June 21, 1990 - Paris - Journal Entry

May 14, 1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on: May 22, 2024

As promised by the guide the trek across the landslide was tricky. Loose shale and rocks under foot. Dorge said two houses had been swept away by the avalanche.

"No one was killed. One man still missing."

He said this with resignation to the danger of living in the Himalayas.

Another trekker Miriam picked her way across the wasteland. Her bare feet were bleeding and her partner, an older German, didn't look in much better shape. Going barefoot like penitents. I can't imagine their sins. I slid a couple of times as did Lance, a New York architect. We both aee better suited to that city's sidewalks.. The porters handled the damaged trail as sure-foored aslike mountain goats.

Reaching the bottom of the valley we crossed the river on a derelict hanging bridge. The current was ever fierce. Falling into the water meant drowning and I was glad to have safely negotiated the span.

At the next village an older woman greeted our passage by sticking out her tongue. Another trekker Dice aka Todd commented that maybe it was part of mating ritual. Our guide Dorge corrected him, "Here the devils have no tongue, so villagers stick out their tongue to show that they are not demons."

"There are demons here." Dice laughed at such an idea.

"Everywhere on my travels across Asia, everyone had warned about the devils or witches in the next valley or island. Upon arriving onward the people of the island or valleys warned their neighbors were evil. Magic was everywhere. A forgotten technology by the West. The worst demons are the royal troopsin Kathmandu repressing the democratic uprising of the people, but those men are seized by a king andhuman.

"All the wooden masks in the villages are of demons." Dorge stuck out his tongue.

I've never seen any demons other than in human forms, but I have seen ghosts."

"You have???" Dorge was alarmed by this admission.

"I have and I'll tell you a ghost story this evening." Ghost stories work better around a fire in the dark. A glass of whiskey helped too.

A crowd of villagers waited by the school and motioned for my approach.

"They ave heard that you have medicine. None of them have seen a doctor in this life."

"I'm not a doctor."

Dorge shrugged with little concern for my being charged with malpractice.

"You have medicine. Only medicine here. Tiger balm and pain and death."

I agreed to the deception and treated infected eyes and hands and feet with antiseptics. I lanced small wounds swollen with pus. They bore the pain without a whimper. I gave a bottle of antiseptic ointment to the teacher, who expressed his gratitude with a solemn bow.

"How much medicine did you bring?" asked Dice. He had attended Cornell for Hotel Management. I had attended Boston College. My major had been Economics and I had graduated sin laude Latin for without praise. My Yankee grandfather had been a Maine doctor. My Irish namesake had been a trolley man in Boston. My only medical training had been at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire over twenty years ago. Thankfully no one in the villages had any broken bones or suffered from a serious ailment.

"Enough to handle a hypochondriac's ills." I had enough to last me till the return to Kathmandu.

LATER

Resting by a prayer wall at another villager. I was a doctor again. Dorge explained that we are stopping too often, so I cut my clinic short by only tending to the children. Babies with coughs got a droplet of sweet syrup. They smiled, as I washed their grimy faces. One old gent complained about a tooth ache. He opened his mouth to reveal rotten stumps. I gave him cloves for the pain and advised that he suck on them. He made a face tasting them, but upon my departure smiled with relief. They waved good-bye.

Ganchemao is the monster peak rising above the valley. Snow clumped in glaciers on the peak. The sun is torching my lips. Dice lends me lip balm.

"I have to take care of the doctor."

"Then you can be my nurse."

Later

I walked ahead of everyone. Even the porters. I want to be alone. The wind, the scent of pines and flowers, the world of sky peaks. I sneak peeks, because I am trekking on a narrow trail and pay attention to where I put my feet rather than trip and fall into a deadly valley. Lots of rocks. Twisting an ankle would be a disaster this far from the road. I stop and rest, regaining my breath. Our porters pass smoking cigarettes. I wait for a lagging trekker. Dieter is suffering from dysentery. He appears after fifteen minutes, looking like shit. I advise him to hire a porter. We are dismissing one at the next village. His pack is empty.

"You shits are only get worse."

"I'm fine."

"You don't look it, but up to you."

Miriam appears that she has abandoned the Sherpa way and is wearing her boots. A wise decision, but I can tell by her gait that she really savaged her feet. I offer to clean them and binding them with tape. She shakes her head not willing to admit she was wrong. Lance looks at me and we both shrug with no comment.

Best to let people do what they think is best.

LATER

We stopped for an afternoon tea. Each step up this valley transports us further back into medieval times. This could be 1452 AD. Yaks, the Sherpas' beast of burden, lumbered up and down the trail under heavy loads of up to a hundred-fifty pounds. Three times more than the Sherpa porters. I'm carrying about ten pounds and every step is a struggle. Dice is much younger than me and is handling the ascent to Langtang glacier with ease. Lance and I are in the same shape.

Crap.

I had to switch pens. I had given away two to young boys.

This is as faraway from civilization as I have been in my life. Far from Boston. Far from New York. As soon as I put my boots on the trail I was transported to the 15th Century. No telephones, no radio signal. No electricity other than our flashlights. No subways. No bagels. No diamonds on 47th Street.

Dice, who retired from Wall Street at 30, squatted with me on a boulder, and asked, "What do you think these people think of us. Trekking through their villages without stopping for more than a cup of tea and sleep."

"They think of us a cash cow. Without us life would be even harder. They have been thinking the same as all travelers since before time. In good times lots of people. In bad times fewer and most of them bad."

"And these are good times?"

"Be more trekkers, if Kathmandu was quiet."

"My guide, Porterhouse, says nothing that happens in Kathmandu affects up here. Do you think these are good times?"

"Nothing is burning and we don't see any dead people. I saw the soldiers shoot into a crowd in Kathmandu. They weren't aiming over their heads. It's peaceful up here. Normal times. Nothing special."

We were surrounded by Rhododendrons. The huge flowers flourish in the high altitudes. I had won a small bush in high school from a church raffle. The only thing I had ever won.

I squinted up to the mountains, the high glare off the snow peaks. These villages weren't flush with money. They never had any. Bad things happened. Bad things happened a lot. A sick child. A sick parent. A sick cow. The King had opened Nepal to foreigners in 1951. The 1950s hadn't hit Langtang Valley yet. This trek wasn't too popular, since it dead-ends at the glacier. There is no open crossing into the neighboring Helambu Valley.

"Maybe in ten years this valley might improved, but the only transport are your feet, on the sherpa's back, or a yak. These people are shackled to poverty, they are slaves to the lower altitude people, but they proudly live their lives as had their fathers and mothers. And do they want our lives?"

"I don't, which is why I quit Wall Street."

"Not after making a fortune."

"I was lucky and left the casino before I gambled it all away."

"All the porters play cards. For their pay."

"To be blessed by luck."

"As are we all."

May 13, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 20, 2023

I wish my camera was functional. It had been smashed after a porter chucked my bag from the bus at the trailhead.

The scenery and people are amazing. I speak with two German trekkers. Dieter is in his 40s. Thin and fit. His hiking partner is Miriam. She has decided to not wear boots and go barefoot like some of our Sherpas. She attacks me for hiring them as slaves. Lance says, "We pay them so they can put food on their families' tables."

"I've seen where they live. They don't have tables."

Lance shook his heads.

Our first stop was a little tea shop with a Coca-Cola flag flying on a pole. Lance and I bought Cokes for everyone. The porters happily thanked us, then lit up cigarettes, inhaling deeply. Lance and I were still huffing from the lack of oxygen. The trail climbed along a savage torrent of glacier melt.

This morning Lance and I were passing through a forest of tall plants. The porters were way ahead of us. I stared closer at some flowers. They looked familiar, because they were marijuana. Lance asked if we should take some and I shook my head. The families of this valley lived on less than a $1 a day. When we emerged from the reefer forest, a young boy ran down the slope, shouting, "Hash, hash, hash."

I was glad to have brought small bills and bought an ounce for $20.

His eyes were crusted due to an infection.

I pulled out my medicine kit. He seemed wary until seeing the Red Cross. I washed away the crud with antiseptic eyedrops. He smiled with gratitude and I filled a small vial for his future use.

"I'm impressed," said Lance.

My grandfather was a surgeon for the Royal Canadian Medical expedition in World War I." I doubted any of his knowledge had been passed through two generations, but I was a severe hypochondriac. My paranoia had killed me many time. Never with success. So I possessed a good sense of preservation for myself and others.

At the next stop I showed the other two trekkers the hashish. Ty Spaulding and I smoke some at lunch. Lance refused, saying he needed his lungs for the next stage.He wasn't a smoker and neither was Ty's partner.

The hashish was fresh off the bud and strong, but probably not the best idea, since Dorge warned us that we were crossing a landslide after this.

I'm sure he's right.

He always is so far and I wonder how many times he has trekked this trail.

May 13, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - 1990 - Journal Entry

Published May 29, 2023The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist. The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I'm not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin and Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, "Chag-po nang."

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I'm sure like the Eskimos they have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

May 10, 1990 - Syabru Besi - the Himalayas - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published previously May 17, 2023

Before leaving Kathmandu on the bus to Langtang Glacier, Lance and I each dropped two valium. The road was reputed to be extremely treacherous and neither of us wanted to experience the fears upon seeing shattered buses in the chasm.

At Thamel Market the driver loaded about sixty Nepalese onto the bus along with our guide, Dorge. Our Sherpa porters were on top with the packs. People were leaving the city.

Last night the army had cleared the streets with gunshots. The pre-democracy forces were calling for an end to the monarchy. The generals understood change meant them losing money. A strict curfew was enforced by the military. Protestors are arrested and shot at without warning. Lance and I also are glad to be leaving the city and sat on the bus' left side.

The bus headed north on a paved two-laner and climbed out of the verdant valley into a narrow steep-sloped chasm. The road was one vehicle wide without any guard rails. Lance was out cold, but I kept looking over the edge. The drop was a cliff and I searched the gorge bottom for any bus or car or truck wreckage. I spotted several far below the road. The Nepalese didn't seem to care about the danger. The Sherpas even less so. Lance remained in a blissful unconsciousness. After two hours I joined him.

We finally arrived in Syabru Besi at mid-morning surroune by the Himalayas.

Everyone got off the bus.

The porters were tossing down our gear. Dorge directed the effort. One grabbed mine backpack. He threw it to the ground. I heard a clink. I knew it was my A2 Olympus striking the ground hard. I opened the bag and checked the camera.

Broken.

I stuffed it back in the pack, hoping the damage might mend itself during the trek. The valium made delusion easy, as did the altitude. Lance stumbled from the bus. Drool on his chest. I pointed to the stain.

"Look at your shirt."

We were twins.

The Valiums had done their work. The New York architect blinked in the high sunlight. Sky scrapping mountains surrounded the small village. Dorge pointed to a restaurant. We were all hungry and the plan was to set out away after lunch. We walked up to a cafe. I couldn't see inside. Hordes of flies crawled on the glass.

"This place is filthy," I complained.

"Before filthy. Now only dirty," answered Dorge.

"Order food. We eat outside." I shrugged, because from here on in we would be eating our own food. If we didn't get sick from this, we never would.

Another bus pulled into the village. Mostly Nepalese, but two more westerners. They were younger than Lance and I and looked in good shape and their equipment seemed to be their own, instead of rented like ours. We were far away from our homes and I ordered a beer. Lance shook his head. He was Jewish and the Tribe don't have a reputation for drinking like the Irish. We are always home as long as there is beer.

Altitude - 1400 meters

May 9 1990 - Kathmandu - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published on May 25, 2023

Kathmandu is a magical city filled with pilgrims traveling to the city's holy shrines and temples of the pantheon of Asian religions. I haven't seen a single church and with good reason. Jesus might have traveled to Kashmir after his crucifixion, but no one here worships him here. Certainly not this atheist, but I am in wonderment, when I stumbled on a procession for the Kumari, the living goddess, in Thamel. These young girls are chosen from the Newari tribe to serve as living vessel for the Hindu goddess Durga until menstruation. The word Kumari means 'virgin' in Nepali. They are revered for their purity, but soldiers disrupted the holy ritual as the government has outlawed the gathering of people, as the citizens clamor for democracy. The TV announcers are accusing the demonstrators of communism and godlessness. So far there is no bloodshed.

I walked to the Thai Air office on the main boulevard shaded by trees harboring thousands of sleeping bat. The ground is splattered with bat dung. I'm glad to be wearing my sneakers.

Last night after drinks at the Yeti Hotel Lance and I walked through dark streets. He was wearing flip-flops and stepped waist deep into an open-air sewer. Up to his waist. I pull him out. Cursing. I help him back to the hotel at a distance. He smells strongly of shit. I hope he doesn't get a disease from this dip in the city's waste waters.

This afternoon Thai Air wasn't able to confirm my flight from Delhi to Paris.

I might have to fly to Munich. It's been over eight years since I was in Germany. I left in December 1982 on an overnight train to Gare du Nord, having ended my working with the pimps at the BSirs nightclub. I wonder what would have happened, if I had stayed in Hamburg.

I would have continued my affair with Stephanie De Leng.

That year I decided after Christmas in America to return to Paris and work at the Bains-Douches. Stephanie wanted me to meet her in Amsterdam. I was too broke to buy a ticket. I crashed at Julie Cole's apartment with the photographer Arthur Gordon and his Doberman. A shabby apartment behind the Gare De L'Est. Stephanie and I later met in New York. The lingerie model had gained weight due to a chronic illness. I thought she was faking the sickness and brutally said so one night. She wrote me a scathing letter and my friend Andy read it.

"What did you do to this woman?"

"I guess I said the wrong thing." I had no sympathy for her and I remember my older lover Linda Imhoff in 1970, as we were laying naked in bed in my Shannon Street apartment, "You're dangerous, because you don't know what you are doing."

I was eighteen at the time.

I'm now thirty-eight. Stephanie could have been the one, but the only way I could get it up was to pretend she was a nun. I had no trouble with the one Patpong go-go girl I took to the Malaysia Hotel a couple of times. I haven't talked to any females in Kathmandu.

And certainly not the Living Goddess or a nun.

Koh Samui 1990

I first arrived in Thailand 35 years ago After traveling on a westward bound round-the-wotld ticket from John at PanExpress, New York - Biak - Bali - Java - Sumatra - Singapore. April. I rode the train north up the Ka Peninsula to Surat Thani. I got off the train at night. A midnight ferry took me to the island. I got a bungalow on the a coal beach. It was quiet and beautiful. I woke up in the morning to have breakfast and exited into the bright sunlight. Then two housekeepers splashed water on me. I laughed. I was so angry until they said it was Songkran. Water Festival. Fun, fun, fun. I miss my family. I miss Thailand.

ERIN GO BALI 1990

My first trip to Bali was in 1990. Kuta Beach was the island's most popular tourist destination for sea, sun, and fun. Being a pseudo-intellectual I opted for Ubud, an idyllic village reknown for Legong dancers, ornate temples, and non-disco evenings in bamboo cafes playing Balinese trance music.

I rented a small house off the Monkey Forest Road surrounded by verdant rice paddies. My bedroom overlooked a ravine whose fragile stream served the village's bathing needs. Ketut the house boy served breakfast and instant coffee in the morning. I wrote on a Brother Electric Typewriter. At night croaking frogs accompanied the gamelan music from the Pura Dalem temple. There was no international phone service other than at the post office. Traveler’s checks and cash were the sole forms of monetary transactions.

At night I listened to the BBC World News on a Sony World Radio and read tattered used books. Dragonflies buzzed through the room and the stars tolerated no earthly rival. I loved Ubud and stayed in the town for months.

Nearing March 17th I suggested to several westerners or ‘mistahs’ that we should staged a St. Patrick’s Day parade. None of them had Hibernian roots. My Balinese friends were enthused at the idea of celebrating Ireland's patron saint by drinking beer.

"And we wear green."

My house servant Ketut shook his head.

“Can not wear green. This unlucky color.”

“Unlucky.” He had used the Bahasa word ‘blog’. I had never heard it before.

"Yes, my uncle he have green car have many accidents.”

"Green is good luck in Ireland and Ireland is the European Bali."

"Ireland tidak Bali. No green and you not wear green too." Tuut was adamant about this edict, but said, "We drink beer and make music."

"That is good luck?"

"Drink beer always good luck."

Especially if a 'mistah' paid for it. I didn't argue with tradition and adjusted St. Patrick's Day in accordance with local customs.

On March 17th Ketut, his friend, and I drank Bintang beer at the Cafe Bali. They brought drums. I sang Irish ballads of British oppression and at sunset we marched down Monkey Forest Road with me singing BY THE RISING OF THE MOON. I adlibed the words.

Ketut said it was a sweet song.

“By the rising of the moon, by the rising of the moon, the pikes must be together at the rising of the moon."

Other Balinese joined the march. No one wore green. We trooped back to the Cafe Bali and switched from beer to 'arak', a strong palm wine. It wasn't as strong as Jamison's Whiskey, but it was a good drink for the first St. Patrick's Day in Ubud and I told Tuut, "Maybe one day you will wear green."

"Maybe a long time away from today."

"But not as far as never. Semoga Beruntung."

I thought that meant good luck and replied, "Go n-éirí an bóthar leat!"

At least I thought I said that.

Everyone clinked beer glasses.

I hadn't worn green either. It was bad luck in Bali and Indonesia in general since the color signified exorcism and infidelity. Satan was not in my soul and I was faithful to the world. The Wearing of the Green had to wait to someplace else.

It's a color close to my heart. Erin go bagh.

ps this was originally written in 2013

February 9, 1990 - Biak, Indonesia - Journal

Night has fallen and the rain has stopped pounding on the tin roofs. I'm lying in the hotel room. Overhead fan cools the room. I haven't shut it off since my arrival. It's hot here. LA was in the 60s. Oahu 70s. New York was cold. Winter cold. Snow cold. Nothing  like here. 80s during the day. 70s at night. Sweltering hot like my trip to Mazatlán in 1975.

I spent the night reading First Contact by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson, recounting two white men's first incursion into the Papua New Guinea Highlands in the 1930s. According to the writers the Melanesians first arrived in these parts across an Ice Age land bridge natives about 40,000 years ago, maybe even more, who can trust white man science? I wanted to ask them, if they are a lost tribe from deepest Africa, but they don't resemble anyone genetically other than themselves. They are their own race. In the book author encountered about the white men with Dead return from death for strange gods who treated them as potential slave, buying loyalties with shells addiction tobacco, in the fear of the Dum Dum bullet. This was the last great frontier. Still is across the waters on the mainland, which is one of the biggest islands in the world. Here I am. Beer in hand on the edge of the world. 

I've met two American MD's on their way to the Highlands of Irian Jaya, , a Texas skin diver Larry Smith in his Indonesian girlfriend, Other than six drunk Japanese veterans of World War II. I'm basically the only tourist

Reading the rough guides Indonesian handbook chapter on Irian Jaya makes me want to forego the next leg to Bali and flying over to Jayapura and then up to the Bellamy Valley, but that would have to wait for another time, although the chances of me coming back this way to beak at the end of the world a slim.

I've been writing North North Hollywood, but not that much.

If I had an extra $500 I'd fly to Jaipur maybe next year, because I really like this archipelago of Indonesia after only two days.

So far the trip has been in success. I accomplished everything I wanted to do in LA. I saw Nina Smith. We had a night out. I got drunk as did she. We tried to make love in her car. I couldn't get it up. As much as I wanted her.

I saw Monty. Who's doing well at Propaganda Films. We were friendly. I thought he might be angry with me for asking for money, when he asked me to look at a Bentley Conti in London last year. I learned a lesson. Never ask the rich for money. You have to wait for them to offer it. The old boy from Atlanta wants me to come up with a Lethal Weapon script. He offered me a room in LA. But I'm not really into writing scripts and I want to finish North North Hollywood, which would make a great movie. I thank them for the offer and said I'd contact him. 

Sadly I couldn't get in touch with Sharon, because her husband's mother explained that after she left my place last year she got into dope very badly. She was fucking young men in the neighborhood, stealing from them and anybody else, the mother-in-law threw her out after she almost burnt down the house. She went through her her father's death money pretty quick. The mother-in-law didn't hold it against her. She had lost both her husband and son to drugs. She's not bad. She's just a junkie. But I don't really want to see her for a long time "Do you want her number?" asked the mother-in-law.

I thought about it for a second and said, I'll see you, when she gets better."

Such is the power of pornography to ruin people's lives no way do I want North North Hollywood to glorify porno as much as I like pictures of naked women, big cocks, and cum. 

Erotica. Is what I'm talking about hardcore. I kissed Nina and I want to write a scene about our near sex scene in her backseat. She was the first woman I kissed in ages, but who knows what tomorrow brings? Nothing in Biak.

Tonight I'm alone with the sound of the fan overhead in the hotel kick you

Lost in Erie and Jaya.

February 6, 1990 - Biak - Journal

Yesterday I left Cousin Johnny in Honolulu. No more drinking at the Hotel Street bars. No more Femme Nu Go Go. So far New York to Los Angeles to Hawaii. Last week I picked up my Garuda tickets at Pan Express' LA downtown office. LA-Honolulu-Biak-overland to Jakarta and then Sumatra-Singapore-train to Bangkok, where I'm meant to pick up my onward tickets to Nepal, Paris, and London. Two legs of my trip around the world completed. More to come. No more Hawaii. LA with volcanoes, but only one freeway. I stayed with Cousin Johnny in his college dorm and his roommate, who was obsessed with Jamie Lee Curtis. Who isn't?

Cousin Johnny drove me to the airport. "What's in Biak?"

"I don't know. My travel agent had said that no one going to Bali ever got off there. My Uncle Dave had served on a destroyer during the Battle of Biak. He never went ashore. His ship kept the island under bombardment for a week." "Japs didn't want to give up."

His father Carmine back in the East Village was a WWII buff.

That evening Cousin Johnny said goodbye at the Honolulu airport and I boarded the Garuda flight across the Pacific. I had never been this far from the East Coast. Not Paris. Not the Yucatan. Hawaii 4700 miles from New York. The Garuda flight took off on time. Every miles farther from the known world.

The 747 landed on the long runway, low on fuel after a long trans-Pacific flight. Beyond the tarmac jungle and a small terminal. Biak, an island off the coast of Irian Jaya. 9100 miles from New York. It had been deep winter back there. LA and Hawaii had been warm. The tropical heat hit the passengers, as we descended the air stairs. Easily 90, as was to be expected sixty miles south of the equator. Once more on Earth. Hundreds of Bali-bound tourists stretched their legs, as black as night Melanesian musicians, naked except for a gourd over their penises strummed BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON on their guitars.

Their ancestors had obviously migrated from Africa sometime before the last Ice Age, when the shrinkage of the oceans created land bridges to connect these future islands to what is now Asia. A fat Christian missionary ignored the musicians to be greet tribal bible thumpers. The tourists went into the air-conditioned gift shop. The man of God traversed the tarmac to a single-engine prop plane. Biak was the epitome of remote, however the Christian was bound for a destination unknown to everyone other than the airport's traffic controllers, the pilot, him and his God. Once he was aboard the plane sped down the runway and took to the sky. Time from leaving the 747 to lift-off about ten minutes.

When I purchased the ticket from Pan Express I asked John, the owner, "What is Biak?"

He said, "It was where the plane has to stop there to refuel. In Irian Jaya. The Indonesian part of Papua New Guinea."

A land of naked headhunters. In 1961 the Asmats on the south shore of the island had eaten Michael C. Rockefeller. A rich man's son. The Metropolitan Museum had a wing of Melanesian wooden sculpture dedicated to him. I always went there. No one else did. Just like here. Biak. I passed through immigration to have my passport stamped for an Indonesia by a Javanese official. Good for three months. Biak and many islands through the vast archipelago were in the process of transmigrasi or shipping Javanese by the thousands to populate distant islands to deal with extreme overcrowding on Java.

Exiting the terminal into the midday sun I put on my sunglasses. Javanese motorcycle taxi drivers sought my traffic. I surveyed the street. Palm trees wavered in the air. Pick-up trucks and motor scooters cruised Jalan Mohammad Yamin.

Across the street bordering the bay was an old Dutch hotel. ROUGH GUIDE suggested staying there and I hefted my bag over my shoulder. I was sweating bullets by the time I reached the check-in counter. A room per night was $10. I paid for five nights and asked for a cold beer to be brought to my room.

A double bed and a overhead fan. Clean, but the tropics had been hard on the walls. Still the sheets were crisp clean and a cold beer arrived shortly. After tipping the waiter 2000 rupiah I changed into shorts and walked out to the deck. Cold beer in hand. I sat at the table and unfolded the Nelles map. Beyond the lawn Yappen Island floated on a slate blue sea. Clouds rolled in from the west. The promise of rain on the wind. This island lay beyond the Orient. I sipped the beer. Biak, Indonesia. So far away from everything. Why had I never come here before? Why had I gone to Paris? I took a long pull for the Bintang beer. No answers. They didn't matter now. I was here now. A light breeze wafted from the shore. The air smelled of jasmine. Night was coming my way. I turned on my Sony Radio to the BBC. It was my only contact with the Western World and I fell asleep happy to be someplace far beyond the reach of the West.

The Chiang Mai Guesthouse

The odds of surviving a head-on collision with a pick-truck while driving a motorcycle are not in favor of the motorcyclists, but I was lucky enough to walk away from such an accident in the Golden triangle of the Thailand back in 1990.

I was unscathed, although my left wrist was warped like the neck of a Klingon Bird of Prey and the 125 cc MTX was in need of a new front fork. A hospital in Fang set my arm in a cast. The rental company came up to drive the motorcyle and me back to Chinag Mai. 2500 baht. $100. Cheap. I booked at room on the top floor of the Top North guest house with a sunset view of Doi Suthep.

The hospital painkillers wore off that evening. My forearm was protected by a heavy plaster cast, yet every movement zapped a pulse of pain through my body like a disco strobe. Beer offered no relief. I need something stronger and walked to the pharmacy by the Eastern Gate, praying for sympathy from the old Chinese druggist.

He wasn't a man to say 'yes' easy.

Every day and night the old man was assailed by a deluge of strung-out junkies seeking a substitute for heroin or opium. Mr. Ma rejected these desperate entreaties with a poker face. He was not a methadone clinic, but few had broken wrists and the Chinese pharmacist counted out twenty red pills.

“Strong. Stop jep. No drink beer. No whiskey, okay?”

"Krap khun carp."

I exited the drugstore and washed down a Dilaudid with a Chang beer at a nearby bar. The girls were white-skinned and tall. A change from the dark Isaan emigres in Patpong in Bangkok. I smiled at them for a second and they sneered with derision.

Junkies were very low society or 'loso'.

A second pill and a third beer transported me to the sweaty netherworld and the pain faded from my body. Time ticked off a clock. The next Bangkok train was scheduled for the morning. There was no way I would be on it.

A booming English voice cut through my nod. A tall red-headed Brit was babbling about the Isle of Wight. I recognized the voice and opened my eyes. The speaker was not a narcotic mirage.

Toby had a hotel on the Isle of Wight. They boiled lobsters at the Osbourne House Annex, where I had holidayed one August with a South African model. The Englishman was ranting about Goya paintings to an overweight female backpacker. Toby squinted beyond his drunken vision and blurted out my name in disbelief.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just traveling.” I made no effort to move. The beer and Dilaudids had kidnapped my legs.

Today weaved over to my stool and the pimple-faced twenty year-old bar hostess escaped into the night. She was looking for adventure and not whatever came her way.

“Why aren’t you on the Isle of Wight?”

“Gave up the hotel. It was losing money.” Ignoring my cast, he explained his presence far from his wife, child, and family auction house in Chelsea. “I bought a plane. One day I flew to Dieppe for some cheap wine. It was a beautiful day and I kept going to Istanbul. After that it was flying by compass, until I reached Chiang Mai. I like it here. The mountains, the people passing through, and I met this girl. Lovely girl really. So I sold the plane and bought a guesthouse.”

“You bought land?” The Thais prohibited any farang from owning property.

“No, I registered the house in my girlfriend’s name.” He unfolded his vision for a Chiang Mai version of the Chelsea Art Society, an art society off the Kings road. “This guest house will be the stepping-off point for the Shangri-La of the Orient. Tribal art, travelers from around the world going to Burma, Laos, the Himalayas, cheap beer, good food, beautiful girls. You know this was once the crossroads of the world.”

“More like a detour off the Silk Road.”

Presently the only traffic over the Burma border was opium and ja bah or meth.

“Sure, it’s not Times Square, but Times Square isn’t Times Square anymore. If it was, you wouldn’t be here in Chiang Mai.”

I had loved 42nd street in the 70s. Go-go bars, porno shops, street thieves, hustlers, whores, and pimps. I had first seen Sherri on screen there. Nothing like that existed in the States after Reagan came into office.

“New York isn’t what it was. Neither was London.

“Which is why we’re here. This is the New Babylon.”

Chiang Mai was fun and I offered “Glad to hear you’re happy.”

“Couldn’t be any happier than to be with my girlfriend. She is so cool.”

I hadn’t heard anyone describe a Thai girl as cool. Beautiful, sweet, loving usually worked for the honeymoon period. Afterwards the descriptions grew a little harsher. When I expressed my concern, Toby waved off my negativity.

"My girlfriend loves me too much to play me for a buffalo. Come with me and I'll show you."

A tuk-tuk transported us to a secluded lane in the old city. The wooden guesthouse rested in the shadow of a crumbling Buddhist spire. The restaurant was filled with unshaven youths. The unwashed hippie wannabes were listening to Bob Marley.

They greeted Toby with a chorus of 'No woman. No cry'.

We drank more beer. Hs girlfriend spoke very good English. She was the spitting lookalike of the Chinese actress from THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG. Her name Pas porn. Toby called her XXX. Her cousin played guitar by request. Porn asked if I wanted a girl. I was in no condition to imitate Toby and I commandeered a hammock to fall asleep.

"So what do you think?" Toby unfolded mosquito netting and the night went white.

“You’re right. This is paradise.”

I woke around noon and my wrist ached bad enough for me to want to cut it off. I swallowed another Dilaudid and drank a beer with Toby. Two evenings evening he accompanied me to the train station. I bought a 2nd Class sleeper berth. He shook my good hand and waved good-bye.“

"Come next year and you’ll witness the miracle."

“The Chiang Mai Arts Club.” The standard-gauge train lurched out of the station into the rice fields. I drank whiskey in the restaurant car. The night air was sultry. The small villages aglowed with life. I fell asleep in my 2nd Class AC berth. The Orient didn’t get any better than this.

For my next trip to the Orient I flew east from New York to London. I ran into Toby at a Chelsea bar. He was entertaining art dealers touting a Fragonard up for the following week's auction. He had been welcomed back into the family business. No longer a disgrace or a danger to anyone. Not even himself. I asked “What’s happening with Chiang Mai Arts Center?

“Sssssh.” THe art dealer brought me to the side. “Six months ago I came here to clear up some banking details. When I returned, the guesthouse had been sold. My girlfriend had run off with the guitar-playing cousin to parts unknown. End of story. I learned my lesson. Don’t fall in love with a Thai girl.”

“Ever?”

“They have magic in their blood.”

“Magic?”

“Makes you crazy and do crazy things. Things you’d never do with a western girl. I lost everything I had there and still wanted her back. People want to know why, but I can’t even explain it to myself.”

“So no more Thailand.”

“I’m back with my wife. It’s a safe love for a man my age.” Toby tightened his tie and rejoined his clients. His story came as no surprise and I vowed to never succumb to such a weakness. Within a month I knew the Thai word for love.

Kwahn-laht.

Proving one thing.

There is no fool like an old fool.

May 15, 1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Published May 26, 2023

The trail has left behind the trees and flowers. Spring millet and sorghum fields surrounded the villages. Beyond this cultivation are rough pastures of high-altitude grass. Yaks lazily chomp their cuds under the watch of young masters. They gather the yak paddies to dry in the sun. The main source of heat in the Himalayas. We have been transported back five-hundred years. Still no sign of civilization, except for bottled beers. Not a single TV antenna spout over the sturdy stone houses. None of them are made of wood. I have no radio reception on my Sony Word Band radio.

At the first tea stop I wash my filthy sox in the raging river, careful not to fall into the savage torrent. Such an accident risked serious injury. Hiking with dirty sox in my boots feels like I walking in mud. I switch to flip-flops, same as the sherpas. The trail is easy as we have entered a broad valley.

My thoughts of losing weight by trekking were ruined by the constant eating to fuel the uphill trek. I have gained a few kilos and will have to be careful to not pack on more in Paris.

Still I'm in the best shape I'e been in after the months in Bali, Sumatra, Malaysia, and Thailand. My heart faithfully pumps blood into my oxygen-starved brain. I pissed and shit like a Sherpa. All my organs seem to be in working order and I've even relegated my brains down to my fifth favorite.

LATER

Another village. More doctoring. A lama has asked to see me. I go into a small house. the room is illuminated by yak butter oil lamps. Ancient prayer books and scriptures are stacked on the wood planked floor and the mud walls are covered with a pantheon of demonic illustrations. The lama is in his fifties, only a little old than me, but he looks eternal and serene.

Dorge translated his blessings.

"Some of the demons are good. Some bad. Nothing in between,"

"Like human beings."

He has heard of my quack doctor routine. No one I treated has complained of my remedies to infected eyes, festering wounds, or my other gentle minstrations. I try to gie the lama my flashlight. He refuses with a smile saying he doesn't want to defile the earth with discarded batteries. I'm probably one of countless foreigners who think giving is good, but there is no way anyone up this high could ever afford the batteries needed to use anything electric.

My father drove us a few times to Mt. Monadanock in lower New Hampshire. It's height was less than three thousand, however the top was above the treeline and the taller White Mountains were visible to the north. My father entered the summit hut and read my words. The Maine native was instantly angry by my writing in the humble mountain's guest book, "The view in for the birds."

My father was very straight and regarded my sentences as anti-social behavior. He was right. I was on the path to ruin. I had never been higher in my young life and was hurt by my father's lecture. The trails on Monadanock were well-traveled, yet every year someone dies stepping off the trail.

Here we are 3000 meters above the sea. Danger exists here from avalanches, falls, wild yaks, the winter cold, rock slides, and demons. I bow to the lama and step into the brilliant sun. Not a cloud in the sky.

I am a day's hike from the glacier.

Last night I could read a book by the starlight.

I am as far as I will be from civilization on this trip.

Yet I am no uncivilized by this trek.

I'm just glad not to be in the white world.

I haven't spoken to my family in Boston since calling them collect after my head-on motorcycle accident north of Chaing Mai. I said nothing about the crash. I chopped off the cast in Kathmandu and the morphine pills killed the pain. I still had a few, but I'm saving them for the long flight to Paris.

My parents didn't mention any mishaps on that phone call.

No bad here.

No bad there.

Whatever is happening in Kathmandu is happening in Kathmandu.

I intend on finish writing THE BEST IS YET TO COME this summer.

Maybe someone will read it, so my parents know there second son is not a ne'er-do-well. Then again thee people up here think I'm a doctor. As was my grandfather. I join Dice and Dorge and Lance. We set off for the last stage.

The Langtang Glacier.

May 14,1990 - Langtang Glacier - Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 23, 2023

2500 meters - Ghora Tabula

This morning Dieter woke up with vomit on his shirt. He doesn't talk about being gay or having AIDS, but he has said anything about spending time in Bangkok. I respect his staying in the closet and told him that we are all sinners. Dieter had been traveling the last three years on $250/month to see as much of the world as he could before his immune system crashed. Dice worries that the German could die on this trek.

"It's his choice. Life. Death all the same," says Dorge.

I tell neither of them of his deadly sickness.

The higher we climb the worst the sun.

Thankfully I have lip balm from Dice and sunblock. Lance's lips are painfully black and face scorched by the sun. I lend him mine. We stopped for lunch without any shade trees.The ports have rigged a shelter from tarps. The cook has once more provided a huge lunch. I had hoped to lose weight on this trek, but I think I've gained a few kilos. Dorge orders us to eat more to have energy. Our bodies are not used to this effort. The porters have been gorging on tsampas, daal bhaat, and Thukpa stew. Eating is the only fuel for our bodies. Our whiskey is finished and I've been sober for a few days.

The hippie teahouse trekkers regard us as heretics on the Asia on $5 a day guide book. All in our sherpas and guides and food cost us each $20 a day. Lance and I share our excess food with the children, who trail us from village to village. We only give Dieter food, because his body has been wracked by dysentery. He still refuses to turn back. Yesterday Miriam left him and attached herself to another group of backpackers.

Israelis.

These young men and women exit from their occupation service in Palestine with short hair. Their heads have sprouted Samson locks overnight. None of the teahouses will serve them food or allow them to stay in the rooms The Sherpas can't stand these long-haired ex-soldiers, saying that they steal and cheat villagers every step of the way like they had invading another country.

Earlier in the year I had read in the International Herald Tribune how Pakistani tribesmen had kidnapped a group of Israeli backpackers. One of them shem broke free, grabbed an AK47 and killed all the militants and a few of his friends.

At the age of 18 they are drafted into the Israeli Army of Occupation Their army time kills their soul and this afternoon as I drank tea one of them came over to demand some.

Fuck off."

I had heard how the Israelis on this trek all spoke of the Palestinians other than animals. I told this one that was the way the Nazis had spoken of the Jews during the Holocaust. The largest Israeli wanted to fight me. I held a rock in my hand. Lance defused the situation by saying we were all here to be one with the Himalayas.

After the dispute Dorge suggested that we avoid any contact and we let them tramp out of sight.

"Israelis always trouble." Lance, a New York Jew, agreed and doesn't have time for the either.

Miriam abandoned them and rejoined Dieter, who has employed one of extra Sherpas to carry his bag. The two of them would be perfectly cast as a gay monk followed by an insane nun in a medieval movie. It has been said that Tolkien's books had been inspired by the Himalayas.

Miriam attended to Dieter.

It's time for him to turn around.

He threw up blood.

Miriam is a saint for taking care of him. He is very brave to persist in this trekk. Almost as if will die when we reach Langtang Glacier.

Miriam kissed me after lunch behind a prayer wall.

"Thank you for taking care of Dieter."

When we returned to group, the German glanced at my crotch. My zipper was still down. The retired school teacher smiled at me like he wished it had been with him. My left wrist has been broken in a motorcycle crash on the Burma-Thai border. I was lucky to be alive as was Dieter. I had hammered off the cast in a Patpong go-go bar. I lifted my crooked arm. It hadn't healed yet I and said, "This makes everything harder."

"So I see. I'm taking your advice. I'm going back down. Miriam is coming with me."

"I'm glad to see you. Maybe we'll meet someplace else. Maybe Kathmandu."

"Vierleicht."

Lance and I gave them food and we shook hands. Miriam kissed my cheek. Her sweat smelled sweet in the rare air. The three of them walked out of sight followed by a young beggar. That was the last I saw of them.

May 12, 1990 - Langtang Trek, Nepal - 1990 - Journal Entry

Published May 30, 2023

The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist with each parting of the clouds.

The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I'm not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin in Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, "Chag-po nang."

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I'm sure like the Eskimos the Sherpas have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

English is my only usable language in this valley other than hand signals, which I use whenever I treat people for cuts, festering wounds, and encrusted eyes. My thermometer amazing them, since I have to put in in their mouth. I usually stick out my tongue to show that I am not a demon. The last of my patients at this rest stop are watching me wash my sox. All these young boys and girls are all barefoot eith busted toenails.

They waved good-bye, as we like every foreigner passing their village head higher to Kyangjin at the head of the valley.

We pass head-high prayer walls erected by faithful Buddhists. The porters mutter prayers and Dorzee says, "They not say these prayers. No one read Tibetan. Not read English. Only lamas read walls. No one here read. No one go school. Not have schools. Before we have many walls. Now not many. Everything not same. No grass, no yaks, no money, no carving."

Something was not right in the mountains. The monsoons came at a different time and the snows were always late. For some reason every year was warmer.

A platoon of Nepali soldiers pass us on the trail heading up to the glacier. The sergeant talks with Dorzee, while the patrol hikes forward. After the sergeant's departure, he says, "Still have trouble in Kathmandu. Most time never see soldiers up here. Government want to tell Sherpas they are in charge. They come and they go. They never stay."

The villagers are Sherpa, Tibetan or Gurkha. They live on the other side of time. Far from the world below. Once the monsoons come the trekking season will be over and the porters will return the shoes and warm clothing to the Kathmandu agencies, then return to up mountain. The villages will retreat into the security of a past lost to the now.

The poverty increases every step forward. Life goes on as it has for millenia. Everyone is uneducated, illiterate, unwashed, malnourished, sick, wear rags, but they always have a smile for us. especially when I give a pen and paper or a postcard of Bali or Thailand to the children. So little will make them happy. I also have sweets. Several Lonely Planet backpackers have ventured reproached me for distributing these candies to the locals. They give no one nothing. Lance tells me to ignore them.

After the next tea stop the porters light cigarettes, swing the packs onto their backs. The loads are getting less and their pace is twice ours. All for $5/day.

Thankfully they are getting all that money, unless they lose it in cards.

The sun is setting over the high rim of Himalayas. It is a little colder than before and Lance and I have decide to sleep in the tea house. Still cold, but it's out of the wind. We have run out of whiskey. Dice and I have switched to the milky millet beer. Tongba, which we drink around a blazing fire. Three cups and I'm feeling okay, glad to not humping on the trail and breathing easier at this altitude.

The porters are playing 'Jhyap', a take and discard card game whose which you play from the three best hands. Money is being waged by everyone. I have no interest n losing money and retire to my room. I am out cold at 8pm.

LATER

Dorge won seventy RPs. Labarai won even more from the porters and villagers. Two-hundred Rupees. About three days of trekking wages and the losers have been losers all the way up the trail. None of them have the sneakers I bought them, but they still have cigarettes

I've worked hard, but not like the porters.

Working at the diamond exchange I never break a sweat. The heaviest thing I lift is a pencil or paper. I don't want to work. I want to travel all the time, but I need money.

I wish I could sell my noVel NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Maybe I'll be lucky in Paris, London, and New York. Maybe I'll be able to sherry it to Monty. It really doesn't matter. I'm four days away from civilization.

May 12, Rinche - Lama Hotel - Langtang - Journal Entry

Published previously May 18, 2023

Day two Lance and I dined with the Sherpa porters, cooks and guides by a campfire outside the guesthouse. There is no electricity in this valley other than our flashlights and my Sony World Band radio. I turn it on, finding a scratchy Nepali station playing local pop sounding much like Indian music. The Sherpa are happy and break out their cigarettes. Damn, they love smoking tobacco. I think about joining them, but my lungs are torched by today's trek.

There was culture clash of endurance. We were hungry after the hard steep climb. The Sherpas seemed fine. It had been a hard trudge on the trail. They were carrying forty kilos each. Our load were small backpacks. They hadn't even broken a sweat.

"The first thing a westerner learns in Sherpa is 'Lo ngi' or "Carry this." The next is 'seng t'a nyi' or "Carry me."

Dorge says tomorrow the trail will become steeper and we will cross a landslide. I wonder if the Sherpas have as many words for steep as the Eskimos have for snow.

Lance and I drank two glasses of whiskey. Dorge said none for the porters or anyone else in our crew.

After dinner Lance and I went to our separate rooms. Our legs are noodled and neither of us are acclimated to breathing at this altitude.

The trekking crew remained outside by a fire. They smoked heavily and play cards. Laughter and cursing. I can't decipher the swears, but I can discern that they are all in good humor.

Working in nightclubs had taught me the menacing tone of calling someone something bad.

I turn on my Sony Word-Band radio

Nothing, but static in this deep valley.

No one here knew anything of the troubles in Kathmandu.

Several nights ago Lance and I had stood on the roof of our Thamel hotel. The protestors ran down the narrow street. The police were behind them. The soldiers trapped them and started shooting. They spotted people watching from the roofs and aimed up, aimed, and pulled their triggers. The officers had told them that this was a communist uprising and they were going to kill the king.

Kathmandu didn't exist here.

There was the trail and the villages and the river and the Himalayas covered with snow.

After this I was flying to Paris with stop-overs in New Delhi in Frankfurt.

No one was waiting for me at either terminal.

I had friends in Paris.

I would call them once back in Kathmandu.

There are no phones here.

Only word of mouth.

All I am is a trekker in a lodge by a cataract raging through the valley. I open the window. A billion stars are overhead. Something strange about the ground. Millions of fireflies carpeted the grass. Blinking like the stars. This place is magic. I breathe in the thin air scented by pines and fire. Only the earth, the river, and the smoke of a smoldering fire.

We're heading higher tomorrow.

No one on the way but us and Sherpas. Yaks too.

The poverty here is crushing.

Porters are paid $2 a day.

We're paying ours $5.

They're carrying forty kilos. My pack weighs five.

Just so I can see a glacier at the end of the trail. The room next door is quiet. Lance is asleep.

Outside the Sherpa have fallen asleep.

It's only 9.

I lay my head on the pillows.

Dreaming of the Cafe le Flore in Paris.

May 12, 1990 - Langtang Trek - Journal Entry

We lunch next to a roaring cataract in a small inn.

Flyblown as usual, although not as bad as the restaurant at the trailhead. We are three hours out of Syabu where we lodged last night. Lance and I are not roughing it like the foreign trekkers huffing under the weight of their packs. At $25/night we have three squares.

There are nine of us. Lance, me, Dorge, Lasabhari, the cook, Den, the second cook, and four Sherpa porters. The porters cook us a good lunch. We sip whiskey. Lance brought two bottles of Johnny Walker from Kathmandu. A great idea. Healthy pours into the cups. Whatever you consume, you don't have to carry.

The porters get a shot of whiskey at night after which they settle into smoking cigarettes and playing cards. Once the whiskey is finished it onto beer, which every tea house along with tea and Coca-Cola.

Altitude - 2400 meters

Lost Baggage Singapore 1990

From 2020

The Bugis people were great voyagers from Sulawesi. They sailed small crafts from Padang Padang to many ports of the Far East ranging from Burma to Northern Australia. Many practiced piracy and as Thomas Forrest wrote in A Voyage from Calcutta to the Mergui Archipelago, "The Buginese are a high-spirited people: they will not bear ill-usage...They are fond of adventures, emigration, and capable of undertaking the most dangerous enterprises."

Most westerners are unfamiliar with the Bugis and especially their complex five gender society.

Men and women are joined by 'bissu' which combined all five genders, 'calabai' a false woman, and 'calalai' a masculine female.

Thriving Bugis communities existed throughout the Orient, although few as famous as Singapore's Bugis Street on which calabai transgenderettes gathered in the 1950s to sexually entertain randy sailors and curious travelers. According to legend the easy way to discern which working girls were female and which were trannies was that the calabai were beautiful and the female hookers were ugly.

Singapore banned wanton behavior in the 1980s to transformed the tawdry area into another worthless shopping mall.

In 1990 I flew from Sumatra to Singapore. Back to the modern world away from orangutans, volcanos, jungles, and cannibals. My bag wasn't in the carousel. I informed the airline of my loss. They gave me money for a hotel and food and said to come back tomorrow. I had the shirt on my back. I exited from the terminal to discover a elderly Chinese man sitting on my bag. He didn't understand a word I said, but surrendered my bag. Lucky and I took a taxi to stay at a cheap Chinese hotel on Bugis Street.

The trannies were few.

The sidewalks were clean.

The Long Bar at Raffles was undergoing renovations.

I left the next day for Penang.

Each time I returned to Singapore, I stayed for enough the time to catch the train.

Singapore has nothing to offer anyone looking for a walk on the wild side. Not anymore.

It's the most boring big city in the Orient, but not in the 60s.

It swung with the best of them.

Bugis Street selama-lamanya.

Forever.

30,000 Feet over Burma - May 5, 1990 - Journal Entry

Previously published May 24, 2023

I have a flight to Kathmandu. I wish I could stay in Bangkok, but my money is getting low. I called New York from the Malaysia Hotel lobby. A collect call to Rickie Boy, who complained, “I haven’t had anyone to drink with since you left. The city sucks. The clubs suck. The drug sucks.”

“At least here in the Orient there are life”

“Where are you now?”

“Bangkok, the City of the Angels. A paradise for the wicked,” I recounted visits to Patpong the notorious red-light district. Go-go bars and more go-go bars. “I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world.”

I didn’t mention my head-on crash with a pick-up north of Chiang Mai. I had been killed instantly and just as instantly reincarnated back with this body. Only difference. A broken wrist.

“It does sound like paradise.”

“Yes, but it’s very poor. And they have lepers in the streets. Hiding from the sunlight. Stumps of hands and feet. Gnarled faces.” I tapped my cast. My wrist itched. The plaster cast prevented any scratching.

“Not a pretty picture.”

“No, it is not.” But New York had over 50,000 beggars and madman freed from the closed upstate mental hospitals. The refuse of a nation after decades of wars, poverty, greed, and neglect. There was no saving them nor will Buddha save the desperate souls of Bangkok nor me.

“When are you coming back?”

“I’ll spend time in Paris and London.”

I had no reason to be in America yet. The Knicks had knocked out the Celtics. I had friends in Paris and London. I had worked in both. I could get a job at a nightclub on my fake carte de sejour.

“But I seriously thinking about moving out here. If you want to join me next year, then start saving your pennies. Departure date. Jan. 2, 1991. Although I don’t know, if I can last that long in the USA. I’d love to leave forever.”

Not that America was heaven on earth, however I knew its evils too well.

“Good luck in the Himalayas.” Richie laughed, “I’m stuck with my father and so are you. Your job will waiting here.”

“Thanks.” I kept it short having covered the reason for the call. Back in New York I still had a motorcycle, an apartment, and a job waiting in New York.

I hung up and joined Dawn on a lobby couch. The diminutive go-go girl had been a good companion over the last week. She actually looked sad to see me go. She caressed my cast. I couldn’t feel her touch. I slipped her another 1000 baht. She wai-ed me and said, “You come back. See me. Love you long time.”

I wai-ed her back, wishing she was coming with me. I am a fool.

The ride to the airport through the traffic took an hour. I had another hour and a half until my flight’s departure. I grabbed a Bangkok Post and a Singha beer in the lounge area. The itch was worsening. I couldn’t reach it and downed another Dilaudid. Men were saying good-bye to girlfriends. Some are sad. Other men are greeting their friends. They are happy. This must be the Hello-Goodby Lounge.

The terminal loudspeaker called for all Kathmandu passengers. I finished my beer and proceeded through customs and passport control. None of the officials paid me any mind. I was just another farang or foreigner leaving the Land of Smiles. The Thai Air flight plane took off on time and I left Thailand for the first time. I would be coming back soon.

LATER

Ten klicks below are the arid rice fields of Burma, burnt brown and begged for the monsoons. The rumors of the military’s corruption, forced migrations, massacres, and starvation are not rumors. I had been on the northern Thai-Burma border. Drug lords and Karin rebels fight the junta. No one wins these wars, but there is too much is at stake to surrender. Neither Thailand nor the USA have cut off ties with Myammar. Heroin was why the French and America fought long wars to control the drug trade. They never stood a chance. These countries are not France or America.

I saw one temple in Bangkok.

Wat Patpong. No Buddhas. Only near naked girls dancing above a bar.

Why did I leave?

An hour later I sight the Himalayas to the north. Snow capped peaks stretching for hundreds of miles. I had seen them in National Geographic. Never this close. I had enough money to trek into them and I was dying to see the Himalayas closer than at eight miles high.

LATER

A golf course is next to Kathmandu airport. Soldiers are everywhere. The pro-democracy wave has washed over Asia. Students are calling for the abolishment of the monarchy.

This evening I met Lance. A New York architect. We have hired a trekking team through the hotel. Te most popular trek is the Annapurna circuit. I don’t have enough money for that sixteen hike. We chose Langtang Glacier. Only ten days. I purchase two Kingfisher beers and sit on the roof, watching the sun light up the Himalayas.

Dorge the guide, has arranged trekking permits in less than an hour. He points out the peaks. We have a Nepali cook and Sherpa porters for an early morning departure in two days, which is a good thing, because I hear gunfire. The army is shooting students.

“We were stupid, “says Todd, another trekker from Hawaii. I had told him about Bangkok.

“How so?”

“You should have brought go-go dancers from Pat-Pong.”

“So they can ask, “Where Tee-vee?” No thanks.”

I am here for the mountains.

The highest in the world.

May 11, 1990 - Brabal - the Himalayas - Nepal - Journal Entry

Previously published May 17, 2023

After lunch on the trail I left the stop and continued up the path. The forest is thick and the ascent isn't too taxing. I've been at it for an hour and haven't seen a single soul. Waiting for the porters, Lance, and Dorge to catch up to me.

Maybe I've taken the wrong trail, except I see the bootprints of trekkers. The Sherpas are either in flip flops or barefooted. I had bought our crew sneakers, but they attached them to the loads, wanting to save them for sale back home. I don't understand a word, but they are carrying heavy packs smoking cigarettes and joking all the time. A cheerful crew.

It's forty-four kilometers to the Glacier. Thirty miles. We could probably make it in a day on flat grown, but Dorge said the trek will get much steeper tomorrow and no one is in a rush. I like this pace fine.

I wish my camera wasn't broken.

Altitude - 2100 meters.

May 21, 1990 - Kathmandu Nepal - journal Entry

The setting sun silouetting the Monkey Temple transports me evokes eternity. This city below the Himalayas was famously one of the great stops of the the Silk Road as well as the Hippie Trail through Asia; Kabul, Goa, Kuta, Koh Saen Road in Bangkok, and Bali. I've been to four of them. I can't find the hash I had bought at the trailhead of Langtang Glacier. Two grams. It has to be hidden in my bag and I'm worried that the flics will find it at Charles de Gaulle aeroport. Douane officers are skilled at finding things, which is not lost, but can not find.

This morning he threw away the clothes, since he was leaving for New York. The architect had been a good travel companion on the trek to the Langtang Glacier. I don't really like reefer, but I do like opiated hash. There is plenty of hash in Paris, but nothing as good as here.

I wonder if anyone in Paris will talk to me. It's been eighteen months since I was last in the City of Light. I called Olivier from the GPO and he replied to my request to crash with him with a warm, "Quais." but almost as if he had something to hide. Like Cindi had returned to LA or he was fucking one of my old girlfriends or he was snorting heroin or didn't have any money. Not a problem since I could always work for Albert at the door of the Balajo.The uncertainty of what awaits in Paris has my mind working overtime. Is NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD my salvation?

Time will tell.

I read about the Yusef Hawkins trail verdict in the Herald Tribune. Joseph Fama was convicted of second-degree murder. White versus black. Race war. I haven't seen any of that out here, although the Nepali army responded to the call for freedom by shooting the protesters and the same had occurred in Bangkok.

Four months ago Andy drove me to JFK on the BQE.

Hopefully tomorrow there's a USA direct phone booth in the New Delhi Airport, so I can call New York. A six-hour lay over awaiting the Air India flight to London then back to Paris. No one will be waiting for me there. I have used New York City to gauge cities on this trip. the best were Penang, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Kathmandu. I was happy to pass fast through Jakarta, Medan, and Singapore.

Returning to the East Village isn't so appealing, but I have to renew my lease in August and pursue a literary career, instead of working on 47th Street slinging diamonds. I'm checking out of this hotel in an hour, having survived the attack of blood-thirsty mosquitoes. I must have killed a thousand last night, even though I taped over the windows and door with masking tape, leaving smears of blood from my smashing them ith a rolled-up Herald-Tribune.

A taxi will take me to the Kathmandu airport.

No more lepers, no more beggars, no cows wandering the streets in a bovine stupor, no distant drumbeats, no monks, no cremations, no raga dirges from the Monkey Temple, no naked fakirs, no communist rallies against the king, no smiling sherpas, no temples of the Dhubar Square, no glancing north to the gleaming snow peaks of the Himalayas, because today belongs to a plane.

Leaving Kathmandu.