No-Man’s Land at Prum
My wife spends a lot of time up country with her family. Her excuses vary from month to month. I don’t lift them to the light, because the truth is an onion with many layers. Once you peel them all, you have nothing. Plus I’d live there too if i had the money.
Neither do I question her wife’s returns, which coincide with my wandering farther from home. I’m happy to end my ersatz-singledom, because my wife’s arrival means I get to spend time with my 3 year-old daughter.
My friends understand during her visits my status around Pattaya is persona non persona. My daughter and I go swimming at the Shaba Hut and ride around town with our little dog in the motor scooter basket. No bars, no late nights, and I spend bedtime reading my little angel Winnie the Pooh in horrible Thai. My wife recently found this good behavior very suspicious and after two weeks ordered me to take a break on a weekend night.
I needed little encouragement to bust out of the domestic kraal and once my daughter was asleep, I kissed my wife good-night and drove my bike to Walking Street like a rat with its tail on fire.
Sam Royalle was waiting at Heaven Above A Go Go.
His girlfriend had a posse of girlfriends retired by out-of-town boyfriends.
After my 3rd drink they were no threat to my monogamy for my wife. Go-go bars are relatively boring. Too loud to speak over the boy band disco and ’suck-my-dick’ rap. Naked girls hold no thrill. Not when they’re shuffling the old bored one-two step, but Sam kept ordering tequilas. After three my tongue reverted to Neanderthalism.
As Sam called for a round of Kamikazes I escaped from Heaven and staggered down the stairs to Soi Diamond. Every step was a challenge and I was wondering how to negotiate the two blocks to my parked bike. A catapult was my only solution, until Jamie Parker said, “Man, are you really that fucked up?”
“Tequila on an empty stomach.” I was trying to lose weight. Not drinking beer was the answer. Not a diet.
“Are you really thinking about driving home?” Jamie was alone.
“I’ve driven in worst condition.” I hadn’t seen him since the disastrous 9/11 opening of his defunct PIGPEN A GO GO.
“Which is why your wrist looks like a Klingnon warship.”
“I wasn’t drunk then, only distracted.”
“I’ll help you on your way.” Jamie and I went back to New York. The East Village to be exact. Drugs and crime to be precise. Neither of us tempted fate in Pattaya. We were the few 50 year olds to be that wise, but not tonight, because Jamie dragged me over to the Jennie bar. World famous for the most beautiful TVs in the world. He ordered two vodka tonics. Doubles.
“Is this Drivers Ed 2006?”
“No, I had something weird happen today. On a visa run.”
“Weird?” Visa runs are as interesting as an airport transit lounge.
“Yeah, I get on the minivan. 6:30. Crack of dawn. Sleep two hours. Listen two hours to the various bullshit from the other visa-runners. The only one not speaking was this old guy. Maybe 65. He’s reading a book. I like reading like you and ask him what he’s reading. He says with a German accent, “Zarathusa, but this version is called BANGKOK 8.”
We speak about the ubermensch and the untermensch. The old guy originally from Austria. Fled the Nazis but he wasn’t a Jew. Father was a commie or a criminal. He’s been out here since before electricity. Runs a restaurant in Made in Thailand.”
“I know the place.” His wife made a great veal schnitzel. “His name’s Frank.”
“Yeah, that’s right, but I have bad news.”
“What?” I was expecting him to ask me for money.
“Frank’s dead.”
“Frank’s dead?” He was only 65. I knew his daughter. She was beautiful.
“Yeah, we cross the border into Cambo. No problem. He’s fine. Gets his visa stamped and lowers his head into his book. I thought he was asleep and went to get a bottle of wine. Nice Bordeaux. I come back and see he hasn’t changed position. I touch him and he’s cold.”
“Dead.”
“Than a bucket of nails.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I told the guide and he said the same thing. We had a little conference and decide to risk taking him back across the border. I mean, i didn’t want him stuck between the borders like Orson Welles in A TOUCH OF EVIL.”
“No one would have wanted to take responsibility for him.” Frank could have been stuck there for days. “Bad luck.”
“The guide wasn’t too happy about the situation, but we got him upright. You ever notice how heavy dead people are?”
“A bucket of mud in a plastic bag.” I had worked as a janitor in a terminal ward during univiersity. The orderlies were my friends and I helped them move the dead to the guerneys.
“You know the border. Shitty muddy waiting area. Crappy bridge.” Jamie downs his drink ad orders two more. Doubles again. “We get to the passport control. The officer looks at Frank and asks what’s wrong. We say he’s drunk. The officer knows drunk. Frank is more than that and signals us to come to the side.”
“How much?” Thai border officials are quick on the take.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“The guy had seen ‘papa’ for years and says he’ll stamp the passport for a renewed visa, but only if we declared him dead in Thailand.”
“Good guy.”
“That’s why we live here. Thais understand reality.” A Britney Spears look-a-like TV sits on Jamie’s lap. “We carry Frank’s body into Thailand. Everyone kais him. They respect him as an old man who loves Thailand. The cops think about taking him back to Pattaya but let the minivan bring him home. His wife cried a bucket.”
“Guess we’ll be going to the wat for cremation.”
“Better than being buried in a box.” Jamie and I never thought we were going to die. We clinged glasses and I knew I wasn’t going home soon. Sitting the dead takes time and I still have plenty of that.
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