Mango Season for Yai

Throughout the first decade of this century I lived in Pattaya in a lovely house off Soi Bong Koch. The neighborhood had once been a mango farm. The last tree rose survived my front yard. Nothing grew beneath the tree. The sap killed grass and any flowers, yet during the hot season February to April hundreds of mangos sprouted from the branches. My neighbors admired the small green fruit, as they grew into maturity. My wife and daughter harvested the early ones. Tart and hard perfect sliced and smeared with chili sauce. Perfect for Sum Tam salad, the famed spicy green mango salad belover by Thai women.

Every evening an older elephant or chang from the nearby elephant tourist park lumbered down the soi to enjoy the night air. , His mahout sold sugar cane to feed the neighborhood. My wife and daughter stood in the yard behind the fence. They were rightfully scared of changs. In the late 1950s I had ridden atop an elephant at Simpson’s Animal Park in York, Maine. I had been probably the same age was my daughter, Angie, and just as small. I still recalled the smell; dusty. I later learned that the elephants have no sweat glands and cover their cracked skin with dirt or mud to protect their flesh from the heat and sun.

The massive male chang was over sixty years old. Yai eyed the mangos. The mahout gently restrained his snout from snagging at the fruit. He surrendered without resistance, as if there was a reason he hadn’t ravage the fruit. I lifted a bag of mangos for Yai as reward. He stared in my eyes, squinted, then allowed me to feed him by hand the mangoes one by one. When done he extended his trunk as a friendly gesture and I held it with both hands, feeling the strength and his gratitude. He smiled his thanks and the mahout tugged on his ear. Yai silently shambled down to Soi Bong Koch. I realized elephants for all their size were extremely quiet as long as they had a clear path. I smiled, thinking I had a new friend.

The next morning I went to the tree, intending to pick off mangos from the higher branches for Yai.

Climbing trees isn’t advisable for men in their fifties, but I easily scaled the tree. My wife came out and shouted something about red ants. I looked around and saw there were thousands of them living off the sap. Hundreds were on my skin. The second I saw them they bit in unison. I dropped from the tree and wheeled crazily in the driveway, swiping off the ants and realized why Yai hadn’t attempted to seize the mangos off the branches.

“Mot daeng,” my wife laughed. Thais love seeing farangs or westerners do something stupid.

Red ants indeed. I never climbed the tree again.

Throughout that hot season and those to come Yai turned up every year and every day along with my neighbors to feast on the sweet ripened fruits. The tree produced mangos much sweeter than offered at the ta-lat or market on Pattaya Klang. Yai always wore a smile for me and scared the shit out of Angie every time he embraced me with his trunk.

Sadly I moved away from that house off Soi Bongkot in 2008. My business selling bootleg F1.shopping.net clothing has been closed by the Thai Cyber-Police. I returned to New York to earn money. Enough to take care of both my expanding family. Three to four times a year I returned to Thailand to spend time with my clan who lived in Chai-Nat and Sri Racha.

During these visits I traveled to Pattaya for a night or two at the Last Babylon on Earth. Drinking with friends at the Buffalo Bar and wandering Walking Street drinking more. One night I walked along Beach Road with Sam Royalle, my friend from London days and a refugee from a Rasta Brixton yardie gang. He loved go-go bars. I loved drinking. He was English and loved drinking too.

We weaved though Walking Street packed with farangs, Thais, Chinese, Indians, every nationalities on Earth, then the crowd parted and everyone looked over my head. Sam and I turned expecting the Brixton Yardies. Yai stood behind us. A smile on his face. I shone one too. I hugged his trunk and he hugged me. I laughed with joy. The mahout too. Released I bought two watermelons from a fruit stand. They weren’t mangos, but Yai happily popped them in his mouth. We strolled down the street together to the Tuna Bar. Yai and I bid farewell. I handed the mahout five hundred baht.

“Chai yo.” I shouted and Yai bellowed his answer.

Loudly.

I haven’t seen him again, but maybe this hot season in 2026.

After all elephants live a long time and so do I.

Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

Much more to come.

Passion Week Pattaya 2008 - Five Excuses for Sin

Back in 2008 on Good Friday morning in New York Christians prepared to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ at churches throughout the city. Catholics will chant the Rosary during the Stations of the Cross, as incense fumes from holy thuribles. I shall attend none of these rites and neither shall any atheists in Pattaya, for while I might be on the other side of the world, I have lived long enough in the Last Babylon to know that Friday night was special for wicked residents of that tawdry beach resort and most will be heading down to Walking Street for fun and games.

The crucifixion of Christ was the last thing on their minds, since most of their week had been spent recovering from the previous weekend.

On Saturday and Sunday every time you mentioned you were feeling like ten pounds of shit in a one pound bag, your Thai wife muttered, "Som nam nah." or "Serves you right."

Tuesday was wasted in a vain attempt to find your cell phone, with which you vaguely recollect a go-go dancer girl photographing you nude onstage and you judiciously decided that it was better to leave your phone lost. After you purchasing a new cell phone, your drinking partner called to say you didn't look too fat completely naked. 

He had photos. 

You whisper into the phone, "Speak to you later."

Wednesday your wife has stopped staring at you like she wished you lived in a two-story building so she can push you down the stairs.

Thursday evening you treated her to shopping at largest beachfront shopping mall in the world and dined at her favorite restaurant. She ordered the most expensive food on the menu. Things were almost back to normal, but tomorrow is Friday and there was no way you intend on staying in the house.

You could be a real man and say, "I pay for everything. I'm going to do whatever I want when I want wherever I want."

But you better be prepared to sleep with one eye open for the next few nights.

Personally I opted for the coward's way out and used one of following five excuses.

"My friend is having trouble with his girlfriend and needed to speak with someone."

In order for this excuse to work, you had to prep your wife by telling her various tales of friend's woe. Even better if the two women don't like each other, since your wife will be pleased at her counterpart's misfortune.

Of course your wife will understand why your friend was having trouble. He went out every Friday night and got you drunk. 

Always blame the person not in the room. Believe me, he will do the same.

Excuse # 2 "It'll only be for an hour or so."

Thai women understood that when a farang said an hour he meant an hour, unless it had anything to do with drinking while looking at naked women. Then the farang's time reference was distorted by the international non-time zone.

This time warp was most apparent on your night out, when you looked at your new cell to discover that it was almost midnight and you had only drunk five drinks. 

If you left now, everything will be perfect, except your friend, who's having all the trouble with his girlfriend, ordered another round of tequila and pushed you on stage with three go-go girls with whips.

You calculate. 

"One drink. One dance. Another fifteen minutes."

Next thing you know it's 3am and you have no idea how you got to this hotel room.

When you stumble through your house door, your wife will ask, "Do you have any idea what time it is."

Once more blame it on your friend.

"Billie kept saying it wasn't late."

Blaming him is fair, because as previously stated he's not in the room and can defend himself later. All you need is enough time to get to bed.

Excuse # 3 "It's business."

Anytime you walk out of the house with 10000 baht it most certainly was business.

Especially since you invested every baht in booze and women.

Hopefully there was no return on this investment.

Excuse # 4 "It's my friend's last night."

This was maybe three times a year occasion.

Your best friend was either going home to replenish his financial coffers or else on a visa run to Malaysia. Your wife doesn't need to hear the whole truth. She knew you two together were no good, but at least there was only one more night of the guy who made you lose five cell phones in the last year.

Excuse # 5 "You can come with me if you want."

This one threw them off balance. 

Your wife will say, "Okay." 

But as the clock ticked down to blast-off she will realize that you'll make her miserable by taking her to farang pubs where Filipino bands do covers of dinosaur rock bands and the only food was burgers or sizzling steaks, and every man in the place was over 250 pounds and sweated like a Bengali laundryman.

One night like that and your wife will never come with you again. This way you can be free to get drunk, dance naked on stage, and lose your cell phone, because that was what a Good Friday night was all about in Pattaya.

As for Saturday.

That was the day of repentance and saying "Never again."

But your wife knew better and so did that go-go dancer with your new cell phone and so had Jesus on the cross.

Pattaya Always Pattaya - 2010

Back in the 1970s Miami Beach was a neglected beach resort populated by ancient retirees in moldy art-deco apartment buildings. Elderly snowbird males dine at Wolfie's Deli sporting Sta-press shirts, plaid trousers, and gleaming white shoes. Attired in their polyester finery these septuagenarians trolled Miami Beach for blue-haired widows with a little extra income.

The tropical sun set early in Florida. Darkness was not an old man's friend. Females in their 70s looked 50 to a man with poor night vision. Desire youngified every senior female on Collins Avenue. The sidewalks emptied after dusk and the windows female compatriots in looked better than good after dusk and the sidewalks were empty by the end of dusk. Hotel windows glowed with TV lights and the ACs hummed to frost the bedroom to the temperature of the Belleville morgue.

That somnambulant elegance had been vanquished by the trendification of South Beach in the 90s. The decaying hotels  had beenrenovated by New York hoteliers, the decayed rooms had been  filled with hipsters, and the night was animated by bars and discos for the first time since MIAMI VICE.

The city was re-born as a super-cool destination. Nothing kills a city faster than a hipster.

I lived in Pattaya from 1998 to 2008. The population was 90,000. A good mix of Thai go-go girls, drag queens, and fugitive farangs. It was good fun and citizens avoided the Costa de Mafia like we had the pox, then Pattaya was discovered by the squares thanks to the Internet. Worse was to come. Most recently I have viewed the horror of Pattaya under siege by Russian draft dodgers and perverted drunken Indians.  Not a pretty picture.

Luxury condos replaced decrepit beach resorts with hopes of replacing the its faithful clientele of European sex tourists with more fashionable tourists from the Pacific Rim.

Gucci instead of tee-shirts.

Prada took from knock-offs.

Upper-class Thais from Bangkok besmote by the need to flaunt their success with au courant styles have exiled the lager louts and steroid juice monkeys from Walking Street the same way Madonna pushed Meyer Lansky's widow off the throne of Miami Beach, however this transition will take time in Pattaya, for the city on the Gulf of Siam remains the most unfashionable city in Asia.

Dressing well is considered a sign of respect for yourselves and those around you, so Thais can't understand why farangs dress so badly in their wife-beater t-shirts, soiled shorts, and grubby sneakers. I expect nothing better from retired postal workers from South London and divorced accountants of Berlin.

Slobs are always slobs.

It's in their blood.

And they will save Pattaya for the scourge of the good.

Berlin Wall a la Pattaya - 2009

The Berlin Wall fell in November of 1989.

Several years ago a German expat in Pattaya tried to recreate one of many escape attempts over the infamous barrier between East and West by trying to evade police by leaping over a concrete wall topped by barbed wire in a state of nakedness. Stasi Police would have shot him dead back in the good old days of the DDR, however the Thai police responded by restraining the unclothed man and remanding the madman to his embassy.

I recall reading back in the 1970s about another mad German attempting suicide by an escape over the Berlin Wall. He ran out into the minefield without exploding a single bomb, then climbed the wall to become tangled in the wire. The guards shot at him and their errant bullets snapped the barbed wire, so the verrückter Mann fell into West Berlin. Disappointed by failures he jumped into the River Spree to drown only to be rescue by the US Army.

He cursed them all and fled into the path of a street car.

It killed him dead and he died a happy free man.

There is no success like a suicide getting to the end at last.

Free at last. Freikeit im Der Ende.

NAPS OF THAILAND by Peter Nolan Smith

When a Chinese general was asked about how the People's Army were defeated 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.

There’ll Always be an England - 2010

"Will there always be an England?"

The England of today is not that of 1940.

No country is what it was seventy years ago and some of those countries aren't countries anymore like the USA.

Yesterday I was drinking beer with two friends in Nah-Jomtien. Over the hill was Pattaya, the Last Babylon. We drank on the soi. Leo beer. $1.50 for a big bottle. Richard had provided a big pot of mussels scrapped from the bay at low tide. His wife had steamed at the local eatery. It was one big family on Soi 7. There was enough for everyone. Mark was complaining about how England had changed from the time of his parents, as he sucked down the hoi. His rotten teeth were a tribute to those times. Cigarettes and beer and the Sex Pistols. Neither of them had been punks like me.

"No one rioted back then."

"That's because they were fighting the Nazis. War is nothing but a big riot." Richard, who lived off the gleaming from the sea, had fought for the South African army in Namibia. Long patrols through the desert tracking rebels struggling against apartheid. "Those thugs in Tottenham were rioting, because they hate the rich."

"And right they should. The banks fucked up and the government expect the poor to pay for it." Mark was retired on a pension from HM postal service. He would have starve on his pension in Surrey. In Thailand the redhead had a loving wife, a cheap apartment, and enough pocket money for food and beer.

"The middle class more like it." Richard taught in Saudi Arabia. Three months on. One month in Jomtien. He had fallen down in the shower last night. Tape covered the scar.

"There's no middle class in the UK. We're all slaves for the rich." Mark was serious.

"More like the Queen."

"There is no future in England." I quote from the Pistols' GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

"Britons will never ever be slaves." Richard came from good English stock. His grandparents had emigrated to the Cape Colony after the Boer War. He was proud of his heritage.

"Doesn't that line come from RULE BRITANNIA?" I was familiar with the national anthems of England, France, Thailand, and Canada. I could hum them all.

"I think it goes “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves”." Mark sang the words off-key.

"There'll always be an England." Richard raised his glass. We toasted the Spectred Isle and I muttered Free Northern Ireland under my breath, while Mark and Richard dueted Vera Lynn's popular 1940 song. They were in good voice.

My introduction to England had been in 1978. I had been living with the blonde model from Buffalo in a studio next to the Chelsea football pitch on Fulham Road. Quiet except for football days. Everyone was English then. Proud of the puttering cars, Stalinist wages, polluted skies, and double-decker buses. I felt like it had always been 1984 in the UK and tht was six years before Orwell's prediction.

“And England’s dreaming.”

The Sex Pistols tried to their best.

They had the only # 1 chart buster to never be played on the BBC.

That England doesn't exist anymore either.

Chicken curry had outpaced fish and chips as the #1 English meal and even more pointedly by year’s end Mohammad will be the most popular name for newborns in the UK.

Mohammad beating out Jack?

Whatever happened to Percy?

Maybe it all went to shit when Tiny Tim sang THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND at the Isles of Wight in 1970, then again integration is the ultimate price of imperialism. You go, conquer, leave, and bring a little bit back with you.

Not just the curries.

Of course there’ll always be one place that’s always England and that’s the Falklands.

THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND

I give you a toast, ladies and gentlemen.
May this fair dear land we love so well
In dignity and freedom dwell.
Though worlds may change and go awry
While there is still one voice to cry
There’ll always be an England
While there’s a country lane,
Wherever there’s a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.
There’ll always be an England
While there’s a busy street,
Wherever there’s a turning wheel,
A million marching feet.
Red, white and blue; what does it mean to you?
Surely you’re proud, shout it aloud,
“Britons, awake!”
The Empire too, we can depend on you.
Freedom remains. These are the chains
Nothing can break.
There’ll always be an England,
And England shall be free
If England means as much to you
As England means to me.
And to me.
Half my blood is English. The other half Irish. They are at civil war, but one thing in my heart remains true.

Free Northern Ireland.

addendum 2025 Nine years ago is a lot of time. I hacve not set foot in neither Thailand or the UK in three years. A serious sickness stranded this wild colonial boy to New York and Montauk. I have no idea what happened to Mark or Richard. The UK Tories elected an Indian man after a disastrous term with a woman. In my mind I see me traveling the world again. Maybe in the winter. The UK, Paris, Kenya, Thailand.Nothing is certain, but there will always be an Ireland.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS by Peter Nolan Smith

The situation in Bangkok had gotten out of control. The red shirts controlled the city. The police did nothing. People called them daeng moh or watermelon. They were red on the inside. Thaksin was a fellow cop. The Army was in the hands of the old elite or phuu laak maak dee. Bloodshed was a daily occurrence. The government was planning a nationwide curfew. Shut down everything.

Even in Pattaya.

Sam Royalle called me from his house on the other side of Sukhumvit.

"You want to go out tonight. Last night. After tonight all the bars and go-gos will be shut." Sam was recovering from a nasty lung infection. His doctor had advised rest. There was only so much staying at home for Sam. "We haven't gone out in ages."

"I know." I spent my holiday with Mam and our son Fenway. "Let me ask Mam."

Mam trusted me as far as she could see, however Sam had helped me on many occasions.

“It’s holiday. Go out with friend. Don’t come back until you mao kah.”

Basically meaning get legless.

Mam knows that I like drinking. We made love before I left the house. My libido belonged to her. I was late to meet Sam.

By an hour.

Mam had made sure that I had no desire.

Sam and his friends were waiting at What’s Up a Go-Go. The go-go was packed with farangs looking for a girl to barfine for the duration of the upcoming curfew. Sam ordered a round of tequilas. Low-quality. I winced after my shot.

"What wrong?" the manager asked tossing back her tequila.

"Tequila very good."

"Strong." Oi was a tomboy. Twice the man I'll ever be. Several of her dancers were lesbians. Few of the male customers noticed this, because near-naked girls dancing to techno appeared straight to a drunken farang, however several girls glared at a bald-headed German in his fifties with jealousy, as he barfined a pretty girl in her late teens.

At first I thought it was envy, but realized the vicious looks directed at the male was that of a lover. The Jefferson Airplane once sang. “Saddest thing in the whole wide world, see your baby with another girl.” Same goes for a girl going with a man.

I asked Oi, the manager, if her girlfriend got jealous.

“Hung like a snake.” She rolled her eyes mentioning the real Thai word for jealous. “My girlfriend thinks I have sex with every girl here. But not true. I only love her.”

“So you don’t look at any other girls?”

“Looking not same as make love.”

“So when you look, you don’t think about making love with the girl.”

“I not say that.” Oi ordered a round of kamikazes to shut me up.

My friend’s girlfriend was cuddling with another friend’s wife. The two appeared comfortable and when the wife went to the ladies room, I asked the girlfriend, “I know you like girls. Why you go with my friend?”

“He has good heart.” Cher looked across the bar to where he was buying a dancer a drink. She raised a thumb to approve of his choice. They would share the performer for a ménage-a-trois later. “But if I not have him, then I stay with lady. Better than man. Lady love you. Man only want to_____you know. You not think girl love girl bad.”

Bad?

North Hollywood sells several billion dollars worth of DVDs dedicated to lesbianism. I wrote a novel about it. NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Men fantasize about a love triangle incessantly, only this egoish equation doesn’t run true to the dream. Girls who like girls like boys only because they really like girls. At best you’re a man-slave. At worst you’re a spectator.

In 1975 I was hitch-hiking in Big Sur. A hippie. It was getting dark in the forest on US 1. Cars were few. The trees were huge. Camping solo seemed my only option, until a pick-up truck stopped. Two men scurried from the flatbed and ran into the forest like they were wanted fugitives. Tow women were in the front. Both cute in a Rubenesque fashion.

“Where you going?”

“LA.”

“We’re going to San Diego. What you think about getting some wine and camping with us tonight?” The cuter one asked from the passenger seat.

“Cool.” And I jumped in the back.

1975. Over thirty years ago. Long hair. Hippie girls. Big Sur. We bought a jug of wine and drove off the road to a grove of redwoods stretching into a cobalt blue sky. Stars were glowing above the treetops. We exchanged names. Theirs were Flower and Sammy. I gave mine as James.

“James Bond?” Flower was older and had long brown hair.

“James reefer Bond.”

Both of them laughed and Flower rolled a joint. She wore overalls without a bra. Her breasts were big. Sammy’s were small. We started a fire and ate fruit, smoked pot, and drank wine. Within 30 minutes we were naked on a scratchy blanket. They called my cock 007, even though it wasn’t that long. We had sex throughout the night. Flower could take everything I gave her, but the second I entered Sammy my pleasure reached a climax like a storm wave.

Hardly one in-and-out.

Flower didn’t like this. I was supposed to be a tool. As the dawn broke over the redwoods they withdrew began a long sumo-wrestling match into a 69 Death Grip excluding any male touch. Flower sneered at me, as if her groans were merely a subterfuge to entice Sammy into this embrace.

They had pulverized my libido and I understood why the other two men had fled the truck. I crawled away from the redwood grove and caught a ride south, knowing that girls like girls and that was it.

Same in Pattaya.

My friends think these girls are experimenting. Most are tom-dee or lesbians and like Gore Vidal said, “Once is experimentation. Twice is perversity.”

They’re only playing a game otherwise.

I left my friends that night and returned home. Mam and Fenway were asleep. They smelled god. I lay on the bed and read a little. Ezra Pound. Within a few minutes I was asleep, because Mam is the only girl in the world for me.

And she's no lesbian.

At least as far as I know.

LOVELY SLEEP by Peter Nolan Smith

Published 2013

The Thai people pride themselves in the purity of their language. Few English words have infiltrated the common lexicon. Dtam-ruaat is the word for police. The diphonic annunciation can confuse most farangs. I thought for years that Dtam-ruaat meant 'make blood', however make blood is spelled Dtam-leuuat with a falling accent on the last syllable.

Thai culture remains strong, however beer is beer in Thai as is pizza pizza, so foreigners don't starve to death in the hinterlands. 1150 is telephone number for Pizza. Pay the gas and the motorcycle delivery boy will drive to the most distant reaches of ban-nok ie the sticks.

Other commonly shared words are whiskey, taxi, sex, and WC for 'water closet', which along with pizza cover most human needs.

Two years ago I returned to New York from Bangkok via Narita Airport.

Twenty-seven hours from Soi 12 in Jomtien to Fort Greene in Brooklyn.

Most people would have taken several days to recover from such a trip. I needed money and showed up at work 10 hours after passing through customs at JFK.

I was exhausted from the trip, yet couldn't sleep and tried to explain to my son's mother why I couldn't sleep. My Thai was rudimentary and Mam was getting increasingly frustrated by my ignorance of her native language.

"You stay here many years. Why you not speak Thai good?"

"Because I'm a farang."

"I know that." She sounded like she was saying 'farang kee-nok'. I know we aren't as good as them, because I have lived in France and the Thais are the French of the Orient.

Their chauvinistic love for their country's traditions, food, and culture border on fanaticism and after residing in Thailand I have to admit that they aren't half-wrong. The only problem was that I had to move back to America.

New York to be exact.

It was where my job was.

The other side of the world and this week my body clock was off by twelve hours.

Day is night and night is day.

"I can't sleep," I explained to Mam over Skype.

"Go sleep."

"Khan Lak Ter. Last night I had a dream about staying in a house with no walls. It was in the middle of a rice paddy. Very beautiful. Made out of wood. You slept in bed and I held Fenway."

Fenway was our son. He was two years old. Every night his body spun on the bed like a clock. I slept like a stone with him.

"Good dream?" Mam was a firm believer in beauty sleep, however children steal sleep from their parents like a CIA rendition torturer. The theft gave them control. Fenway was no different from the rest of the young in their preparation to usurp the strength of their mothers and fathers.

"Not a good dream. I see men in the dark. They attack us. I wake up screaming." I live alone in the top floor apartment of a Fort Greene brownstone. The walls were thick. No one heard my terror. "A nightmare."

"Fan raai." A nightmare was scary in every language.

"Yes."

"Are you thuuk-phee-am?" Mam was horrified at the possibility that I had been possessed by an evil spirit or 'phee'.

"Not at all." I never scoffed the Thai belief in ghosts. I had been to the house of a 'maih moht'. Magic existed in the heart and soul of her country, however my dream was the harvest of several sleepless nights. My next attempt to clarify the reason for my insomnia pierce the language barrier.

"You mean 'jet lag'?"

"Yes, jet lag." The word was the same for Mam as it was for me.

"Can not sleep?"

"No."

"I understand now." She had never traveled outside of Thailand, so the effects of jet lag were a mystery.

"I can't sleep. Four nights now." The CIA used sleep deprivation to persuade secret prisoners to tell the truth. I had slept maybe ten hours since Tuesday.

"'Oht nawn' not good for old man." Mam was twenty-six. I was more than twice her age. Youth had a mission to take over the world. No one lived forever or not sleep forever.

"I'll fall asleep soon." I couldn't say when, but Mam cared about my health.

"Nom dee." She wanted me to reach a hundred years old. Thais hated being alone.

And at the tender age of close to sixty, so do I.

We have a couple of words for loneliness in English.

"Never want to say good-bye." Barry White sang those words.

And I feel the same way too.

Like a man without a soul.

Happy Sabaii Sabaii Happy

In 1972 Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck attempted to reform his country’s feudal economy on a Buddhist spiritual level rather than a capitalistic model. To best judge his efforts the king created a Gross Domestic Happiness Index based on life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita. The Wall Street Journal ignores the Happy Planet Index, which placed the Pacific nation of Vanuata at the top of the list. Zimbabwe understandably was dead last in 178th place.

Thailand ranked 38 in the 2006 Happiness Survey before coups, yellow shirts, red shirts, shooting in the streets of Bangkok, and burning luxury mall. Four years later the ranking is not lower, but higher.

# 32.

Maybe Thailand mai mi sanuk or not have fun, but they have about forty-three smiles for every expression much like the Eskimos have 23 words for snow. The present smile is known as sao sokh yim or unhappy smile. This mask of chagrin hides the basic dissatisfaction of the nation’s present state.

7/11s do not answer all our needs.

Although a little beer drinking never hurts.

Several years ago I stopped into the Janet Bar on Soi Excite. It was past midnight. Twelve ladies sat on the stool. Two westerners were at the bar. Natalee joined me for a drinking. She was typically looking very sexy, but complained, “Mai mi kak.”

“It’s low season. There aren’t customers anywhere.” Rainy season is lean for the bargirls.

“No good.” Her eyes begged me to bar-fine her.

“Mai mi taeng.” I lied about my finances. Natalee requires training and my long-term devotion to sloth has relegated my sexual prowess to an amateur level, plus I was faithful to Mam, the thinnest woman on Soi 6. She wasn't faithful to me, but one day she would be to our mutual happiness.

“Wah.” She faked crying and went to eat Chinese chicken feet at a table with the other girls.

The nearest westerner smiled sadly and said, “You speak Thai good. How long have you been here?”

“Four years straight.” My first arrival in Thailand dated back to 1991. I was only 39. A mere youth. So innocent. I never thought I would live here, but neither did I think GW Bush would win a second term.

“I’ve been here two years.” His accent was London. East End. He was about 30 and dressed better than most of the beer slobs of Pattaya. “Married a girl and lived up-country the last year.”

“How that working out?” I immediately regretted the question.

“Left her a week ago.” Alan introduced himself and signaled the bartender for two beers. “She is as good as gold, but her family was stitching me up for money. Her step-father is an ex-cop and drinks whiskey all day. And her mother took all the gold I brought my wife for her wedding. The old man wanted 50,000 baht and I told him no.”

“Good idea.” I had heard this story a thousand times. 90% of fathers of the bargirls are a good old rice farmer. Happiness is a bag of tobacco and a bottle of lao khao every day. Easy happy.

“That started the end. He called me a cheap farang in my own house. I bought a house up there. Okay, not much. 5000 pounds and spent 300,000 baht on a wedding.” Alan sounded more disappointed than mad.

“That doesn’t sound gra-dook kat man to me.” Up-country Thais consider farangs money cows.

“No, but the worst was that my wife didn’t back me up.”

"Supporting you would go against the grain. Thai women place their mother first, father second, then the rest of the family, the village, every other Thai before you.” I had experienced this first-hand with all my girlfriends here. The Thais are natural zenotropes. They hate everyone else.

“The old man came to house later with a gun. He wanted money. I told him I was leaving. Asked my wife to come along. She said no, so now I’m here.” He was looking for advice. Advice he wouldn’t follow, because he’s still in love. “My girl ain’t so pretty, she’s 31, but we have sex twice a day.”

“Sex has nothing to do with love.” Although spending a night with Natalee might come close. “Best to cut your losses. You’re from the East End. You’re not a square. Don’t let a rice farmer sucker you.”

“I don’t know.” Weakness of the heart is blood in the water to a Isaan grifter.

“What’s your old man say?” Alan’s father was a dry cleaner in the City.

“He said there ain’t no kids and you’re still young. I’ve been married before.” These failures rankled him. “I wanted this to work out.”

“Sorry.” I ordered another round.

Natalee came over to massage my neck.

“You still not want to go home with me.”

“I want, but have no money.” I was saving my money for Mam.

She frowned and joined the other menless women.

Alan’s happiness index had dropped below the UK average. Mine was someplace near Peru, which is #3.

Beer makes me happy as does hearing someone having it worse than me. We changed the subject and drank two more beers. It was 2am when I left for home. I wished him luck. Natalee blew a kiss. Alan stopped to speak with her. She smiled with enthusiasm. There wasn’t another man in sight.

I arrived back to an almost empty house. My wife has been up-country a long time. She wasn't coming back. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Thankfully my little dog was happy to see me, but then dogs are the only animal who loves you more than themselves.

Happy?

You should see Champoo's tail wag.

Now that’s happy.

Mellow Yellow

Throughout the 00s I lived on Moo 9 on Soi BongKot in Pattaya. My house backed onto a nature reserve. The Thais called it a 'chaai laehn' or swamp. Their definition was justified by the hordes of mosquitoes haunting the dusk, but the various birds thrived on the nightly swarms. Few farangs or westerners lived on the street. I spoke with none of them.

My ex-wife regarded them with contempt.

The Thais are like the French in their haughtiness.

They are better than anyone.

My Thai neighbors tolerated me.

I spoke their language with a Boston accent and wore funny clothes.

My Sikh tailors made me egg-yolk yellow trousers.

"I will never go out with you wearing those." My ex-wife hated them, even though the color yellow honors the King.

"Fine." I wore them whenever I wanted a night out on the town and Pattaya was quite a town in the 00s.

My dog Champoo had no problem with my trousers.

She liked me no matter what I wore, because a dog is man's best friend.

And none were a better dog than Champoo

To hear Donovan's MELLOW YELLOW please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWVJpimnUAc

The Thai Anti-Midas Touch 2014

One of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen in Pattaya was Ann. Her beauty lasted longer than most, as she bathed in the fountain of youth created by her countless sponsors’ generous donation of cash and clothing. The veteran mistress managed these farangs with the skill of a circus juggler yet she was always broke, for beauty has its costs.

Several years ago one night at the Marine Disco a French marine asked Ann to go home. Her refusal evoked an expletive in his native language. Ann had had many frog beaus in her career and told the dejected garlic-eater, “Fuck ta mère.”

The Frenchman reacted to this insult to his mother by throwing a glass of beer in Ann’s face. The impact shattered the glass and a shard tore an inch scar behind her jaw. Blood splattered on the dance floor. Ann was taken to the hospital. Angry Thais wanted to kill the farang. The police arrested him. The chief inspector said that he was looking at 6 months in jail, but after coming out of the hospital Ann settled for 500,000 baht plus medical cost to drop charges. After the French marine paid the money, he was freed from the monkey house with a warning to be nicer to young girls.

Ann's scar was no threat to her beauty. Friends congratulated her good luck. The police took their cut on the action leaving Ann with about 400,000 baht.

The average annual income in Ann's Isaan village is about 60,000 baht. If she retired to Bannok, that money could last years, but Ann was too young to quit the game, so she sent home 50,000 and spent his punitive reward in less than a week.

10 baht of gold = 100K.

New motorcycle = 50K.

Partying for a week = 50K.

New clothes = 50K.

Lending money to friends = 50K.

Money goes quick when you’re having fun, but even Ann was surprised how fast 400K evaporated with the pedal pushed to the metal.

Jamie Parker, a man of little wisdom, heard this story of riches to rags and said, “The Midas Touch works in reverse for a Thai bargirl. Any gold they touch turns into lead, but it doesn’t matter because they think, “There’s plenty more where that went.”

Jamie was right, because a week later Ann was seeing the French marine.

They were in love.

Kwahm Lak 100%., because a girl has to live.

The roots of this need to spend is highlighted in an article from this 1928 article featured in 2bangkok.com

Bangkok, Siam… It has always been a moot question in all minds as to why people of Siam are never over-burdened with riches. Now the answer comes in the form of a series of pictures which demonstrates in graphic way how surplus riches of the people are disposed of. When a man of Siam thinks he’s too wealthy to go to heaven he promptly goes out and purchases as much food, clothing, fruit, etc. as will relieve him of his surplus money. He then mounts a high platform built for the express purpose and throws his gifts down to members of the poorer class below. Since all have a right to the food and clothing offered a merry battle goes on for possession of the offerings. Hooks are even made which might tend to give the seeker a better chance to make a good haul. However, before the foodstuffs and clothing are given away, prayers and praises to the king of the devil or “Phya Yomaraj” are sung. The prayers insure the donors of recognition when they dies and are led before the king of the devil for entrance to heaven. After the prayers are said and the food distributed, the huge image is burnt, and residents of Siam must wait until they pile up more coin of the realm before they can stage another similar celebration.

This article was published by a Thai newspaper in October 23, 1928.

Easy come, easy go.

Something things stay the same and the same is sometimes good.

Winchester Gun Club - Jomtien -2007

For the last months of 2007 the facade of the old Beggar's Arms in Jomtien had been undergoing renovation. The venerable Jomtien institution had been closed for the better part of a year. Someone had dropped money to resurrect the short-time bar under the guise of the Winchester Club on Soi Wat Boon.

I used to go to the Manhattan Gun Club on West 20th Street every Monday with my Dutch uncle, Howie Hermann. I worked in his diamond exchange. Guns were part of the business as were the thieves, who made them necessary. I never fired once in anger, but Howie and I popped off hundreds of rounds each week. I like 9mms best. Soft trigger and little recoil. 

Strangely many of Pattaya's elephant camps have shooting ranges and the pachyderms were freaked by the daily gunfire, figuring one day a Chinese or American tourist might go safari-hunting frenzy. For some reason I suspected that the new owners weren't installing a basement shooting range and suspected that the 'gun club' was a euphemism for activities pursued within the confines of the second-floor bedrooms.

Jamie Parker called Sunday.

"I'll buy you a few beers at the Winchester."

"It's open?"

"Yes, and they have a free buffet with ribs." Jamie knew I was a little short for cash this month and that I also had a weakness for ribs. I told my wife I was going out to get the oil changed on my bike. She rolled her eyes in disbelief, but didn't ask too many questions, since I had paid for repairs to the car.

Her accident.

My bill.

Sunday traffic had become infuriating with the influx of Bangkok weekenders in a rush to get everywhere fast and I avoided the congestion on the back road through the wetlands, reaching the Winchester within ten minutes. About thirty bikes were parked in the dirt lot.

The door was plastered with a Thai-language anti-gun sticker and a long sentence saying that shirts were required for all male customers. No tank-tops. Nothing puts me off drinking beer more than seeing some old geezers' saggy tits.

I stepped inside the bar. It was dark as midnight, except for around the bar. Girls in dresses lurked in the shadows. My eyes adjusted to the murk, yet I couldn't make out their faces. The men with them seemed pleased by this lighting arrangement, since dim lighting cuts both ways. A hand touched my shoulder. Jamie.

"Good, huh?"

"Black as a witches heart."

"And it's only 3pm." Transylvanian blood ran in his family and the New Yorker tried never to see the light of day.

"How are the ribs?"

"Good." He signaled two beers and offered a rib. It was tender and free. I went into the pool room to load up a plate. Back at the table Jamie and I talked about baseball. He was a Yankee fan and as a New Englander I hated the Bronx Bombers as much as a Tottenham Hot Spurs fanatic despised Chelsea. Our discussion was getting heated and Jamie said, "Good thing there's a 'no guns' sign on the door."

"Not like the old days." Red Sox Nation believed more in fistfights than shootings. "When I first came to Thailand the hotels and bars had signs forbidding landmines, grenades, dynamite, dogs, and durians."

"A sensible policy, especially about durians." Most farangs ran at the smell of an over-ripe durian and the stench clung to the walls too. "Smells like old baby diapers."

"I like a little durian." The Indonesians say 'when durian comes down, the skirts go up', referring to its aphrodisiacal powers. Probably a myth, since my wife never reacts amorously after eating the foul-smelling fruit.

"You can have it." Jamie was eying the girls closest to us. He was a single man with money and time on his hands. I was married with a kid and bills for school. Another beer was as far as I was going to get today, but Jamie disappeared upstairs for a test run of the new facilities.

Sean loomed out of the darkness. The Elfin Aussie was proudly wearing a Winchester Gun Club shirt and explained that he had branched out of his visa service on Soi Buakhao to become the CEO of the Winchester Club. "In other words I get to shut the door at night."

"You have a good crowd." More than two farangs was a success this low season.

"They come from everywhere. Businessmen on the way home to Ban Amphur. Golfers. Husbands seeking someplace secluded without having to get involved with a 'mia-noi'. And this is August."

"You expecting a big high season?"

"High season for 2006-7 was shit. Punters had no money and they didn't come here this summer either, but you can't tell me that they can stand a year away from here. I mean the UK is brutal for men our age."

Bald overweight single men in Britain have sex with another person once a decade. Married ones even less.

"Which is why the internet is loaded with spam for Cialis and porno."

"Sex for the home bound."

"And also fighting off baldness."

"Too late for me and here who cares." Thai girls were notoriously forgiving of a male partners' physical flaws and social faults.

"No one." My wife was equally blind to my age. I drank another beer and then pissed off for home, where my wife sniffed the tobacco on my shirt. She made no comment, but thought the worst. I could expect nothing else.

Jamie later called from the Winchester and said he was on his way to getting supremely drunk.

"It-chaa?"

"More than a little jealous." I was sober, but next time at the Winchester I would take advantage of the eternal night.

If only to celebrate Beermas.

WINCHESTER GUN CLUB - Soi Wat Boon near Jomtien Beach Road.

Hours early to late

SKATING ON THIN ICE by peter nolan smith 2011

Thailand's monsoons arrived at the end of the Pattaya's low season in April 2022, but none had ever been lower than this Covid season. Hotels offered special rates and the few working girls at the even fewer bars and go-gos called everyone 'sexy', but the global travel chaos due to the deadly pandemic has forced the Thai Tourist Board to revise their typically optimistic projection for arrivals to the Land of Smiles, especially after monumental rains flooded the center of the country.

Cities and villages were underwater. Transport was impossible on the inundated highways. Food grew scarce to find and the monsoons weren't expected to ease until October.

My family and I lived up the coast from Pattaya and news of the empty bars filtered north.

"Thailand not have farang," said Mam, as we drank Leo Beer at our small house in the hills.

"You have me and so does Fenway." And the rest of our clan.

My son was happy. Fenway had his father to drive him around SriRacha.

"Many girl go back home."

"To Isaan?" The impoverished plateau had supplied Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket with a steady crop of bar girls for decades.

"Better now live on rice farm. Pattaya not have old men. Not have young men. No men. No money. No rice. Everyone get skinny.

"But never as beautiful as you." We had been together for years, although most of those year I worked in Europe or the USA. I had two families to feed.

"Barg wan."

"Yes, I have a sweet mouth. More beer?" I regarded the sky. Dark clouds approached from the Gulf of Siam. Black lined the bottoms. Lightning crackled through the air and Mam ran inside to unplug the TV and fridge. I shut off my cell phone. Electrical storms were a force to fear in Thailand.

A minute later the rain fell hard, then harder, and even harder. I lit a kerosene lamp. Fenway didn't like the dark and I held him close. Thirty minutes later the storm passed over SriRacha heading inland.

The sun came out and the street steamed with a rising mist. I turned on my phone and it rang immediately. Sam Royalle was on the other end.

"Did it rain by you."

"Not a drop." Sam resided in Pattaya.

Twenty miles to the south.

"Bucketed down here." I hadn't seen Sam in a while. He had been working on a new website.

Sixteen hours a day, so I was surprised when he asked, "Feel like coming out for a beer tonight?"

Sam Royalle liked go-gos. We normally drank shots of tequila. He conversed with people despite 110 dB levels. His Bedford accent worked well in loudness.

"If it isn't raining."

"No excuses. I'll take you out for a steak."

Sam had been living in Thailand over ten years, but remained a boy from Bedford.

"You ever think about changing your diet?"

"What you expect me to eat? Thai food?"

"It's good enough for sixty million Thais." Few of them were overweight.

"I'm British. We eat British food. Only British." The Brit did like a good plate of curry and pad Thai, which I never ate. It had no kick.

"So see you around 7." He gave the address of a new steakhouse. "It's very classy."

"I remember classy. Seven, then." Classy for farangs in Pattaya meant no wife-beater t-shirts.

Back in the last century only the Dusit Thani was the only classy resort in Pattaya, but times had change.

"You go out with friend?" asked Mem.

Fenway was eating chocolate ice cream.

"Sam wants to have a drink."

"Go-Go bar."

"I guess so, but I only think of you."

"Hah, all men lie. Think of me with naked lady. You very funny."

"It's the truth." My thinking only of her was the truth, but no women will believe that.

"True not true. Same same. I know you. One drink look lady. Two drink talk with lady. Three drink only think drink. That truth."

"Yes, it is." I liked holding hands with a glass of gin-tonic.

A little later Mam, Fenway, and I ate at KFC. She dropped me at the bus stop at Tuk Com on Sukhumvit. Traffic was heavy and the sun was going down. I kissed her and hugged Fenway.

"Mai mao, papa."

"No, I won't get too drunk."

Mam gave her blessing.

"Sam take care you. You take care Sam." Her spies covered Walking Street. Their network posted agents on every soi. I was a good boy and good boys never get caught doing bad.

"Chan lak ter."

And I did love her, as I jumped on the bus.

Thirty minutes later I got off at Pattaya Klang and hopped on a motorsai, telling the taxi driver, "Walking Street."

The ride to Pattaya's Second Road took less than ten minutes. I walked over to Walking Street. Farangs were a rarity on that gauntlet of lust. The desperation on the go-go girls' faces was a cruel mirror of hard times. Every girl sang the same chorus "Take me home."

"Bang thi teelang."

"Maybe later. Maybe never. All farang kee-nok."

Sam and I ate a great ribeye steak at the classy restaurant.

He looked healthy for the first time in years. His new business venture was off the ground. Sam was looking at a million dollars in two years time. It all sounded good in a go-go bar.

Sam suggested hitting Heaven A Go-Go. The upstairs bar was the best in Pattaya. I hadn't been there in months, but several girls knew my name. They were friends of Mam. We drank beer. Two bottles. The owner of Heaven bought several rounds of tequila. Paddy had run a pimp bar in East St. Louis. He was most men's hero.

Sixty-five and running a go-go bar. He was my hero too. East St. Louis was tougher than Pattaya back in the early 1970s.

"Any girl you want. No bar fine." I thanked Paddy for his generosity, but refused about twenty nubile dancers before midnight. I told them the same story.

"Mai mii keng leng."

"I can give you power." Their bare bodies smelled of youth and a promise of a trip to heaven or hell. I wasn't interested in either destination after ten beers and deserted my bar stool at Heaven Above a Go Go, telling Sam Royalle that I was going to the bathroom. Three naked girls were on his lap. He wouldn't notice my departure.

The night air on Soi Diamond was strangely cool. The moist wind carried the threat of rain and I walked to 2nd Road rather than be tempted by another drink on Walking Street.

Two transvestites grabbed my arms at the top of the alley. The pair were armored in black shiny leather. They towered over me in their spiked heels. Masochists would have paid to lick the their feet. A hand slithered into my pocket. Her fingernails raked my thigh for plunder. The Shim found my wallet. It only had 2000 baht, but all my ATM and credit cards. My struggle to break free was futile, until the pickpocket yelped with pain.

"Pai loi." The voice belonged to Jamie Parker, a friend from the Lower East Side. "Get fucking lost."

"We go. Come back too." The taller TV sneered with a helium alto. Her manhood throbbed in a leather bikini. I felt inadequate.

"Good luck then." Jamie stood his ground. Almost sixty he carried the menace of the killer paroled after eleven years hard time.

"Yet mun." The she-boys strode off to find easier prey.

"I had things under control."

"Didn't look it to me." He handed back my wallet and coughed like a backfire from an out-of-tune Harley, although I suspected his hack hadn't come from smoking cigarettes.

"You're right. Those ka-toeys are tough." I count on bruises on the tomorrow. The indentation from their nails would fade faster. Mam's suspicious mind wouldn't clear for months. I asked Jamie, "What happened to you?"

Jamie's body had been perennially thin. Drugs and diet, but his face was gaunt and Panda black circles masked his eyes.

"I look that bad?" He stared at his reflection in the 7/11 window. He wasn't the type to lie to himself about his looks.

"Yes, you look that bad." Ja-bah was bad. The cheap speed was addictive. "You need some money?"

"A thousand wouldn't hurt, but it isn't for what you think."

"Jamie, you can do what you want with it." I was no angel.

After dark any money you give a friend had to be consider a gift. I pulled out a purple note.

"I don't feel like it, but then I'm not the boss." He stuck the bill securely in his jeans pocket. "Mind if I walk with you a bit?"

"I'm just going to get a taxi."

The eyes of a passing policeman convicted Jamie of several crimes. He could never go back to New York. His sin against the state had a long statute of limitation.

"Let me give you a ride somewhere."

"Yeah, there's too much light here." He lowered his head like someone might be following him. I fought the temptation to look over my shoulder. A taxi took us to 3rd Road for 200 baht. It was safer than a motorsai taxi.

At the Buffalo Bar I ordered him a beer and waved for the girls to leave us alone.

"Man, it's been a hard month." He sat on the stool as if he had been on his feet for days. "But you don't want to hear about it."

My mother had prayed for her second son to accept an avocation to join the Cloth. I refused the priesthood after hearing Led Zeppelin's first LP in 1969, but she had been right. I would have made a good priest or at least a confessor. Everyone liked to tell me their secrets.

Jamie drank his Chang beer in less than a minute.

"I'm all ears." I downed my first in sixty-five seconds.

"You ever hear of Ice?" he whispered the word with guilt-ridden worship.

"Crystal Meth." The drug had hit the fly-over of America hard. The cops had cracked down on traditional drugs and the dealers synthesized a smokeable speed from ephedrine, the basic ingredient for over-the-counter cough medicines. The substance was equally available in Thailand. Big Pharma was behind it all.

"That's the one. The Nazis used to give chocolate bars laced with the stuff to Luftwaffe pilots." Jamie was a vast abyss of useless knowledge. "Kept them flying for days."

"And you started smoking it here?" Drugs are readily available in Thailand, although opium, heroin, grass have been supplanted by ja bah and ice thanks to the repressive interdiction of the Thai Police and DEA.

"With Ort." He shrugged to indicate his complete surrender.

"Ort?" I knew Ort from Soi 6. I hadn't seen her since her boyfriend left her for a transvestite five years ago. The little vixen wanted to be my geek. I had refused with deep regret. Ort was very sexy. 23 and looked 16. She was every man's vice.

"How you run into Ort?" She was a girl around town. I stayed out of her path. Even her saying the words 'I have' got me hard with the thought of the pipe.

"She was dancing at Paris A Go-Go. Told me to meet her after work. We went back to her place. A little furnished studio. Bed, TV, AC. She asked if I minded if she smoked some ice. You know me. Anyone can do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt someone else." Jamie's heroin addiction had stolen his youth. Cocaine took away his edge as a comedian. His taking up with speed in his fifites could be a show-stopper. "Don't look at me like you were a Parole Officer, who discovered a bad blood test. You're no angel."

"You're right." I had disappointed Nancy Reagan too many times by saying 'yes', instead of 'no' to throw any rocks without breaking windows in my own house of glass, but I tried my best to avoid drugs in Thailand. Prison here was worse than any of Jamie's stateside time.

"And you're right too. I knew it was dangerous, but did it anyway."

"And how was it?" Jamie didn’t need a lecture and I was curious about ice and Ort.

"Ice is nothing. No rush. Shooting speedballs is a thousand times better for a high."

"So what the attraction?"

"Sex." Jamie spoke low, which was a little strange in a bar, where every girl was looking for a date. "I thought she wanted me only to buy some ice. 1000 baht. But once we had a few pipes, she said she was hot and asked if I minded if she took off her clothes. Another bowl and mine was off. A day later and we were still at it."

A binge. "How many days?"

"3-4. I took Cialis to keep up my strength." Speed and Cialis were tough on the heart, however Jamie was hardy enough to survive hardcore XXX games. "And then another four days and we had sex the entire time. I had to stop because the skin on my penis wore off. Ort wasn't happy and started screaming for it. It was like being with a nymphomaniac. A tyranny of sex. I told her I was going to the ATM. I didn't come back."

"How much money you spend?"

"About 15000 baht and I lost about 5 kilos."

"Cheaper than Jenny Craig's or Weight-Watchers."

"I don't have the weight to lose like you."

A loss of five kilos would put me close to the fighting weight of my early 40s.

"And you didn't go back?"

"Don't trust myself. It's not the Ice. It's the sex, the ice, the lying in bed with nowhere to go." He drank his beer with a thirst to quench another demon. "Sawan."

"Heaven." I was impressed Jamie knew the Thai word for paradise. Nah-Lok meant 'hell'.

"A little hell too, which we both like."

"Without sin, there is no pleasure," I loosely quoted Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealistic film director. "So now what?"

"I changed my SIM card # and started clean again." He ordered another beer. They were going down smooth. "Not 100%, but close enough. Another few days and I'll be back on top of the world."

"More like top of the slag heap in this town."

"As long as it's a foot higher than anyone else, you can see the stars." Jamie had a way with words, which slurred after our fifth beer.

I invited him up to Sri Racha. He made Mam laugh. Fenway liked playing with him. On the third day he left for Pattaya. I drove him to the bus stop on Sukhumvit.

"Take care."

"I know how to do that."

"And how not to too."

"Something else we have in common."

At the end of the week I was packing my bags for New York. I had to go back to work at the Dimaond Exchange. My flight left in the morning. Mam hated being alone. Fenway is a very busy boy.

The phone rang in my pocket. It was Jamie.

"Are you okay?"

"Excellent." He was running promo events for bars and restaurants during the low season. The next is an erotic hot dog eating contest at TiggleBitties Tavern.

"What about Ort?" I whispered the name. Mam has good ears and a jealous soul. Some people question her love. I know better.

"Haven't seen her or been to anywhere she goes."

"Smart move." Ort was a girl to avoid, which is why I no longer answered her calls anymore. "I'll see you next time around."

"Send my love to Mam and little Fenway."

"They will like that."

I went into the living room. Fenway was trying to load two discs at the same time into the DVD player. I told him, "No."

He didn't like hearing that word in either Thai or English, but just saying 'no' can save your time these days, especially when you're skating on thin ice.

COME ALL YE FAITHFUL by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya is not a city known for monogamy.

Promises of fidelity last, until you leave the room, because this city on Thailand’s Eastern Seaboard offers temptations by the thousands and those temptations rarely say no.

Bar girls, rent boys, ka-toeys, booze, and drugs added up to damnation according to Reverend Joe Stannis of the Holy Revival Church located down the street from my old soi. The born-again Christian preached through a megaphone to passing motorists.

“You are all going to hell.” The black-suited minister of the faith liked shaking his fist. Thais thought he was 'bah' or a fool.

Attached to his concrete chapel was a sign pointing the way to the Angel Inn, the nearest ‘Love Motel’, where rooms rent by the hour or day.

Anytime I drove past the reverend I shouted, "Heaven on Earth."

"And damnation to you." Born-agains have no sense of humor, especially in a city whose motto is written on tee-shirts, whose manufacturers transformed Mae West’s epithet. “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go anywhere they want.” to “Good men go to heaven. Bad men go to Pattaya.”

Nevertheless this doesn’t mean everyone in Pattaya was a sinner.

Even Sodom had one good man and my friend Richard claimed to have never cheated on his wife.

Several years back Richard, Nick, and I were sitting at the Buffalo Bar. Beers were before us. The DJ was playing HOTEL CALIFORNIA. Richard explained his faithfulness. His girlfriend was at his side. Lee was old school, but her beauty was a mystery after 10 years in Pattaya.

“I’m too lazy to be unfaithful and it’s not in my nature.” Richard was a contractor from the UK. He worked 10-12 hour days. Lassitude only pertained to matters of the heart, but the Brit doesn’t know that his Thai wife sleeps with another man. His friends never tell Richard either. It's considered bad form.

“No one is faithful in this town.” Nick was a Tottenham Spurs fan. They were his only love. His girlfriend worked as a service girl at the Buffalo Bar. Fen was too pretty for words.

“Fen has a German boyfriend. He pays for her schooling. She sees me when he leaves town and considers herself ‘faithful’ to both of us. Fen never asks me for money."

And you think you get free sex?"

“Nothing is free in Pattaya.” Everything had a price, even if it was marked ‘free’.

“So is Fen your mia noi?” Richard asked Nick.

“No, she not mia noi. She geek,” Richard’s girlfriend explained waving for another gin-tonic.

“What’s the difference?” Richard was clearly confused by the demarcation of fidelity. The question was directed at his girlfriend. The seeds of suspicion were worming into his trust. Lee stammered for an answer. Nick saved her from having to tell the truth.

“A mia noi you take care. A geek is someone you have sex with and care about but only a little. You see her when you see her and it’s no big deal.” Nick obviously had been educated in the difference.

“But your girlfriend doesn’t think she’s your geek?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.” Nick was hardly defensive with this answer. “Fen is what she is.”

“So you never say the love word?”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “It’s a sex thing.”

“So she is a geek?” Richard couldn’t fathom why people sleeping together for purely sex.

“No, not geek. Not mia noi. Not friend.” Richard’s girlfriend was exasperated by the his husband’s density, but he only wanted to know where Nick’s girl stood in the scheme of things.

"You like her?"

Yes, but I'm in love." He had told me many times that he wasn’t faithful to her. Not like she was to him or Richard was to Lee. I got up and left to avoid any examination of my situation.

Jamie Parker sast at the other end of the bar.

When I told my friend about the discussion, the New Yorker smiled slyly and said, “This is not a town for the pure of heart. Some women here regard their husbands as faithful if they don’t bring anyone home or aren't seen with another women by their friends. Other women think you’re cheating if you look at another woman or think of one. Men will believe any story by these bar girls to grant them immunity from a life of sleeping with complete strangers. I call it the Eliza Doolittle syndrome. I can rescue her from this life of sin. Ha, but it’s not the farang boyfriend most men have to worry about. It’s the Thai ex-. They never die, even if the girl says his husband was killed in a motorcycle accident.”

“I’d heard that story twice.”

“Bet every man in Pattaya has heard it at least once. We are all bad men thinkng we are different from all the other bad man.” Jamie had little use for stories. His girlfriend had worked on Soi 6 three years. Ort liked being a bad girl and so did Jamie. “Everyone has been unfaithful in either thought or deed and I don’t know what’s worse. Thinking about it and doing it.”

“Doing it.”

“Yeah, but at the end of your life are you going to be sorry about not doing it or doing it?”

“Regrets I have a few but then again too few to mention.” There had been twins at the old Blackout a Go-go. I had been faithful to my previous girlfriend. She left me for an Italian.

“Sinatra the Philosopher.”

“Aristotle to be is to do. Kant to do is to be.”

“And Sinatra do-be-do-be-do.” Jamie crooned off-key and several bar girls stared his way, as if he was a dog with his paw stuck in a door. “Are you thinking about going home with someone from here?”

“No way.” I lived two minutes from the Buffalo. Mam was my steady. We had been seeing each other for over a year. I hadn’t been with anyone in that time. Something was wrong with being faithful in Pattaya and I thought that maybe she had dowsed me with a love potion.

“Is Mam that jealous?”

“She’d cut it off and feed it to the ducks.” Castration was a favorite punishment Thai women inflicted on philandering males. So much so that Thai doctors had become the world’s premier saviors of amputated penises. Accordingly Thai women cast the severed member to the duck pen, since quackers, unlike pigs, eat anything.

Even cock.

“Better to keep your sins in thoughts and not deeds.” Jamie advised, for Ort was equally vicious when it came to a roaming eye.

“Deeds we can save for the after-life.”

“Or secrets we never tell anyone else. Is it a sin if no one knows?”

"In this town everyone knows sooner or later."

My fidelity depends on my drinking. Mam also knows that once I’ve had two drinks all I really want is a couple more drinks. She accepts this fallibility as the least of all evils and I went home to surf through the ennuidom of international TV. Mam was off playing cards with her friends. She wasn’t answering her phone. The night was still young, but I shut off the TV and went to sleep with dreams of becoming a saint.

At least in deed.

Thought was another story.

We’re all going to hell.

At least according to Reverend Joe Stannis of the Holy Revival Church and that preacher knows sin.

5 Things Thai Bar Girls Like About Farangs

WRITTEN 2009

Most surveys are conducted with scores, if not hundreds of people. Personally I go for the one person who is most representative of the subject group and several years ago when I was thinking about the five qualities a Thai bar girl required from her farang boyfriend, I immediately went to Gai, the Buffalo Bar's version of Anna Nichols Smith.

Gai has been loved by scores of men over her five year career and spent the night a few more. My cousin was one of them. Few had complaints other than Gai really didn't want to settle down with most of them. After plying her with several drinks, I asked, "Why?"

"Farang men like Thai men are no good. Say one thing, do the other."

The lights of Pattaya don't attract the best catches on the planet, but there are some nice guys.

"What do you look for in a man?"

"The opposite of what a man wants." Gai ordered a Heineken on my tab. No one's time is free and I waved for another Chang Beer. I like drinking with her.

"Which is?"

"Sex, love, fun, freedom, and faithfulness."

"Sounds about right." My top choice after her first is someone having my back or a woman on the same team.

"Most farangs kee-nok think they are the best thing to happen to a Thai girl. Look at them. Bald, fat, unable to find a woman in their own country, cheap, except when it comes to getting drunk, then they are just like thai men. Drink everything they have and end up in bed with another woman or lady-boy."

"That's a little hard." But not off the mark in Pattaya. "So all the women her are angels."

"Not angels. Women. Nothing more and they want something most men can't give them. Security is #1."

"Money."

"Without money I not take care of my baby."

"I would say truthfulness, but no man can tell the truth more than second hours in a row. All you have to do is ask them what they are thinking."

"The answer is usually nothing."

"And you expect a woman to believe that."

"Men have minds like dogs."

"And women are cats."

"So what's second?"

"Fun and laughs. No sense in being with a man if he is no fun."

"What about choice #1. Money."

"Only if there is no other choice."

Unfortunately during low season the options were reduced by 50% and bar girls had to make do with the dregs. Sam Royalle calls this time after Songkran the Brad Pitt season, when bar girls call Saudi hunchbacks with mohawks sexy. Gai was lucky enough that she can be choosy most of the time.

"So far we have money and fun."

"Only two." Gai lifted her fingers. The nails were long and painted fire-engine red. Respect for family."

"Meaning your mother and father." I knew how important that was, since many bargirls started off in brothels to pay off their father's rice debts. I can't respect the old men, but the girls understand that the needs of the family supersede their dreams.

"Yes." he finished her beer and waved to a good-looking farang entering the bar. His smile said he was her first pick for tonight and she finished the top five. “Next comes sex. Good sex is good. Bad sex is good too as long as it's fast. Last comes love, because you can't eat love.

"And you can eat sex?"

Sex pays the food."

"So it's money, fun, family respect, sex, and love." I tipped her a 100 baht and Gai kissed me on the cheek.

Her choices were not the same order as men. Maybe other bar girls would have a different order, but somehow I felt that Gai was on the money, especially knowing Pattaya's farangs.

After all I'm one too.

Mona Lisa Redux

Teenage boys in the early 70s were not supposed to like Joni Mitchell, but once I loved to France in 1982, I loved the line from FREE MAN IN PARIS.
"I was a free man in Paris."
My freedom remained unfettered throughout the next two decades and while living in Thailand, I changed the lyrics slightly, "I am a free man in Bangkok."
I could have added 'middle-aged man', except extra syllables threw off the phrasing.
Back in the early years of this century I frequented Soi 6 in Pattaya. I liked the short-time bars on that narrow block. The bar girls had great stories and I didn't have to speak with the sex-starved farangs interested in a short-time romance. My favorite bar was the Viking. The dingy three-story building had a first-floor bar drenched in eternal night with two upper floors crammed with bedrooms dedicated to happy endings. I sat at the corner with my dog and Ping. The twenty-one year-old beauty was finishing a Spy Wine Classic and said, "I used to work massage in Bangkok."
"Where?" I had gone with her several times. Our conversations were ping-pong matches of Thai versus Farang living.
"Mona Lisa. Not dirty same here. They change sheets and cleaned room after each customer." Ping had started at the New Petcharburi Road massage parlor a month after her second baby's birth. She had been 19. "I have many customers. Maybe four one day, but China men finish fast. One Korean man I lick his nipple and he finish. Another I massage his back with soap. He finish."
Most of the men going to the Mona Lisa at that time were Oriental. Thais 1500 baht for 90 minutes. All others 2000 baht.
"And then they have to leave?" The math on four men a day meant Ping serviced about at least 1000 men a year. All her money went to her children, family in Isaan, and a small Ja Bah habit. Dangerous, although Ping had said they have to use a condom. No exceptions.
"No." The thin-framed girl shook her head. Long hair floated like vapors about her face. "Have to give massage too."
"And how much you get?" I figured half.
"700 baht." She slid over on the sofa. Her soft hand expertly caressed my chest. She had learned the lessons of instant seduction from pros. "But I get tip too. First Thai man give me 8000 baht. Give me phone too. He only like to go with virgin. Pay 30,000 baht for one. But he like me. One day maybe have 4000 baht."
"Good money." More than a $100US, but the girls had to pay for make-up, hair, food, and costume rental to work behind the glass of the selection cubicle.
"I can work four day one week. Too tired. Have to take care my babies." Ping weighs 39 kilos and she was tall for a Thai girl. Her thinness is due to a thyroid problem. "Many girl go 7-10 time one day. I not strong like them. One day I meet Scotland man. He want me stay with him. Girls have a party and I say good-bye. We live together three months. He go out drinking every night at Nana Plaza. I not like drinking and stay at hotel. I not love him, but think okay can be with him for my babies. He give me 40,000 baht one month."
"I don't remember you telling me this." She had told me many stories, but never about a Scottish man. I was jealous of him. 40,000 baht was over $1000.
"That because you old man and brain no good." She kissed my neck with the tenderness of a runaway.

"Yeah." At 55 my memory could salvaged little from so many talks with friends and fiends.
"He think I have Thai boyfriend and leave me for Nana go-go girl."
"And you go back to Mona Lisa?"
"Cannot." She would have suffered nah sia or lost face. "I come to Pattaya and work on Soi 6. Not good. Farang not same Thai men. Take long time to finish. I have one friend she still work there. Say only have fat girl."
"Maybe you should go back to Mona Lisa." Ping was skinnier than Kate Moss.
Some men like that look. I was one of them.
"No, fortune-teller say I meet man here. He stay with me long time."
"Ping's eyes shined with hope, but she also understood the game. "Not wife, but mia noi. Okay, if he take care my baby."
"Good." I liked drinking with Ping. Not that she had to work someplace like the Viking. She had said that the first time she went with a man, she cried inside her body, but told herself that she had to do it for her babies.
I gave her a tip and went out in the bright sunshine of the afternoon. More than three hundred girls were on Soi 6. They shared the same story as Ping. Everyone in the West can condemn the women for what they have to do, but Soi 6 and Mona Lisa are the only avenue for a woman who can't say no to the love in her heart for her children.
MONA LISA MASSAGE changed its name to LA BELLE,but was closed permanently during the Covid Crisis.
Maybe one day it shall open again offering heaven on earth to mere mortals.

B-Course Body Massage - 1,500 - 1.5 hours
Super - 1,800 - 2 hours
Side line - 2,000
Russian girls - 3,000 -1.5 hours

I am not a free man anywhere anymore.

Kids kill the beauty of freedom.

2008 Stunner

After New Year’s Day of 2008 my 'wife' packed the car with Angie, Champoo, and her fat sister for the return drive to Chai-nat. Her week stay for Xmas had been torture. My every word was met with visible disdain. She told my daughter that I was a worthless drunk. My restraint had been tested to the limit. My young daughter and I celebrated her birthday together. Angie refused to choose sides and cried getting in the car. I hugged my daughter and said, "I’ll see you soon." Chai-nat was a five-hour bus ride from Pattaya. My online site for selling fake F1 merchandise required daily attention, but I had come to Thailand to be with Angie and not flog second-grade copies to racing fanatics. “You take care?” Angie’s mom spoke little to no English. Thais are the French of the Orient and even the lowest caste have a very high opinion of themselves and their country. The former factory worker considered farangs ‘so-kapok’ and we were only one step above Arabs. “I’ll be fine.” I kissed my daughter good-bye. Her mother and I had not been intimate since before her birth. Our sole connection was our daughter and she had said on more than one occasion that Angie wasn’t mine. Her ex-boyfriend had disappeared weeks ago. Pi-et was no magician and the main prop for his vanishing act had been a bus north. Chai-nat lay in the same direction. Murder constantly paced the corridors of my mind and accordingly we maintained a defensive distance. The Toyota backed out of the driveway. Angie waved from the backseat. She had my mother’s smile, crooked teeth and all. I swallowed a lump and went inside my rented house to open a can of beer. It was twenty-three minutes short of noon. I thought about calling Angie’s mom to come back, but my words had lost their magic. They had a full tank of gas and 2500 baht, which was more than enough to last two days, then again if I had learned one thing in Thailand, “It’s never enough.” The beer tasted strong on an empty stomach. I was once more being deserted to my own devices in Pattaya. I turned the TV onto Fox News. Bill O’Reilly was praising GW Bush for saving America after 9/11. As I got up for another beer, my mobile phone vibrated on the coffee table. The volume of the ringing was turned down to avoid to avoid unwanted phone calls. My wife suspected the worst and a woman was never wrong about a man. I answered the phone It was Mint. 22 years old, thin as a runway model, and convinced that I could never love her. “Is she gone?” “Back to Chai-nat.” “And her ‘feend’.” The Thai word for lover sounded very much like friend. I had discovered my wife sitting on Pi-et’s lap. She had said that they were just friends in Thai. I had chosen to accept the lie for the sake of my daughter. “Yes.” “We have to talk.” “About what?” Mint and I had been lovers for over a year, but we had never spent a night in bed together. Our encounters were pure afternoon or early evening. “I tell you when I see you.” She shared an apartment on Jomtien Beach with a gay friend. Glai was very jealous of our relationship. The hustler liked it better when I had been a customer. Mint felt the opposite. “Can’t you tell me now?” I hated mysteries. “No. Not now. I see you. I tell you.” If it can’t be said over the phone, then it wasn’t about money. She wasn’t shy about asking for money, but neither was Mint greedy, despite having two kids. They cost money. I gave what I gave. It also was never enough. Mint probably had another boyfriend to bankroll her life. She was an ace at pretending desire. Her faithful clientele from her years on Soi 6 and the Mona Lisa Massage in Bangkok were legion. She juggled her time with us like a crap shooter hoping for the best roll. I drove the back roads to Jomtien. Pattaya attracted thousands of long-timers. Coconut plantations were giving way to holiday villas. The vanishing wetlands behind Jomtien Beach put a good distance between my house and Mint’s apartment, diminishing the possibility of my wife and Mint running into each other. I hated confrontations. By the time I reached Thraprassit Road, the sun had burnt through the morning haze. The cold front had slunk down from Siberia. Thai beachgoers reveling in the sea. Russians waddled out of 7/11 with ice creams. It was a too nice a day to hear goodbye twice. I turned off the Beach Road and rolled up to her semi-abandoned apartment building. The Doors’ ’THE END’ played in my head like this scene was the beginning of APOCALYPSE II. Mint sat on a stool in front of the building. She was wearing a loose dress. A bottle of beer was on the table weigh two glasses. “You want drink?” She averted looking in my eyes. “Yes.” Beer protected me from everything. She poured beer into the two glasses. Neither of us took a sip. Mint had her hands folded on her lap. I sat down and asked, “What is it?” “I’m pregnant.” She lifted do-it-yourself pregnancy test. Two red lines indicated mint was carrying another life. I had thought the recent weight gain had come from beer. “Pregnant?” I was old enough to be Mint’s father, who’s actually two years younger than me. Angie had been a surprise. This neared a shock. “Yes. Two months. It is yours.” “Mine.” Two months ago had been Loy Krathong. I distinctly recalled a long afternoon in bed. The math worked out to 1+1=3. “I not go with other man.” She had been faithful to me. I was the same to her. “I know.” I wasn’t brought up to accuse a woman of entrapment. It wasn’t like I was the pick of the crop. “Chai.” Her morning sickness and expanding belly should have been signs of impending fatherhood. I was too absorbed in my problems to notice the obvious. “A baby.” Walking away from a woman was easy in Thailand. Marriages dissolved like sugar in the rain. Men were free to come and go as the wind. Women were glad to see them go too. Mint was well aware of her position. Pattaya was the Last Babylon. It was every man for himself. The father of her two children had left her penniless at 18. Her beauty had saved them from starvation. I lifted her head with two fingers. Tears dotted the corners. She had been here before, but not with me. “Two months pregnant?” “Chai.” She was expecting a repeat of bad luck. “What you want to do?” “I want have baby.” Mint wanted to make me happier. She was too crazy to do that all the time, but she had heard the sadness in my voice, as I told her about Angie’s mother singing the name of the father to Pi-et. The Thai authorities would never reverse that signature. Mint wanted to have the baby. She wanted it to be mine. “Baby girl be cute.” “That’s the truth.” Looks were the least of our problems. “How do you know it’s a girl?” She certainly had not done an ultra-sound. >”Old lady see my neck and say if blood move up and down sure to be girl.” Mint indicated a pulsing vein on her neck. “Old lady say maybe I have two.” “Twins?” 30 seconds was not enough time to digest the first news let alone the second. “Not sure. What you want do?” There was only one choice. Abortion was out of the question. It was illegal and while I accepted the freedom of choice for a woman, I was old-fashioned enough to regard every life as sacred. “If it’s a boy, can I chose the name?” I was a 55 year-old American living in Thailand. Going back to the States was not in the books. “Yes. What about your wife?” “We were never married.” Her numerous betrayal had cancelled that event. “I not want be mia noi.” Her smile was half-hearted. The second wife or mia noi usually ends up standing in the rain outside the house of her child’s father. Thai TV soaps loved that scene. “You won’t be a mia noi.” I couldn’t guarantee how her countrymen would view her, but Angie and her mother were living up-country. They weren’t coming back. My cash flow was threatened by the global slow-down. The big house in Pattaya was an unnecessary expense. Two families were an obligation for a real man. Jomtien had the beach. Mint and I could live small. “You and me will be one.” “I not want much.” Not much sounded good today. Much would be spoken later, because kids cost money. “Only me.” I felt good saying it. Believing it was not as easy, but Mint held my hand and said, “Only you, me, and babies.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way. You never do when there’s only one choice. For better. Never worst. ps my son Fenway was born in July. So much for the old lady’s prediction.

THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after my arrest by the Thai Cyper-Crime Unit in 2008 I was drinking at Donovan's Sports Bar on Pattya's Sai 3. Most of the clientele was watching a golf match, while I concentrated on drinking a vodka-tonic. Golf meant nothing to me.

After Tiger Woods birdied a hole, the TV went to commercial break. Conversations of a normal nature resumed between the drinkers.

An oil worker complained that his new girlfriend slept most of the day.

His friends said that their girlfriends suffered from a similar somnalepsy.

The oil worker hailed from Texas. He was overweight and bald.

"And when she wakes up, she eats like an escapee from a concentration camp, then watches Thai soap operas before dropping into a coma."

"Same with me." His two friends were also dumbfounded by the malaise.

"Sleeping 20 hours a day has to be a disease."

"I'm just glad that it wasn't infectious."

Donovan's owner had a 4-handicap. To the oil worker this skill was genius and he asked Steve, if he had any idea why their girlfriends slept like the dead.

"I don't have a girlfriend." Steve was the smartest man in the bar. His Thai waitresses understood more English than they let on and he changed the subject. "Think Tiger Woods will play the Hong Kong Open?"

The golfers bailed after another drink. Their tee-off at Khao Kheo Golf Course was scheduled for 9. I paid my bill. Steve forestalled my departure with an offer of another vodka-tonic. He knew my story. The police might not have thrown me in jail, but their geek shut down my website. I couldn't leave the country until my trial. My money was very tight.

I accepted his buy-back with gracious humility.

Steve and I discussed Eli Manning's Scramble in the Super Bowl, which gave the Giants the win.

"In the regular season he would have been whistled dead. Caught in the grass. Then again rules are made to be broken by the refs in the Superbowl. They had a lot riding on the game." Steve felt that the only people who can fix games were the officials.

"The secondary stopped playing defense to watch him get his." I believed that the NFL officials were also on the fix.

"Never stop playing until you hear the whistle."

We clinked glasses and I asked about his bachelor status.

"I don't have a girlfriend, because I hear too many stories from my customers about theirs."

"I won't ever tell you about winning the Worst Girlfriend of the Year in 2001."

Bee had left me for an Italian five times in two months. I wanted her to go. She just couldn't say good-bye. She was stuck in my life like gum in hair. She had to be cut out in the end.

"Thanks, my head filled with enough unhappy endings to write a soap opera, but I have a question. Why you think Thai girls sleep so much?"

His question echoed off an unspoken affair whose mysteries defied his rational mind. I speak Thai. I know bar girls on a platonic level. They tell stories about 'customers'. Some of them might be true.

"The most obvious answer is the one no one wants to believe."

"Which is?"

"You try spending a night with a drunken farang sucking down beers and tequila like the Taliban were at the city gates. I promise you that you would be a little slow to get out of bed."

"But that's not the real answer, is it?" Steve wasn't accepting the easy way out.

"No, their sleeping sickness is either pretend or a reaction to having to spend so much time with a farang. Faking sleep keeps a farang off them. Not many people have a fantasy about sex with a sleeping woman. The second option is that they are so freaked by being with a farang that they wrap sleep around them like a blanket. You have to think of it like astronaut in suspended animation for inter-planetary travel only Thai girls sleep after they've landed on Mars. They have no interest in the Martians."

"You mean us?"

"Did you ever see BOB CAROL TED AND ALICE. Ann Margret sleeps throughout her affair with Jack Nicholson. Why? Because she didn't want to be there. So what do you do when your girlfriend sleeps?"

"I certainly don't wake her." The peace during their slumber was priceless.

"Let sleeping dogs lie."

"As long you're in bed for when they wake up."

We clinked glasses again and another drink was pushing my budget, but I ordered it anyway.

Mam was already asleep. She was so cute under the sheets. She was safe and so was I. Tomorrow morning was another story.