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

Previously published May 24, 2023

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

“At least here in the Orient there are life”

“Where are you now?”

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

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

“It does sound like paradise.”

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

“Not a pretty picture.”

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

“When are you coming back?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LATER

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

I saw one temple in Bangkok.

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

Why did I leave?

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

LATER

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

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

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

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

“How so?”

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

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

I am here for the mountains.

The highest in the world.

MAY 17 1978 EAST VILLAGE JOURNAL ENTRY

The Bruins lost 2-1 at the Forum against the Montreal Canadiens

What else is new?

Hilde Harnett is crossing the Hudson for a Saturday night on the town. She had been babysitting her aunt’s children in New Jersey. Her grandfather had been mayor of Jersey City. A powerful man. Her father is the editor of the Boston Globe. Hilde is no longer a teenager. Or almost not a teenager. I like her more than before, although I really liked her before. She thinks I ignore ( hate ) her, because of how crazy things were between us. Her and Dennis. Me living there, Dennis and I fighting in the hospital, while she was sick with a blood disease. He actually won the fight and her. Actually I’m indebted to her. Without those crazed episodes I might have never left Boston. And not become the me who is now.

And not become the me who is now.

And I loved her back then.

Maybe always will love her back then.

November 27, 1978 - East Village - Journal Entry

for us all.

Two weeks ago Bill Yusk fronted me an ounce of hashish. I've yet to sell any of it. I can't even be a drug dealer adn worse I've smoke a quarter ounce. Ann brought home Sherry. I have slowly acquire a taste for the British liquor, although sherry tastes too much like altar wine for me to like it. Too many memories.

As an altar boy the priests required our wearing cassocks and surplices, so we looked like devotees to Jesus headed for the black cloth. Latin was the language on the altar, until Vatican II changed the Mass' litany to the worshippers' language. The magic of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa lost its magic in English. I still remember 'forgive me, forgive me, really forgive me' as one of the Latin phrases I didn't have to mumble.

I stayed an altar boy into my teens, because my services were required at funerals during the week, which meant my older brother and I went to St. Elizabeth's at 8 instead of St. Mary of the Foothills. We could go through the motions. The mourners weepy before the close coffin. They were never open in the church.. That was only for the funeral homes. The priest rambled through the liturgy with a short testamonial for the departed. Mostly old people. The exit procession is very solemn. Priest leading the way with us carrying urns of burning incense. Sometimes rich families had the parish organist play a dirge for their loved one. We stood aside for the casket and the priest sprinkled a blessing of holy water of the casket. We never saw anyone arise from the dead. THe dead stayed dead. Even as a proto-atheists I respected the solemnity of the service.

I was a virgin then.

Somehow I abandoned holiness for libertinism.

Maybe when I first touched Ann McCellan's tits. She was one of a set of identical triplets. Her sisters Beth and Cathy were also fondled freely in their basement. Having impure thoughts was an easy sin to confess, until the thoughts became deeds and lust a goal for the ages.

Journal Entry - November 10, 1996 - New Delhi

After visiting Delhi's famed Red Fort I crossed the Yamuna river and wandered through narrow streets of a working neighborhood. A choking cloud of motorcycle exhaust overwhelmed my lungs. The workers of the small machine shops ignored my presence and the sun beat through my clothing to broil my skin. There was no refuge until I found myself standing before the Jain Bird Hospital I had read about the ancient religion's reverence of life and escaped the broiling sun,surprised how the chaos of India's capitol city had been vanquished by the hospital's inner calm. Thousands of birds were recovering from their injuries under the care of Jains, who respect for all things living to achieve the eternal circle birth life, life, death and reincarnation. I swiftly realized that I had added yet another holy site which might aid my young brother Michael's soul through eternity.

Back outside I caught a rickshaw to Connaught Circle, buying a Herald-Tribune before entering the calm of the Cellar. I ordered a Kingfisher beer and read the newspaper's reporting of the presidential election. The Democrats had beaten the GOP offering of Bob Dole, a good man, but deemed too stingy by the American public. Governor Bill Clinton had been reward for helping the CIA transport cocaine from Central America to Arkansas, but no one in America had sought prison for Colonel Oliver North. He was considered a hero, as was Bob Dole, but heroes weren't getting elected in 1996, because the message was simple.

It's the economy.