LOVE YOU LONG TIME - CHAPTER 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

"I forgot that."

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

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

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

"Have sanuk."

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

Sanuk trumped money for the poor.

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

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

"I have accident too. I die."

"You die?"

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

"You dead now?"

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

They weren't wrong.

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

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

"I have big family."

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

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

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

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

"You said you had one son."

"My eye no good."

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

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

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

"He just friend?" I asked Vee.

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

"Oh."

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

"House belong Mae-mod."

"Witch?"

"Good witch."

"Why come here?"

"See future."

"About us?"

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

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

"Dead women."

"Dead how?"

"You ask your wife. Look."

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

"Dead?"

Ban-tee."

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

Twenty minutes later Vee exited from the house.

"You have good future?"

"Good some. Bad some."

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

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

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

Vee held my arm.

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

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

"And the fture?"

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

We left Isaan in the morning.

"You scare magic."

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

"Fly where?"

"Surprise."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Work in Bangkok. Play in Pattaya."

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

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

I was not alone in my damnation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You know him?" Ae stifled a sniff.

"The very best of friends."

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

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

"Only Buddha knows."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"None at all."

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

Two days passed without a phone call.

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

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

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

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

The hotel door remained shut for two days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We go see father."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll be back."

"Same you tell Vee."

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

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

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

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

"I happy too."

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

"And Dtut?"

"Your son can live with us."

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

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

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

"I not believe magic."

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

"Not magic. Maybe house have phi."

"Ghosts?"

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

"No, I don't think so."

"You not believe in Phi?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Rak khun."

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

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

"Because I feel young with you."

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

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

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

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

I rested the book on my chest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Anyone of them donate money to the ballet?"

"No."

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

"And is there any salvation?"

"Only if you are lucky."

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

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

"Volunteer donor."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The same thing as me."

"Which is?"

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

"I am where I am."

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

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

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

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

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

"What about Finnish man?"

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

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

The Italian.

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

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

To Forgive and Forget - 1999

After my youngest brother died of AIDS in 1995, I traveled to the holiest shrines in Asia. The ancient temples salved little of my grief and I switched to worshipping the high heels of the go-go girls. Vee danced at the Baby A Go-Go in Pattaya. She had one eye. We had an affair. The word ‘love’ was traded between us many times. My money ran out before Christmas and a 747 flew me back to the States. My vow to return was a lie. Friends phoned to say she was seeing an Englishman. It seemed better that way.

A year later I took a plane to Thailand. The taxi ride from Bangkok lasted two hours. I stayed at the same hotel. A knock sounded on the door. It wasn’t room service. Vee hadn’t changed much physically, but told me she had AIDS. I said I would help her. We went up country to Isaan to see her baby.

Nothing had changed at the farm. THe fields were fallow and dry two months before the monsoons.

Her son was healthy. She said it could have been mine. The math didn’t work out. I didn't care. I liked children.

The farm had prospered. Vee and I slept in the same bed. She wanted me to hold her. We did nothing else. The next morning I looked for water. No medicine filled the refrigerator. Vee put the child on my lap. She had told her lovers the same story. It had been a test.

None of them came north. I was the only one who passed this exam. The memory of my brother stopped my strangling her. Her son cried as I packed my bags. Vee asked if I was angry. My answer was a weak no and I put down my bag. Her son climbed into my arms. All three of us slept in the bed together. Two days later I caught the bus back south. Forgetting her lie was much easier in Pattaya as was everything else, because life is too short not to forgive and forget.

To Forgive and Forget by Peter Nolan Smith

After my youngest brother died of AIDS in 1995, I traveled to the holiest shrines in Asia. The ancient temples salved little of my grief and I switched to worshipping the high heels of the go-go girls. Vee danced at the Baby A Go-Go in Pattaya. She had one eye. We had an affair. The word 'love' was traded between us many times. My money ran out before Christmas and a 747 flew me back to the States. My vow to return was a lie. Friends phoned to say she was seeing an Englishman. It seemed better that way.

A year later I took a plane to Thailand. The taxi ride from Bangkok lasted two hours. I stayed at the same hotel. A knock sounded on the door. It wasn't room service. Vee hadn't changed much physically, but told me she had AIDS. I said I would help her. We went up country to see her baby. She said it could have been mine. To Forgive and Forget by Peter Nolan Smith. The math didn't work out, but I was glad that the child was healthy. The farm had prospered. Vee and I slept in the same bed. She wanted me to hold her. We did nothing else. The next morning I looked for water. No medicine filled the refrigerator. Vee put the child on my lap. She had told her lovers the same story. It had been a test.

I was the only one who passed this exam. The memory of my brother stopped my strangling her. The baby cried as I packed my bags. Vee asked if I was angry. My answer was a weak no and I caught the next bus out of toto wn. Forgetting her lie was much easier in Pattaya as was everything else, because life is too short to not forgive and forget.

LOVE YOU LONG TIME - CHAPTER 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

The staff of the front desk at the Malaysia remembered my room. I washed up and went to Kenny’s Bar. He wore my ring. The girls were older, but the beer was cold. The ex-pats told the same stories as always and Fat PatI stayed a night and in the morning called Sam down in Pattaya.

“I have your room all ready. Be prepared. It’s Songkran.”

“I forgot that.”

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

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

Sam gave her some money to have a good time and we went to a beer bar on the Beach Road. We threw water at everyone in sight. I soaked a girl. Her name was Vee. She was pretty, despite having one eye.

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

"I have accident too. I die."

"You die?"

"Yes, but only for a second." It was a second that lasted forever in another dimension.

I invited her to eat at a small restaurant. She said she wanted to go home with me. We spent the week together and she quit working the bar. Rob and Dtum didn’t like her and said she was money hungry. They weren’t wrong, but I knew the score.

Small villages throughout the country had been modernized by bilked fools. We traveled up north to see her baby in Khorat. The house was poorly constructed, but her family was nice. I bought food and beer. Everyone ate like the world was ending tomorrow.

I found a photo of an Englishman.

"He just friend?" I asked Vee.

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

"Oh."

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

"This house Mae-mod."

"Witch?"

"Good witch."

"You come here for what?"

"To see future."

"About us?"

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

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

"Dead women."

I had seen animal sacrifice in Indonesia.

Killing a human for magic was a horror.

Vee exited from the house.

"You have good future?"

"Good some. Bad some."

I asked her about the old women around the bonfire.

“Yes, the old ladies picked a number. One get 4. She go into jungle. To die. Other women live longer."

"Not if I'm here."

Vee held my arm.

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

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

“I not do you magic. Only magic is in my heart.”

We left Isaan in the morning.

I was scared of the magic.

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

“No, I can’t say when I can come back.” I gave her enough money for a month.

Her boyfriend from England was coming around Christmas. There would be no long-distance phone calls. Sam later called to say she had moved to the UK. It was better that way.

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

“One day you’ll find out you don’t have a job here.”

“That day will come, when I can’t make you money.”

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

“Work in Bangkok. Play in Pattaya.”

Vee wasn’t in Pattaya. She had married the Brit. I was free to do whatever I wanted and Rob’s wife hated us going out even more than before. I never brought anyone home other than her mates. She had plenty of those.

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

I was not alone in my damnation.

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

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

In 1970 BLIND FAITH issued an album cover featuring a shirtless blonde waif. This girl was her Asian twin and I memorized her hips walking away from the bar. A mischievous backward glance should have warned me to watch my freedom.

AJ and I didn’t go out at night after that. He kept saying he had to get up early for his diving courses. I went to the bar on Soi 8 twice. The girl wasn’t there. The mama-san said she was on holiday with man from England. There were thousands of Brits in Pattaya. AJ was one of them.

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

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

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

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

“You know him?” She stifled a sniff.

“The very best of friends.”

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

AJ was not one to fall in love during a ten-day holiday.

“Only Buddha knows.”

Buddha was a good counter to magic and I vowed to buy a medallion to ward off evil spirits.

Her cascade of tears brought the mama-san over to see what was wrong. I didn’t understand the exchange in Thai and excused myself, “I’m going home.”

“I come with you. Same I stay with AJ?” The tears dried to a smile.

Saying no would have been easy. She wasn’t working the bar for laughs. If I agreed, then I was entering a financial agreement. Girls got 1000 baht or $25 to go with men. Ours wasn’t a match made in heaven, but I had money in my pocket. “You come with me, but I can’t say it will last forever.”

“I happy with one day. One week. One month. Maybe more.” She bid good-night to the mama-san and we drove off to my hotel.

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

Ae was 24. She had two kids. Her English husband had deserted her for a younger woman.

The farangs buy the girls drinks and pay for their favors. Within a week they are seasoned pros, earning $1000 a month. The money goes clothing, food, gold, old boyfriends, family, police, doctors, and unforeseen expenses running their debt deeper than the day they debuted in the business.

Never enough.

Ae was no different.

Go-go dancing supported her children, although the real money came from going with men. She couldn’t tell me how many. She wired money upcountry for her kids’ schooling, for this altruistic streak fooled most farangs into thinking they have met a saint without considering that these women have also abandoned the dirt-poor villages to forget their cheating ex-husbands and drunken boyfriends.

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

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

Now I was being posed the same question.

I said, ”Sure.”

Saying anything else wouldn’t have changed her decision. Two days passed without a phone call.

That Sunday Sam’s British partner reneged on the balloon payment of his investment and our company joined the Internet crash.

Katmandu was three hours away by plane. The monsoons weren’t due for another two months. A small guest house in Annapurna’s rain shadow served pancakes in the morning. Life would cost $10/day. Mustang lay to the north. A month’s walk in the sacred Himalayas would erase my year in Babylon. I didn’t make it out the door. Ae stood in the hallway. She looked at my bag. “Where you go?”

“I’m going to Nepal to see the mountains.”

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

She had a good point and the door remained shut for two days.

Our holiday on Koh Samui was like a honeymoon. We stayed a month. She was my sleeping dictionary and taught me Thai. I learned the words for love, caress, hug, kiss, and jealous. I said “Rak-khun’ more than a man my age should tell a younger woman.

Mrs. Adorno curse was over.

Female westerners gawked, as if I were a sex tourist.

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

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

“You say that to all the men.” I didn’t need to hear about these other men, because Sherri had told me how easy it is to fake an orgasm. She had done so in hundreds of films and real life too.

“Yes, say, but not true. With you true.” Her hand caressed my shoulder with a tenderness no one had shown in years. It was something you couldn’t teach and I reciprocated with a gentle embrace.

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

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

We rented a utility apartment. Her youngest son Dtut joined us. Three of us in one room. Our love life suffered, but not as much as when her father came to town.

Den lived on a dirt road on the other side of the train tracks and shared a filthy room with his son and his drug addict girlfriend. She was six months pregnant. They drank heavily and played cards. My donations to Ae improved no one’s lives.

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

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

"Pom Khao jai."

I had been dosed with a love potion like Toby.

I had only begun to act crazy.

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

“I’ll be back.”

“Same you tell Vee.”

“No, I swear I’ll come back.”

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

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

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

“I want you.” I was happy too. “No one else.”

“And Dtut?”

“Dtut can live with us.”

“You good man.” We moved into a house surrounded by swamps. Birds sang in the trees. Butterflies danced in the sunlight. She cooked triple fried fish and vegetables. One night I drank a beer. The taste was off, but I drained the bottle.

In the morning my chest ached and my temples pounded with acid hammers. The empty beer bottle smelled funny and I accused Ae of poisoning me.

“Poison?” She didn’t know the meaning in English.

“Yeah, magic potion.” Thais draped talisman around their neck, inscribed their bodies tattoos against evil, and visited fortunetellers and witches, instead of doctors.

"Not magic. Maybe house have phi."

"Ghosts?"

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

"No, I don't think so."

"You not believe in Phi?"

"I know ghosts well." I was from New England, although farangs derided the Thais’ belief in creatures eating your intestines or a greedy man doomed to wander eternity with a worm-sized mouth without taking into consideration that 65% of Americans believe in guardian angels. I was not an unbeliever and I contracted the monks to exorcise the house, but whatever potion had been in that beer bottle lurked in my belly and its spell was bound to emerge from hibernation at a moment of weakness.

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

“Same you live in a foreign movie and not have subtitles. Jep hoo-a.”

His conjecture was worrisome, since Ae had twice slept for twenty hours.

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

“Rak khun.”

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

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

“Because I feel young with you.”

“You my khun garh.”

I was neither the oldest or youngest farang in her life.

“Yes, I’ll always be your old man.”

I was somewhere in the middle.

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

Outside the distant hum of cars mingled with the buzz of mosquitoes beyond the netting. The night air was scented by jasmine. I rested the book on my chest.

Pattaya was so much different than New York.

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

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

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

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

“Go out, have fun. I meet later.”

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

“I learned it from Ae.”

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

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

“Anyone of them give money to the ballet?”

“No.”

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

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

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

“Volunteer donor.”

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

“That’s exactly what it is.” I only trusted Ae in her sleep.

“No fair, you see me I no see you.” She finally spotted me.

“And I see you don’t have a boyfriend.” The red dress clung to her body like a boa.

“Only have you, khun garh.” She dragged me onto the dance floor. Dtum asked Bish to join her. I became Brad Pitt and Bish was Clint Eastwood. Sam showed up from Bangkok. He had settled with his investor for a few million baht. We celebrated with tequila. The police threw us out at dawn. Standing on Walking Street amidst the flurry of transvestites, off-duty go-go girls, and short-timers, Bish said, “This place is Garden of Eden.”

“More like the farm league for Hell, but I’m not religious.”

“Hell is more like a suburban mall. Lots to buy. None of it will make you happy. Not like here.”

“I’m in no position to argue, counselor.”

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

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

"The same thing as me."

"Which is?"

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

"I am where I am."

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

>Too little of it was the truth. The love potion's power restrengthened with jealousy and I came close to throwing her mobile out the window. “So when is your teelat coming?”

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

“You expect me to believe that?” I had my suspicions about her good-bye to the Finnish man.

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

Pizza and pasta were banished from the menu. My jealousy painted a portrait of a young Italian with greasy long hair. He wore a Juventus football shirt and chain-smoked between bottles of wine. Anyone speaking a romance language was suspect. The hot weather exacerbated my temper as did the arrival of the Songkran festival in April.

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

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

Too little of it was the truth and I was tempted to throw her mobile out the window.

“So when is your tee-lat coming?”

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

“You expect me to believe that?” I had my suspicions about her good-bye to the Finnish man.

“You are the one I want.” While Ae might possess a grammar school education, she played my emotions with the virtuosity of a concert pianist and we made love with an Armageddon urgency shadowed by the impending disaster. Afterwards I knew I couldn’t come to my own rescue.

My jealousy painted a portrait of a young Italian with greasy long hair. He wore a Juventus football shirt and chain-smoked between bottles of wine. Ae was trouble. I had another curse on top of Mrs. Adorno’s older one. I was trapped, but good.

The Italian might be the only one who could save me from both, especially since Songkran was coming soon and Songkran was the crazy time of the year for the Thais and even more so for a man lost in Asia.

LOVE YOU LONG TIME - CHAPTER 6 by Peter Nolan Smith

Two thousand years ago Cato wrote that the deadliest trap for a man is the one that a woman weaves with her tears. Every bones in my body said throw out Ae. Regrettably I was bound by a love potion much stronger than love and I was beyond saving myself from the sinking sands swirling around my ankles.

I had only one ally to stave off my self-destruction and slowly devised the Italian Plan. Her Italian would show up one day. He would call Ae. She would say he was a friend. I would let her go see him. The rest of the future was written beyond my sight, but I would be saved from a fool’s fate.

Unfortunately nothing happened.

No phone calls.

No family crisis for Ae.

Nothing.

Something wasn’t right and two days before my birthday, Ae announced she was going on holiday to Chiang Mai with her youngest son. She hadn’t ever mentioned any family up north and this sudden departure sounded suspiciously like a discreet rendezvous with the Italian. The morning of my birthday she packed a bag with her best clothes and asked, “You angry?”

Telling the truth gained nothing. “Angry? What for? You go. Have fun.”

“And what will you do?” She stood at the door. Her bag and son was on a motorcycle taxi. The fat driver worked the corner of her father’s soi and had helped Ae leave other men. She would go with him. I would be alone. Life would be simple.

“I think about you.”

“I think you too.”

Ae ran to the motorcycle and two seconds later she was gone. I walked to the house. It was quiet. I put John Coltrane on the stereo. No one complained about the jazz. I packed Ae’s clothing into a big box, swept the floor clean of her hair, dumped the sheets in the trash, stuck her pictures in a drawer, and called Sam Royalle, who suggested a birthday tour of the go-go bars. “You can drown your sorrows in drink.”

“I’m going to have a quiet one. Men after 40 should only celebrate birthdays ending with zero.” I opted for a two-hour rubdown at a legitimate Thai massage parlor. After listening to my tribulations, the masseuse said, “Pattaya have many bad lady. You free. Can be butterfly. Have fun.”

Sanuk remedied any woe for the Thais. Pattaya had go-go bars, beer halls, and discos. Girls went home with you for a smile. Drinks were cheap. I intended to bury myself in fun and I left the massage parlor with my muscles al dente.

Night had fallen.

Girls rode pillion on motor-sai taxi to Walking Street. The pi-dogs made love in the bushes and the mechanics from the motorcycle shop drank with their wives around a plastic fire.
In the nearby karaoke lounge a lone police officer sang a drawn-out Lao love song to a video of dancing girls in a rice paddy. Like him I always ended up alone and this self-pity wasn’t healthy on birthdays or Christmas.

Turning the corner onto my soi I spotted balloons hanging from the wall and fairy lights strewn through the trees. A dozen motorcycles were parked in the street and a cloud of smoke rose from a fish barbecue. Twenty Thais, Sam, Mark, and shouted, “Surprise.”

I got off my bike wearing the stupidest grin on the face of the Earth and Ae ran up, laughing. “Surprise. You not know 100%. Big joke.”

“I’m a big kwaai.” Everyone enjoyed ridiculing the birthday ‘Buffalo’. We ate and went to Marine Disco. I imagined things might work out. Ae had to love me. When I wobbled to our bike, Ae asked, “You think I leave you on your birthday?”

“No.” I wondered whether we ever told each other the truth. “Thank you for the big surprise.”

Ae and I made love that night. She said she wanted life with me alone and sent Dtut to her grandmother’s house. The crisis seemed to have passed and our little house surrounded by the swamp became a Garden of Eden under Ae’s care.

In mid-June my cousin returned for a week’s holiday. Bish brought a book BLACK MASS about the South Boston Mafia, and a Boston Bruins t-shirt. Ae appreciated the bottle of perfume and promised to find him a wife. He waved his hands in the air like an air traffic controller warning off a 747.

“I’m not the marrying kind.”

“I think run in family.” Ae wasn’t smiling and I shrugged defenselessly, “We’ll get married when I sell my book.”

“Why you not ask me marry?”

“Now’s not the right time.” Her drunkard father asked to a dowry price of 50,000 baht and was not impressed by my counteroffer of 5000 baht and a bottle of Scotch. “And you get married before.”

Ae stamped her feet on the floor. “Englishman not marry. Say marry. Have monk come. Family too. Have food. Have drink. Englishman not come. UK suck. Man United ki.”

Bish hadn’t come to Thailand to hear a domestic squabble and sought refuge at his hotel. I spent an hour trying to prevent Ae from self-injury and finally when she was calm, she said, “You go with cousin. Go see lady. Go. Pai ke ki.”

“I don’t want to go with him,” I explained that my mother had asked me to look after Bish. “He’s family.”

“Sure?” Her anger was quelled by this explanation. Family was everything to Thais.

“Sure 100%.” My mother had never mentioned go-go bars.

“You go out with him. I go with friend. Maybe cousin go with she.”

“I’ll see you at the TQ.”

I met Bish at the Sabaii Lodge pool. He ate a club sandwich, while I tucked into laab gai, a spicy Isaan dish. After a second beer, I told him about Ae’s Italian lover.

“What else can you expect? You’re going out with an ex-go-go girl with two kids. As your counsel I have to ask for your own good, what are you gaining from this affair? I mean you’re a little old to confuse lust for love, aren’t you?”

This question held merit and I replied, “I know what I'm doing.”

“So why don’t you ask Ae to get married?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I was afraid she’ll say yes.”

My heart was too suspicious to accept anyone loving me now.

“Me too.”

I shook my head and told him about Ae’s secretive phone calls.

“None of my relationship have had a good landing.”

As much as Bish enjoyed our nights out with Ae, he saw her for what she was. “You should thank your lucky stars, if some stupid Italian can take her away, plus you haven’t been faithful.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t sleep with Mrs. Carolina anymore?” He had me on the witness stand and expected the truth.

“We’re friends.”

“What about Sherri?”

“We’re family.”

“But not blood like you and me.”

“We’re just friends.” He would never accept the porno star as family. He had seen her first movie THE ABDUCTION OF CLAUDIA.

“Isn’t that what Ae said about the Italian?”

“Yes.”

“And that cute hostess, Nu.” Bish arched an eyebrow.

“I haven’t touched her.” No points were awarded for monogamy on the Bight of Siam.

“Not in your mind.” Bish had been taught by the nuns that sins in the mind were as dangerous as those of the flesh.

“It’s not the same thing.” I recognized why he was a successful lawyer in Boston. He was relentless in seeking the truth. In Pattaya the pay-off wasn’t the same.

“Of course not.” He signaled for the bill. The evening sky above the palms was ablaze with stars and Bish said, “You’re my cousin. Having a bad landing doesn’t mean the pilot has to die in the crash.”

“I’ll walk away from the crash.”

“Like that bike crash with the pick-up truck.”

I held up my wrist, which had healed bent. “Only a little battered.”

“Better than dead. Where we meeting your tee-lat?" Bish was picking up bar Thai.

"At the Tahitian Queen a Go-Go. It dates back to the Vietnam War. She danced as a showgirl after her English husband had run off with a karaoke waitress. She told me she went with up to three men a day. Four if she was lucky."

"To take care of here family?"

“Some gave her 2000 baht for short-time.”

"And how much are you give her?"

"I guess not enough."

"Love kill lust. Just remember that."

Ae was waiting at the TQ bar, wearing pink hot pants, a sheer bra, and high heels. A thick layer of chalky blush heightened her Chinese features and her hair had been teased to a ridiculous height. She looked ready for the prowl and the mama-san asked Ae to dance.

She ignored my scowl and jumped up on the stage. Her body rippled around a fire pole to a Brittany Spears’ hit. Slattern eyes were riveted to her reflection on the mirror. She dropped the straps from her shoulders to expose her breasts. This routine was out of her normal skein of bad behavior and I scanned the object of this deviation, when the mama-san handed a note to a skinny young falang with a big nose. His two young friends glared in my direction. The three sported Milan AC football shirts.

“I think it’s the Italian.” Ae had pointed out other “Friends in the past. None had studied her every move so intently and I gripped my beer.

“Do yourself a favor and don’t start anything.” Bish was on a vacation

Ae was 24, had two kids, an ex-husband, a criminal family, no concept of money, no education, and no ambition beyond having sanuk versus her beauty and our sex. The equation had only one solution.

“Bish, you said the best option would be let Ae go with the Italian.”

“Save you a lot of trouble in the end and in the middle too.”

“Cut bait and run.” It had worked for Ronald Reagan after the Marine barrack bombing in Beirut.

“At this point you can walk. Later you will have to run.”

Ae bared her breasts to the young man.

“I’m opting for the Italian plan.”

“It’s a wise decision.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s why it feels like the wrong thing to do.”

Ae sashayed off the stage at the end of the song with a long strand of hair whipping across her spine, challenging the young Italian to maintain his invisibility.

“I still dance best.”

“Yes, you would win the bar fine prize every night.” I said, but she missed my sarcasm and said, “Thank you, tee-lat.”

“Let’s go someplace more interesting,” Bishop suggested and we left TQ'S to view Hot and Cold a Go-Go’s midnight live show. He loved the fire show. Ae’s cousin worked the lesbian act and Bish barfined her for the night to balance out the third wheel.

By 2am I was ready for sleep.

Mem was not tired. “I want dance one more hour.”

“One hour?” Thai time was not measure by a clock.

“One hour. Not more.” She had plans with the Italian.

“Have a good time.” This would finish us and I would be a free man. I kissed Ae goodnight and she said, “Go Marine with cousin and Bish. Come home soon.”

I watched TV until 3. The phone hadn’t rung and I called Ae. Her not picking up had a million possibilities. I settled on one and drove my bike to my cousin’s hotel. The desk clerk said that Bish had gone to his room ten minutes ago. Possibly Ae had returned home and I drove to my soi in less than five minutes. It might as well have been ten. The house would have been empty either way.

Pattaya was not a big city. She wasn’t at the Lao coffee shop or the karaoke bar across the creek. No one had seen her at the Marine discos. I rolled up to the biggest disco in the city. The motorcycle attendants asked where my mia was, which meant either she wasn’t here or they were covering up for my ‘wife’. I went inside to discover it was the former and I walked out feeling better, until Ae arrived on the Italian’s motorcycle.

She said, “Don’t talk now.”

Her plea came about an hour too late.

“I take care of you for a year and the second this punk comes into town you go off with him.”

“Why you talk same this?” She slipped off the bike with her eyes clouded with confusion. Her favorite band Loso was playing inside and this boy on the bike was young. “He friend.”

“Who’s this?” the Italian asked in clipped English.

The prospect of two falangs fighting over a dok thong had become a cartoon for the scores of Thais before the nightclub. Their laughter horrified Ae, but she remained by the Italian’s side. His friends bracketed him. It was three against one. The love potion's power came on strong and my veins burned with the lava of jealousy.

“Please don’t fight.”

The music from CHAO MOTORSAI boomed from the disco and her words ricocheted inside my skull. She had chosen this young man. Her khun gair was out and I said, “You fucking bitch.”

While non-fluent in gutter American, she started crying into her hands. The Italian realized his trespass into an unexpected relationship and apologized, “There are a hundred women in Pattaya. She can go with you.”

“No, you can have her.” I pressed the electric starter and roared out of the parking lot.

This was not Romeo and Juliette.

Back at the house I fought to sleep. I had ignored the warnings and nightmares exhausted me by dawn.

In the morning her brother picked up her clothes and drove away without any explanation. Over the next few days I heard the stories from a dozen sources.

She was with a younger man. He had offered a trip to Italy. His father had given him $10,000 to process her visa. The Italian intended on marrying the ex-go-go dancer, whereas I was content with living in sin. It was Ae's middle name. Mine was farang. I could have been anyone to Ae, but Ae was Ae to me.

Sin.

Pure and simple.

As a witch's curse.

Rocket Madness in Isaan

Every year Thailand's northeastern provinces hold a rocket festivals to entice the Naga spirits to deliver the right amount of rain for the rice growing season and rocket enthusiasts from every corner of Asia flock to scenic Yasothon to participate in the missile mayhem with their specially constructed 'bang fai naga' rockets.

No one wears helmets or goggles, but many participants drink copious amounts of sura or lao whiskey as an extra safety precaution, figuring that if you get drunk enough, then you will lie in the shade of a tree out of harm's way.

Winners are decided by how long the Bong Fai or rocket projectiles constructed of bamboo or PVC piping and fueled by a mixture of nitrate and charcoal remain in the air. Rockets are required to be at least 3 meters in length. Over 50% never leave the ground, but those achieving take-off fly without any benefit of guidance.

Explosives, lao whiskey, and a four-day celebration are the right ingredients for misadventure as was proven by a potentate from the pseudo-ruling party several years ago. His missile was the biggest in the festival (6 meters) and billed as the acme of bamboo rocketry.

The farmers toasted the minister with lao whiskey.

He lit the fuse with an elite tooth-whitened smile.

The rocket rose from the earth and then veered off into the distance. Everyone cheered the minister. The happy ending on the missile range was not matched by the the village 3 kilometers away, where the rocket landed, blowing windows from the school van and nearby houses as well as scattering rocket debris over the area.

How do you say 'opps' in Thai?

The minister claimed responsibility and did not flee the scene of the incident.

It had to be a first.

If getting drunk and playing with explosives is your thing, then head up country to catch the blast-offs.

It's sanuk mak.

Old Black Magic of Siam

Two years ago my friend, Pi-Noi, brought his work crew down from Ban Nok to install an air-conditioning system in a Pattaya bar. The 400-kilometer drive gave them a healthy thirst and that night under my mango tree we drank a case of Chang Beer. Nearing midnight the bottles were empty, but the out-of-towners wanted more and I introduced them to cheap Russian vodka.

The aficionados of lao khao downed the liter in minutes. The only evidence of being mao was the cranking up of the stereo volume and Pi-Noi asked for me to tell a ghost story.

"Pii ni-Thann?"

"Chaii." Thais love ghost story.

"

"Yes, very funny you tell in Thai." Pi-Noi has long claimed that I’m the last surviving speaker of Neanderthal Thai and another plastic bag of Lao magically appeared. Pi-Noi's friend poured a full glass of the white fire.

"Dhim."

I drank as commanded and launched into a ghost tale about a underwater photo shoot in

Another plastic bag of Lao magically appearederwater photo shoot. LIFE had hired my friend as a photo assistant to shoot the female lead of SPLASH in bathing suits and bikinis. I had never heard of the actress and neither had my Thai friend, although when I mentioned she was the star in a comedy about a mermaid falling in love with a mortal man, everyone sat up straight in the shadows under the mango tree.

“Ngeuuak?” asked Pi-Noi.

“Ngeuuak.” The mermaid myth was known to every sea-going culture.

“Suay?”

“Suay mak.” Darryl Hannah was a blonde goddess. The photographer was working to seduce her. I explained to the Thais that I was his ‘thaat’ or slave. They understood this term, since all Thais had been slaves until 1095.

“We stayed at an old hotel. Hotel have ghost.”

“Pee ngeuuak?” Thais have scores of designation for ghosts; phee phohng ‘evil spirit’ phraai water ghost, bpee saat or ‘animal ghost’ et al.

“No, ghost old lady,” I continued how the actress had complained about a female ghost entering her room. She was barely visible. Her words were echoes. The encounter frightened the actress, who wanted to sleeping my room.

“Sex with mermaid, good.”

“No, my friend is jealous. Says he won’t pay me, if I sleep with me.”

“Farang kee-nok.”

“Yes, he was bird shit. I get revenge by drinking rhum. I drink lots of Rhum.” 150 proof quelled the disappointment of not having sex with a movie star. “Mao mak. I go sleep. Someone touches my shoulder. I think it’s puying farang suay.”

I really had thought it was Darryl Hannah.

Instead my visitor was a long-haired apparition of an 80 year-old woman.

“Mai puying suay. Phi gair. Phee.”

I acted out the part of an ectoplasmic old lady.

“Guah.” Pee-Noi and his crew shivered with collective fear.

“Not scared. Mao.” I dismissed the old ghost and fell back to sleep in a drunken stupor. The tale was meant to be funny, but at its end Pi-Noi demanded with a chill, “Ching?”

“True 100%. The ghost was as real as you or me.”

“You sex with her?”

“No way.” I was too drunk to do anything but tell her to fuck off.

“Mai shua.” He preferred to think that I had made love to a ghost.

A really old ghost.

His friends told it was funny, but Pi-Noi rolled his eyes.

“Didn’t you like my story?”

His face was set with anger. “You don’t make fun of ghosts.”

“They do in the movies.” Thais at the Big C Theater roared hilariously about headless ghosts chasing fools through the night. I laughed too.

“Not same. This your house.”

“You believe in ghosts?”

Pi-Noi shrugged, as if he take them or leave them.

"I only scared my wife."

"I understand that."

I was scared of his wife too.

And I suspect so were most ghosts, then again my Irish blood grants a special affinity for spirits and I don’t disrespect the beliefs of this or any country.

Every year thousands of Thais and tourists line the Mekong River to view the glowing gas balls floating into the air from the mythical Naga creature. Temple steps are often decorated by a representation of this serpent. Farangs tend to deride the Thais’ belief in creatures eating your intestines or a greedy man doomed to wander eternity with a worm-sized mouth without taking into consideration that 65% of Americans believe in guardian angels.

While not 100% convinced, I really did see a ghost in Jamaica and ten years ago during a visit to Isaan with my one-eyed girlfriend we drove to a mae-mod or witch’s house. The old crone’s house was located beyond the electrical grid. A score of women sat in the candle-lit hut listening to their fortunes, while men lingered nervously outside. At one point the oldest women were assembled in a circle. Lots were chosen and the most wrinkled of them was led into the jungle by two men.

“Where she going?” I asked Vee.

“Women have lottery. See who die so others live longer.”

“They’re going to kill her?”

“No, she picked same woman every time. Other ladies never know or don’t remember.”

It was a scam, but a scary one in this setting.

The next morning a green potion was smeared on the rim of my glass. Vee said it was nothing and I drank some. We were both sick for two days. A year later we broke up and neither of us could leave the other. When I returned to the States for business, I didn’t sleep for three days and sweated out a fever. A Thai friend smiled knowingly and said, “Red-lum.”

“Magic?” Jack Nicholson had said the same in Kubrick’s THE SHINING.

“Red rum.”

‘Murder’ backwards.

He nodded. “At least she drink it too."

Ban-thee."

"Maybe?"

"Thai women like simple magic."

"That they do."

And like that I became a believer. Of course being half-Irish I wake at night to the slightest whisper, because not everything going bump in the night is a thief.