Magic Infirmary

*

So, scavenged from the heart, he could hear the news going down like a lead balloon, I have new boy now, he take good care of me, when Baw rang from Phuket. I miss you, he said; and yes in their own strange way, the flashes of intimacy between men, yes he missed him too. Should I call the bad influence? he asked a group of friends, well acquaintances, the previous night as they sat under the glistening tree at the Jazz Restaurant around the corner from the Park Hotel in Nana, and they looked at him like: you've got to ask us? You just finished telling us what a merry dance you had been lead. How much money you spent. What a desolate, crazy ending it was. So the calls kept coming through the meeting and he didn't answer them; and didn't answer them that night. But when the phone went off in the morning at 9am - what the heck was Baw doing awake at 9am? - he took the call and could hear them laughing together. Good times and bad. Got very crazy in the end. I think you should stay there, get a normal job, meet some nice girl, have children, that is my advice as an older man, he said, although how much of this English was crossing the language divide he was not quite sure.

Be a good boy, a good Buddhist, not a bad boy in Bangkok, he said, and that, he thought got through, he could hear the silence echoing in the subdued tone of voice I come back to Bangkok in two weeks and could almost see the palm trees and the sands and the dirt poor farm and the shadows and the wild ways that had passed between them; upraised points, shadows that danced, crazy days that were uplifted, times that were never there, contrasts that came and went, handsome boys that gestured from the sides of statues, Jean Genet and the rivers of regret, and so when the call came, in the morning of all things, the time when when they were together the boy was never awake, and he would keep drinking himself into lost time because there was nothing else left to do, and shadows flickered across their past and he woke up sandwiched between sex workers who were more like friends, they spent so much time together, well yes: he took the call. Everyone had told him: ditch the twink, you're being taken advantage of, we can understand what he says on the telephone, you can't, we know what's happening. But he forgave him everything. As he said: when I was a boy I did exactly the same, made sure they paid and paid and paid; that was motto number one, ruling principle number one.

Now the same was being done to me and I didn't care, he said; and as this was Bangkok and there was craziness all around and it was so easy to get lost and there were so many stories of Westerners coming unstuck and blind benders that never ended, sex tours that in themselves became addictions; wasn't that a shadow? wasn't that a flicker of the past. But here, washed clean, reborn, he could hear the sound of the choir practicing and everything going wrong, everything that had gone wrong, correcting itself in the firm passage of altered consciousness; because there was more than one way to resolve these issues; to end the flight, to confront, to become, a singleness of purpose, a single person, not to hide out behind multiple screens, not to be a walking shadow of a different time, not to surrender to an amazingly dark past but to triumph here in the tropical heat. The woman had ostentatiously taken her plastic legs off, begging with her stumps fully visible. If they were to be remembered it would be in a different way, in an anti-climactic sense, in an array of garbage and has beens and thoughts that kept flying, flying, because he didn't care what happened in the future. There was no future. Calcutta when diagnosed, that was all he could think.

They lauded those who died sober; spoke of a good death; and he just looked at them like they were crazy. I have no intention of dying sober, he declared. If I was diagnosed with cancer I would head straight to Calcutta and get myself a massive heroin habit; and die there. I couldn't think of anything worse than being a junkie on the streets of Calcutta Nora, a Bangkok legend who had lived in Asia for decades, burning down the houses of her neighbours and generally creating havoc until she sobered up, responded. I wasn't thinking of being on the streets, he declared; I was thinking of living in colonial splendour in some fading hotel, perhaps the Fairlawn, and venturing out rarely as he pottered and creaked across the old carpets and wistfully declared it to be all at an end; when boys like Baw and Aek and Kia were all just distant memories and heroin, the true love of his life, took up where every tender embrace left off and fulfilled every need to be a coherent whole, a single person, triumphant at best, lauded at worst, coming through a single break in the clouds to a glorious end. When every street corner, every distant embrace, was already history in a different place and the times he had bought and paid for: they too were just drifts in history; times passed, and he raised up his arms and exposed his veins and declared in an abruptly loud, strange voice: bless me.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/01/2941912.htm

British-born author Christopher Hitchens has cut short a book tour to undergo chemotherapy.

Media outlets including America's CBS News reported that Hitchens, known to be a heavy smoker and drinker, has been diagnosed with cancer.
"I have been advised by my physician that I must undergo a course of chemotherapy on my esophagus," the 61-year-old said in a statement released through his publishers Twelve.
"This advice seems persuasive to me.
"I regret having had to cancel so many engagements at such short notice," he added.
A representative for Twelve offered no details beyond the statement.
Hitchens launched a book tour last month to promote his memoir Hitch-22, which tackles subjects ranging from the Middle East and Zimbabwe to his friendships with prominent writers including Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis.
As a journalist, critic and war correspondent, Hitchens has carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures, and a fierce intelligence.
In his 2008 book God Is Not Great, Hitchens put himself on a collision course with major religions with his trenchant atheist views.
Hitchens was born in Britain but lives in Washington DC.
He retained his British citizenship when he also became an American citizen in 2007.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/julia-gillard-will-be-judged-on-policy-john-howard/story-e6frgczf-1225886583535

JULIA Gillard cannot escape responsibility for the policies of the Rudd government and will be judged on her performance, according to John Howard.
The former prime minister also said the fall of Kevin Rudd could be attributed to Tony Abbott's efforts as opposition leader.
“It was Tony Abbott who began the descent of Kevin Rudd and it was Tony Abbott taking him on over emissions trading and forcing a reversal of that policy. It was a very courageous thing to do,” he told Sky News.
“He stood his ground on a policy issue whereas the leadership of the Labor party has changed on a personality issue. And I think in the long run the Australian people want their governments standing or falling on policy rather than personality.”
Mr Howard said it was only a matter of time before Australia had its first female prime minister.
“I think very quickly the Australian public will say `OK. It's good that we have a female prime minister. But I want to know what she's doing for the country',” Mr Howard said.
“She has come to the job, she is coincidentally a woman. I'm sure she doesn't want to be judged just on the fact that she is a woman. And she won't be.
“The Australian public will mark her according to her performance and that is how the Australian public should.”
Mr Howard warned Ms Gillard she would have to bear responsibility for her part in the policies of the Rudd government.
“She can't escape responsibility for all of the policies of the Rudd government because the concentration of power, even more so than in my government, was in a cabal of four people of which she was the number two,” he said.
“Julia Gillard has to bear her full share of responsibility for the policies that brought Kevin Rudd undone.”
Mr Howard also indicated he bore no ill will towards Mr Rudd but said he would be going through a lot of anguish.
“It's a tough game,” he said.
“Clearly judgments were made about him within his own party. But the key thing is now the contest between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.”

http://www.sliabh.net/images/stuff/my_bangkok.jpg