments which went nowhere, only served to reinforce his own dissolution. So he hated to admit it but it was nice to have escaped; frightened when he thought he couldn't stop; had crossed some invisible line and that was that; there was no coming back, not this time. He had just walked out of a meeting and standing in Soi Cowboy with Ian, who was, as always, chasing women, thought when they met the Australian accountant standing there lost, having, he claimed, wandered into the soi by accident, thought, oh bugger it, I'll just have one beer and go back to meetings tomorrow. Never complain. Never explain. Never confess. It didn't work out that way.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1296115/Mel-Gibson-abusive-says-second-woman.html#ixzz0uBBVmQmJ

A woman who claims to have had a relationship with Mel Gibson has alleged he was ‘abusive’ towards her.
‘He called me up screaming and said he would make me suffer,’ Violet Kowal, 26, told Fox News.
Gibson apparently became angry when their three-month-long relationship became public last year, Kowal said.
‘I was so scared of him. It was a huge emotional experience for me. I was close to going to the police but instead of that I went into hiding for a few weeks.’
Kowal, who is Polish and says she is a fitness model, said she first met the 54-year-old actor back in 2007 when he was married to wife Robyn.
It wasn’t until after his divorce that she began a relationship with Gibson last year, she claims.
‘So, when he was calling me and when we were seeing each other I thought we were just friends and we had an intimate relationship,' she said.
Kowal said she was unaware of Gibson's relationship with 40-year-old Grigorieva, with whom he had a baby daughter, Lucia, last October.
‘He never talked about Oksana or the baby. It was like they weren't in his life,’ said Kowal, who said she last saw Gibson at Thanksgiving (November) last year.
Kowal said she has records of calls she received from Gibson's home and mobile phone numbers as proof of the relationship.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD9H2EL0G2

KABUL, Afghanistan — The strategy sits for now on a table in a locked-down Afghan capital: Hand over security in all 34 provinces to the government by the end of 2014 — more than three years after President Barack Obama's date for the start of an American troop drawdown.
By Tuesday, it will be adopted at a one-day international conference, giving war-weary Americans and Europeans a date for when their involvement in Afghanistan may begin to come to an end. It will also give President Hamid Karzai a chance to show whether his struggling government is making progress toward running the country.
The conference comes at a time of growing anxiety in the U.S. and Europe about the course of the war — concerns underscored by Taliban attacks on Monday that killed six Afghan police and two American soldiers. A major security operation virtually shut down Kabul for the conference in which some 60 nations will focus on the postwar transition.
Afghan officials want the U.S. and other international donors to give them a greater say in spending the billions of dollars in aid and reconstruction funds that have flowed into the country since the war began in 2001 — often with only limited results and amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement that have bolstered the Taliban in the eyes of many ordinary Afghans.
Talk of lofty development goals will take place against the backdrop of rising casualties, especially in the Taliban strongholds of the south and east.
Mindful that public patience is running out, the delegates will endorse the goal of gradually turning over security to Afghan forces by the time Karzai leaves office at the end of 2014, according to a draft communique obtained by The Associated Press.
The Afghan government and the international community are expected to agree on a plan to decide which of the 34 provinces would be ready for Afghan control and when. The communique however makes no mention of international troop levels during the transition period.

Picture: Peter Newman.