Skating on Thin Ice
The monsoons coincide with low season in Pattaya. Hotels offer special rates and the bargirls call everyone ’sexy’. Many retreat to Isaan to wait for the high season. Better to work in the family rice paddy, then settle down with an 80 year-old retiree on a limited pension. At least until high season comes back in November.
The desperation on the go-go girls’ faces is a cruel mirror of hard times and every girl sing the same chorus “Take me home.”
I refused about twenty before midnight. “Mai mii keng leng.”
“I can give you power.” They all promised a trip to heaven or hell. I wasn’t interested in either destination after ten beers and deserted my bar stool at Heaven Above a Go Go. The air on Soi Diamond was strangely cool. The wind carried the threat of rain and I walked to 2nd Road rather than be tempted by another drink on Walking Street.
Two transvestites grabbed my arms at the top of the alley. They towered over me in their heels. One hand dipped into my back pocket. I could feel her fingernails grasping my wallet. It only had 500 baht, but all my ATM and credit cards. My struggle to break free was futile, until the pickpocket yelped with pain.
“Pai loi.” The voice telling them to get lost belonged to Jamie Parker.
“We go. Come back too.” The taller TV sneered with a helium alto.
“Good luck then.” Jamie stood his ground and the girls strode off to find easier prey. Handing back my wallet, he coughed with a hack. This didn’t come from smoking cigarettes. “Thought you could use a little help.”
“Those girls were tough.” Bruises would color my arms tomorrow. “What happened to you?”
Jamie’s body was perennially thin due to his years on the streets of New York, but his face was gaunt and Panda black circled his eyes.
“I look that bad?” He stared at his reflection in the 7/11 window.
“Yeah, you look that bad.” Drug bad and I went to the ATM. “You need some money?”
“A couple of thousand wouldn’t hurt, but it isn’t for what you think.”
“Jamie, you can do what you want with it.” After dark any money you give a friend you have to consider as a gift. I pulled out 2000 baht. “You’re an adult.”
“I don’t feel like it.” He stuck the two tan bills in his jeans pocket. “Mind if I walk with you a bit?”
“I’m just going to get my bike.” The eyes of a passing policeman convicted Jamie of several crimes. “Let me give you a ride somewhere.”
“Yeah, there’s too much light here.” He lowered his head like someone might be following him. I fought the temptation to look over my shoulder. We drove to 3rd Road. His body wavered like a wraith on back. I checked the rearview mirrors every ten seconds. No one was there. At the Buffalo Bar I ordered him a beer and waved for the girls to leave us alone.
“Man, it’s been a hard month.” He sat on the stool as if he had been on his feet for days. “But you don’t want to hear about it.”
My mother had prayed for God to send her second son an avocation to join the cloth. I refused the priesthood after hearing Led Zeppelin’s first LP in 1969, but she had been right. I would have made a good priest or at least a confessor. Everyone liked to tell me their secrets. Even more so after two beers.
Jamie drank three in less than a minute.
“I’m all ears.”
“You ever hear of Ice?” He whispered the word with worship.
“Crystal Meth.” The drug had hit the fly-over of America hard. The cops had cracked down on traditional drugs and the dealers synthesize a smokeable speed from ephedrine, the basic ingredient for over-the-counter cough medicines. The substance was equally available in Thailand.
“That’s the one. The Nazis used to give chocolate bars laced with the stuff to Luftwaffe pilots.” Jamie was a vast abyss of useless knowledge. “Kept them flying for days.”
“And you started smoking it here?” Drugs are readily available in Thailand, although opium, heroin, grass have been supplanted by ja bah and ice thanks to the repressive interdictions of the Thai Police and DEA.
“With Ort.” He shrugged to indicate his complete surrender.
“Ort?” I knew Ort from Soi 6. I hadn’t seen her since her boyfriend left her for a transvestite. The little vixen wanted to be my geek. I had refused with deep regret. Ort was very sexy. ”How you run into Ort?”
“She was dancing at Paris A Go-Go. Told me to meet her after work. We went back to her place. A little furnished studio. Bed, TV, AC. She asked if I minded if she smoked some ice. You know me. Anyone can do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.” Jamie’s heroin addiction had stolen his youth. Cocaine took away his edge as a comedian. His taking up with speed in his 50s could be a show-stopper. “Don’t look at me like you were a Parole Officer who discovered a bad blood test. You’re no angel.”
“You’re right.” I had disappointed Nancy Reagan too many times by saying ‘yes’, instead of no’ to throw any rocks without hearing the sound of breaking windows in my own house of glass, but I tried my best to avoid drugs in Thailand.
“And you’re right too.” Prison here was worse than any of Jamie’s stateside time. “I knew it was dangerous, but did it anyway.”
“And how was it?” Jamie didn’t need a lecture and I was curious. About ice and Ort.
“Ice is nothing. No rush. Shooting speedballs is a thousand times better for a high.”
“So what the attraction?”
“Sex.” Jamie spoke low, which was a little strange in a bar where every girl was looking for a date. “I thought she wanted me only to buy some ice. 1000 baht. But once we had a few pipes, she said she was hot and asked if I minded if she took off her clothes. Another bowl and mine was off. A day later and we were still at it.”
A binge. “How many days?”
“3-4. I took Cialis to keep up my strength.” Speed and Cialis were tough on the heart, however Jamie was tough enough to survive hardcore XXX games. “And then another 4 days and we had sex the entire time. I had to stop because my skin wore off. Ort wasn’t happy and started screaming for it. It was like being with a nymphomaniac. A tryanny of sex. I told her I was going to the ATM. I didn’t go back.”
“How much money you spend?”
“About 15000 baht and lost about 5 kilos.”
“Cheaper than Jenny Craig’s or Weight-Watchers.”
“I don’t have the weight to lose like you.”
A loss of five kilos would put me close to the fighting weight of my early 40s. “And you didn’t go back?”
“Don’t trust myself. It’s not the Ice. it’s the sex, the ice, the lying in bed with nowhere to go but here.” He drank his beer with a thirst to quench another demon. “Sawan.”
“Heaven.” I was impressed Jamie knew the thai word for paradise.
“A little hell too, which we both like.”
“Without sin, there is no pleasure.” I loosely quoted Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealistic film director. “So now what?”
“I changed my SIM card # and started clean again.” He ordered another beer. They were going down smooth. “Not 100%, but close enough. Another few days and I’ll be back on top of the world.”
“More like top of the heap in this town.”
“As long as it’s a foot higher than anyone else, you see the stars.” Jamie had a way with words, which slurred after our tenth beer.
He stayed at my house for several days before changing apartments. I got a call from him the other day. He’s running promo events for bars and restaurants during the low season. The next is an erotic hot dog eating contest at TiggleBitties Tavern.
Ort has called several times asking where is Jamie. I told her out-of-town. She invited me over her place. I said I was busy. She said she was thinking about me and thanks to Jamie I knew why. I don’t answer her calls anymore. Like Jamie I’m too weak to skate on thin ice.
At least until I’m in my 80s.
At that age everything is fair game.
