King Of The Streets, Child Of Pain

*

Ian and Gary are talking about why there are so many trannies in Thailand; comparing it to their own cultures where drag queens are the exception rather than the rule, imagine the smorgasbord, they speculate, announcing their own confirmed heterosexuality. As always Ian is propounding his theory on something, this time gender orientation; there's a whole scale, if you have the hormone imbalance, no way I was going to be gay, it just wasn't going to happen. He sat in the corner and laughed; there's might and night and peachy faced boys, sex workers and time out of mind; escaping, watching the sun set over the Chao Phraya River and watching Ian get hopelessly pissed; sitting with a group of Thais hanging around the river after work. There was a cheap bar and the owner had his shirt off, displaying his fat gut. Ian was singing the Bee Gee's "How do you mend a broken heart"; but cries of pain were as nothing, dying in the muffled heat.

It was intolerable; downright dangerous, rent boys rifling through his wallet, bringing to mind Jean Genet's The Thief's Journal; I do all the work, she just has to lie there, Ian says, expounding again on the virtues of his "rooty bitch"; after drunkenly declaring he was in love but love needs a future. There is only today, he declared, uttering cliches to keep away the dank spirits, watching everyone but himself get drunk as the river lit up with the brilliant sunset, admiring the famous five star hotel the Shangrila opposite, suggesting if Ian was that drunk they should go there for dinner on his plastic and he wouldn't even remember till the bill came. There is always a price to pay; for every deviance, every sad swamp, for stupid cigarettes and crippling congestion, for a life too short and friends long gone, for a quick glance in a crowded soi and rapid congruence, for lust that was barely lust and a body that had lost its way. He wasn't going to be comforted; not now; not at all. The pinks splashed across the river; rippling round the ferries, the cruise ships and the floating bars.

He looked with fascination at the abandoned high rise building next to the Shangrila and enquired of the story. A worker had died. It overshadowed the Buddha, the wat. The local people didn't like it. And so it was abandoned at the 15th floor, or something like that; and was more atmospheric than any of the glistening finished buildings that increasingly occupied Bangkok's skyline. An old sex worker smiled; cracked. A local woman with her front teeth missing joined the bar; causing laughter when she made some suggetive comment about Ian's large size. Later, following comfortable silences as the river lapped around the boats and their custodians drank whiskey, there was much mirth involving a recent trip to the beach, when they had gone diving and one of the boys had lost his pants, leading the girl to complain about the octopus. His mind wandered across sex workers as night settled around the abandoned skyscraper. Once we were the wild boys. We didn't want to do it either. We were not willing, professional workers. Everyone was dysfunctional. Everyone in our world.

Now the shoe had turned and he was tired of watching everyone else get drunk. King of the streets, child of pain went the Bob Dylan song in his headphones. How do you mend, a broken heart, crooned Ian, and the Thais laughed with him or at him. Sweaty in the streets, confused, wishing everything was different; bent low, he ran his hands across tight skin, bought and paid for was no answer as charming smiles turned into light fingered assasins; as drunken campaigns took on a new level of significance, as he slowly ascended from the darkest period of his life; the liquid glue, that terrible black, shooting up in cars near schools, wasting away every thought, every opportunity; stranger stranger strange how you listen to the river of my corrupted song, who knows where the next madness lies sang Augie March, and he declared: only an alcoholic or an addict could write those lines. Like Bukowski said, we were born to throw flowers down dead avenues. He had tired of the Americans, they had turned him completely, and the final straw was one boastful utterly arrogant loud mouthed idiot with a gargantuan ego declaring that if anyone was having trouble connecting with God or a higher power then they should talk to him after the meeting and he would show them in a couple of hours later in the day exactly how to do it.

Nice to be able to solve the riddle of the ages, the mystery that passeth all understanding, the theological questions that have exercised humanity's greatest intellects for millenia, all in an afternoon. These qustions, the absurdity of the program, drove him to seek answers elsewhere and the world pressed down, the sheltering sky, the giant bowl that imprisoned us here on the surface; far away from their origins. Pinching his own skin and then his, the handsome Burmese boy with no English kept repeating the words: DNA. And weeks later, having now been through it several times, he asked the woman sitting there with the drunken boat keepers, what does this mean; demonstrating. It just means you are different; a different race, she said; and he smiled kindly, sadly, for these obsessioins were too much to bear, too expensive to maintain, too emotionally debilitating to withstand. Love sick, he explained of Ian's increasingly drunken behaviour. A lot of Western men make fools of themselves over bar girls here, he said, for the man it is love, for the woman it is business; and she nodded; "I understand". But he, too, could easily make a fool of himself; and he watched as a lit up cruise ship with coloured neon shapes along its side slid pass, packed with tourists on the upper deck, the lights reflecting on the now black surface of the Chao Phraya River. That was only the beginning of what was to be a long and confronting night.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0419/1224268628483.html

THEIR FACES covered with red bandanas, carrying sharpened sticks and waving banners, hundreds of red-shirted anti-government protesters faced down riot police in Bangkok as Thailand’s political crisis threatened to spill over into another bloody confrontation.

Police and soldiers made formations behind riot shields on Rama IV road as the protesters, who have made Bangkok’s central commercial district their own, gathered weapons for what was shaping up to be a showdown.

The red shirts, supporters of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, are demanding that the current prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, stand down and allow fresh elections.

Violent clashes between security forces and opposition protesters led to 24 deaths a week ago. The Songkran new year holiday cooled tensions as many of the red shirts headed back to their homesteads in the countryside for the celebration.

Now they are back – in their thousands. At one point, organisers with megaphones cleared the area of non-participants, their places taken by masked young men with sharpened sticks. The same organisers said: “Anyone with guns should put them away, we don’t want guns.”

Across the road, security forces gripped their riot shields and prepared for battle.

Faced with the defiant group of red shirts, they opted not to push things further, although this rumour-filled city was abuzz with talk that the police would move in at dawn.

There are signs that the army is losing patience with the unrest after five years of instability, and may yet stage a coup to impose stability, as it did in 2006 when Thaksin was unseated.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/carl-williams-dies-after-a-jail-attack/story-e6frg6nf-1225855506968

MELBOURNE underworld figure Carl Williams has died from head injuries after being attacked in the high-security unit of Barwon jail.

The 39-year-old died of cardiac arrest about 1.30pm after receiving treatment for head injuries.

Williams was serving life imprisonment in Barwon's maximum security Acacia unit with a non-parole period of 35 years for ordering the murders of three underworld rivals and the failed conspiracy to murder a fourth person.

He pleaded guilty in 2007 to murdering drug dealer Jason Moran and his father Lewis Moran and amphetamines trafficker Michael Marshall.

Williams was a key player in Melbourne's underworld wars, in which 35 people were killed from 1998 to 2009.

An Ambulance Victoria spokesman said attempts to revive a man who had been seriously injured after being assaulted failed and he died at the scene.


Victoria Police said in a statement they were “in the process of notifying the family and will have more details shortly”.

Homicide detectives have arrived at the prison and a crime scene has been established.

Williams had one child, a daughter, with his ex-wife Roberta Williams, a convicted drug trafficker.

Williams' father George was released from prison in June 2009 after serving a sentence for drug trafficking, while his mother Barbara was found dead in 2009 after an apparent overdose.

Victorian Supreme Court judge Betty King said when she was sentencing Williams in 2007 there were “no other appropriate penalties for crimes of this nature, gangland executions carried out . . . in the presence of frightened men, women and children”.

Justice King said Williams appeared to enjoy notoriety, giving interviews and making statements outside court. She expressed concern he could become a cult hero.

“You are a killer, and a cowardly one who employed others to do the actual killing,” Justice King said.

Williams was a key character in the first series of Channel Nine's Underbelly.

http://kulturweit-blog.de/daniel/files/2009/08/Bangkok-2.jpg