Two mornings ago I making a call at the overseas phone booth in the Malaysia Hotel. A young bearded man entered the lobby. We had last seen each other in Kathmandu 1990 after a trek to Lantang Glacier. Upon departure westward to Europe I had told Dice, if he was in Bangkok, then you should stay at the Malaysia Hotel and there was a good chance if the Hawaiian did I might be there in May. Dice was a no show in 1991, but here he was now and upon seeing me he called out, “Pascha.”

My Oriental pseudonym.

Dice was just in from Nepal and a long night at the go-go bars. He needed brakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, which offered a restorative American breakfast.

“Then sleep. I’m sending these girls home. They have probably had enough of me. I’ll see you later.”

We rendezvoused that afternoon at Kenny’s Bar on Soi Si Bamphen. We drank on Singhas that day and on the next which was my 40th birthday.

After a few beers at Kenny’s we told some girls we would be back after dinner and wandered over to the Chandrphen Restaurant, a top-notched Chinese chicken restaurant across from the Lumpini Muay Thai boxing stadium, where we finished off a bottle of small bottle of Mekong whiskey. The waiters invited us to a comedy club. I was drunk enough to allow myself to be dragged on stage by a troop of improvisers. They mocked me, but I grabbed the mike. I have no idea what I said, but I thought it was funny the Thai audience laughed at the farang fool.

Finally I was thrown off the stage gently. Todd said, “You’re natural ham.”

We were late for the rendezvous at Kenny’s and rode a tuktuk over to Patpong. Despite being my birthday birthday I wasn’t in the mood for whoring. Maybe Bangkok’s wild fun doesn’t glitter as wickedly coming from Indonesia, instead of New York. Maybe it’s all part my monastic onanism. I had passed through Bangkok three times this trip without bar-fining a single GoGo girl. The old age truck has hit me so hard.

40 and overweight. I don’t know how many more years I’ve got to go. Decades I hope.

No pension plan. No retirement cabin. All I have two written books, a script, 30 or so journals, an East Village apartment, and a crapped out Yamaha 650 on the sidewalk outside on the sidewalk, unless someone had stolen it in my absence.

Of course I also had my fading good looks and by the time I reach California I’m going to be in tip top shape ready for the conquest of the modern world of the West.

As I packed to check out of the Malaysia Hotel, I listened to Velvet Underground on a cassette player. I won’t be coming back here until next year working and the Diamond District from September to January. Any possibility of my earning any cash from writing was probably decades away. My typing sucks and my spelling is worse.

Two days ago I had gone down the victory Square, where hundreds of thousands of young people had been protesting against the military rule for weeks without any violence. The hometown troops would not use violence on their neighbors friends and family. The generals brought in troops from the country. They called the demonstrators communists and gave the order to shoot to kill and the soldiers from Isaan did just that, killing hundreds of their countrymen to prevent democracy. But nightlife in Bangkok stayed the same bastard under the harsh rule of High Society over Low Society.

Today Bangkok remains under martial law.

I’m catching a bus to the South island of Koh Phi Phi. 14 hours overnight.

I wonder when I’ll into into Dice again.