Watched By An Indifferent Gaggle At The Bar

*

Torrid dangers. Thailand's third gender. And only in Bangkok, the sign outside the parlour just down the road: Special Testicle Massage. Feel Young Again. There is no mistaking the world's happy endings, oil massage being code for getting your rocks off with a quick hand job. Bangkok specialised in this; amongst so many other things; but now the foot massage palaces and the glittering shelves were all empty, barely enough tourists to block the streets; the Arabic women to the fore, shopping for fancy shoes, their bulky burqas at odds with the skimpily, stylishly dressed Thais, with the bars that beckoned on every corner, with the life they could and should have known, there in the free fall, when everybody answered to someone else and malformed creatures scuttled from the light. They went to Siam Paragon, to the Imax Theatre, to watch the utterly pointless Inception, and tipped the driver 50 baht because there were four of them for a short ride, because Thai taxi drivers were amongst the worse paid in the world, because they were falang and the exchange rates still stood in their favour. And because he was kind to those who were kind to him. Jaan, the intense, single American woman who's apartment at one time he was going to take over, before she changed her mind because of Baw and because she kept changing her mind anyway, has lost her apartment after she put in her notice and then decided to withdraw. Only one person saw it. They took it. At 10,000 baht a month just off Chong Nonsi in the heart of the city, it was pretty near impossible to get anything cheaper or better located.

She was upset to discover, when she contacted the landlord to cancel giving notice after getting a couple of job interviews in Bangkok, that the apartment was already gone, putting her on notice that it was time to leave. He never wanted to leave. The world moved forward and back; that was crystal clear, but he had settled and never wanted to move; was happy, for once, exactly where he was. Alex, who he presumed dead or in hospital, showed up at the Rum Rudi meeting yesterday fit as a fiddle, having also moved in with someone who was a looker, and who wasn't drinking. Well she's mad on the piss, mad as a cut snake, and she's seen me drinking, she knows what I'm like, she knows it's a serious problem, so she's promised not to drink and she's moved with me to a little town three hours north of Bangkok, where I'm teaching English, he explained. Coming up two months without a drink. They had been buddies in those early days when the world was reversed, when crimes out of mind were committed on a routine basis, when he was physically too screwed to even bother going to the lady boy bar, which Paul kept urging them to do; they're good company, great personalities, he insisted; and you've never had a blow job till you've had a katoy. Well as far as he was concerned Thailand's third gender could remain unexplored by him; but perhaps he was being closed minded. They always caught his eye on the early morning works, those hyper-dressed girls with the hard faces and the roving eyes; looking for business, looking for lunch, looking for a foreigner just like him.

I want what he's got, the boy's university friend had loudly declared, stripping off shortly afterwards to have a shower. Let's go, he said, none too subtly. Make yourself at home, he thought. I'm already happy with what I've got, suppose you've got to learn to go with the flow here. And if that involves group sex and casual liaisons at any time of the day or night, well so be it. He was paying for it, but monogamy didn't seem to be a part of the picture. Then again... He managed to escape; and at last an alien kind of peace descended into his life. It was very hard to get used to. I don't do happy, he thought, only manic or world weary or a laugh a minute bleak tiredness which caught every fractured discord on a collapsing planet; and so when they spilled out of the bar in the early dawn, the last dance club open in Chiang Mai, they were perfectly at home. So at home there was no answer when the English boy insisted, we've lost our keys, we want to come home with you. But we're happy the way we are, he insisted; although that wasn't exactly true. He would have been happy with just that one, might have been more to the truth; and the fast fire patter of the walking disaster zone they called a young queen from the west, all the stories of having fled Jersey in disgrace, he loved it. But when someone said something all he said was: he'll be a bitter old queen one day, hunting for the glories that never were. And of course he had seen it so often, one reason he was attracted to the theatricality of it all. Here was a young one, ripe for the plucking. There was an old one, shrieking and flapping as he landed on the scrap heap, watched by an indifferent gaggle at the bar.

It was here in these reaches that he now found himself. Safely cushioned perhaps, but then again there was no excuse. He could walk the line and never be imprisoned. He could listen to his own head and think himself young again. Aek would catch himself in the mirror in the lift, and admire himself. Good, good, dee, dee, he would say, pleased with his own image; but he was never pleased with his own image. The horror, the horror, he joked, kind of, but at least the horror was not as cracked and worthless as it had been a month ago. Things were coming back into focus. Stories were being told. Treasures were filtering out from the swamp. Waving spinsters, tall young lads, the beggars that would always be with us; the beggars that suddenly multiplied at the Cambodian border; or those on the streets of Sala Deng, most of whom he knew well by sight now; the woman with her well dressed, happy children, who certainly did not appear to be starving, the woman with her plastic legs, the other wizened woman who would still be sitting there at 5am, cross legged with the begging cup in front of her, awake, still, always, because the madness was in her. Deformities were a consequence of sins in a former life; and therefore worthy of little sympathy, he heard; and the shreds, the farcical displays, all spoke of a tortured time he had overcome; a shadow he had walked past; a river not worth crossing. Liquid desire had turned to liquid despair; and he should have known the outcome before he even started. He didn't think of consequence. He didn't think of anything. The world was a lonely hearts club and he was an active member; that was all. Oh f... it, let's have a beer, he had said. I'll go back to meetings tomorrow.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/features/federal-election/coalition-will-cut-immigration-says-opposition-leader-tony-abbott/story-fn5tar6a-1225896532324#ixzz0ue7p6Q51

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott has vowed to put a lid on Australia's population growth by slashing immigration by nearly half over the next three years.
Mr Abbott will announce today a Coalition Government would cut net overseas migration from nearly 300,000 to 170,000, and reduce the nation's population growth from 2.1 per cent to 1.4 per cent.
Echoing the mantra of former prime minister John Howard, Mr Abbott told The Sunday Telegraph: "We will determine who comes to our country and the circumstances under which they come."
The planned cuts will focus on family and student visa programs, while skilled migration would largely be quarantined.
Mr Abbott said a "fair dinkum" debate was needed after Prime Minister Julia Gillard's attempts to distance the population debate from immigration levels.
The Coalition's policy, to be announced today in the lead up to the first and only leaders debate tonight, sets up an historic split on bipartisan immigration policy.
The immigration debate fired up again yesterday after a report that 800 asylum-seekers would arrive on our shores over the next month.
Mr Abbott said the Coalition would keep skilled migration numbers up, but would crack down on "dubious educational and family-reunion applicants".
Although the Coalition doesn't nominate a population figure, the growth rate would put Australia on track for a population in 2050 of well below 36 million.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said although the Coalition believed that Australia was a nation of migrant success stories, "these do not justify a population blank cheque for the future".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/25/2963433.htm?section=justin

The Federal Opposition is dumping its candidate for the western Sydney seat of Chifley for attacking his opponent's Muslim faith.

David Barker is reported to have used his Facebook page to accuse Labor of bringing Australia closer to a Muslim country.

Labor's candidate in Chifley, Ed Husic, describes himself as a non-practicing Muslim.

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says the comments are unacceptable and Mr Barker will not be the Liberal candidate by the end of the day.

"Our concern with Mr Barker is what he said his opponent and trying to use religion as some sort of tool in the election campaign," he said.

Chifley is a very safe Labor seat in outer western Sydney seat.

It covers the suburbs of Rooty Hill, Doonside, Woodcroft, Dean Park, parts of Marayong and Blacktown, plus all the suburbs that make up the Mt Druitt housing commission estate.

On top of the state tower, Bangkok. Photograph: Peter Newman.