THE PIGPEN A GO GO by Peter Nolan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

The stagnation was all-powerful.

40 would become 50 and 50 would run into 60.

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

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

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

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

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

I always brought my Shi-Tzu.

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

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

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

Bad.

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

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

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

"We go upstairs. We get warm."

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

"Dirty movie?" New shook her lovely head.

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

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

"Champoo sing?"

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

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

The man took off the towel.

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

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

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

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

"New."

"Nice and a nice night for it."

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

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

"I'm as happy as a clam."

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

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

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

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

"So you're opening the bar?"

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

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

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

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

"How so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're still with Ort?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four years of two wars.

Five years of OBL on the loose.

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

Thailand was twelve hours in advance of Eastern Standard Time.

It was 9/11/2006.

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

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

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

Heavy black clouds spread across the afternoon sky.

Even a blind man could predict tonight's weather.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabo darted out reach.

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

"Jamie?"

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

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

"Our first guests."

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

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

The clouds had darkened from gray to black.

"Boston-born, so no free beer."

"Almost thirty years in the East Village."

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

Jamie clapped his hands.

"Girls, it's Showtime."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We were Americans far from home.

The DJ played Chuck Berry's MAYBELLINE.

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

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

A party of trim Thais entered the bar.

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

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

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

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

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

"Fucktherich," I babbled fast on tequila.

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

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

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

We drank more.

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

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

A tap on my shoulder.

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

"Time for what?"

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

"Five years ago." I picked up Champoo.

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

"Krung-Bin."

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

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

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

"Thailand. Thailand. Chai-yo."

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

Jamie gave the old geezers Cialis.

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

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

They could have cared less about the 77 virgins.

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

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

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

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

ANARCHY IN THE UK.

The old guys were mostly British and knew every word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To repeat last night would have been a sin.

Just like re-living Woodstock.

Pattaya GO-GO Deadline 2/18/2010

Diamonds sales were non-existent on Manhattan's West 47th Street during the run-up to Valentine's Day 2010. At least for the masses. The wealthy were splurging on big ticket items. 6-figure purchases of watches, diamonds, and jewelry. The good items were still rolling for Wall Street. None of these sales trickled down into my pocket and I was entertaining a tempting offer from Sam Royalle to run his go-go bar in Pattaya. Working papers and $2000/month.

"I'll be your first customer," said, Russ, my favorite cousin at Winter, where we tucking into Dover Sole and a very expensive bottle of French wine. He had regained his position in high finance. Money was once more no object. Only something to be moved here and there. How never made sense to me, which was why he earned the big money.

"Be only happy to serve you." Nightclubs, diamonds, and road trips were my forte. "It's only the first of many and one day we'll open one here."

"You open a Thai go-go bar in Manhattan and there'll be traffic jams in New Jersey of lonely guys trying to get there."

"All wanting to hear that famous cry "hey sexy man'."

"And no to mention 'love you love time'."

"Ah, the classics."

We clinked glasses. My cousin lived the Pattaya experience through me. He was faithful to his wife and so was I. Him fifteen years. Me three. It seemed like only yesterday I saw Mem and she would always be young. Especially since the mother of my son, Fenway, was three decades younger than me.

"Have you told Richie Boy about this move?"

"Not at all." I still held out hope for making a big score plus working night at a bar was a deadly proposition for a fifty-seven year-old man. I liked to drink and Mem was more than a little 'hueng' or jealous.

"Try telling your wife that you're not fooling around with go-go girls."

"I do and it's the truth." Once I had two two gin-tonics, I was faithful to my drink.

'I can be strong too." About the women it was easy. Drink was my one unforgiving vice. "Another reason is that the police have announced a crackdown on Pattaya Go-Go Bars to arrest foreigners backing sex bars.

The news came from the Pattaya Times 2010.

Interpol was reportedly opening an office in Pattaya to nab farang fugitives. I had met several of their officers at the Buffalo Bar on 3rd Road. They always joked that they were on duty.

The Pattaya Times advised bar owners to clean up their act, although Sam Royalle said this was the same story every time the Thais change the head of police. More tea money for the Police Benevolent Society. I told none of this to my cousin and I certainly wasn't mentioning to Richie Boy, at least not until after the February 18 deadline.

It's only five days away.

Will Plan B survive to save me from plan A?

"It's not the despair I mind so much as the hope." Woody Allen.

Lobstah on Patpong - 1990s

Back in the 1990s I was in Bangkok s Patpong gogo zone. I was standing at the bar and heard a younger man order a beer.

"Are you from Maine?"

"Lewiston."

"Falmouth Foresides. We must be the largest gathering of Maine people in Asia."

We clinked beers and he shook his head, saying, "Those two ovah theah are coming Bangur."

We joined them and everything was Chowdah and Wicked Lobstah.

ps I speak all languages,; French, German, Thai, Malay, and English with a Maine Accent.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN PATTAYA by Peter Nolan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll only drink beer."

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

"Okay, no tequila."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie was in a New York state of mind.

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

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

A second-story balcony.

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

"Pai ke ki."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're crazy."

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

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

"Stop it before you go mad."

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

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

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

"So 9/11 is just a number."

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

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

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

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

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

We downed the tequilas.

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

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

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

On any day of the year.

Washing Of Hands

The regular MLB season ends tonight with a tiebreaker between old rivals; The New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. The night game will be played at Fenway Park, where tradition is eternally tradition and that die-hard honor of men not washing their hands at a baseball park will remain sacrosanct until the last out of eternity.

One survey conducted at the Atlanta Braves stadium revealed that while 95% of female Braves fans washed their hands while only 54% of their male counterpart attempted this ablution.

Someone once told me that at the old Yankee Stadium less than 20% of men put their hands under a faucet after finishing at the urinal. 8000 men out of 40,000 Yankee fans.

After hearing that information I always wash my hands, even if other men think it's effeminate.

Also I never shake anyone's hands at a game and I certainly don't make eye contact.

That is a baseball game no-no.

Unless of course it's someone famous and then you want to see how big they are.

Does that make me gay and do women wash their hands at Fenway?

Oh Poor Babylon

This month I've had a number of opportunities to pass through Times Square. Each time I'm shocked by the gross commercialization of an infamous sex entrepot. Go-Go bars have been replaced by Starbucks. Old movie theaters are shopping malls for uniform fashion and tawdry clip joints have been replaced by mainstream eateries serving GMO food. The hordes of tourists flash selfies of themselves surrounded by a blitz of neon billboard commanding them to spend more money on worthless products.

I walk through the old Doo-Wop without my glasses. My myopia transforms the shopping mall atmosphere into a blur. Nothing of value exists here anymore, but like the ruins of Rome I can remember the bad old days.

I miss them almost as much as I miss my youth.

And Clover.

She was special too.

Washing Hands a Go-Go

Another New York survey revealed that less than 1% of men at Yankee Stadium washed their hands after using the bathroom. Even scarier was that less than 2% did so after squatting on the porcelain throne. Thankfully more than 20% did so after puking cheap hot dogs and worthless Bud beer. Last month I decided to conduct a similar survey in the go-go bars of Pattaya.

This meant drinking a lot of beer, but I was surprised to see that more than 30% of the lager louts attending the exotic dance performances actually washed their hands and I hired the one-armed bathroom attendant from the Carousel Go Go to verify these findings. She later reported that almost 50% of the men washed their hands, then again she earns her living from tips, so she might misrepresent the free-style piss and wash statistics, so as not to lose face with her customers.

Me, I always wash my hands, just because I like cleanliness.

Not washing your hands after peeing is a crime in Singapore and the government has trained special agents to sniff your hands after exiting from the toilets, so wash your hands or else expect a caning.

Only 5 strokes for 1st offense.

Masochists need only apply.

Farang Poll by Nana Plaza Girls

Last January the Old Roue and I stayed out later than planned in Bangkok and I stayed at a cheap hotel on Soi Nana rather than spend 1000 on a taxi back to Sriracha. In the morning I woke up wanting to to kill the cat, who fouled my mouth, then called Fenway's mom, who asked, if we had a good time at the go-go bars. I groaned that I had got 'mao ka' or legless without explaining the main reason for my near-death experience was that the Old Roue and I had conducted a survey about farangs with the bar girls and go-go dancers of Nana Plaza.

The multi-floored quadrangle of bars attracts tourists from every country on Earth. Every language is spoken in the bars and go-gos. Some countries are more heavily represented than others. The Thai girls generally are even-handed with the generosity of their opinions, however there are favorite and conversely there are least liked nationalities. The Old Roue and I were not surprised by the results.

TOP FIVE
1. France - Good time and don’t have to speak too much English. Negative - Menh or smelly.
2. Norway - Free with the money and drink more than they should, so they pass out before sex.
3. Italy - More interested with drinking and speaking with their friends than paying attention to the girls, but a good time, since they are usually too drunk to have sex.
4. Swiss - Go to sleep early and let you go out with your friends ie boyfriend. Very trusting.
5. UK - There are a lot of them. Volume overwhelms any of their numerous bad points.
WORST FIVE
1. India - Smell and cheap
2. Israeli - Dirtier and cheaper
3. Italy - Smell
4. UK - Smell and there are a lot of them.
5. USA - Smell and they are fat and cheap too and think they own the world. Farang kee-nio.
The reasons for these decisions were based on good time, free-spending, and not asking too many questions. Not bathing was a problem for several groups as well as jealousy, which put the Italians in the worst and best categories.
A final consensus was that the girls liked older good-looking men with money. They also liked fat men, since they were warm in bed and had bigger members than their previous boyfriends.
Young men were considered too much of a problem, because they wanted too much sex and smelled bad.

I guess we all smell bad, but no one worst than the Indians, but the old Roue and I knew that all along, because sex has matters not to bar girls.

It's all love.

Trust me.

I know.

The Gift Of The Hitman

Pattaya has a well-earned reputation for a refuge of scoundrels. The city fathers campaign ceaselessly to promote the city's other attractions such as golf, food, shopping, and the beach, but a pig is a pig is a pig no matter what color the PR flaks paint the pig. Things have improved since the 90s, but the bars, go-gos, and nightlife collect a less than stellar crowd of Russian gangsters, German bikers, French credit card scammers, American deadbeats, British football holligans, Aussie mercenaries ad nauseum and then you have the Thais; the good, the bad, and a few of the in-between. Avoiding this tidal wave of filth is difficult, if not impossible, since people re-invent themselves ad infinitum in Pattaya. Some of them can be trouble, so I only drink at my regular hang-outs, such as the short-time bars of Soi 6, the Buffalo Bar, and a few lesser-known establishment far removed from Beach Road or Walking Street.

I try not to associate with the farang criminal element or the Thai mafia, but sometimes you can't help meeting a character who would make your mother rise from the grave and tug you by the ear out of the bar syaing, "What I tell you about people like that?"

"That they're trouble." My mother was more right than wrong about that you not only are what you eat, but who your friends are.

Last January Jamie Parker and I were drinking in a shadowy bar off Sai 3.

The naked girls on stage were listelessly whipping their naked flesh with thick hoses.

A lot of noise, but little pain.

Three Thai men entered the bar. The staff greeted them with deference. The mama-san offered them a bottle of Whiskey. Johnny Walker Red and not 100 Pipers. Two were definitely police. The third wore a Pancho Villa moustache. His shoes were imported leather. He sat down with a hand behind his back. A gunman checking his gun. He noticed my watching him. I smiled and said hello to him in Thai. We struck up a conversation in his language. After several drinks I told him I was a writer and he replied that he was a hitman. "A hit man." "Yes, I kill people for a living." The hitman seemed almost proud of his profession. "I go everywhere. If you want anyone killed, let me know."

He handed me a card.

"Thanks, I'll keep it in mine. "You never know when you might need me."

I nudged Jamie that it was time to go. "What's wrong?" "This guy next to me is a hitman." "I know." "He has a card."

"Can you think of anyone you want killed?"

"Off the top of my head?" It was a tough question, but after a few seconds I answered, "Dick Cheney."

"Too expensive."

"There's the guy who beat me up in 7th Grade, but I'd only want him kneecapped."

"He probably has arthritis already. Anyone else?"

"What about me?" I had been suicidal a year ago. "I thought you were over that." "I guess I am." I didn't feel that way anymore.

"What about old girlfriends?"

"Not anymore." My heart has always been forgiving. "Can't think of anyone."

"Me neither."

"Pity, eh, here we have a killer on the cheap and we can't give him any work."

"Probably better that way." I remained true to the 5th Commandment, except in the case of mosquitoes.

They get the death sentence 20 times a day. Even more if I hired the hitman. Somehow I think that killing insects might not be in his repertoire. I stuck his card in my shirt and waved good night. He smiled back and waved his finger at me. It was a warning that while I might not have anyone to kill, I might be one someone's else list. I shuddered with anticipation. of that day. It's not easy being a good man in the Last Babylon on Earth. .