BLOOD AND MUSCLES @ CBGBs - 1978

The Hell's Angels frequented the rough Bowery bar.
No one challenged their claim to the punk rock venue,
The Angels scared off other asshole bikers, although not every night.
The Cramps first played to a packed house of garage rock fans,
As if the world was diving into the sun tomorrow.
I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Strychnine, and a cover of Surfer Bird highlighted the show.
My hillbilly girlfriend danced to every tune like she had been baptized by moonshine.
Alice wasn't white trash, but her West Virginia home wasn't far from the coal-mining hollows.

During the encore a scrawny saxist took the stage to fondle two Jersey biker chicks.

Their boyfriends sat in the front row. br/>Chance had a reputation for trouble and stuck out his tongue.
The girls thought he was funny.
The biker boys jumped onto the stage.
Chance was skin and bones to the bikers’ mechanical muscle.
A solid right caught Chance on the nose.
Blood poured onto his dirty white shirt
A b-movie actor scrambled to rescue his skinny friend.
The half-Cherokee stepped between the biker and Chance.
The band played another chorus of Surfing Bird.
Alice grabbed my arm.
I stayed with her.
This wasn't my fight.
The biker looped a slow overhead right.
His fist loudly impacted on the actor’s nose.
More blood splattered everywhere.
Merv the bouncer threw out the bikers.
They left without a struggle.
The 6-6 doorman was a punk version of an Addams family's Lurch.
Even the Angels respected Merv.
The next night the actor entered the bar with a black eye.
Chance sported a double badge of honor.
That night the two were everyone's darlings,
Because at CBGBS there was never any shame about losing.

Foto by Andrey Armyagov

Lorraine Hotel Fifty-Two Years Ago

In April 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to address a gathering at the Masonic Temple. The city's black sanitation workers had walked off the job to protest working condition and low wages. The speech keynoted by the phrase 'I've been to the mountaintop."

That night King stayed at the Lorraine Hotel with civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy.

As the group prepared to leave according to biographer Taylor Branch, King's last words were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at a planned event. King said, "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

A shot rang out from across the street.

A bullet struck King's cheek and detoured down his spine.

He never regained consciousness.

A white man fled the boarding house.

The FBI put James Earl Ray of the Most Wanted list.

He escaped capture in the USA only to be arrested in London's Heathrow Airport two months after the shooting.

A good part of the nation was in mourning.

America was ruled by the gun.

Coretta King, his wife, showed dignity.

His followers acted with restrain.

Not the police.

They beat blacks without mercy.

The officers of the law only protected and served one group.

The KKK.

And Nazis.

THE TEN TOP THINGS TO DO IN PARIS

Set fire to a historical cathedral.

Get entombed in the catacombs

Die of boredom waiting in line for the Louvre.

Pay a wanker in a beret to paint an unflattering caricature of you.

Surrender to an invading force without shot being fired.

Protest the rigours of a thirty -hour work wee.

Enjoy local delicacies like snails, frog legs and horse meat.

Get caught jerking off to The Thinker at the Rodin mudeum.

Put a padlock on the Pont des Arts with your initials and those of your soon to be ex-wife.

Crash your Mercedes in a tunnel

FAST AS HELL by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in 1984 my friend bought a fiendishly fast KZ 1100 cc bike in Paris. We were doing smack.

While sitting at an African transvestite after-hour bar in Les Halles, le Savanne, he asked, “How you like to take it for a ride?”

My survival instinct had been rendered to zero and I took his keys. The pre-dawn streets were slick with winter rain. As high as I was my death wish was low and I drove the bike underneath Les Halles maze of parking garages. It’s been in plenty of films since then. I got the bike up to 200 kph on a straight-away. Blood sizzling with the desire to live I returned to the bar and my friend asked with a junkie smile, “Fast?”

“Very.”

However in August o 1978 Claude Lelouch mounted a Eclair cam-flex 35mm camera with a wide angle lens to the bumper of a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9

According to http://www.jerrykindall.com/2005/11/07_cetait_un_rendezvous.asp

"He had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine through the Louvre to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed. Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film with the sound of a was dubbed with the sound of a Ferrari 275GTB in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested by the Paris police. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

I remember seeing the short film in Paris.

Damn they were fast.

But few people drive as fast as drunk Thai boys on their little scooters. No helmets. No lights. Death wish 2010.

To view C'ETAIT UNE RENDEZVOUS go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DSyEarRAKo

Beer Versus Jesus

Top Ten Reasons That Beer Is Better Than Jesus:-
a) No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
b) Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
c) They don't force beer on minors who cannot think for themselves.
d) Beer has never caused a major war.
e) When you have a beer you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
f) Nobody has ever been burned at the stake, hanged or tortured over a beer.
g) You don't have to wait 2000 years for a second beer.
h) There are laws saying beer labels cannot lie to you.
I) You can prove you have a beer.
j) If you are devoted to beer then there are groups who can help you stop.

ps rick santorum doesn't drink beer

SCHNORRER / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

On a late October afternoon in 1994 I hurried from the subway to the diamond exchange on 47th Street. A cold drizzle wet the sidewalk. My leather jacket fought off the damp and my boots prevented the wet from touching my feet. It was 9:25 and a slovenly beggar wearing a soggy yamakah stepped into my path.

“Damian, can you spare a few coins for a drunk?” Lenny pushed his busted glasses up his nose.

Other diamonds dealers hurried to their stores. The GOP still controlled the House, although Bill Clinton ruled the White House. It was a good time to be making money.

"Isn't it a little early to get shikkah?"

"Yashim doesn't wear a clock and neither do I, besides the money goes to a good cause."

The homeless schmiel smelled like a slave ship. His wardrobe consisted of a stained tee-shirt, soiled gray flannel pants, and torn sneakers.

"Such as."

"For me to take care of my crazy sister. She's even more verkocht than me."

"Here." I gave him my change and a dollar.

“Bless you, Damian.” His empty brandy bottle needed filling. “Can you tell me why your boss hates me?”

“Manny doesn’t hate you. He just doesn’t have any use for bums.” Manny’s life was his work.

“I wasn’t always a bum.” Lenny shivered in the soaking chill.

“I know that.”

Manny stood in the front window of the exchange, tapping his watch.

I waved for him to wait.

“Lenny, you want me to bring you a coat?”

“No, the other bums in the shelter will only steal it. Make a sale today."

"Thanks."

I watched the Hassidic Nebekh waddled down the sidewalk with an outstretched palm and then hurried to the door of the exchange. The guard buzzed me inside and I stepped behind the counter.

“Nice of you to show up.” Manny was at the safe with the combination in his hand. The tumblers rolled without a click.

“I’m only a few minutes late.” The door opened to the public at 9:30. It was 9:35, but Manny operated in a different time zone than the rest of us. He hated tardiness.

“Late is late.” Manny twisted the tumbler to the right and then the left.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Domingo or your sons?” Opening the safe with only two people was an open invitation to the thieves of 47th Street on the prowl for a slip-up.

“Wait till when? Fur Zol makekhs vaksen offen tsung!”

"For pimples to grow on my tongue?"

Manny spun the tumbler again.

“Zolst es shtipin in toches! I need to concentrate on the combination.”

It took five attempts for Manny to open the safe and I laughed aloud.

“What’s so funny?” The safe tumblers clicked and Manny yanked open the safe.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Manny lifted a metal box from a shelf. “Start setting up the window and try not to smudge the jewelry with your greasy fingers.”

“My fingers aren’t greasy.” I hadn’t stopped at Veselka’s Diner on 2nd Avenue for breakfast or else I would have been really late.

“You touched Lenny.” Manny stood next to aisle counter. “Why you give that schmendrick money anyway?”

“ Oif tsedokeh iz oich do chazokeh. Lenny’s my charity.” I laid out the glittering diamond rings. One tray was worth more than $500,000. “It’s not like I’m paying taxes.”

“Enough already.” Money issues were no one else’s business. “Just set up the window.”

I obeyed Manny and later he gave me several manila envelopes to deliver to the setters and polishers.

"I don't like leaving you alone."

"Where Domingo?"

"I don't know."

"And my hero son?"

"I don't know." I had left Richie Boy at a Soho club around 2am.

"Fuck 'em both. I'm fine by myself."

"Are you sure?"

“I come from Brownsville. I fought in a gang at age of 15.” Manny opened his jacket. My boss had a license to carry and his .38 was in a shoulder holster. “Who’s going to rob me?”

Manny was on the wrong side of 70 and I sat down.

"Could be anyone, so I'm not leaving you alone."

In the Diamond District criminals outnumbered the customers.

"I'm not alone."

His partner's daughter walked into the booth wearing sunglasses. Eliza looked as beautiful as a Caribbean dawn, despite my having put her in a taxi around 1. We were just friends.

"Morning." Eliza went to her desk. She wasn't a big drinker, but she loved her sleep.

"Watch Manny for me."

"You got it." Her phone was rang and she sat at her desk. We would talk later.

"Get going." Manny liked giving orders. He had started out as a schlepper on the Bowery and his smarts came from someplace other than school or schul.

“You’re the boss.” I picked up the NY Times.

“Where you going with that?”

“Sometimes the pen is stronger than the sword.” Rolled up the newspaper packed a good punch.

“Everyone’s a hero.” Manny lifted his eyes to heaven. “Don’t go disappear.”

I completed the rounds in record time, stopping to gaze at the our competitors' glittering windows. Some stores specialized in high-end diamonds and other dreyed dreck. Manny’s store offered the in-between and our big diamonds came from his partners, the Randolphs. They were old money on this street of nouveau-riche hazars from Central Asia.

By the time I returned to the store Richie Boy, his brother Googs, and Domingo were working three customers. I handed the envelopes to Manny. A walk-in customer entered the exchange. Before I could greet him, Manny gave me another sheaf of envelopes.

“Bring them back quick.” Everything was a rush with Manny. I hesitated, as the man surveyed the merchandise in the display case. Manny waved me out the door.

“Go already.”

I wasted more time on this trip and the Gotham Book Store was a good place for killing a few minutes. I read a few chapters of The Curious Lore of Precious Stones by George Frederick Kunz. The bookstore wanted $15 for the Dover reprint of the original 1913 publication expounding on the magical aspects of gemstones. I bought Charles Williford’s A BURNT ORANGE HERESY instead and headed back to the exchange. It was lunch time.

Manny looked at his watch. I would have dropped the envelopes on his desk, except he was sorting through a packet of tiny diamonds.

“What are they?” I placed the envelopes carefully on a shelf.

“I have these loose diamonds. Anything less than .22 carats is what we call ‘melee’. Lesson over. Leave me alone.” Manny plucked a diamond from the pile with tweezers and examined it with a loupe, which magnified the stone 10 times. “Go already. You’re making me nervous.”

I sat at my desk and took off my leather coat. The Randolphs ordered sandwiches from Berger’s Deli. The delivery boy showed up fifteen minutes later. The aroma of pastrami reminded me of my sandwich and I sat down at my desk. Richie Boy snagged a slice of salami off my sandwich.

"Hmmm, good."

“I see you have no shame in being a schnorrer!” We had been friends for almost twenty years. Eating each other’s food before the other could get it in their mouth had been a contest that neither of us could win.

“Only because I learn from the best.” Richie Boy popped another peppery slice in his mouth and returned to fielding the onslaught of phone calls from friends and customers.

“What’s a ‘snorer’?” asked Myrah, the blonde girl working for the Randolphs. Her mother was a schitzah and her father Jewish, but she had been bought up agnostic and couldn’t get her mouth around the guttural ‘schn’.

“A schnorrer is someone who mooches off you.”

“Mooch?” This antiquated term also stumped Myrah’s English.

“A mooch or schnorrer is a beggar.” A passing Hassidic pearl dealer partial to blondes interjected his two cents.

“Yes, but not always,” I explained. “A schnorrer is more someone who eats off your plate, because he likes to have what you have.”

“You mean like how someone else’s potato chips taste better than those you buy.” Myrah understood this analogy and I turned to the Hassid. “Can you think of another word for beggar?”

“Not that I know.” The Hassid pulled on his long curly side lock. Richie liked to call ‘peyes’ ‘yidlocks’, then again he was a bacon Jew. Eating pork ran in his family.

“Marty,” I yelled to the retired principal, who schlepped merchandise for the Randolphs. “What’s the Yiddish word for beggar?”

“Have to admit I really don’t know.” Marty shook his head.

“So a ‘snorer’ is like those ladies with the canes begging on 47th Street?” Myrah was referring to the seemingly crippled women dressed in Hassidic attire

“No, those ladies are Palestinian Gypsies,” Marty frowned disapprovingly with an added shaking of his head. “They pretend to be Jews.”

“So there’s nothing wrong with them?” Myrah’s eyes widened in revelation.

“They have a school where they learn to walk like ballerinas with broken feet,” Marty explained without bitterness. He had nothing against gypsies other than they were thieves. They came into the exchange every day trying to steal. Robbing was an honest profession in comparison to pretending to be a Jew.

“I thought they were cripple.”

“They’re thieves running a scam.”

“So beggars are more honest.” Myrah had been giving them money. She was a little slow, but had a good heart.

“Beggars are just as bad.” Manny chirped from his desk. He had quit school at age 14 to slave on Canal Street humping boxes. He had no pity for any able bodied person who didn’t want to work even if they were family, but one beggar on 47th Street drove him insane. “Especially that schlemiel Lenny.”

“Not Lenny!” Slagging off my good luck charm was bad luck.

“Lenny was the worst of them all. He pretends to be mad, but he’s mad crazy smart. He has more money than all of us put together. Just like the goy. You have money socked away someplace. The goy fortune.”

“Manny, I wouldn’t be working here, if I had money.”

“No, you’d be here, because we make you laugh.” Manny was losing his temper.

“Manny, I’m broke. My bank account’s broke.”

“Dad, he’s so broke he can’t pay attention.” Richie Boy attempted to defuse the tension.

“Go blow smoke up someone else’s ass.” Manny was eager to bruise anyone’s ego. Idle hands bugged him and I put away my sandwich. Richie Boy backed off and I said, “Manny, you’re right. I have a pirate’s chest buried in the sand. Maybe a million dollars and I'll lend you some at 7% vig per week.”

10% was the standard hit from a loan shark.

“Such a hero.” Manny’s face was red. He had high blood pressure.

“Maybe Lenny could do better. How much money you really think Lenny makes in one day?”

“Fifty dollars easy,” Marty ventured and even Mr. Randolph entered the discussion. “Lenny doesn’t need the money. His family was rich.”

“Too drunk more like it!” Manny muttered, then added, “Don’t you have anything better to do than talk about that bum!”

“Yeah, the world’s a better place without him!” Mr. Randolph returned to his end of the booth.

Lenny certainly was no saint, so I dropped the subject to phone several customers about picking up their merchandise. Once I was hung up, Myrah came across the aisle and whispered, “Why did everyone get so angry about Lenny?”

“This street has plenty of bums,” I spoke quietly, not wanting to re-ignite another debate. “There’s a mad rabbi who always is shouting ‘Shalom!’ and another Hassid pretending to be asking for alms for the new temple in Jerusalem. Lenny’s the only Hassidic bum not running a religious scam.”

Manny walked past us to place a diamond brooch in the window.

“So Lenny is a good person?” Myrah asked loud enough for only me to hear.

“No, Lenny wasn’t such a nice person, but I like him.” Maybe because he resembled an overweight puppy.

."Me too."

Myrah left the store to deliver a diamond. Manny handed me a set of earrings.

“Go up to the setter and have him check these stones.”

“Can I eat my sandwich first?”

"Sure." Manny picked off a slice of pastrami. “Nice. Almost as good as we used to get on the Bowery.”

“I remember that place. The sandwiches came from an Italian deli.”

“I miss the Bowery.” He had been a big player on Canal Street. He looked at Myrah exiting from the exchange. “Why are you bothering to tell that girl stories about that gonif?”

“Because Lenny is special unlike your buddy, Tie-Coon.” Tie-coon was a well-dressed gentleman from Harlem selling name-brand ties and belts at a fraction of the price. Manny gave him $20 every time he came into the store, which was once a week on Fridays.

“Tie-coon provides a service.” Manny had a soft spot for Tie-coon and I had mine.

“Lenny always has a nice word for me.”

“Cause you give him a buck!”

“Yeah, well, it’s my dollar.”

"Money you get from me."

"Do me a favor and leave me alone."

For once Manny did as I told him, but the day worsens, as the drizzle became rain. No more customers came into the store and the Randolphs started packing up at 4:30. They always went home early.

Manny was desperate for a final sale and said we were staying till closing time. The guards weren’t happy to hear this news. Like Richie Boy, Googs, and Domingo and me they wanted to go home.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Manny was eternally hopeful.

A hand slapped the glass door. It was Lenny. He pushed his way inside. His stench smelled more like rancid alcohol and everyone stepped away from the front door.

“Anyone have anything to give today?” Lenny blew on his hands.

“Get out! This is a place of business,” Manny shouted from his desk.

“What you have against Jews?” Lenny's voice was irritatingly high-pitched.

“We have nothing against Jews, only bums!” Mr. Randolph yelled from the other side of the aisle. “You heard the man, get out of here!”

“You’re both Nazis!” He faced me. “What about you? You’re a gentile, right? You got a dollar. I don’t do drugs. All I do is get a little schitkah.”

“You tell me the word for beggar in Yiddish and I’ll give you a dollar.” I dug into my pocket.

“Most people think its schnorrer, but they’re wrong. The more applicable word is bonsai or even belter. Of course the pronunciation depends on the accent of the shetl.” Lenny played the audience. “You know Mr. Randolph, there’s a very good book by Israel Zangwill. THE KING OF THE SCHNORRERS.”

“Enough already.” Mr. Randolph slapped a dollar on the glass counter top. “Go.”

"Lenny, you really should take a bath."

I handed him a dollar and Lenny took off his threadbare yarmulke. “Sorry, but I don’t wash in the shelter. It’s not kosher.”

“You're more than ripe.”

“I'm worst in the summer, but my ipish keeps anyone who wants to hurt me and in the shelter there’s plenty of people who don’t like Jews.” Lenny showed my dollar to Manny. “See how gentiles treat Jews.”

As soon as he left, Manny said, “I don’t want you giving that bum any money. Not in my place of business.”

“Okay,” I answered, but my money was my money.

The next morning I spotted Lenny in front of Berger’s Deli. It was below freezing and his skin steamed in the frost. He wasn’t speaking to anyone, but I listened to his articulate treatise on Microsoft stock, though I wasn’t banking anything on someone who smelled like a dead man’s shoe. As I began to walk away, the bum said to a passing Hassidim diamond dealer, “There’s the goy who gave me a dollar yesterday. The good goy, Damien.”

“His name isn’t Damien___” The dealer recognized me at Manny’s store.

“I like the name Damien fine.” I couldn’t resist Lenny’s utter helplessness. “You want my lunch?”

“From Berger? It's not really kosher," shrugged Lenny.

“Just what the world has been waiting for, a finicky bum,” The Hassidim laughed and Lenny shambled off with a mutter. “I’m not finicky, just don’t eat tref. See you, Damien.”

Berger’s was definitely kosher, though not dairy, and I said to the Hassid, “Lenny's is better on some days."

“Believe it or not, Lenny used to be a big stockbroker on Wall Street.”

“What happened?”

“He went nuts after the 1987 Crash. Lost his fortune and his mind, but he really does know what he’s talking about.”

“So you would use his stock tip.”

“About Microsoft? No way they’ll beat out IBM.”

Of course no one listened to Lenny.

We all made fun of him, but no one picked on the schlemiel more than himself and he worked self-deprecation to a fine art. People would ask him to come home in hopes of salvation, but Lenny was beyond redemption and apparently happy despite his sufferings.

The following day I saw Lenny limping up the sidewalk and asked him what was wrong.

“You know I sleep outside, because the crackheads in the shelter will steal everything I have.”

“Lenny, what could they want from you?” Lenny possessed nothing even a crackhead would want, but desperation is the evil step-father of need.

“They think I’m rich, just like everyone here. The Nazis!” He unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants. “I was sleeping on a bench and a cop hit me.”

The bruises across his thighs were not self-inflicted and I told him, “Pull up your pants, Lenny. There are women present.”

None of them were looking, but Lenny chuckled, “Sorry, I forgot where I was.”

I held out five dollars and Lenny said, “You don’t have to, Damien. I know you don’t make a lot of money.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I know everything about the street.” His eyes were clear. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you everything I know like how three years ago there was a drought in Angola. You know where it is, right above South Africa.”

The country had been suffering from a savage civil war since the Portuguese abandoned their old colony in 1975.

I nodded and Lenny continued, “Well, there was a UN truce and things were getting back to normal, but because the water was so low, people were able to go into the rivers and pick millions of diamonds from the riverbeds. Billions of diamonds and diamonds were getting about as rare as light bulbs, so deBeers got tired of paying out this money and paid Savimbi from UNITA to start up the war again. Don’t worry, you won’t find it in the papers. Thanks for the money, Damien.”

I had heard rumors about this. Lenny was filling in the holes. It all made sense.

He was no schnorrer about the truth.

He shared what he knew and what he knew Lenny knew.

Everything else was a Myzstal.

LOVE YOU LONG TIME - CHAPTER 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

The staff of the front desk at the Malaysia remembered my room. 203 overlooked the pool. Overweight farangs basked in the torrid sun like walruses oiled for a boiling pot. The bar girls sheltered in the shade, eating sum-tam or spicy papaya salad like the world was ending tomorrow or beginning by waking up next to a complete stranger.

After washing up I walked down Soi Si Bamphen to Kenny's Bar. He wore my ring. The girls were older, but the beer was cold. The ex-pats told the same stories as always and Fat Pat sold me a small bag of Ma. I stayed two nights and called Sam Royalle down in Pattaya on the third noon.

"You get trapped in Bangkok?" The Englander had adapted to Thailand after one Singha beer.

"It is an easy thing to do, but I'm on my way."

"I have your room all ready. Be prepared. It's Songkran."

"I forgot that."

The Songkran celebration ushered in the Thai New Year and the rains ending the hot season. The festival was focused on Wan Parg-bpee or April 15, when homage was paid to deceased ancestors and young Thais poured scented water into the palm of their elders, who utters wishes of happiness and good luck. The practice was quite charming, but the tradition has changed in recent years and how much was revealed by my bus ride from Ekemai to Pattaya.

Traffic packed the roads into town. People bucketed water at each passing motorists. It took the taxi an hour to reach Rob's high-rise overlooking the Gulf of Siam. His girlfriend was a teenager named Dtum. She was eager to party with her friends.

Sam peeled off ten red hundred-baht notes from a thick stack of bills.

"Have sanuk."

The Thais had been slaves till 1905. The Thai upper-classes treated the common people like 'muaan' ma noot' and their former serfs loved nothing better than having a good time to show the elite that money meant nothing as long as you could laugh free.

Sanuk trumped money for the poor.

Sam, his workmate, Dougie, and I went to a beer bar on the Beach Road. We chucked threw water at everyone in sight. I soaked a girl. Her name was Vee. She was pretty, despite having one eye.

"I lose eye on motorsai. Lucky not dead."

"I have accident too. I die."

"You die?"

"Yes, many times, but only for a second." A second lasted forever in other dimensions.

"You dead now?"

I took her hand. I invited her to dine at a small restaurant. She ate like an entire NFL football team and said she wanted to go home with me. We spent the week together and she quit working the bar. Rob and Dtum didn't like her and said she was money hungry.

They weren't wrong.

Farangs had supported hundreds of small villages throughout the country, as if they were charitable NGOs. Most returned West broke or jumped off their condo balcony. Few wanted to leave paradise.

Vee and I traveled up north in a rented car to see her baby in Isaan Plateau. This was the hot-season. The temperature lurked in the high-90s. We stopped in Khorat and stocked up on food and beer. Vee filled a shopping cart with enough to feed an army.

"I have big family."

"So do I." There were eight of us and I cut her off at $100.

She made a face like she thought I was kee-nioo or cheap. I ignored the facial insult and popped open an icy cold Singha and drove east on Route 24.

Dust devils skated over dust of the parched rice paddies and vultures ascended over thermal updraughts. Water buffalos lunged in muddy pools. Not a single human was in sight. Vee said, "Turn right."

I had ten seconds to brake for the turn. We proceeded down the narrow road and arrived at a wooden house on stilts. At least twenty people sat underneath in its shade and cheered our coming. Her sons ran to Vee.

"You said you had one son."

"My eye no good."

I envied their affection. Everyone ate and drank like the world was ending tomorrow. Vee fawned on her sons. I gave them each 100-baht.

$100 went fast on the Isaan Plateau and I sent out a 'cousin' to get 1000-baht of lao-khao. Night dropped over flat fields like spilled black paint. Vee put her to sons to bed . We sang around a bonfire. Vee and the other women danced to 'luk krung'. The celebrants left a minute after the last drop of rice whiskey.

Inside the house a photo of a farang was on the wall.

"He just friend?" I asked Vee.

"More than friend." She looked to her sons.

"Oh."

The next evening we drove through the sweltering heat through deep Isaan. No electric lines ran from the dirt road to the house surrounded by the only tree stand in the middle of a vast rice. Two bonfires lit the yard. Candles illuminated the house. A line of women stood on the stairs. There was a chill in the night.

"House belong Mae-mod."

"Witch?"

"Good witch."

"Why come here?"

"See future."

"About us?"

"No, future me and Englishman. Men stay there." She pointed to the right and joined the queue. "Women go see phram. Shaman."

I joined the men around the blaze. They drank 'lao khao' or rice whiskey and passed me the plastic bag. The whiskey was fire. None of them spoke and watched the women enter the house one by one. An old farmer pointed to the other fire. Six old women huddled around the glow. They looked to be a thousand years old.

"Dead women."

"Dead how?"

"You ask your wife. Look."

A young man emerged from the shadows and walked to the women. He picked one and led her into the trees. He emerged from the forest out alone.

"Dead?"

Ban-tee."

I understood the degrees of 'maybe' and ordered another bag of lao khao.

Twenty minutes later Vee exited from the house.

"You have good future?"

"Good some. Bad some."

Once in the car I asked her about the old women around the bonfire.

"Old ladies pick number. One get 4. She go jungle. To die. Other women live longer."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I started to get out of the car.

Vee held my arm.

"No one die. All show. Magic. Red-lum." Vee's good eye widened, as if to better envision the candle-lit hut.

"Yeah, Red-lum." Vee had later told me that the set-up was a scam and the same woman loses every night.

"And the fture?"

She tell future> Easy. Not hurt no one. Kill black magic. Mohn dam." "I not do you magic. Only magic is in my heart."

We left Isaan in the morning.

"You scare magic."

"Only scare nothing. You take plane before. Plane magic. Fly same birds."

"Fly where?"

"Surprise."

Koh Samui's beaches were beautiful and we made love in the warm waters at sunset. I wrote a comedy about the first men having sex in Space. I thought it would make a great movie. After six months my money ran out and Vee asked, "I wait for you."

"No, I can't say when I can come back." I left her enough money for a month. Her boyfriend from England was coming around Christmas. There would be no long-distance phone calls. Sam later called to say she had moved to the UK. It was better that way.

Sam parlayed his computer expertise into a corporation. He phoned with a job offer in Bangkok. A ticket was waiting at JFK. His father was getting tired of my ping-ponging between Asia and New York.

"One day you'll find out you don?t have a job here."

"That day will come, when I can't make you money. Give me my commish."

I flew to Bangkok business-class on upgrades. Rob had an office on Wireless Road. His company built websites for Asian corporations. My job was writing content. Most of his employees were paid a fifth of my salary. I didn't deserve it and figured this was his thanks for having transferred that money from his wire scam. During the week his work crew hung at Bangkok's trendy clubs and weekended at his beach house in Pattaya. Rob called his plan.

"Work in Bangkok. Play in Pattaya."

Vee had married the Brit. I was free to do whatever I wanted and Rob's wife hated us going out even more than before. I never brought anyone home other than her mates. She had plenty of those.

In truth I was getting old. My friends' children had grown up. My nieces and nephews were attending college. I seemed doomed to spend my life in the last Babylon on Earth.

I was not alone in my damnation.

My friend, AJ, flew out from London. The cameraman and tai-chi teacher had told everyone that he was traveling to Thailand for a diving certification. Pattaya had plenty of schools for PADI courses and a lot more too. I took off the week.

One evening AJ and I stopped at a bar of Soi 8. A slender Thai girl danced on a platform to a boy band hit. A skinhead farang was obviously her date for the night. She winked over his shoulder with a mercenary mirth and I was pierced by a deja-vu arrow.

In 1970 BLIND FAITH had released an album cover featuring a shirtless blonde waif. This girl was her Asian twin and I memorized her hips walking away from the bar and heard CAN'T FIND MY WAY HOME in my head. A mischievous backward glance should have warned me to watch my freedom.

ome curse are self-generated and I didn't go out at night after that. AJ kept saying it wasn't a problem.

"I have to get up early for my diving courses."

I went to the bar on Soi 8 twice. The girl wasn't there. The mama-san said she was on holiday with man from England. There were thousands of Brits in Pattaya, but I knew the Englishman, because AJ was a birddog.

After AJ departed for the UK, Sam's wife banned him from going out with me. She had seen him with a girl at a disco. She blamed me. I moved to the Sabaii Lodge on Soi 3. It had a swimming pool and I didn't have to listen to their fights.

I returned to the Soi 8 bar. The skinny girl wore a band-aid bra over a breastless chest. Long black hair snaked down a bare back. She hopped from the dance platform and sat next to me. She pronounced my name wrong and told me hers. I offered her a drink and Ae said, "I no drink lao, maybe drink coke."

I expected her to rattle off the typical list of bargirl questions; "Where are you from" How old are you? You have a wife" How long you stay" instead she sobbed out a tale about a man leaving for London. "He diver for Navy.

"His name AJ?" Girls in Belize, Manado, and Bali had also heard this tale.

"You know him?" Ae stifled a sniff.

"The very best of friends."

"You think he come back?" She bit her lip in anticipation.

AJ was not one to fall in love during a ten-day or one year holiday. Like most men he only thought about himself.

"Only Buddha knows."

Her cascade of tears brought the mama-san over to see what was wrong. I might not have understood the exchange in Thai, but recalled Cato's quote, "The strongest acid in the world is a woman's tears.

I excused myself, "I'm going home."

"I come with you. Same I stay with AJ. Only have you." The tears dried to a smile.

Saying no would have been easy. Ae wasn't working the bar for laughs. Girls got 1000 baht or $25 per night to go with men. Ours wasn't a match made in heaven, but I had money in my pocket.

"You come with me, but I can't say it will last forever."

"Forever same one day for heart. I happy with one day. One week. One month. Maybe more." She bid good-night to the mama-san and we drove to my hotel.

In bed Ae faked orgasms like a porno star. The lie turned on the old fool in me. Our one evening lasted the weekend. We lay in bed and spoke of our lives.

The English father of her son had deserted her for a younger woman. Ae was 22.

Go-go dancing supported her children, although the real money came from going with men. She couldn't tell me how many. Neither to me or herself. She wired money upcountry for her kids' schooling, for this altruistic streak fooled most farangs into thinking they have met a saint without considering that these women have also abandoned the dirt-poor villages to forget their cheating ex-husbands and drunken boyfriends.

Neither side of the equation asked too many questions and neither did I, when Ae announced on a beautiful Monday morning, "I say good-bye to Finland friend. Not boyfriend. Friend. Go see him to airport. He give me 5000 baht. I come back. Stay with you."

"Mai pen rai." I recalled a story from the Pattaya Mail.

A westerner had marrying a dancing girl from t. They celebrated their wedding at the Royal Cliffs, the most expensive hotel in Pattaya. The next morning he woke to an empty bed. The hotel staff knew nothing. The police even less. A week later his wife showed up at his house and explained, "Have old boyfriend come see me. He give me 50,000 baht. You not mind?"

"No problem?" Ae was disappointed by my absence of jealousy, but in Pattaya you never lose the girl. Only your turn and I was willing to wait, because I loved drinking at a bar and Pattaya had hundreds of those.

"None at all."

She tenderly kissed my cheek and said, "I call you from Bangkok."

Two days passed without a phone call.

British partner reneged on the balloon payment of his investment and our company joined the Internet crash.

Katmandu was three hours away by plane. The monsoons weren't due for another two months. A small guest house in Annapurna's rain shadow served pancakes in the morning. Life would cost $10/day. Mustang lay to the north. A months stay in the sacred Himalayas was penance for several months in the Last Babylon. I didn't make it out the hotel door. Ae stood in the hallway and looked at my bag. "Where you go?"

"I'm going to Nepal to see the mountains."

"Mountains?" Her face scrunched up in disbelief. "Why you go see mountain, when see me?"

The hotel door remained shut for two days.

Our holiday on Koh Samui was a month-;ong honeymoon. She taught me Thai as a sleeping dictionary. I learned the words for love, caress, hug, kiss, and jealous. I said "Rak-khun" more than a man my age should tell a younger woman, but Senora Adorno's love curse had been vanquished by a slender go-go girl.

On the beach fat female westerners gawked, as if I were a sex tourist.

In some ways they weren't wrong. Ae and I had sex three times a day.

"It good with you. You not too big. Not too small." She lay with her thighs clasped to trap me inside her. "I not finish with men from go-go. With you all the time."

I didn't need to hear about these other men, because my cousin Sherri had told me how easy it is to fake an orgasm. She had done so in hundreds of films and thousand more in real life.

"Yes, say, but not true. With you true." Her hand caressed my shoulder with a tenderness absent from my life for years and I reciprocated with a gentle embrace.

"When we return to Pattaya, will you live with me a little?"

"Long as you want." She was telling the truth, but only about that, because the truth in Thailand or anywhere else in the world is an onion with many layers.

We rented a utility apartment off Soi Boukhao. Her youngest son Dtut joined us. Three of us in one room. Our love life suffered, but not as much as when her father had completed a murder sentence at the Rayong Prison and came to town.

"We go see father."

I only extracted 1000 baht from the ATM and drove across the railroad tracks down the end of a dirt road. Den shared a filthy room with his son and his drug addict girlfriend. She was six months pregnant. They drank heavily and played cards.

"You help my family." My donations to Ae had improved no one's lives, but I said, "Yes."

$200 settled a gambling debt. Another $100 to buy off a police loan shark. I rented her brother and father a small restaurant. They transformed the enterprise into a ya bah or Methedrine den. Her children went shoeless. Crooked policemen came to my house for tea money. Loansharks for delinquent loan.

After this lesson in the futility of foreign aid I withdrew my sponsorship. I should have left her, but I couldn't and I recalled the glass of beer. Everyone was angry and Ae spat, "You not understand Thai life."

"Pom khao jai 100% and I understand not knowing is good."

My bank account was low. My old boss, Richie, called from New York. He needed an extra salesman for Christmas season in the Diamond District. Ae said, "Go. You want leave me. Go."

"I'll be back."

"Same you tell Vee."

"No, I swear I'll come back."

I worked forty days in a row and sold 25-carat cabochon Burma sapphire to a well-known interior decorator, who whispered over dinner at a fancy Soho restaurant, "You?re sexy."

Tony drove a convertible 1960 Ferrari 250 GTO, lived in a 5th Avenue apartment, and owned a house overlooking a surfing spot in Montauk. Richie said I should marry him, if only to have him buy a big engagement diamond from his store. I didn't play for that team and called Ae every day. I didn't tell anyone. Not even Sherri and I booked a flight to the Orient.

Ae met me at the airport and said, "I happy now."

"I happy too."

The only sad men in Don Muang were those drinking their last beer in Thailand.

"And Dtut?"

"Your son can live with us."

We moved into a house surrounded by swamps. Birds sang in the trees. Butterflies danced in the sunlight. Mosquitos sucked my blood. Ae cooked triple fried fish and vegetables. One night I drank a beer. The taste was off, but I drained the bottle slick with a green liquid.

In the morning uranium spikes drummed my temples. I looked at the beer bottle. It smelled funny and I accused Ae of poisoning me.

"Poison?" "Yeah, phit or a love potion."

"I not believe magic."

"Ching, ching."Thais draped talisman around their neck, inscribed their bodies tattoos against evil, and visited fortunetellers and witches, instead of doctors.

"Not magic. Maybe house have phi."

"Ghosts?"

"Phi Am. She sit on you in night."

"No, I don't think so."

"You not believe in Phi?"

"I know ghosts well." I was from New England, although farangs derided the Thais' belief in souls eating your intestines or a greedy man doomed to wander eternity with a worm-sized mouth. I was not an unbeliever and contracted the monks to exorcise the house, but whatever potion had been in that beer bottle lurked in my belly and its spell was bound to emerge from hibernation at a moment of weakness.

Life settled down after that episode. I woke with the dawn to re-edit my novel on pornography in our air-conditioned bedroom. Thai bar girls were Olympic sleepers and Pi-Ek, the owner of Hot Tuna on Walking Street, theorized that these bargirls preferred the world of dreams rather than a half-translated life with a farang.

"Same you live in a foreign movie and only hear language farang. Jep hoo-a."

His conjecture was worrisome, since Ae was sleeping fourteen hours a day or night.

On each occasion she had arisen from these comas demonized by a tigress in heat. Once I rolled off her sweat-drenched body and she murmured, "You love me?"

"Rak khun."

My heart was pumping too much blood to my head and the twenty-four year-old smiled quixotically. "You write book sound like monsoon rain. Why you love me?"

She knew nothing about the Red Sox, the coast of Maine, or CBGBs in the East Village. I had incorporated her breastless body into my novel without explaining my original attraction was based on a supergroup's album cover. I winged my reply.

"Because I feel young with you."

"You my khun garh." She snuggled into my like a stray cat after a long stay on the streets.

I was neither the oldest or youngest farang in her life. I was somewhere in the middle and replied, "Yes, I'll always be your old man."

She resumed the sleep of the dead and I read Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME.

Outside the distant hum of cars mingled with the buzz of mosquitoes beyond the netting. The night air was scented by jasmine.

I rested the book on my chest.

Pattaya was so much different than my life in New York.

There I worked. Here I wrote. There I slept alone. Here I made love to Ae every day. She would tell me about her lovers. They were many. In some ways it was like listening to Sherri. The two probably shared the same adventures. I was getting to think Pattaya could be home. Mrs. Adorno would never miss me.

The hot weather melted off my winter gut and daily swims at Jomtien Beach toned up my muscles.

A few friends from New York came out for a visit. We toured the go-go bars and discos. They wondered how they could stay here for the rest of their lives. I did too, since I had no money coming in.

In late March my cousin arrived from Boston with a Red Sox cap and a skimpy red dress for Ae. My mother had sworn me to take care of Bish. Ae modeled the skin-tight sheath.

"Go out, have fun. I meet later."

Bish loved the food, the weather, and the wide-open nightlife. We ate at a seafood restaurant on Beach Road. The hostess greeted us with a shy smile. Only a month in Pattaya Nu didn't speak a word of English and Bish was impressed with my rudimentary Thai.

"I learned it from Ae. My Sleeping Dictionary."

No Thai bargirl encouraged her sponsor to learn their language in fear of losing the advantage of a communication chasm.

"In the States every woman we know would criticize our going to go-go bars."

"Anyone of them donate money to the ballet?"

"No."

"Well, then your tipping these girls after a show is more charitable than a donation to the Boston Ballet. These girls come from the end of the road. Their farms grow one rice crop a year. They have big families. Usually a brother kills someone and to avoid going to prison, they pay blood money to the cops by sending the prettiest girl to Pattaya, Bangkok, or Phuket to make money off some drunken beer lout."

"And is there any salvation?"

"Only if you are lucky."

The next day I bought a medallion of a desiccated Thai monk. The Thai charm seller swore Lop Ngern would protect me. NO one else would. Ae was a ticking time bomb. It was highly unlikely I could walk away from the explosion intact.

"You used to complain about not having served in the Peace Corps after college. Guess you are in the Peace Corps now."

"Volunteer donor."

We clinked glasses and after a long stay at the Happy-a-Go-Go, we crossed Walking Street to the Marine Disco. The Chicken Farm was loaded with free-lance girls looking for a short-time date. Most of the farangs were drunk enough to think these girls actually considered them handsome. Ae was dancing with Sam's wife. Bish and I stayed on the other side of the bar. He asked, "Isn't this spying?"

"Not if my back is turned," I replied, knowing I only trusted Ae in her sleep. She finally spotted me and arrived in a huff.

"No fair, you see me I no see you."

"And I see you don't have a boyfriend and I don't have a geek." The red dress clung to her body like a boa.

"Only have you, khun garh." She dragged me onto the dance floor.

Dtum asked Bish to join her. I became Brad Pitt and Bish was Clint Eastwood. Sam showed up from Bangkok. He had settled with his investor for a few million baht and we celebrated with tequila. The police threw us out at dawn. Standing on Walking Street amidst the flurry of transvestites, off-duty go-go girls, and short-timers, Bish said, "This place is Garden of Eden."

"More like the farm league for Hell, but I'm not religious."

"For me Hell is a suburban mall. Lots to buy. None of it will make you happy. Not like here."

"I'm in no position to argue, counselor."

When Bish left, tears touched his eyes. He wasn't looking forward to life in America.

"All my life I work. I have money. I have a good job. But no woman. What is wrong with me?"

"The same thing as me."

"Which is?"

"I don't know, but maybe you should move back into Boston."

"I am where I am."

Several weeks later Ae's cellphone rang around 3am. Her hand snatched it from the night table with the speed of a cobra attacking a fat rat. She closed the bathroom door. The word tee-lat muffled through the wall. When she returned to bed, Ae read the murder in my eyes and flashed the number on the mobile's LCD.

"Sorry, have friend call me from Italy. He old boyfriend. Now finish."

Friend never finish. He have money. He come. Mai pen rai," I said, as the love potion tightened every vein power with jealousy. I almost threw her mobile into the swamps. Dtut shook his head. He liked playing games on the phone. He was a good kid, but Thais know how to play farangs at birth.

I smiled at him and asked, "So when is your teelat coming?"

"Not boyfriend. Friend." She pounded her fists on the pillows and rolled over, revealing the naked gap between spread legs. "You not trust me. I never go with man. Only with you."

"What about Finnish man?"

"You are the one I want." Ae might have possessed a grammar school education, but she played my emotions with the virtuosity of a concert pianist and once Dtut was in bed, we made love with an urgency shadowed by an impending Armageddon.

Pizza and pasta were banished from the menu. My jealousy painted a portrait of a young Italian with greasy long hair. He wore a Juventus football shirt and chain-smoked between bottles of wine. Anyone speaking a romance language was suspect, but there was an escape plan.

The Italian.

I took Dtut for ice cream. He liked chocolate. The sun fried the sun. I had a vanilla cone and pulled Dtut to my side. He was a good boy.

The Italian was next on Ae's list. He was the answer, especially since Songkran was coming soon and Songkran was the crazy time of the year for the Thais and even more so for a man lost in Asia.

FRENCH AIR STEWARDESSES by Peter Nolan Smith

Air stewardesses were sex symbols in the 60s and 70s. These elegant airborne beauties flew from city to city and country to country with a smile. The uniforms were designed by fashion housesx. Air travel was cool and the stewardesses were sexy in a good way.

The sexiest air hostesses were from foreign countries with Air France girls exuding an availability at high altitudes and they overnighted in an apartment high rise next to Hurrah on West 62nd Street, where I worked as the doorman.

The punk disco offered live shows of the Damned, Ramones, and Dead Boys. Between sets our New Wave DJs such as the British Sean Cassette spun the B52s, Specials, and Blondie for dancing. Each night a new crew of Air France would drop their bags at the apartments and then stripped out of their uniforms and slip into leather and chains for a night at Hurrah.

As doorman I held the power of entry and waved in the Air France stewardesses for free. They were young, international, and beautiful. Pan-Am, BOAC, Lufthansa, Air Italia were also welcomed guests. My co-worker, Anthony, and I bedded many of these travelers and these glamorous Valkyries transported us to Valhalla without ever asking for a home phone number.

Anthony and I reveled his these anonymous encounters and we gained a well-deserved reputation for free love in the stairways and bathrooms of Hurrah. Jhoury the gay bartender would announce the arrival of these high-flying angels in a shrill voice.

"Now landing at Hurrah Air France Flight # 201 from Paris."

It was good fun until a goddess fully aware of her deification sauntered up to the entrance in a sleek black leather body suit straight out of the flight school of Pussy Galore, 007's love interest from GOLDFINGER. She was arm and arm with a handsome air steward wearing matching black leather. I didn't even really see him.

Her platinum blonde hair hung straight as a bullet's trajectory complimented her powdery white skin. Her crow black boa stiletto heels click on the sidewalk to accented her haughtiness.

She didn't even notice my opening the ropes or my waving her in for free or my trailing her scent of Chanel # 5 up the stairs to the dance floor.

My adoration was in competition with every straight man in Hurrah. She danced with anyone who asked her for dance. My eyes studied her sinuous body to the music of the Bush Tetras like a XXX film producer casting his leading lady.

Jhoury plied Claudine with drinks at my request. Her male steward friend was his type; handsome as a Greek statue and dumber than a bucket of mud.

I introduced myself.

"I know you. Dance with me." She spoke like Marlene Dietrich and I obeyed her command.

I danced with her during the headliner's show, my hands on her hipbones. The flesh over her skeleton was thinner than a crepe. Claudine shrugged off my grope.

'Pas ici."

"What about______"

"I have heard about you from the other stewardesses. You fuck like a dog. Toilet, roof, stairway. I am not a dog."

"Oh."

She swirled away with a shimmering curtain of hair pirouetting across her shoulders. Her refusal scoured the rust from my lazy pride. I had never said that she was a dog and I had never thought about having her doggie style until she mentioned 'dog'. She was right. I was a dog.

Jhoury laughed at my expense. He was expecting to tour Le Toilet bar in the West Village with Claudine's male roommate. He was into the rough stuff. I gave Jhoury the finger, as Claudine and her friend, Martin, left the club.

I had failed for once.

Fifteen minutes later Martin climbed the stairs to Hurrah. A boa stiletto in his hand. He pointed to a lighted terrace on the 24th floor.

"Claudine is expecting you. She is flying to Paris in five hours. Go now. Enjoy." He had a big smile for Jhoury.

I told Anthony that I would be back. It was 2:14am. I wasn't coming back here until the following night. Anthony glanced at my hand. The shoe said everything.

"Bon appetit."

The doorman at the high-rise was expecting me and said, "24F."

The apartment door was open. Claudine lay on a chocolate brown couch. Her vanilla skin looked like ice cream atop cake. A dog collar was clasped around her aristocratic neck in imitation of Marie Antoinette on the leash. Cocaine rails zigzagged across the glass table. Claudine had seer-soothed my sins. I was Johnny Thunder's cousin from the John Holmes' side of the family. A thin Cartier watch was on the table. Claudine glanced at the face.

"Three hours to take-off."

Claudine had a swimmers's skin and bones. After a few minutes her skin bore the tang of chlorine. Within twenty minutes she only smelled of my sweat. The view out the window was New York from a magic carpet, but the magic spell was draining out of the hourglass of opportunity. We had no time to waste figuring who was master or slave.

The reversals of domination contested our stamina. I was in good shape. She was in better condition. In the end I was Claudine's dog, while she was a lioness wanting more of heaven and hell. I was looking for eternity, but as the sun bleached the black rim of the night with a sliver of red, Claudine reached out for her watch.

It was 5:43am

Claudine snapped off the cuff. The fall of the chain was muffled by the carpet. Brown. It was a rented apartment. No one really lived there. New York was a stopover. Paris was home. She threw my clothes across the room.

"I must go."

"Five more minutes." I was begging for more.

She shook her head with a smile of conquest on her lips.

"Au revoir, le chien."

Claudine pushed me out of the apartment with a kiss on each cheek and the scent of her skin gently weeping in my soul. The Beatles should have written a song about her. Claudine was gone and I was a naked man in the hallway of a high-rise. I had been here before.

Same apartment.

Same hallway. Only then Claudine had been Brigitte.

I didn't bathe her off my flesh for three days.

Several weeks later I met the Blonde Model from Buffalo. She became the only woman in my life. The stewardesses heard the news and fewer came to the club. Anthony was angered at my blowing a good thing.

"French stewardesses," he muttered, saying the two words like a prayer three times.

This prayer acted as a curse.

I've haven't had a stewardess since.

Neither in Space nor on Earth.

The # Of Us

Last week I ended my family holiday in Sri racha and flew east from Bangkok through Inchon to JFK on a mixed crew from several nations. The Airbus A 380 was the biggest passenger aircraft in the commercial fleets, but we were on a Boeing 777. When I asked the stewardess about the seating, she replied with a French accent, "546 passengers and a crew of 34, but we're traveling light tonight" "Merci." I thanked her in French. Our sixteen hour trip to America coasted over the Bering Sea to make landfall in Alaska. I had already exhausted the movie offering on the outward trip to Thailand. More than 200 million people speak that language out of a global population of 7 billion and I took out my cellphone to calculate the percentage people were on this massive plane. The figure came out to be .000000081428571%. 580 was the same number of townspeople living in Isleboro, Maine, but this number is only .0000000058% of the total number of people who have lived since 50,000BC. This demographic number comes from a study by the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, which I read on BBCNEWS. Arthur C Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey wrote back in 1968, "Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living." We are numerous. By the way the total number of people who have lived has been calculated to 107,602,707,791. Thankfully only 420 of them were on that Boeing 777. Another 200 and the behemoth would have never left the Earth.

On Writing - Patrick Dennis

“I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind.” - Patrick Dennis, author of AUNTIE MAME.