With Dmitri’s blessing in mind I free-dove amongst sunken Japanese destroyers off Biak, danced in the rice paddies of Bali, rode ponies across the sand plains of Mount Bromo, ate pig with the headhunters of Lake Toba, tripped on mushrooms at a full-moon party of Koh Phagnanh, and frequented the go-go bars of Patpong. Various ex-pats recommended my heading to Burma, Vietnam, or the Nana Plaza for another ogle at naked girls of the Firepole Ballet.
None of it had anything to do with bikes and an Australian motor trekker at the Malaysia Hotel suggested, “This time of year the dope fields of Northern Thailand are bone-dry as left-over turkey and dust ankle-deep. Very few people have driven through the tribal villages; Akhas, Yai, Karens, Hmong, KMT refugees growing opium for outlaw warlords.”
The next night I rode the sleeper train to the northern capitol, Chiang Mai. I rented a beat-up 125cc Honda XT and set out for the mountains. The paved road ended at a bridge crossing a tea-colored river. A lazy police guard waved me through the checkpoint and I throttled the gas. The dirt bike’s knobby tires churned a thick cloud of red dust in my wake.
The rutted track was trafficked by the occasional pick-up truck loaded with poppy plants. The scowls on the drivers’ faces warned the drug lords considered trespassing a mortal sin in the Golden Triangle. I didn’t care. I was on a motorcycle. The sky was cloudless. The hills stretched in all directions. This was the freedom of the road and I was going to live forever.
My immortality vanished when a pick-up truck rounded a blind turn in my lane. 50 kph was way too fast to avoid the accident. This was how bikers died and I said, “Shit, I’m dead.”
The impact catapulted my body headfirst into his windshield and I somersaulted onto the flatbed. The entire accident had taken less time than the Big Bang and I was shocked to have survived the head-on collision, although my left wrist was out of the socket and blood streamed from the lacerations on my face.
An old lady atop a bag of rice stared into the sky, as if I had fallen from an airplane. I climbed from the flatbed and surveyed the bike. The front tire was bent as a taco and the handlebars peeled onto the gas tank. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“Farang ki. Farang kwaai,” the rat-faced driver raged in rapid Thai.
The truck’s grill was only slightly dented from the collision, yet in his mind the accident
was my fault, because westerners had no business in these hills. His screams became more high-pitched and he kicked dust at my feet.
Grateful to be alive I was slow in losing my temper.
He grabbed my shirt.
I told him to calm down.
He was beyond understanding my request and spat in my face.
I yanked his hand off my shirt and he stumbled off the road down the hillside. The old lady ambushed me with a cane. It struck my injured wrist, as the driver scrambled from the slope with murder in his eyes.
Luckily a police truck appeared to stop anyone from getting hurt. The driver explained the accident and my assault. I tried to counter his lie. The policeman lifted his hand to silence us. He inspected our tire tracks.
“Falang, right. Thai man pay for motorsai. Pay for doctor. He sell pig, come give you money. Is okay?”
His summary judgment was more than satisfactory, since normally the farang was at fault for any accidents. The driver had to haul my motorcycle to Chiang Mai and I have a photo of him lifting the bike out of the pick-up, his face seething with hatred, while his mouth is warped by a rigid smile.
The hospital set my wrist. I downed several painkillers. That night my arm throbbed with increasing pain. To this day I can predict wet weather by its dull twinge. Snow brings on a sharper ache.
Upon my return from Asia, I recounted my accident in the Golden Triangle to Dmitri at the Sidewalk Café. He laughed at all the right spots. Someone told me that he had been straight six months.
“Any motorcycle accident you can walk away from is a good one.” He looked better than he had in years. “Any time I have one, I jump on the bike as soon as I can.”
“In some ways I imagined I had died and gone through to the after-life, only the after-life
wasn’t any different from my previous existence.” I had no intention on challenging this time-space dimension by getting on a motorcycle.
“You probably did die in several existences, but whatever doesn’t kill you makes you think you might have died. I know from first-hand experience, but no more I’m going to be a father and junkies don’t make good parents.”
“Congratulations.” I would have given anything to have a child.
“Here’s to me. I’ve finally realized the only thing worth living for is life. Someone else’s instead of mine.” We drank to his unborn baby, his wife, and finally our parents, since we had reached the age that you have to admit you’re not too different from them, especially after you subtract the bikes, the drugs, and travel. At the end of the evening he asked, “What about buying a bike?”
“Maybe next year.” My hand was barely strong enough to hold a beer.
“Next year then.”
Only there was no next year for Dmitri.
No next week either, because Dmitri decided to break his exile from drugs. Like many addicts the first shot after the last was too strong for his body.
He was waked on 1st Avenue. His famous stepfather attended the Mass with his mother.
His brothers carried his coffin out of the church. This body was buried in a Russian cemetery in New Hampshire. I have stood by Dmitri’s grave. His soul would like it; pine trees and old factories.
After the Christmas selling season on 47th Street I flew to Thailand and rode the night train to Chiang Mai. I hired a 250cc AMX trail bike and in the morning I set off to the spot where I had almost been killed seven years earlier. From the top of the pass I could see Burma stretching into China.
A road ran from Chengdu to Lhasa. Another five days put you at the border of Tajikistan. Within two weeks I could be sitting in Paris. The biker with the Mohawk no longer existed and EASY RIDER had only been a movie. Dmitri had been real and I honored his life by dropping over the border. I might not reach the Himalayas, but the gas tank was full. It would last most of tomorrow and I would have company on the road. You always did when only heroes were your friends.
CHAPTER 5
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