Time Out Of Mind

*

The air in Bangkok was different now, washed clean by morning rains; the stifling heat and the acrid pollution gone. As too was his state of mind, feverish, indistinct, living in the inverse, a psychotic negative of the real world. With a head no longer filled with post-apocalyptic imagery, it was easier to be free. But where was the excitement. Super Pussy shouted the Pat Pong sign, and in the warm drifting rain he and Ian sat at a corner bar and idly watched the atmosphere of a red light district during the day. Nothing like it. A boy, a girl, they flitter boy. An old man emerges from the bar. A homey worker keeps them company. They buy her, and the barmaid, a drink, grossly inflating their own bill. It was all expected. Stupid farangs wasting money. The terror was gone. In its place; he had no clue. The whispering dusk; rubbish drifting in a corner; a red light district out of hours; a sad regret; the stomach for nothing; they come they go, he said wryly, wasting thousands of baht on sex workers for the sake of a bit of physical company.

That's why businessmen waste thousands of dollars, and girls can charge up to a thousand dollars an hour; so the men can be arseholes at work and lonely at home with their anorexic blond wrinklies they used to call a wife; they agree in the back of a taxi on another idle day. After Patpong during the day proved as atmospheric and as pointless as everything else. Super Pussy indeed. Perhaps it was time he went back to work. There was crisis; but crises were only manufactured. And that was something he had realised over here. Just another in a long line. Reach the end of life and the end of time and you will be here too, another old man lurking the streets, charmed by the embrace of a handsome boy, an astonishingly good looking girl. They were here, now, warm in the flesh; bought and paid for. These men had had their day and weren't ready to say die. But God, had their looks gone. Was there ever enough money to go around? Was there any way to savour this, to make court, to fulfill functions, to rise up out of pseudo hangovers and a stifling regret; to think, I don't like you to the person in his bed.

If only, if only what, he had been a different person and the march of despairing imagery had not ceased as his own psychosis retreated; if only he had been a better father and a better person; if only there was more money. Come fly with me. But everything had turned into a lie. The burnt out hippies on the corner of the camp fire; in the shadows on the edge of bars; in corners, on outskirts, watching on, their eyes black holes and their long, now grey hair unkempt over raggly, out of date of clothes, they were all testament to that. My heart, my soul, I give to you. The music soared and his spirits slumped. Topless pool shouted another bar; and he dragged Ian past because he couldn't be bothered looking at tits at this hour of the day. Or any hour, some days, with swishy boys and the argument close: you want me, you know you want me, pumped the disco songs, the same songs all over Thailand, and the unsettling thought kept pumping in: they really don't like you. Us. Them. And every taxi he got into the driver deliberately turned up the radio: the harsh, declamatory sounds of the red shirts. They made no concessions. They were on the edge of revolt. You like red shirts? he asked the taxi driver on the way to the Bourbon Street bar. Very much in my heart, he said, in the only English he had spoken all trip, thumping his chest. They smiled at each other. And the declamations continued.

Once, once, he had been so overwhelmed; now it all drifted away; those lonely days at Bondi when he sat in his alcove in the cliffs and watched the shifting colours of the sea, the tired wave of a twisted hand, the secret life of someone who spoke to no one, the air they could no longer breathe. They never ask you to speak, it drives me crazy, Dextel said, realising something that only those who got to know him knew; fame and fortune, public profile, we are secret now in our whispering ways, and fortune may favor the brave but here in the back lots, where every step is watched and every movement shadowed, where he didn't have to reach out and do anything, not even put a face forward, back here in the muffled silence the only safe place to be, it didn't matter what rippled across the mask, it didn't matter if no one understood or no one cared or there was an absence of love, or people speculated about his single status, or he made feeble attempts to get drunk enough to sleep with the girl next door, none of it mattered. These in between stages he had been through before were difficult for their lack of construct. But it wasn't a prescription for being. It was a tactic for survival. Long polished. Oft abandoned. Now here in retreat. Everything had collapsed.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/SEAsia/Story/STIStory_516050.html

BANGKOK - THAILAND'S powerful army chief Anupong Paochinda yesterday met top commanders as 'red shirts' pledged to escalate protests again to pressure Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to call an early election.

But government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn insisted that the authorities would not use force against red shirt protesters in downtown Bangkok.

'People want this settled quickly, but the authorities also face their limitations. There are a lot of people out there and we cannot do anything harsh,' he told the Associated Press.

The red-shirted United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship has been campaigning for more than a month in the capital, and the protests showed few signs of losing steam yesterday.

A daytime crowd of about 2,000 people at the upscale Ratchaprasong intersection swelled to nearly 10,000 by evening.

In a surprise statement yesterday, co-leader Nattawut Saikuar told reporters that on May 15, all 24 leaders who have arrest warrants out for them would surrender to the police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/17/thailand-tourism

The Thai new year is one of the highlights of the tourist calendar and has for two years now been marred with violence in Bangkok. This year that violence was some of the worst in the country's history and it was tourists on Khao San Road, the backpacking hub of south-east Asia, who had front row seats.

The crisis is clearly far from over, and yet there is little tourists can do other than try and get back to their holiday. Last Sunday afternoon, one journalist surveying the damage tweeted that 50 metres from where people were killed, tourists were watching the Blackburn v Manchester United match.

It would be unfair to ask tourists to think too hard about Thailand's problems; they are, after all, on holiday. Yet, whether they realise it or not, tourists are not just spectators to the political turmoil. All sides in this conflict use tourism as a weapon to achieve their aims. The decision of the Yellow Shirts to close the airport in 2008 was an audacious move, designed for maximum impact. As of yet, the Reds have not targeted tourism so explicitly, but that might well be changing.

The fact that the Reds have continued their protest, despite suffering the losses they did, shows how determined they are. Also, as they become more desperate, it makes sense that they will attempt to put pressure on the government through directly targeting the economy. This week the protest site moved from the area close to Khao San, to Ratchaprasong, the main shopping district and a stone's throw from the city's major hotels.