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Redolent with warmth, dripping with message, confronted, shadowed, he was shocked when Baw number 2, that lyrically handsome boy with which they formed the gang of three and went hunting through the Bangkok nights, through the clubs, the Kareoke bars, the brothels, only coming out at night, only passing down streets on their terms, shocked when he showed up at the front of the upmarket apartment block he had discursively, inconsequentially, oddly made his home. Clashing with everything that had been his past, he nevertheless felt entirely at home here. It had the added advantage of impressing the hell out of the boys, who came and stayed. I want what he's got, Aek's friends would say, and in status conscious Thailand it was important for Aek to impress his friends. He couldn't have cared less. One experience was much like the next. But in some strange way that wasn't true any more, he was happy here and didn't want to let it go, with the lyrical, melodic Thai pop music transforming the mornings and the nights, and everything that was darkness no longer true, and that was why, perhaps, it was such a shock to see that messenger from the past, that boy that even now he couldn't help fancying to death, because he knew what he looked like with his clothes off and even the bristly new little moustache and the whiff of late-night derelict thinness couldn't change that.


So he stood there while the past and the present exchanged words in rapid Thai. He had no idea what they were saying. They were on the way to Tescos, to stock up the fridge, buy a new t-shirt, feel good about themselves. And there he was, that blast from the past, on his motorcycle at the front of the building. He had no idea what they were saying but he could guess; we knew him first, I have every right to say hello; and between it; behind it; we've run out of money now and you've taken what is rightfully ours; our inheritance for working this one, keeping him happy for so long. The fact they hadn't kept him happy and had left him wiped to the nines, had almost killed him, didn't figure in that equation or their thinking. They were all straight, these marauding street boys whose company he had been so entranced by, but now, fitting in perfectly with the upmarket apartment, he was sleeping with a small framed gay boy who didn't smoke, drink or take drugs, who took good care not just of him but of the apartment, making sure everything was immaculately clean and tidy, that everything was in its place, that the appropriate music was playing on the stereo, that he was happy. And despite, perhaps because, of himself he had grown very fond of this quiet, well behaved lad who took himself off to university every day in a neat white shirt, who slept eight or ten hours a night, thought it was a great treat if they went out to a nightclub every now and then, and who's only fault if it was that was that he liked to show him off to his friends still working the bar.

John good, he would say, in the little English he had. Mama say John good. Making an expression with his hands. Laughing with delight. Mr Jung say, John gooood. Laughing again; as if he couldn't believe his luck. And the word came back via the friend with a foreign boyfriend when he jacked up on buying him gold, don't worry, he say, he come from poor family, he appreciate every baht. Don't smoke, John, I love you, Aek would say, and so it was almost a month now since he had even had a cigarette. The heat of the day came thumping in, but everything was languid in their easy, perfect life. Aek mopped the floors every morning, although they didn't look like they needed mopping to him, while the gay soundtrack played on the stereo. This time in Thai, Celine and Titanic, the favourite movie of every swishy Thai boy, momentarily banished. Soon to return. So it was a shock to him to think that he might have exposed this boy, the first gay one he had slept with since being here this time around, to those marauding street thugs who, perhaps justifiably, certainly in their view, might well believe he had encroached on their territory. It was the opposite end of that image, the easy going Thais, sleep with anyone, everyone, either for money or at their convenience, on their terms, the land of smiles. This was a country where you could get someone killed for $500 and life was cheap, where foreigners who did the wrong thing regularly disappeared or came to unfortunate ends, he shot himself in the back of the neck, he threw himself off the 23rd floor with his hands tied behind his back, he drowned in the river, even though he was a good swimmer; no, toxicology report was ever performed.


Was it possible he had exposed this gentle soul to danger? He didn't know; maybe, it was easy, his inflamed imagination read into things. I'm prone to grandiosity, Peter declared, everything is universal, no one has suffered or conquered or had more profound thoughts than me, and even he said: I can tell, you're worried, you think you might have exposed him to danger. Just as well the security is so good here. And it was true. You couldn't move in this place without showing up on a camera; it was almost impossible to get past the security guards at the front without the appropriate passes; and a tip now and then helped to keep them happy and saluting, holding out umbrellas in the rain, jumping to find a cab. Yes, he said, I am. The Baws are street boys; they know all sorts of people; they know where I live; they were fond of him, not only his wallet, that was true enough, they had lived through too many things and did too many things together not to be fond of each other in some strange way; even if these things can turn on a dime nothing can change the flashing intimacy of the past, the dancing joy of the late night bars, the complex affiliations through all those chaotic places; but they're dangerous, they're exactly the sort of people who know how to get someone killed; it was one reason he was always so generous, and generous to a fault when he left; these were the wrong people to have off-side. And now his precious life could devolve, just like that. Perhaps there was only solution, the old one, lock the door, refuse to answer the phone, disappear off the face of the earth. When he emerged the landscape, the circumstance, would all have changed. So it was annoying that in his fluster he had left his ATM card in the machine at Tesco's, and now couldn't even go down to the "Seven" ATM and pull out some cash whenever he felt like it. These were the times, the quandries. Quality problems they called them. Huh.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/16/2955223.htm?site=thedrum

An unpleasant political passage

By Barrie Cassidy

If Hawke and Keating are anything to go by, Rudd and Gillard have no chance of ever moving forward together.

Can Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd put their recent unpleasantness behind them and move forward together?

No chance.

Exhibit A. The last recorded case of a prime minister being deposed in office by a colleague happened in 1991 when Paul Keating beat Bob Hawke in a caucus ballot. And after 19 years, how are they doing? After this week, do we need to ask whether they are yet over that little tiff?

There is a world of difference between leadership challenges in opposition and those that depose a prime minister.

When the latter occurs, it sets off a lifetime battle for the legacy; for the place in history. Who was the better prime minister? Who made the greatest contribution?

And does history suggest the axing of the leader was justified in all the circumstances?

For Paul Keating, the biggest single argument in his favour was the secret Kirribilli agreement. Keating always had a sense of entitlement driven by his reformist zeal, and his undeniably powerful presence. For the life of the Hawke government, there was Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, then daylight.

I declare an interest. I was Hawke's senior press secretary from 1986 until 1991, and in my last month, his political adviser. The last piece of advice I gave him was that Keating would eventually muster the numbers to win and he should look for the most dignified way out. It was advice rejected; emphatically. I left his office for the United States, between the two challenges. Hawke was convinced that Keating was unelectable. What annoyed so many of his staff is that none of them knew about the critical Kirribilli agreement. Keating's key staff did. Then again, had I known about it, I might have shared to a much greater extent, Keating's sense of entitlement.

So the two of them , after 19 years, still fight like two bulls in a paddock over the legacy.

Keating makes absurd claims that Hawke had to be carried through his early years. What nonsense. They were his most reformist years, his most energetic. Together with Keating, he transformed the Australian economy and made a big splash overseas as well.

But equally Hawke, through his wife, Blanche d'Alpuget, now elevates his own standing by diminishing Keating's.

The pattern continues. The two had a marriage of convenience in office for so many years. They didn't like each other, but they found an effective and workmanlike way of doing the necessary work together.

Then even after the showdown, they eventually again found a way of being sociable to one another during life after politics when their paths inevitably crossed far too often.

And then another version of history is written and they are at each other again.

Keating will probably write a book now; they all do eventually. Even Malcolm Fraser did.

Who knows what his mood will be like when he does. Think Mark Latham and "the conga line of suckholes".

But in the end, they are fighting over history. The problem for the current prime minister is the present.

Laurie Oakes's question to Gillard at the National Press Club is ominous in terms of the light it throws onto the Gillard-Rudd relationship. It is a brute of an issue for Gillard; difficult to manage this side of the election and toxic afterwards.

Oakes asked Gillard whether Rudd had told her in his office the night before he was deposed that he was planning an October election.

Oakes continued: "Is it true that Mr Rudd indicated that closer to the election if polling showed he was an impediment ... he would voluntarily stand aside?

"Is it also true that you agreed that this offer was sensible and responsible?

"Is it true that there was then a brief break during which Rudd went outside and briefed his colleagues on what he thought was a deal, while you contacted your backers; and when the meeting resumed you said you had changed your mind; you'd been informed that he didn't have the numbers in caucus and you were going to challenge anyway?"

Gillard dismissed the question by saying she would always respect the confidentiality of that discussion.

The fact that journalists know about the discussion anyway, has to be troubling to Gillard. A journalist - not Oakes - told me a similar version of that discussion almost a week ago on the basis that I use it only for a book that I am writing. What choice did I have? Agree or never be briefed on a key piece of information. It was a curious request. Even more curious that the journalist involved hadn't used the material himself. I have no idea why not. But there you go. The information had been provided to more than one person, until it was finally made public.

The development doesn't help Gillard as she tries to move on from the ugly side of politics. But on the face of it, it doesn't sound anything like a Kirribilli agreement. That was a firm promise given by Hawke to Keating in front of two specially chosen witnesses, Sir Peter Abeles (for Hawke) and Bill Kelty (for Keating). This on the other hand, was a last-gasp pitch from Rudd for a temporary lifeline when he knew his number was up. It was not an offer made from a position of strength. Those outside the door were going to have none of it, no matter how torn Gillard might have been. They had the numbers, overwhelmingly. They had already crossed the Rubicon. There was no turning back; and that's the message Gillard delivered on reflection, once the meeting resumed.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/us-fears-grow-over-war-in-afghanistan/story-e6frg6so-1225892348054

IN what could be NATO's worst month for casualties since 2001, US politicians have voiced fears about the American-led war in Afghanistan.

With NATO suffering 12 casualties in two days, Democrat and Republican senators questioned yesterday whether the Obama administration could really begin withdrawing troops mid-next year and whether it had a plan for forging a political settlement.

"We need a better definition of exactly what the definition of success is in Afghanistan," said Democrat John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee opening a hearing at which special envoy Richard Holbrooke was grilled on US policy. "We absolutely need to know what a political solution looks like and how we get there."

The hearing followed reports that eight American soldiers had been killed in 24 hours, bringing to 33 the number of US troops killed this month. There are currently about 100,000 US troops there.

Of the 12 NATO troops killed in the past few days, four were British and eight American. On Tuesday, a renegade Afghan soldier killed three members of a British Gurkha battalion on a base in Helmand, including a sleeping British major.

Also on Tuesday nine Afghan civilians were killed in Helmand when the minivan they were travelling in hit a roadside bomb - the Taliban's weapon of choice.

Photograph taken on my mobile.