everywhere & nowhere 40
By the time I got to Thailand, I knew it was just going to be a transit point, and so I used the time to do some reflecting. I still didn’t know what I wanted to get out of the journey I had embarked on. Mostly, I don’t think I wanted to get anything. Mostly, I wanted to lose the monstrous ego I had been carrying around with me, and just see what was out there.
a difficult thing to do, for a pseudo-narcissist
with the bad habit of over-introspection
I got to Bangkok during the water festival and made my way over from Banglamphu to a couple of city parks, taking in some of the light-hearted water fights, and the air of good will along the canals. After that, I searched for someone who could offer me a reasonable train/ferry/accommodation deal for Ko Samui. A week on the beach sounded good, and I decided not to risk another desperate hunt for beds once I arrived.
In 1992, Ko Samui still had the charm of its old treehouse flop zone. But the tourist industry was already starting to pick up on the island, and a few lower end resorts had sprung up… yep, the island was beginning to gentrify but, for the moment, it was still out-of-the-way enough to sustain actual Thai locals, providing a mix of Thai culture and backpacker ease, rather than the never-ending nightlife and necessary-shopping-opportunities for the rich and trendy (I have since heard it has been completely developed into holiday resorts, and has suffered the fate of Phuket… such a pity).
After a rather restless seven days on Ko Samui, though, I had to call my time there a bust: way too much introspection. I seemed to be seeing nothing and getting nowhere in the quest quel the ego.
Deciding I probably shoulda gone to a monastery, I returned to Bangkok with three days to spare before my onward flight.
Then something interesting happened. Stepping off the overnight train that carried me from the south, I ran into an unusual couple: a young Indian man (mid twenties, I’d guess) in an unadorned light blue cotton dhoti, and an older American woman, who appeared to be in her late forties/early fifties. They told me they were seeing something of Thialand together, and had been to Napal for a couple of weeks too.
The young man, Ahmed, told me it was his first time travelling, except for the Haj pilgrimage he had undertaken some years earlier, when he had seen a bit of Saudi Arabia and (I think) had stopped in Qatar.
He told me his father ran a guest house in Udaipur (a beautiful old city in Rajasthan whose pictures in my Lonely Planet had partially influenced my decision to spend more time in India). I gathered that his American companion had been a guest in his father’s establishment, and they had developed a friendship while Ahmed showed her around the surrounding area.
We got to talking a bit about travel as we waited for a room, and I remember being especially curious about the manner in which this traditionally dressed young Muslim man had decided to hook up with an older single woman from America for a six week jaunt, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to ask.
Instead, having found out that I had seen pictures of Udaipur and had contemplated stopping there while I was in India, Ahmed handed me his father’s card, and told me I must stay with them for the duration of my stay. I took the proffered card without promising anything… at this point I was making no set plans.
I wanted to follow my whims… or, perhaps, the wind
That early morning chance meeting would set a number of “whim” and “wind” scenarios into play more than a month later.
…but I don’t want to give everything away just yet…
So: Back to my last days in Thailand….
First stop: A beauty salon, where a charming young Muslim Thai “Tsk, tsked” my decision to cut off the nearly waist-length blond tresses I had been lugging around…. But he did as I bid.
Then I had letters and postcards to send. Things to put behind me, and things to project forward.
I guess you could call it tying up loose ends. Mostly I think it was mind-clearing. A bit like going through the old attic. Remembering the context for each dusty object. Like a benediction. Just before you chuck it out.
To Michael I sent a postcard:
re: Buddha and nothing
Thailand and somewhere
unable still to break completely
escape the moment/us
i miss our/your s(k)in
..cuz sometimes
a heartbeat stands watch–
and things get really screwed up, see,
if his eyes can make
the time-piece race.
so if i want to say something
…but i don’t know what that something is…
(pause)
i guess i should just shut up.
~
To Jeff I sent another long letter:
April 24/93
Bangkok, Thailand
Sweet Seven Badgers
Woke up this morning with you guiding me from the sub to the conscious realm. Think I’m hankerin’ after your company. Was paging thru my India handbook last night, trying to decide on a direction. But, hell, direction’s a goose chase when you lead this sorta life.
Right now, in backpacker’s ghetto, Banglamphu, Bangkok…where there are more European accents than Thai faces. In a little restaurant under the breeze of a fan.
escaping the hustle and the heat of the street
I’m waiting on a fake student ID card from a very pretty Thai black-marketer, who sets up table, boldly in front of the lines of stores and cafes and guest houses catering to the Western wanderer. These streets are flanked with the fake: watches from Gucci to Rolex; Levis 501 jeans, bootleg walkmans; and every imaginable species of cheap “silver”, copper, and brass adornments; tie-dye and patchwork hippy hang-loose clothes; tattered, handled copies of travelers’ favorite novels,
and so on
and so forth…
And of course, I’ve been doing nothing productive. Not even a traipse around some of the famous wats for a gawk at things like the Grand Emerald Buddha. No museums, or Thai dance presentations, and no writing.
‘Til now.
I think I’m about at boiling point. Ready to start cooking (complement the flesh that’s already roasting under the tropical glare).
Mind if I fry away some of the “fat” accumulating over my normally sunny disposition? Let off a little steam, and maybe mix my metaphors while I’m at it?
don’t know what you’ll get
maybe a little philosophy
maybe a little bitch
maybe a little irony
and some not-well-disguised pleas for sympathy
among the hedging, and describing
and so on,
and so forth…
Out on Ko Samui, I avoided as much as possible the absurd middle brow French run resort the travel agency booked me into. Wandered among the travelers instead. And, the beaches were as lovely as any postcard, powder fine and white like snow. The waters turquoise and warm like a bathtub. On the last night, I finally wander up to the pool side bar at the resort. I order a scotch. Light a cigarette and talk to the Thai bar-tender about the state of “things”.
“How’s tips?”
“Bad,” he pauses, wondering whether he should have been so frank, “…to be honest” he adds, an apologetic afterthought.
“Really?” I say inclining my head towards the French tourists who had rolled in en masse on a package deal to Thailand, “In their own country they’d be giving you 15%.”
He smiles ironically. He knows.
We talked a little bit about travel and travelers, and how some people treat their time in a developing country as if they were on holiday from civilized good manners.
“They look right thru you. Turn their backs at the bar. don’t want to talk. See. [....] Like that.”
I sympathize.
He asks me how long I am staying here. Hasn’t seen me around.
“No. It’s not really my scene. I’d rather be down the way paying a 100 Baht a day, than deal with all this ritzy French snobbery. To be talking to the people who run the place instead of having them wait on me.” pause. “… To be honest.”
“But I am leaving tomorrow. I fly to Bombay, and then to Africa, after India.”
“We cannot travel as much as you of course. But Thailand is good. We are happy to stay here.”
It’s my turn to be abashed. Of course, for all my trying to be something other, I too am a tourist. I have the money to get here, to stay here, and to leave here.
“Yes.” I said. “We are rich, and should be grateful. And even me, among my friends, not many of them could afford to come here either. I am the lucky of the lucky.”
I slip off the stool and head for the beach. The stars glow above the shadowy water and an island shape to the west rises darker than the blue-black horizon. I kick off my sandals and wade a little in the gentle lapping. Then return to my air-conditioned room, with its soft blue carpet, tiled bath and white towels. I am thinking about what comes next, what has come before, and what exactly it is I think I’m doing here. Now.
and so on,
and so forth…
& part of the dream I had last night was me and you, Jeff, on a beach somewhere. Gentle waves at first. Turquoise waters.
Then there was a surf and me sitting on coarser sand gazing out beyond the breakers every now and then, to watch the strong strokes of your front crawl in the distance…
But just before I woke up around 3:00 am, there were sharks, Jeff… and since seeing Jaws when I was an impressionable 12, I got a mortal fear of those beasts.
By 6:30, I was in a new dream, and you were revived: arms and head and torso pieced back together again. Living to coax me back to conscious day-light realities.
For a while there…though…
When we hit the coast of Africa, have a care ‘kay?
I have such prosaic and predictable dreams. Not at all like you: Waiting on men in suits with a heavy serving tray, or sweeping up their corpse dust with a vacuum cleaner after you bopped ‘em.
So, now. A new cafe. Off a side alley that probably hops at night. Full of bars, and young beautiful Thai women who smile and treat me with an amused indulgence. I think this is one the notorious Patpong offspring.
But they are friendly and their smiles are catching, so I hope I’m wrong. Too many Thai women are sucked into the prostitution ring. Especially in this city –clean tho it looks for a developing country. It may appear almost Toronto-ish in its tidy efficiency, but the seams show in these alleys.
& me, I’m tanned and still a seamy tourist. Just biding time ‘til tomorrow when I leave for Bombay. Still wandering dazedly, sometimes brooding: money, a heavy backpack, traffic and noise, pollution, everyone hounding you:
“buy”
“you buy!”
and so on
and so forth…
I think I’ll find some nice mountain retreat in Uttar Pradesh maybe.
Oh, by the way, I cut all my hair off a week or so ago.
“My Gayle, don’t you look 30 now?”
& with that little piece of information, we arrive at the self-indulgent philosophy:
Sit tight!
If I’m having these dreams about you becoming some shark’s Sunday morning dim sum…
And if I’ve been enacting a sort of minor masochistic self-mutilation by cutting off my hair…
And if I’m hankerin’ after a familiar bed, the quiet of no-city-traffic, and your pieced together broad shoulder (no strips of graying flesh floating gracefully as you please to the bottom of the ocean) …
…then maybe, just maybe mind, it’s got something to do with me fearing that I’ll grow old, still restless and end up lonely.
I was contemplating what Jinnean might be doing right now, back in Toronto. Having finished marking the term’s exams, and about to set off with Stan-her-man to one of his else-wheres. He provides a large circle of exciting writers and intellectuals for her entertainment, and takes her to heaven at night, if her narrative of their sex life is to be believed.
And I was thinking of Adeena and Michael indulging their taste for kinky encounters and hallucinogenic moments. Bouncing and/or jettisoning (depending on the substance) from one fast-paced and spell-binding engagement to another.
And I was thinking about my little brother, Doug, and his wife Leanne. Busy with spring yard work, planting geraniums and clipping hedges, and walking their handful of a white dog. Maybe thinking about babies…
and so on
and so forth…
In the midst of all these pretty pictures, you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I brood on what you’re all doing back home. Just for today. ’Cuz sometimes, you know—when the adventure grinds down and gets caught in the particulars of working out a place to stay, or waiting around for the next stage… the next somewhere on the horizon—well, the envy, it can go both ways.
Like the web of spidery connections between the continents on Cathay Pacific’s Discovery map.
You know I would prefer to have you really here, Jeff.
your strong fingers replacing the oppressive heat
caressing my body into a sweat
& your smiling voice guiding me from the conscious
to the subconscious realm
Et voila!
Just talking about you alters the melancholy… Tomorrow I have a Passage to India of my own to negotiate (hopefully less neurotic)… And then there’s you on the horizon. Coming to Africa outta a western sunset, like some loco, in(tro)verted, Canadian Clint Eastwood…
Now that’s my kinda scene!
and so:
Forth!
Then I was on the plane, heading to Bombay…
and, yes it is true, India has a way of bringing monstrous egos back down to earth.
