In the 1990s the Christmas rush in New York's Diamond District consisted of six weeks of working 9:15 to 6 without a day off. My needs were simple and I banked almost every dollar from my diamond sale commissions and weekly salary at Richie’s exchange. By Christmas I had saved more than enough for six months in Asia including my flight. When I announced my departure on New Year’s Eve, Richie asked at a party on West 18th Street, “Is this how it’s going to be? You work six months and then take off?”
“It seems like a good plan.” The jewelry business died in the winter.
“You're a great salesman. We’ll be here when you get back. So will your. Good luck.”
This time I flew east from New York. The first stop was London, where I ran into Toby at a Chelsea bar. He was entertaining art dealers from his auction house. We greeted each other with a hug and saddled up to the bar where I posed a discreet question, “What’s happening with Chiang Mai Arts Center?”
“Sssssh. Six months ago I came here to clear up some banking details. When I returned, the guesthouse had been sold and my girlfriend had run off with the gardener, who was supposedly her brother. End of story. I learned my lesson. Don’t fall in love with a Thai girl.”
“Ever?”
“Magic runs in their blood.”
“Magic?” Senora Adorno's hex has lost none of its power. I hadn't touched a woman in this city.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do. I’m no stranger to magic and love potions.”
I gave him the hundred words or less version of Mrs. Adorno’s curse.
“Witches are nasty. They make love potions that will make you crazy and do crazy things. Things you’d never do with a western girl. I lost everything I had there and still wanted her back. People wanted to know why, but I can’t even explain it to myself.”
“So no more Thailand.”
“I’m back with my wife. She's a safe love for a man my age. You be careful out there.”
Toby tightened his tie and rejoined his clients. His story came as no surprise and I vowed to never succumb to such a weakness.
In Bangkok I booked into the Malaysia Hotel and visited Kenny. Not much had changed at his place, except he explained that Pong had gone to Germany. Kenny said, “He a nice man.”
“If she calls, tell her I asked for her.”
That evening I phoned Michael down in Pattaya. He invited to holiday in the south at his beach house in Jomtien. I had no idea what to expect, but knew that backpackers avoided the beach resort’s wickedness to avoid seeing a fat German sunbathing with two tiny Thai girls.
After a three hours bus ride I arrived at his house by motorsai taxi. The Frenchman was living with his lovely daughter and a Thai woman with their baby daughter, Lek. He was 54. Porn was 34. The age difference coupled with the cultural gap fed vicious argument and Emilie and I escaped to a beach restaurant with Lek. The waiter came with a smile. It was low season. We were money. Emilie had a coke and I ordered a Singha beer. The baby sucked on milk
"You want to swim?"p>The ten-year old shook her head and led me by the hand across a beach was strewn with plastic to a murky sea.
"No one comes here for the beach."
"I can see why."
After that evening's dinner Michael and I drank Cote du Rhone and played backgammon. Mosquitos buzzed around our feet. Porn watch Thai soaps. At the end of the night I said, "I have to get a hotel."
“Why stay at a hotel when you stay here for free? Porn and I don't fight every day.”
I doubted that, but accepted his offer and settled into a second-floor room overlooking a field of jungle grass.
Dawn painted the fields with a golden glow and I sat at a table to begin a novel about a XXX movie star in North Hollywood base on my cousin Sherri. Michael and Porn hit bed early. I went to Walking Street. The bars were filled with women. Some of them were beautiful. One night I brought a girl back. In the morning Michael warned, “This is my home. Not a brothel.”
Okay, I understand."
His admonishment was deserved, considering his wife didn’t approve of having a guest. I should have left, but liked taking care of their baby daughter. Porn would disappear for most of the day and miraculously arrive a half-hour before her husband’s arrival.
I thought about telling Michael, but her wife’s absences were none of my business.
He dealt in sapphires and rubies.
I asked him for a job.
“Sorry, but I have trouble paying my own salary.”
“No problem, if I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t know.”
After dinner we drink whiskey and once the house was asleep I ventured across the hill to Walking Street. The sex emporium was wide open to everyone, farangs and Thais alike. Go-go girls begged me to take them home, dying for a night off their feet. I tipped them $5 and returned to Michael’s house.
I didn’t sleep long.
The door opened and a man stood at the foot of my bed. A Japanese sword gleamed in his hands. It was Michael.
“I’m going to cut off her head.”
“Cut off her head"” Decapitation seemed a drastic measure.
“She’s seeing her ex-husband. A Thai man.”
“Why don’t you leave her?”
“She’ll take away my daughter.” Western men have no rights to their children in Thailand.
“If you cut off her head, you’ll go to prison.” The Thai police frowned on westerners killing Thai wives in a fit of jealousy.
Emilie entered the bedroom in tears. Michael joined his daughter. The wife didn’t show up that morning or the following day. Fearing a murderous showdown, I decided to go up north and said, “I have a train to catch. Why don’t you come with me?”
“I’ll be fine.” His eyes told a different story. “I have a business to run.”
"I call from there."
In Chiang Mai I once more rented a 250cc motorcycle from Australian Jim. I drove around the North, avoiding opium and pick-up trucks. My hands were numb from the bumpy roads. Only saunas freed my skin from the deeply ingrained dust. I rewrote my novel in a shack along the Mekong River.
When I returned to Jomtien a month later, the Thai guard said that Michael had returned to France. He had no idea what happened to his wife or daughter. I doubted the guard was telling me everything, but any form of involvement was him for bad luck.
For me too.
I returned to Bangkok and booked a room at the Malaysia. Kenny’s Bar was populated by the usual collection of drunken farangs and young girls. I told Kenny about Michael and he explained, “All Thai women fall in love with Thai man. Get marry. Maybe no marry. Have baby. Man go to see other women. Get drunk. Leave wife. After girl must take care of baby. Meet man. Same your friend. Same story. I hear all time.”
“Ever hear any happy endings?” I ordered him a drink. He liked gin.
“Happy beginning, yes. Happy middle, yes. Happy ending?” Kenny motioned for the bargirl to bring him a slice of lime. “Everyone die in end. Love too. I hear from Pong. She ask for you.”
“Tell her I said hello.” I was leaving for New York and gave Kenny a gold ring.
“Something for you to remember me.”
The ring fit his thumb and he wished me good luck. “You stay safe.”
“That's not problem in the States.”
My apartment was comfortable. I gave my agent the novel. Tony sent NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD to publishers and warned me to be patient. We heard nothing and I committed myself to work at the diamond exchange. It was a grind, but Richie introduced a married woman from Richmond. Mrs. Carolina was married to a country doctor. He had land. The blonde 45 year-old wanted someone to love.
“I wrote out the ten best things about you and the ten worst. The good outweighed the bad.”
“Only ten bad things?” My list was much longer.
"I threw away the small faults."
"Thanks for that."
Mrs. Adorno laughed seeing me with Ms. Carolina and stared with her evil eye.
Ms. Carolina asked about the wizened woman and I said, “She’s crazy.”
“Same as me for you.”
“Do yourself a favor and have nothing to do with that woman. She’s a witch.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Ms. Carolina visited me every month. The sex was good, but only good. Still I wasn't lonely and we traveled to Wyoming, Guatemala, Death Valley, and the Bahamas.
After months I told her, “I'm going to Asia to write.”
“And what about women?” Jealousy is a natural trait for women or men, especially if you are the loved as opposed to the lover.
“I look. Not touch.” I wasn't interested in joining Kenny's collection of Not Happy Endings. Thai women strongly believe in bad, so I steer clear of involvements with them."
“Mostly because you’re scared of love.”
“Something like that.”
After New Years, Ms. Carolina came up to New York and drove me to JFK. She cried at the departure gate.
"Away I'm twice the man as most men and I will be back. I promise."
"I wish I could believe you."
I beleve me and that's what counts most." I wiped away her tears and kissed her good-bye.
This time I flew directly to Thailand.
Bangkok served as a transit point. Cars, buses, boats, planes, and trains transported me to Asia’s ice-sheathed mountains, mossy temples, sugar sand beaches, islands floating on a gin-clear sea, and rivers swelling with monsoon rains.
I loved the feel of dirt under my boots in a distant mountain pass, however writing required a sedentary life and I sought a location meeting my prerequisites; good food, weather, and people.
The Legong dancers of Bali possessed a gracefulness to be envied by Gods. Emerald forests climbed up the jungle slopes of Sulawesi’s misty mountains. Penang served Indian, Malay, and Chinese cuisines.
I had spoke the truth to MS. Carolina and I returned to America. My youngest brother was sick with AIDS. He didn’t last long and after his death I broke up with Mrs. Carolina.
She and I remained close. Her husband became my friend. I was no longer a threat. I was on the verge of becoming a life-long bachelor and I questioned whether there was something wrong with me. Other men had women. They seemed happy. I was sad. Mrs. Adorno no longer answered the door, when I knocked on it.
Several months later my mother was diagnosed with cancer. On her death bed she admonished my avoidance of Ireland. "You have been all over the world, but never to the Emerald Isle Maybe you can find a nice woman there. Someone like your sisters or aunts.”
“I don’t know.” Her solution sounded too much like incest.
“Promise you’ll go.” A quick trip to Dublin was what I had in mind. My mother knew me well. “I want you to reconnect with your roots and not just with a pint of Guinness.”
She passed away after Christmas. Mrs. Carolina held my hand at her burial.
The next summer my father and I toured the Loire Valley. We enjoyed large meals in pleasant cafes and drank wine in caves carved in cliffs. He cried listening to Irish ballads on the car stereo. We missed my mother and spoke about how much she would have loved the chateaus.
In Paris we unexpectedly met my friend, Sam Royalle. The Londoner was a computer geek, but had become involved with a money wire transfer with a criminal organization. $200,000 had gone missing and now a gang of Brixton yardies had threatened him with grievous bodily damage, if they weren’t awarded the proceeds of his house sale.
Sam skipped a few details of the scheme and heeded my suggestion to hide out in the Orient. The Malaysia Hotel was a good starting place to disappear from sight. I went to London and cashed a check at his bank. I was a little scared, but no yardies raided the bank, while I wired him the money.
My business in the UK was done and I flew over to Dublin to fulfill my mother’s death wish. I rented a haunted old schoolhouse on the Connemara coast from a Lord and wrote a book about prostitution in Hamburg. Most of the story was based on the blonde and her pimp.
Sullen autumn rains accompanied long walks through the soggy bogs. The cow farmers at the nearest pub shared a nasty word for everyone and wondered why I wasn’t writing my novel in Germany. The women in the village were either 15 and pregnant or 40 with five kids. The house was haunted by old ghosts who whispers crawled down the dark hallways. Sam called from Bangkok. He was grateful for my advice and offered a ticket to Thailand. My funds were low. I said I would see him next year.
Back in New York I worked with Richie.
After New Years Mrs. Carolina and I skied Jackson Hole. No one was interested in publishing my books. My script based on my first novel. NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD was rejected by producers, directors, and one agent said, “It’s sixteen sex scenes chasing a plot.”
I counted the sex scenes.
There were five.
The rest were foreplay.
I was a failure and contemplated throwing my typewriter into the trash.
If I committed to selling diamonds, I would have car, house, maybe even a wife. 47 wasn’t too late to have kids for a man.
Sherri came to town and stayed with me. She had stopped drugs and porn films. Out in California she was attending school to get her degree in psychiatry. It was a miracle that she was alive. Even more so that she could laugh about her last lost period.
I told her about my plan to settle down. “You can’t do that”
"Why not?"
"You’re a legend.”
“Legend?” I felt more like a rumor.
“Whenever I tell people about you, they say that’s the life they want.”
“Any of them willing to switch?”
“None of them have the courage. Plus you are too fixed in your ways to be with an American woman. They want someone stable. Someone who isn’t going to threaten their security. Someone more like their father.”
“I can be all those things.”
“Maybe you can, but you wouldn’t be you.” Sherri's major was human behavior.
“Before I said I shouldn’t get involved with a Thai woman, but there’s one working at a restaurant near me. She met her husband in Thailand. They are relatively happy." I didn't mention the fighting, because everyone fights in a relationship. "She’s not a domestic person like everyone thinks of Asian woman. She has a mind of her own. She’s not a caricature, but never never really left her Thai husband 100%.”
“Where she meet her western husband?”
“In a bar. Maybe a go-go.” Sherri frowned at my answer. “She probably married your friend that to take care of her family. I can’t throw any stones at her and neither can you. None of us are saints. Not even the good are. Not until they’re dead.”
“Okay, I’ll re-open my mind to falling in love.”
I was leaving for Thailand in the spring and called Sam. He was living in Pattaya with a teenage girlfriend.
“Come on down. I have a place for you to stay.”
In my mind I constructed a palace of possibilities.
I’d meet Pong. We’d go to Pattaya. I’d write my book.
I called Kenny. He answered the phone. He didn’t recognize my voice at first. When I asked about Pong, he said, “She living in Holland now. Have new husband and a baby. Fat too. When you come? I call my sister. I have many nieces.”
“A big family.” Thais extended kinship to second cousins, friends of aunts, and schoolmates. Everyone was in the family just like the South of France. I told Kenny. “I’ll see you soon.”
Mrs. Carolina asked if she could come on this trip.
“No, but I promise to phone from Bangkok.” Her eyes misted hearing those words. I couldn’t tell her anything else. We were no longer lovers. Then again we had never been lovers.
The 26-hour plane ride to Thailand was lengthened by an unexpected delay in Japan. The hotel at Narita gave the passengers coupons for a hotel and food. I spent my dining chit on beer. The desk called at 6am. I was back at Narita at 7. We completed the journey in six hours. I got off the plane. The temperature was in the 90s. Bangkok could only get hotter.
After all it was the true Orient.
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