THE PIGPEN A GO GO by Peter Nolan Smith

Life is the sum of a person's experiences. Work and family dominate the sculpting of a soul. Days are defined by routine and years by the seasons and weather. En masse we are the same, but different thanks to our participation in special events liberating our souls from the shackles of perpetual monotony.

Woodstock lasted three days. The freedom shared by the young celebrants of Aquarius remains an icon of peace and love to millions of young people. I was washing dishes at a hotel outside Boston that weekend. I bought the record and watched the movie. No number of joints can transport my body to the glory of Max Yasgur's farm.

While I was never at Woodstock, I have been lucky enough to have seen the first screening of APOCALYPSE NOW at the New York's Ziegfeld Theater, dropped LSD at the Mudd Club's Acid Party, and caught the Whorelords' one-night stand as well as attended every night of CBGB's Johnny Blitz Benefit and witnessed Rahsaan Roland Kirk stunning performance for the hippies at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival.

"I'm blind, but I know there's more than five of you motherfuckers out there," the sax player shouted into the microphone with a tenor, flute, and clarinet draped around his neck. The long-hairs cheered his bravado and he rewarded their applause with a 17-minute long version of THREE BLIND MICE. After a last blast on the sax the hippie audience leapt to their feet to give the jazz legend a standing ovation.

So I missed Woodstock and the opening of Studio 54. No human can be everywhere. however as I approached forty the drive to see and be seen gave way to the comfort of sitting in a bar with a cold beer in my hand.

The stagnation was all-powerful.

40 would become 50 and 50 would run into 60.

I was a nobody in danger of becoming even more anonymous to others and even myself.

Something had to change and in 1991 I quit my job selling diamonds on 47th Street and bought a round-the-world ticket. In Bali I dropped my birthname to become Pascha Ray, explorer of bars in the Far East. Beer and gin were my poison. I recounted tales of CBGBs to backpackers. The 20 year-olds thought of me as a legend or a liar. The truth depended on my sobriety.

By the time I turned 50, my body was exhausted by the annual circumnavigation of the globe and I marooned myself in Pattaya, the Last Babylon on Earth, with a wife and daughter.

The Go-Go bars and brothels of the infamous Thai beach resort offered lonely middle-aged men from the West a last chance at youth. A night with a girl without a name passed for love. A hang-over was more easily attained than nirvana and our motto for next morning was 'another day in paradise', yet even Adam got tired of paradise and I had had my fill of go-go girls dancing to HOTEL CALIFORNIA. My friends were content every day of the week with that fate. They were oil diggers, anti-intellectual lager louts, and an assortment of international fugitives from justice.

I preferred the Buffalo Bar on Sai 3, where I rehashed ancient adventures in slurred Thai to leggy bar girls in slinky dresses.

I always brought my Shi-Tzu.

The froggie owner and a few patrons didn't like a furry dog lying on the bar, but the girls said Champoo had a nah-lak or lovely face and none of the old geezers dared to argue with a pretty girl.

Anywhere else in the world women would have avoided the Old Geezer Lounge like an ex-husband looking to borrow money, but the bargirls of Pattaya have the uncanny skill of blinding themselves to man's pros and cons.

To them all men, Thai and farang, were the same.

Bad.

Every night my friends deserted the Buffalo Bar for the go-go bars of Walking Street. I promised to join them later. My true destination was my bed up the street, where my 'ex-wife' and I slept together with my daughter. Angie lay between us. Her mother and I never had sex. She had broken my heart with an affair with a 'cousin'.

Months became years and the rainy season of 2006 swamped Pattaya with a vengeance.

One night Champoo and I were trapped by the deluge at the Buffalo Bar. Monsoon rain drummed off the tin roof with a deafening intensity to flood the side street. My drinking companion was New. The twenty year-old shivered in her thin dress.

"We go upstairs. We get warm."

"Sorry." There was no way that I was going upstairs with New. Her price was 3000 baht. In New York City she was a bargain, since she looked like Natalie Woods. I tried to tell this to New, but she has never heard of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS or REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, so I asked New, if she wanted to be in a movie.

"Dirty movie?" New shook her lovely head.

"Not dirty." Shooting a sex film in Thailand was almost as foolish as buying property.

"Movie called MY DOG SINGS THE BLUES. Champoo is the star."

"Champoo sing?"

"Listen." I whistled a high pitch and my puppy howled off-key, getting good laugh from New. A brand-new Toyota Corona pulled up to the entrance and a scrawny man jumped out of the passenger side with a towel over his head. He was drenched in a second.

The greeting girl called him a ngao or fool with a mocking laugh.

The man took off the towel.

The fool was none other than my old New York friend, Jamie Parker.

New got up from the stool and meandered toward the pool table. Every woman in the Buffalo Bar knew the ex-con was trouble. He sat on the vacated stool and ordered two vodka-tonics. My dog growled with bared teeth and Jamie asked, "You ever think about breeding Champoo who a pit-bull? That way you'd get a pit-zhu."

"Very funny, but,Champoo took a vow of virginity."

"Like that girl you were talking to?" The gaunt 50 year-old nodded to the pool table where New was entertaining an elderly French man.

"New."

"Nice and a nice night for it."

"Monsoon season." I hadn't seen Jamie in several months. Rumor was that he was building a go-go bar in a vacant lot off Soi Buah-Khao and that Fabo, the Belgian oil explorer, was financing the project.

"How's married life?" Jamie wiped the wet from his face. The car waited in the deluge. He wasn't staying long.

"I'm as happy as a clam."

"You want to be happier." The lithesome waitress brought the drinks. They cost 100 baht each. He paid her with a 500-baht bill.

"I'm not into drugs." Pattaya was awash with speedy Ja-bah, meth Ice, and wretched cocaine. Opium might have worked, but Pattaya was too far south from the Golden Triangle.

"Not drugs, but the Pig Pen A Go Go." A soggy flyer flashed over Champoo.

PIGPEN A GO GO OPENING 9/11 UGLY GIRLS ANYTHING GOES FREE BEER FOR NEW YORKERS

"So you're opening the bar?"

"Fabo didn't mention anything?" "Not a word." Fabo and I spent the afternoons at the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. We talked about everything, but their project.

"He said he could keep a secret and did. Not many of the losers in this town can hold their sand." Jamie glared at two football hooligans at the end of the bar. He hated English soccer fans.

"Better change your mindset. That type loves go-gos." Pattaya's countless go-go bars generated billions of baht of income for the owners, dancers, bar staff, and police on the take. The clientele was strictly farangs.

"They won't be coming to the Pigpen. I'm appealing to a niche market."

"How so?"

"I'm hiring ugly girls who will do anything for anyone. The fatter and uglier the better. A horror show to wake up the dead and we're opening on 9/11 to commemorate the five years since the day."

"How appropriate." I had been standing on my roof in the East Village after the first airplane crashed into the WTC. The second attack was a shock shared by thousands. Their collapse had been witnessed by millions around the world. It was a 'had to be there' event that I wished could be exorcised from history.

"Come early. We have a special sunset show."

"Free beer, ugly girls, and a 9/11 show. Who can resist that?"

A car horn beeped loudly and the high beams flashed into the bar.

"Looks like your driver is in a hurry." The woman's face was obscured by the water sluicing over windshield.

"Ort has to get back her 'boyfriend'. Some British bodybuilder."

"You're still with Ort?"

"More or less." Ort and Jamie were made for each other.

"Is she going to dance at the Pigpen?" The vicious go-go dancer barely into her 20s had a snake's rhythm flowing in her blood.

"Opening night only." He ran out into rain, shouting, "She'll be dancing naked under a chador. Like Bin Laden's wife. You won't want to miss that."

"I see you there." Nudity was against the law in Pattaya, unless the police received their tea money to turn an eye and they were experts at being blind.

I was home by midnight. My daughter was asleep in bed. Her mother was watching a Thai soap on TV. She offered no greeting and I wasn't expecting one. I joined my daughter in the bedroom and read Nick Hornby's FEVER PITCH. I was out cold in minutes.

The next three days passed with the sameness of the previous months.

Work, eat, kisses and hugs from my daughter, the cold shoulder from her mother, beers at the Buffalo, and sleep.

I could have repeated the routine without a break, if I hadn't noticed the Bangkok Post article mentioning the 5th Anniversary of 9//11.

Four years of two wars.

Five years of OBL on the loose.

Five years of GW Bush and the worldwide war on terror.

Thailand was twelve hours in advance of Eastern Standard Time.

It was 9/11/2006.

Five years ago the attack squads had booked into airport motels. Some of the hijackers passed the last hours in prayer. The others sought solace in go-go bars to train for their reward of 77 virgins in the afterlife. Mohammad Atta exited the Mass Pike without paying the toll. Letters were written to friends and family. I spend that evening at home. The forecast from the Weather Channel predicted cloudless skies. It was right on the money.

The hijackers probably woke at 5 on 9/11 to a black morning with stars in the sky.

Five years later I left my house for the Pigpen. My daughter was napping on the couch and my 'wife' was speaking on the phone in a low voice. Her boyfriend was probably on the other end. I said good-bye and whistled for Champoo. My puppy like getting out of the house on Moo 9.

Heavy black clouds spread across the afternoon sky.

Even a blind man could predict tonight's weather.

I drove over to Soi Buah-Khao on my scooter with Champoo in the basket. Thais called out her name. She would have been a prize-winning Shzi-chu, if the next-door neighbor's mutt hadn't torn off her left ear.

The Pigpen was located at the end of a row of derelict beer bars.

A long table was loaded with good food and a pig roasted of a spit. Balloons waved in the wind. They were a Pattaya tradition indicating free food to the Cheap Charlies on a tight budget. A dozen fat girls sat on their haunches wolfing down spicy sum tam salad. None of them had been cute since birth.

Two aluminum billboards rose from the vacant lot across the street.

Fabo and Jamie were flying radio-controlled airplane around the two billboards touting a bankrupt property deal. A few Thais watched the aerobatics. They oohed at the close passes.

I parked my bike and lifted Champoo out of the basket. She barked at the looping planes.

The two owners nodded to me and I walked over to Jamie.

"You're not really going to do this?" I directed the question at Jamie. He was completely absorbed by the flight of the replica planes. Neither looked like jet liners.

"Do what, Yankee?" Fabo's grin was besotted by mischief.

"Re-enact 9/11." I stepped forward to snatch the controls.

Fabo darted out reach.

"This is only practice, Yankee." His plane buzzed the metallic billboards with inches to spare.

"Jamie?"

"What? You wanna play FBI or CIA? They didn't stop the hijackers and GW Bush let the Bin Ladens out of the country. And five years later nothing's changed in America other than we drive bigger cars and are getting fatter." Jamie was not all there at the best of times, but off his medicine he jacked up his meanness.

A pick-up truck rolled down the dead-end street.

"Our first guests."

Jamie landed the plane and greeted the five XXXL men. They collectively weighed over 1500 pounds and were dressed like off-duty fat men from a freak show. Each of them hugged Jamie and Fabo. When I joined them, Jamie whispered, "Americans, but none of them are from New York."

"I am not either." A glop of rain splattered on my face.

The clouds had darkened from gray to black.

"Boston-born, so no free beer."

"Almost thirty years in the East Village."

"Doesn't matter. You're Red Sox fan till the day you die. But we'll overlook your birthplace for one night."

Jamie clapped his hands.

"Girls, it's Showtime."

We entered the bar. The Pigpen was decorated, as if Fabo and Jamie were trying to imitate the old peckerwood TV show HEEHAW.

More fat girls emerged from the back rooms dressed like Daisy Mae of LIL ABNER.

The white plaid shirts bursy with size 45 DDD breasts and large assses overwhelmed shredded denim hot pants.

The DJ put on the Clash's ROCK AND ROLL WORLD.

"You won't be hearing HOTEL CALIFORNIA at the Pigpen, Yankee." Fabo ordered beers.

Ten bone-ugly men in their late 60s stumbled through the door and beelined to the food table.

"The hierarchy of the balloon chasers. No one gets to free food faster than these freeloaders and they drink, as if the Taliban was enforcing Sharia law tomorrow."

"That will never happen here." I sympathized with the plight of Palestine, but as an atheist I raised my beer and loudly announced, "We shall defend our beer, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight the sober bastards on the streets, we shall fight in the bars and we shall never surrender our right to drink beer. 9/11."

The fat men and the freeloaders clinked glasses with grim determination.

We were Americans far from home.

The DJ played Chuck Berry's MAYBELLINE.

A solitary dancer shrouded in a chador took the stage. The movement within evoked the struggles of a young girl stuffed into a burlap bag by Arab white slavers. It could only be Ort.

A round of tequila and the another to Love's HEY JOE. Champoo was into her first beer.

A party of trim Thais entered the bar.

Jamie high-waied the off-duty cops and installed them at a table with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Police on the take only drink the best. Jamie waved for me to join them.

Half-Irish I had a way with cops and spoke Thai with a Boston accent.

The captain asked about 9/11 and I told him about watching people jump from the windows of the World Trade.

"Yet Islam." The Muslim South of Thailand was under martial law. Bombs and bullets were the court of justice.

I explained about living in Yala during the 90s. The insurrection was flickering with the intensity of a match until the Prime Minister had evicted the common people from land. They were Buddhists and Muslims. The rich are egalitarian in the mistreatment of the poor.

"Fucktherich," I babbled fast on tequila.

"Fucking GW Bush." Jamie blamed the president for 9/11.

"Fucking Bin laden." A fat man shook his fist. The Al-Fuck the rich swami was Wanted Dead Or Alive # 1.

"Yet Myanmar." The Thais hated Burma. Their neighbors had burnt every Thai capitol at least three times.

We drank more.

I danced with a fat woman twice my size. Her sweat smelled of chili and burned my eyes.

The DJ played SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. Two vans of antique golfers entered the bar. Jamie poured them tequila. They drained their glasses and banged the bar for more. Time slipped into the future like it was lubricated with KY jelly. Champoo licked my face. It was good to feel love.

A tap on my shoulder.

"It's time." Jamie had the plane in his hand. He tapped his watch. The bar was empty.

"Time for what?"

"It's time to fly. Remember 9/11."

"Five years ago." I picked up Champoo.

"Exactly five years ago." Jamie and I walked outside the bar followed by fat girls and an assortment of farangs. A hundred Thais joined the crowd. Fabo launched his plane into the night sky. Jamie's aircraft followed 20 seconds later. They were lost in the murk for several moments.

"Krung-Bin."

The model plane buzzed across the garbage-strewn lot and smashed into the billboard with a thwack. The billboard withstood the crash.

"World Trade. World Trade," I shouted with tears in my eyes.

Jamie's plane was on a steep attack approach for the South Tower. The Thai cops pulled out their guns and fired at the model. A bullet clipped its wing and the plane spiraled to the ground.

"Thailand. Thailand. Chai-yo."

The sky opened for Noah's flood and we ran into the Pigpen chanting those words. Whiskey flowed like water. Lightning and thunder split the heavens, as if time had been rent in two. No one was going anywhere.

Jamie gave the old geezers Cialis.

The girls drank tequila like Pancho Villa's relief column. Ort took the stage to the Cure's TO KILL AN ARAB.

A busload of Arabs entered the bar. Everyone froze, then the Arabs ordered drinks for everyone.

They could have cared less about the 77 virgins.

They were after fat girls, which was what Jamie offered in spades.

I don't remember when the first person got naked.

I think it was when the DJ spun KC's THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT.

Old guys, fat girls, and Arabs dancing to 70s disco, then Jamie had the DJ segue to the Sex Pistols.

ANARCHY IN THE UK.

The old guys were mostly British and knew every word.

It was getting ugly and I took off my glasses to prevent seeing how ugly, as I sang, "I want to be born Anarchy."

LOUIE LOUIE, STREET FIGHTING MAN and then Sinatra's MY WAY.

The Arabs cursed Osama Bin Laden for making everyone in the West hate Muslims and the farangs showed their forgiveness by calling out, "FREE PALESTINE."

It was at that moment that my phone vibrated in my shirt.

It was my 'wife'. She never called me. Something had to be wrong with my daughter and I slipped out the back of the Pigpen with Champoo under my arm.

The rain pelted down hard and I drove home through a rushing river. My 'wife lifted her head from the TV and said, "Al Qaeda?"

"Chai." I felt like telling her what my thoughts on our 'relationship', except my daughter called out from the bedroom. I went to her and laid on the bed. Big storms scared three year-olds.

It had been a fun night, but not as much as holding her in my arms

Angie wasn't frightened as long as I was with her or at least that is what I wanted to tell her before we fell asleep.

The next day I called Jamie. His phone was shut off. I drove by the Pigpen a Go-go. A police sign in Thai said it was closed until further notice.

I couldn't be happier, because a place like that should only be open one night.

To repeat last night would have been a sin.

Just like re-living Woodstock.

DARK HUMOR

On the first anniversary of the World Trade Tower Attack I was sitting with two NYPD narcotic detectives in a bar on Avenue B. Rocco and I went back to the Milk Bar and his partner Stevie was telling us about his 9/11

“My sergeant said as we approached the north tower, “Be careful, boys, today a lot of people are going to die.” He barely finished that sentence and a body smashed in front of us and then another and another. We ran for cover. None of us were heroes that day, even though we tried.”

“Shut up, Stevie. You did your best. No one can ask for more.” Rocco drank heavily from his glass.

We each had stories of that tragic, but lost the thread as we eavesdropped on a group of firefighters toasting their fallen comrades.

“Fucking Boy Scouts.”

"Who?"

"Firemen. Everyone thinks they're heroes, while we're scum."

"You got that right, Rocco." Stevie had been partners with Rocco for eleven years. Rocco leaned over and started talking loudly about how the firefighters have looted the WTC before its collapse.

“You know there would have been no dead firemen, if someone had posted one sign on the World Trade.”

The firemen at the bar turned as one to our table.

“And what would be on that sign?” Stevie loved playing straight man for his partner.

“Nothing of value inside.” Rocco laughed and slipped a hand under his jacket, as a trio of behemoth NYFD approached us. We were friends of the owner, the firemen had their house around the corner, but this was an old fight between rivals.

“What’d you say?” The largest fireman demanded with clenched fists.

“Just that if the World Trade had nothing to steal, then none of you would have died.”

Rocco laid his Glock on the table without taking his finger off the trigger.

“You’re a fuck.” The biggest fireman waved for his comrades to ignore the insult.

"It was a joke," explained Stevie. He wasn't looking for a fight.

“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” Rocco had lost two friends in the collapse. None of us found much funny about that day.

“Now be happy campers and go back to your drinks. The next round is on me.”

“Fuck you and fuck your drinks.” The biggest fireman forced his friends back to the bar, but they drank Rocco’s round and sent us one too.

“Nice one, Rocco.” Stevie lifted his glasses. We were drinking vodka-tonics.

“To the gone, but not forgotten.”

We downed them in one go and ordered another round.

9/11 is that kind of day that was remembered forever one way or the other.

THE TRUE REWARD OF A LIE by Peter Nolan Smith

My flight from Bangkok via Taipei and Anchorage to JFK in 2008 lasted almost thirty-six hours. I wished the trip had taken even longer since I had nothing to gain in America, however we landed stateside on time ending the longest Sunday of my life. The immigration officer asked how long I had been out of the country.

"Seven years." All of it in Thailand.

"Welcome back."

He stamped my passport and I entered the USA without any idea when I might see my wife and daughter again. The 12:05AM Skytrain to Brooklyn carried few passengers, mostly airport workers coming off the late-shift. They spoke my language. This had been my city for twenty-seven years. It should have felt like home.

My friend had promised a soft landing at his Fort Greene brownstone. Andrew had told the truth. His wife was willing to accept a guest for longer than three days. His daughter was the same age as my daughter. I went to sleep dreaming of rice paddies, red dirt roads, and Angie.

Over the next week I fought off the lingering effects of international jet lag and slowly connected with friends. They bought me lunch and dinner. Several lent money. They had heard about my arrest in Thailand. I didn't say too much about my new girlfriend's pregnancy or leaving Angie's mom. I was a hard sell as it was and I needed money for my families.

I visited several galleries with my Jean-Michel Basquiat sketch, except now was not the time to sell anything. Everyone was broke.

April grew warmer with the sun and one afternoon I wandered over to the East Village. I almost rang the bell of my old apartment. Someone else lived there now and I wanted to see the change, but instead I walked down to the basketball courts of Tompkins Square Park.

No one was playing hoop.

My friend JD had said the games died several months after my departure. I stood underneath the baskets. No one in the park knew my name. The East Village belonged to skateboarders and the young Wall Street bankers and I headed down to the F train stop at 1st Avenue.

It was early evening. The sun still had another hour to set. The light glazed everyone with unearthly silver. Couples kissed on the sidewalks. Singles prowled the bars in search of a hook-up. They were young. Life had gone on without me. One person is nothing to a city of millions, especially a ghost of the past.

As I approached the subway entrance, I spotted a familiar face. Thomas was speaking on a cellphone. I decided to wait for him to turn my way, thinking maybe he wouldn't recognize me.

Thomas was a neighborhood real estate developer and I was a pseudo-intellectual seeking to stop the gentrification of the Lower East Side. Our conversations were more arguments and we almost came to blows over the sale of a 2nd Avenue variety store, whose closure he viewed as progress.

I bought my underwear there.

Afterwards a store opened selling tee-shirts for $30.

Several years later at a Christmas dinner for Ornette Coleman, we pigpiled on a TV News producer extolling the networks' sense of truth. Thomas said that all TV News was lies. I called it propaganda. We recognized that we weren't that far apart and occasionally met for drinks. I even introduced him to his girlfriend.

I was too poor for Cara's tastes.

Then and even more so now.

Thomas clicked off the cellphone and slipped the mobile into his well-tailored suit. Times were tough in the USA, but he appeared prosperous.

For a second he seemed to look through me, then his eyes lit with recognition.

"Good to see you. When did you return from Thailand?" He took off the imported sunglasses to examine me better. "You have changed. How long has it been?"

"Seven years. How's Cara?" I wondered if they were still together. Her olive-skinned beauty possessed an Iberian love of laughter.

"As lovely and difficult as ever. Up in the country right now. I bought a farmhouse on 250 acres along the Walkill River. My property was the second largest in New Paltz after a New Age commune?s pig farm. She'd love to see you."

"And me her."

"Last winter I bought a building on North Moore Street and redid the top three floors. 7200 square-feet. I'm having a house-warming this Thursday. You should come. Is your family with you?"

"No," I explained they were staying behind without mentioning about my deportation.

The story was over for the moment. I was trying to start a new chapter. I showed Thomas a few photos. He casually excused himself by tapping his platinum Pate-Philippe.

"I've got to run, but here's my card. Bring a friend if you like."

"You want me to bring anything?"

"No, just don't be late or else you'll miss the lobster."

Thomas turned just in time to avoid a collision with a beautiful brunette. They knew each other. He didn't introduce me. They walked away, speaking in whispers. After several steps she started crying and laid her head on Thomas' shoulder.

I tailed them for several blocks.

They entered the brasserie Balthazaar, where the maitre de greeted Thomas like he was the new owner. I could have been jealous of his new loft, high-paying job, house in the country, fiancee, and the tears of his mistress, except I had learned long ago the envy of other people's triumphs was best suited to those who had lost all hope of achieving their own dreams and planned on attending the housewarming with a Maine native's appetite for lobster.

That Thursday Andrew accompanied me across the river from Brooklyn. He was an architect and I thought maybe Thomas could give him work. My house warming gift of a 19th Century iron was out of place in the loft on North Moore Street.

A Clifford Still hung over the river rock fireplace. Tropical flower bouquets sprouted from the corners of the enormous living room. A liveried bartender tended a well-stocked bar, while wild salmon and thin-shell lobster overwhelmed a long table. The display of wealth was well-mannered as Cara's silver sheath whispering across the teakwood floor.

I introduced her to Andrew. She kissed me on both cheeks and fingered the diamond solitaire hanging from the platinum chain around her elegant neck. Thomas had bought the D-Flawless diamond for an engagement ring and she sensed my concern.

"Don't worry, we're still engaged and better yet I'll persuade Thomas to buy me something extra special at Christmas. But enough about diamonds, I want you to meet someone."

"A friend?" I had offended hundreds of people during my twenty-five years in New York and prayed this introduction wasn't an attempted reconciliation.

"Only time will tell."

Andrew excused himself, seeing two friends. Manhattan's upper crust was a small world.

Cara led me across the room and unexpectedly introduced the brunette from the other day.

"This is Tatiana. She works in film and I've been telling her all about you."

"Like what?" I feared the worst.

"Your diving off a cliff at Lake Minnewaska.? Tatiana?s accent bespoke good schools.

"I didn't dive, I jumped." The crystalline waters had been irresistible.

"From a hundred feet." My friends tended to exaggerate my stories and I smiled guiltily. "More like fifty feet, but it was high."

"Cara says me you're a writer." Tatiana's clothes were worth more than my earnings last year.

I spieled out my latest novel's outline, after which she arched a plucked eyebrow accusingly, "You've pitched that story before."

Before I could plead innocence, Thomas joined us.

"So you two have met."

Tatiana glared in fear Cara and Thomas expected a liaison to birth from this encounter and departed to a gaggle of admirers. Winking conspiratorially Cara left for the kitchen and Thomas asked, "What did you think of Tatiana?"

"She is a goddess, but the other day I thought she was your mistress."

"Mistress?" He sneaked a peep into the kitchen, where his fiancee overlorded the help. "Cara would kill me, if she ever caught me with another woman."

"Why was she crying?"

"She bought her loft at the top of the curve and lost nearly 20% of value with the sub-prime crash. She's fucked like a lot of people."

"Guess we all can't be as lucky as you."

"We make our own luck. Like maybe you and her?"

Tatiana stood in the gentle light of the billiard room. Her devotees were obviously rich.

"She looks like she's hunting for a millionaire.

"You underestimate what you have to offer."

"Those men drive BMWs to the Hamptons. I'm a penniless failed writer, who sells diamonds for a living." I didn't even mention Sirinthep as an obstacle. My mia noi was half a world away.

"When we first met, you didn't care anything about money!"

"That crazy poet might have lost a little of his pride." I refrained from confessing my setback in Thailand. Desperation didn't sell well in this city.

"I haven't seen any twenty-year olds dive off the cliff at Lake Minnewaska."

"I jumped."

"Dive sounds better."

"But it isn't the truth."

"People want to hear the truth as much as they want to tell it." Thomas lifted his finger, as if to signal time-out. "You think I got where I am, because I told the truth?"

I examined the luxurious loft.

"Hard work maybe?"

"Shit, hard work is overrated! Maybe that's not true, because you can't grab the ring, if you're not in position, but the business, the loft, and the country house all hinged on a lie told in the right place at the right time." Thomas eyed the distance of the nearest guest. None of them needed to hear what he had to say and I was good at keeping secrets as long as I didn't drink too much.

"Almost sounds like a deal with the Devil."

"And I would have taken his offer. Ten years ago I got into a tight spot. I owed the bank $650,000."

"Ouch!" I was losing sleep over a five-figure debt incurred in Thailand.

"My only asset was that loft on 16th Street worth maybe $450,000. I told the bank I would sell it. They agreed to this deal, because my bankruptcy got them nothing. Unfortunately the best offer was for $650,000."

"Unfortunately?" I earned barely $30,000 last year. That amount of money was a fortune in Thailand.

"$650,000 settled my debt, but left me with nothing." He grabbed two champagne glasses from a passing waiter. "I had grown comfortable with the good life, so I decided to not tell the bank about the extra $200,000."

"The lie?" We clinked glasses and sipped at the champagne. It was vintage.

"Not the important one. My beautiful plan fell apart, because the bank informed the loft board about the sale. They demanded why I was giving them $450,000, when the sale was for $650,000." His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to remember his exact words. "I said that a sale for $450,000 would lower the value of the other lofts in the building and never be approved by the board, so I lied about the $650,000."

"And they believed you?"

"Yes, I had never lied to them before. That $200,000 bought a small property, which I flipped and soon was back in the money. I haven't told anyone this. Not even Cara."

"So why did you tell me?" Too many grand families in America had sanitized the origins of their wealth, whether it be smuggling of opium, running whiskey or insider trading for me to regard Thomas as a criminal.

"Just so you understand the true reward of lying." He shrugged and said, " Excuse me, but I have to see to my other guests."

I wandered through the crowd, listening to the schemes of rich men. They turned their shoudlers at my approach. I walked into the billiard room, where Andrew spoke with several agitated men on how to best exact revenge from the perpetrators of banking crisis. A balding man in his fifties ventured with a grim grin, "We should confiscate their yachts."

"Who? The government. They'll only waste it on propping up Wall Street," a tall man in an exquisitely black Italian suit countered with what I deemed to be the voice of reason, until he added, "Better to let everyone fend for themselves."

"We do that and we'll have anarchy within a year." A third man with a frail goatee entered the fray. They had all been watching too much business news and Andrew asked me, "Can you come up with a solution?"

"Yes, have international write-off day. All debts canceled. Nothing belongs to any other than what they hold in their hands." I had written a script about this. HEAVEN ABOVE, which had been rejected by several studios. Now might be a better time for such a tale.

"Anarchy is not a solution. Things will get better."

The tall man in the black suit tsked, as if the White House had granted him the concession for selling foreclosed houses in Florida to the Chinese.

"But not this year. Gas will hit $4 this summer. The wars will go on without surrender or victory, but in the meanwhile let's drink champagne. Morituri te salutant."

"Those who are about to die, salute you." Andrew had studied Latin too, but the rest of the men's faces betrayed they thought I was mad and I wandered away onto the terrace to stare at the few stars dotting soft black sky.

None would have been visible, if the Trade Towers were standing together.

Someone put on U2's NEW YORK and a lump choked my throat. I had been born in Boston, yet loved this city and cried like a baby, until the paean-turned-dirge was replaced by Joni Mitchell's CARRIE. Something about her high-pitched soprano dispelled my sorrow, though not as much as the sight of Tatiana in the doorway with two champagne glasses.

"I just got something caught in my eyes."

She had the decency to buy my lie.

"There's a lot of that going around and there will for quite some time." She regarded me, almost as if someone had shed a revealing light about me to which I wasn't privy. "I just hope this crisis isn't forever."

"It's not the end of the world," I told my story of giving blood with a madman on 9/11. "If the insane can recover, then so can the sane. It only takes more time."

"How long do you know Thomas?" Her eyes were steely sapphires.

"We go back."

"He thinks a lot of you." She obviously valued his opinion.

"It wasn't always that way. One time we got into an argument."

"Over a girl?"

"No, over intrinsic value."

"Intrinsic value?" She frowned with disappointment.

"This old variety store in the East Village sold every necessity. The landlord upped the rent and it was replaced by a tee-shirt shop, which Thomas considered the natural course of economic evolution. I argued that no one had taken into consideration the intrinsic value of what the store gave the neighborhood. It got a little heated and people had to hold us back."

"Over a shop selling tee-shirts?"

"Yeah." Neither the tee-shirt shop nor a Blockbusters had succeeded in the space.

"You are sure it wasn't over a woman?"

"No." My soul-kissing his ex-girlfriend had been a joke.

"Men are stupid." She sneered, as if her half of the species was the only worthy cause for a fight.

"We were never friends, until I introduced him to Cara. They were meant for each other like Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet. I guess that's was my intrinsic value."

"Everyone has some." Her shadowed profile belonged in a museum and I almost reached out to make sure she was flesh, but she moved to the right like a mirage vanishing from a desert road, only she stopped a pace away and said, "I can't stay here any longer. You mind escorting me to a cab. It's just a cab ride. Nothing else."

"I can deal with nothing else." Her beauty canceled out her heartlessness.

Her suitors couldn't hide their puzzlement of her departure with me. I had no intention of solving the mystery, for it was never good to question the unexpected, especially if the end result was simply a handshake.

I waved good-bye to Andrew.

I had keys and this was going nowhere.

After all I was a married man.

As the elevator door closed, Cara lovingly embraced Thomas. "I didn't suspect that they would leave together.?

"I sort of cheated."

"You tell her he was the heir to a family fortune?"

"No, I said that he had the biggest____" Thomas whispered the rest of his confession into Cara's ear. She laughed raucously and several of the guests turned their heads with knitted brows of disapproval. Cara couldn't care less about what these gringos thought. "And does he?"

"Maybe." Thomas cocked his head to the side, as if it might be the truth.

"Why would you tell such a lie?"

"Because he looked so lonely without his family and I never repaid him for making me a happy man."

"Really?" Like every woman Cara had heard too many lies to believe a single word said by any man.

"Of course, but I still don't understand why he introduced us. It wasn't like he and I were good friends."

Cara pinched his cheek. "I told him to."

"Why?" Thomas asked with all ignorance a man can possess about a woman's wiles. Cara could have hurt his feeling, but she really did love him. "Because you had big feet. Big feet, big shoes. Big shoes____?

"I get the picture." Thomas stared down at his shoes. They didn't seem big.

"Would it have mattered, if they weren't big?"

"Of course not, my love." They didn't have to say another word on the subject. Both of them were happy with the way they were and no one could blame them. After all theirs was a perfect world and that was no lie.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN PATTAYA by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya isn't what it used to be in the 90s or 80s. The coconut plantations have been replaced by luxury villas. Interpol and the Thai Police hunt down fugitives and the Russians have taken over the hills, so three summers ago I moved north to Sri Racha with my son Fenway and his mom. The city was a quiet refuge from the madness of the Last Babylon, which was too quiet some nights, and one Friday night Fenway's mom suggested that I go visit old friends in Pattaya.

"I came here to be with you not them."

"I know, but farang have to be with farang sometime. Same Thai have to be with Thai." Thais understand the concept of fun or sanuk better than westerners.

"Are you sure?" Pattaya was filled with temptation.

"Sure you love me forever, no, but no one in Pattaya can love you same me." Mam knows my heart is hers and hers alone and swore that my longtime fidelity has nothing to do with a magic potion. "I not need magic to make you love me."

"You're right." I loved Mam for her and she loves me for me. No one else can handle either of our special madnesses, plus at my age I was too lazy to butterfly with a bargirl or go-go dancer.

"You want go out. Go out. Not get too drunk." Mam worried about my getting into an accident or a fight more than cheating on her.

"I'll only drink beer."

"No tequila. You have son. Not want him not have father."

"Okay, no tequila."

I called Jamie Parker and we arranged to meet at an old haunt.

I kissed Mam and my son good-night and caught a slow bus to Pattaya.

Forty minutes later I walked into Chez Michel on Soi Sahm. Jamie Parker was on his first beer. He had always been thin, but the new gauntness was worrying.

"I know what you're thinking, but I'm okay." The exiled New Yorker explained that he had gone on a six-month Ice binge with little Ort, the twenty-three year-old go-go dancer from the Paris A Go-Go. "It's all over. Ice, Ort, and not eating food."

He ate three courses; salad, steak, and dessert.

Afterward we walked to the Buffalo Bar for a nightcap at a slow pace.

Jamie was in a New York state of mind.

"Tomorrow will be nine years since 9/11. Remember everyone saying how it would change the world. Nothing's changed. Nothing at all."

He paused and a second later a woman's body hit the pavement with a soft thud. We looked up to see from where.

A second-story balcony.

A groan reverted our attention to the woman. Her fall hadn't been fatal. Jamie knelt down to help her.

"Pai ke ki."

She didn't want our help. Two women came out of the shadows. They regarded us as assailants, until recognizing the woman's face. She was no stranger. We called for help, as a crowd gathered around the woman. A pick-up appeared and two men loaded the suicide onto the back of the truck. They drove off to Banglamung Hospital and I overheard from an old lady that the jumper was one of the other woman’s lover. She had found out about her seeing someone else. Her leap to the street had been an act of love. I explained the story to Jamie outside the Buffalo Bar.

"If she had wanted to kill herself, she would have jumped from the roof."

"Have a little heart." People frequently jumped to their death in Pattaya; mostly jilted lovers and bankrupt farangs.

"She broke her arm. That’s all and you know what day today is?" Jamie dragged me to the bar.

"September 10th." I couldn't recall anything significant about the date.

"World Suicide Prevention Day." Jamie ordered two Chang beers. They were stronger than Heineken. "I read about it in the Bangkok Post. She was trying to kill herself on a day like that."

"Suicides aren’t interested in dates only a relief from their misery." Four year ago during my black period I had contemplated killing myself, although only with a gun, which I couldn't afford, and I rejected jumping as too messy.

"Then she should have picked another day. The terrorists from 9/11 did."

"9/10/2001 was rainy. Ceiling visibility in New York was a 1000 feet." No way they could have found the World Trade Towers in that slop.

"I know, but the real reason they didn't pick 9/10 was that it was World Suicide Prevention Day or maybe someone talked them out of it."

"You really think nineteen towelheads had any idea about what day it was." I had never heard of World Suicide Prevention day until Jamie mentioned it.

"Yeah, I do and your'e being a little anti-semitic with a statement like that. If you're going to drive a plane into a building then you want things right. Everything. They did it on 9/10 out of respect for what they were about to do. Suicide."

"You're crazy."

"Then you give me a good reason why they chose 9/11."

"It had nothing to do with 911 being the emergency telephone call letters for many countries." I sipped the beer from my glass. The ice made it nice and cold. I had actually researched the numbers once and said, "9 is the second cube and 11 symbolizes threat in numerology. Revelation 9:11 warns of destruction. George Bush Senior declared the creation of The New World Order on 9/11/2000. Eleven years later 9/11 and 9+1+1=11. September 11 is also the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11."

"Stop it before you go mad."

"Two tequilas." I signaled the bartender to make them doubles.

I had seen a man go insane on numbers before. He was trying to figure out how much a girl loved him by the times that she didn't kiss him. The answer came up zero.

Bix was found dead in a park at the northern tip of Manhattan. His fingernail had scratched arcane formulae in stone. My fascination with number came from studying Math in university. My Multivariable Calculus professor failed me in my sophomore year. He had done me a favor, but I still respected the power of numbers and said to Jamie, "Numbers are only numbers."

"So 9/11 is just a number."

"Nothing more." I wondered how many times 9/11 had been said since 9/11.

Billions of times a day. Those numbers added up to no good, especially since the Pentago construction began on September 11, 1941.

"But not if you consider GW Bush as the anti-Christ." I lifted my glass.

"And you do?" Jamie’s eyes rolled in his head like a broken slot machine. He was no fan of GW Bush, but he didn't believe in any devil other than himself.

"I don't believe in anything, other than my son, my wife, and beer."

We downed the tequilas.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll keep trying to kill myself with beer." I ordered two more Chang. "Is that all right with you?"

"It's not like we have a choice."

"Beer." We clinked glasses. "The only way to go."

On any day of the year.

RETURN TO NORMAL by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after the collapse of the Trade Towers the westerly wind shifted and a southern breeze spread the funereal smoke across Lower Manhattan. The poisonous fumes smelled of a blazing cannibal BBQ.

Later that afternoon I caught a train north to Boston. My sister put me up in her basement. I watched the Red Sox on TV. My home team were too far out of first to gain a spot in the play-offs. My sister joined me and said, "Another year of the Babe Ruth Curse, but it looks like the Yankees might make the playoffs."

"Not many New Yorkers are talking about baseball these days."

"They will one day."

"I supposed life must go on."

"It always does," answered my sister and she went up to bed.

The Red Sox lost in the late innings.

Life did go on.

On the weekend my sister suggested a drive to Newport, Rhode Island. The yacht club was holding its annual boat show and her husband was thinking of purchasing a new boat.

"I'm not really into boats."

"I'll bring my bike and you can ride around Newport." My sister understood my mindset. We were family.

"That'd be nice." I hadn't been to Newport since the 1969 Jazz Festival. Led Zeppelin closed out the show. My older brother and I left during DAZED AND CONFUSED to beat the traffic. The bass line thundered for miles, as we drove away into the night.

That Saturday in 2001 was a tribute to a New England autumn. Clouds dotted the sky and the a cool breeze shunted summer south. The trees were changing colors. We dressed for the season.

My sister's husband sped to Newport in his three year-old Audi. Work at his law firm had resumed several days after the planes hit the Trade Towers. The cars on the highway drove 10-15 miles over the speed limit. The radio was playing Gloria Gaynor's DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY.

I sat in the back seat with my four year-old niece. Warah was talking about her doll. Its name was Shirley. I listened to every word, wishing my name was Shirley too. Anything to get the image of a burning people hurtling out of Windows of the World out of my brain.

We arrived in Newport around noon. The parking lots for the Boat Show was packed with gleaming Benzs, SUVs, and sports cars. I unloaded my brother-in-law's bike from the roof rack and my sister suggested a ride around the peninsula.

"We'll meet you back here around 4."

"It won't take him that long to bike around Newport."

My brother-in-law liked doing things fast. He was a Yale graduate.

"I'm in no hurry." I had finished BC without any honors. I took my time, plus these days rushing around seemed senseless.

"Uncle Bubba, wear a helmet." My niece was well-trained in safety measures.

"For you always." I tugged on the plastic brain basket and waved good-bye.

I looked over my shoulder passing Brenton Cove. The Jamestown Bridge gleamed in the sunlight. The long span had replaced the old ferry.

I circled stone walls of Fort Adams. Several families picnicked on the lawn. The aroma of hot dogs wafted through the park. People were having fun.

Farther along I passed the Country Club. Men and women stood on the fairways dressed in colorful clothing. A solid whack signaled a good drive for an older man. The ball flew through the air to land on the green. The golfer wore a broad smile, as he handed his iron to the caddie.

Upon reaching Ocean Avenue I biked east along the rocky shore and wheeled into Goose Neck Cove. The shimmering white sands of Gooseberry Beach were empty. The lifeguards had retired for the summer and swimming was prohibited by law. I ditched the bike in the dunes and swam in my underwear. The cold waters of the Atlantic brought back memories of childhood visits to Newport with my parents. I toweled dry with my teeshirt and continued on my route past the summer cottages of Gilded Age.

My mother loved viewing the rich people's mansions.

Surfers dotted the break beneath the Marble House. The waves stretched like corduroy to the horizon. I ate fried clams at Floe's Clam Shack. The crisp fried batter complimented the Ipswich clams and I washed down the traditional New England repast with a Narragansett beer. It was 3 and I returned to the Yacht Club.

The Boat Show was winding down and many of the visitors relaxed around the tables with a Bud. I rested the bike against a chain link fence and sat at a bar. The nearby conversations were mostly about boats, but a trio of overweight men in their 40s were discussing 9/11.

The subject quickly narrowed to revenge.

"We should go over there and kill them all," a bald-headed man spoke in strident tones. He looked as if no one in his family had left the USA since World War II.

"Why go anywhere?" His jock friend was red-faced from either drink or sun. "Press a button and nuke them to the Stone Age."

"Who are we attacking?" I asked the men.

"And you are who?" The bald man regarded me with suspicion.

"A fellow American curious about your choice on who we should attack."

"The president says Al-Qaeda and they're in Afghanistan."

"That's a start," his friend added, signaling for a round of Bud-Lite beer.

"And then Saddam in Iraq. He tried to kill the president's father. The Afghanis and Saddam." The more athletic of the group pointed in my direction with suspicion. He wanted more than an eye for an eye from the perpetrators of 9/11

"How many Iraqis and Afghanis were on the planes in 9/11?" I knew the answer.

"Ten."

"None. Not one."

"Bullshit." He was convinced of their guilt by the wrath of politicians and TV news commentators. America was out for blood. Whose blood didn't matter as long as the red flowed from a Muslim.

"Not bullshit. The truth. The fifteen hijackers were Saudis and the four pilot came from anywhere else, but not Iraq or Afghanistan."

"Saddam financed it those towel-heads in Afghanistan." The jock had a TV sense of geo-politics. "The Taliban were sheltering the enemy."

“Why do you think we were attacked?”

“It’s unimportant. Fucking the Arabs is what we have to do. Tora Tora Tora just like the Japs at Pearl Harbor."

"No mercy."

I was into revenge too. The buildings had fallen less than a mile from my apartment on East 10th Street, although I wasn't giving the president a carte blanche for total destruction of the Middle East.

"They deserve whatever they get."

They clinked plastic champagne glasses and hooted like owls on steroids. I strangled my responses. No one in America wanted to hear any arguments against a rush to judgment. Everyone's blood was up.

Mine too, but for different reasons.

My brother-in-law motioned for me to join him. I left the bar without any good-byes.

"You have a good ride?" His hand was filled with brochures.

"It was a good day for it."

And so were the days after it, because I was alive and alive was a good thing for anyone who have lived through 9/11.

There were billions of us.

RAIN RAIN RAIN by Peter Nolan Smith

September 10, 2001 was a rainy day in New York. The Weather Channel predicted precipitation throughout the afternoon.

I exited from my East 10th Street apartment at 9.13 and headed toward Velseka's on 2nd Avenue. My breakfast of a bagel and coffee came to $2.11 and I gave the waiter a dollar tip. My funds were low, but it was one thing to be broke and another to act broke.

Tony thanked my generosity and refilled my cup to the brink. At least someone was happy to have me back in New York after a six-month stay in Pattaya.

My friends were busy setting up autumn projects or putting their children in school. They answered my phone call with trepidation. Few were in a position to lend me more than $20.

>I exited from Velselka's Diner and watched the NYU co-eds run through the rain. Innocent smiles suited their young faces. They had their lives were before them and like any old person approaching sixty I was jealous of their future, but I still had one too and went over to Astor Place to catch the Lex Line train to Grand Central. I got off at 42nd Street and walked over to the Diamond District on 47th Street. The rain hadn't let up and I bought a cheap umbrella for $4.99. It kept off most of the wet, but nothing could fend off the thickness of the humidity.

My old boss shook his head and I asked the diamond dealer if he had any work.

"Sorry, but there isn't anything happening here, but the rent." Manny lifted both hands in apology. "Why you come back from Thailand? I thought you had it made there."

"It was a bullshit job." Sam Royalle's and my S&M website failed to take off. Both of us were too vanilla to make it real.

"New York's not what it was." Manny read my soul like a ten cent comic book.

"I know." Wall Street Bankers and brokers played the roulette wheel of hedge funds and derivatives. These Ivy League nouveau-riche scorned the dedication of artists and writers. "If I could click my heels like Dorothy Gale in her ruby slippers, I would."

"And end up in Kansas." Manny loved THE WIZARD OF OZ. "I don't think you'd like that."

"No, you're right about that." I had never been to that straight-line state.

"At least it wouldn't be raining." Manny liked the sun. He went to Florida after New Years. That tan lasted the rest of the year.

"This is a drizzle. It's monsoon season in Thailand."

"Drizzle, mizzle." Manny slipped a C-note into my hand. "Wait a few weeks and I'll have work for you."

"Thanks, comrade." Manny hailed from Brownsville and I came from Boston's South Shore. AS much as I could have used more money, a single hundred dollar bill was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

The rain was lightening up, but I could tell it would last the rest of the day. It was Monday. The Oyster Bar was only a few blocks away. A September day like this was a good day for a bowl of chowder. The weatherman predicted a pleasant day for tomorrow.

It would be 9/11/2001 and I liked that results of that equation better than the result for (9/10) /2001 = 0.000449775112.

Carpe cras or none of the Latins said, "Seize tomorrow."

September 10, 2001

I well remember 9/10/2001.

It rained all day in New York.

The day before I had almost gone swimming at Lake Awosting, except the park ranger blocked the path to the old granite swimming hole. No one was allowed in the lake after Labor Day to avoid legal problems from drunken locals and tourists.

There was no one swimming at the Coney Island or the Rockaways on 9/10/01.

Rain and a lot of it.

I recall turning on the TV and seeing the weather report for the next day.

Sunny cloudless skies and that sounded lovely to me.

NO SWIMMING ALLOWED by Peter Nolan Smith

The weather forecast predicted a sultry summer day for September 7, 2001. My friend Alia had transported a Porsche Boxer from the UK and her high-octane convertible awaited clearance at the Newark Customs. The British diplomat asked me to accompany her to the Jersey docks and I agreed on the stipulation that we drove the two-seater north along the Hudson.

"Where to?" The blonde mother of six had left the children with her ex-husband for the day. Alia was up for most anything.

"I know a place." I extolled Lake Minnewaska Park. "I've been going up there since the 70s. Once I jumped off the cliff into the lake."

"How high?"

"Sixty feet." It felt like a hundred.

"We won't be performing any death-defying feats today."

"No, those days are over."

I was nearing fifty. The gravity transformed the water to semi-hard mud and the soles of my feet were very tender.

"We're going to Lake Awosting. Its slanted stone beach bears the scars of the Ice Age Glaciers before disappearing to the lake's blue-emerald waters."

"Fabulous, it will be my last swim before autumn." The slim blonde diplomat loved hot weather and we taxied over to the Port of Newark. Her last posting had been in Dar Es Salaam and she conversed with the Tanzanian taxi driver in Swahili.

At the entrance to the docks the Customs officials treated the UN under-assistant with the utmost deference. Oxford was her alma mater. Her family dated back to before the invention of sliced bread. The process of retrieving her car took about seven minutes. She beamed a smile of thanks to the officials and we sat in her Porsche.

"I bought this from my mother's inheritance. Sitting in it reminds me of her." Alia pressed a button. The top folded into the rear. She gave the engine some gas.

"The car sounds fast." I settled back into the leather seat and appreciated the growl of Teutonic power.

"Wait until we get on the road." Alia shifted into first and released the clutch, shedding her mother of six status for the role of a woman on the run.

The Porsche had diplomatic plates, but she ran the car below 90 on the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River. We listened to loud 1980s English Pop on the stereo. Conversation was impossible at this speed, although when we hit a deserted stretch of the Northway, Alia floored the accelerator and shouted, "No police anywhere set up uphill radar traps."

Seconds later we hit 130 on an empty road.

The wind ripped through our hair.

Her hand twisted the volume knob for Depeche Mode's PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE.

Our friendship dated back to London.

Leicester Square.

CUT TO 1986.

A young blonde woman arrived at the Cafe de Paris in a rubber dress. Her provocative attire earned immediate entrance and I was slow to realize that this sliver of femininity represented the shards of the English Empire. Her position never mattered to me, because Alia could quote Ovid in Latin and I adored knowledge.

CUT TO 2001

Exiting at New Paltz Alia switched to the radio. NPR reported how America's delegation at the South Africa conference on racism had contested the vote on Israel's mistreatment of the occupied territories.

"That's not good." Our new president was a born-again Christian. GW Bush's devotion to the Second Coming was based on a Jewish Jerusalem.

"Israel has a right to protest any accusation as does the countries opposing it." Alia was 100% on the side of compromise to achieve peace.

"Theft is beyz." My thoughts on Palestine were similar to my feeling about the freeing the North Counties of Ireland, yet I didn't mention Ulster, because we were on a road trip and the day was far too beautiful a day to ruin with an argument over oppression.

I directed Alia down the main road of New Paltz.

The Hudson Valley village was a pleasant college community. Newly arrived students crowded the sidewalks with smiles on their faces. None of them were going home until Thanksgiving.

A few miles out of town the sheer cliffs of the Shawangunk Ridge rose from the valley. Overhead rock climbers challenged the Gunks' sheer ascent routes. Friends watched from below. We drove past the cliffs to the park. The lot was empty.

Throwing towels over our shoulders Alice and I set out for Lake Awosting. Few hikers were on the trail. Unusual for such a lovely day. The path had been built for vacationers at the Lake Mohonk Resort. A carriage road designed to offer panoramic vistas of the Hudson Valley. Alice and I enjoyed our walk and soon Lake Awosting came into sight.

Boreal blue water surrounded by evergreen pines.

Alia cruised slowly by the hundreds of car on the shoulder of Route 55. Overhead rock climbers challenged the sheer ascent routes. Friends watched from below.

"Is Lake Awosting far?"

"At the top of the cliffs."

We turned off the road into Lake Minnewaska Park. No one was at the ticket booth. The parking lot was empty. It was after Labor Day and school was back in session.

We threw towels over our shoulders and set out for Lake Awosting.

Few hikers were on the carriage road, which had been built for rich vacationers at the nearby Lake Mohonk Resort.

Alia and I enjoyed the panoramic vistas of the Hudson Valley and after 30 minutes Lake Awosting came into sight.

The deep blue water was surrounded by evergreen pines.

No one was on the granite beach slanting into the lake.

A female park ranger on an ATV rolled up the trail.

The hefty officer in her 30s braked within a foot of us.

She eyed our bathing suits and towels.

"Where you heading?"

"Lake Awosting."

"You're not thinking about swimming there, are you?" Her voice adopted a threatening tone of authority.

"Why not?" This was America, the Land of the Free.

"Because it's against the law to swim after Labor Day."

"My friend has been saying that Lake Awosting is the best swim in the Catskills. We thought that we might test his theory." Alice's accent was pure upper-class. They usually got their way.

"There are no lifeguards." The ranger gunned her engine, as if she had been instructed to enforce this mandate by GW Bush himself.

"I can swim three miles. What's the problem?"

"Dead men never sue, but the local lawyers wait for some drunk fool to jump into the lake and break their neck, so the families can sue the state parks for several million dollars."

"It's a stupid law."

Alia touched my arm.

She possessed a diplomat's gift of knowing when to say nothing.

"Thank you, officer."

The park ranger drove down the road.

"You still want to go swimming no matter what she said?"

I shrugged a 'yes'.

"The law is the law and as a guest of your country I am obliged to obey them."

"Drat."

We turned away from the forbidden pleasure of Lake Awosting's crystal-clear water.

"I hate this America. It's become the Land of No."

"It's the times. Not the country."

"More like both. Let's go back to New York." The City was the last bastion of the Free.

On the trip home the radio announced that the USA bailing out of the Racism Conference in South Africa in protest of a nearly unanimous condemnation of Israel for their occupation of Palestine.

"Another thing I hate about America."

"What?"

"Nothing." Anti-Zionist talk was as legal in this America as swimming after Labor Day.

I needed a drink.

Alia and I stopped at a bar in New Paltz.

Three beers later I was ready to resume our return to New York.

Alia was sober. She never drank liquor and the Porsche hit 140 on the Freeway.

I sat back and enjoyed the ride, because speed was a rare freedom in America and Alia could drive fast. All I had to do was watch the wind.

NAPS OF THAILAND by Peter Nolan Smith

When a Chinese general was asked about the defeat of the People's Army by the Vietnamese in 1979, he replied, "We get up at 5am and they get up at 4."

The draconian work ethic of NVA seemed to have been sapped by the torrid climes closer to the equator, because Thais and Laotians are epic sleepers with an uncanny ability to find comfort in conditions better suited to a CIA rendition camp.

Some farangs attributed this hyper-sleeping habit to oriental lassitude, however their Eurocentric observations are way off mark.

Most Thais wake before dawn to work in the rice fields until the heat hits treacherous body-sapping temperatures and then 'Khon tam khao' retreat from the sun for a good meal followed by a better nap or nge'ep before returning to the fields for the long afternoon.

This rice farming tradition has been transported to the cities where workers labor from dawn to dusk six days a week.

Having lived in the South of France, where siestas are a valued cultural treasure, I often defended the Thais and other Asians' sleeping habits.

"Naps are good for you," I once said at the Buffalo Bar.

"So explain to me why bar girls sleep twenty hours at a clip," an English bar-goers asked in Pattaya. Jim had been here for years. His vocabulary in Thai was limited to orders for more beer and sexual propositions.

"Only can be several reasons." I'd been in the Orient since 1990.

I didn't have all the answers.

Just some of the right ones.

"Like what?" Jim was eying his date. The plump bargirl seemed alert for the moment. The fifty year-old mustn't have paid her yet.

"First is that she's exhausted from having sex with you." Many farangs in Thailand exist on a diet of Viagra and alcohol.

"Could be." The bar-goer smiled with pride.

"Second, she could be on ja-bah and crashes after sex." His girl's fatness excluded her huffing meth. She was a healthy eater.

"No way. The cops piss-tested her at Marine Disco the other night. She came up clean."

"Well, that leaves only one other explanation and this comes from a very knowledgeable Mama-san of a go-go bar. She said the reason most of these girls sleep so much is that they're trying to escape the reality of having to have sex with a fat farang and would rather live inside a sleep world until they have enough money to rejoin other Thai people. Of course this couldn't pertain to you since you're such a sex hero."

Jim tipped the scales over 280 and his age was a 20th of Methuselah. No one had called him 'sexy' since he was in his teens and that person had probably been the parish priest. For an Englishman Jim had good smile considering he had half his front teeth.

"I'm not so sure about that." Even Jim recognized that he was no Apollo.

Me neither, but I like hearing girls tell me I'm the best I ever had.

It's a lie which improved with age and I sleep in peace content to accept a well-intentioned lie.

Sleeping well is a talent an old man admires with age.

Those damn Thais.

There is nothing like a good nap and as Carrie Snow once said, “No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.”

Ching ching.