October 10, 1978 - Journal Entry - East Village

One NRP member incurred the wrath of the Party by suggesting that we kill the rich. I agreed with Guadalcanal in theory, but everyone else rejected violence.

"If we use violence, we will be just like them," Anthony Scibelli said parroting the old movie line foisted on the film's audience to prevent the poor from ravaging the Upper East Side or Greenwich. It isn't like Anthony is square, but I don't trust him, especially since he hit on Alice at CBGBs.

Later at our apartment Alice said that she wanted the NRP to handle security for New Wave Vaudeville.

"We can't pay anything."

People put their lives on the life, they get paid," I countered, although all of the male members are tough as one twenty-five year-old from the South Shore.

"None of them are asking for money. Why are you backing them? I'll pay you. Just don't tell anyone."

"I only want John Kemp to get paid." The British shoemaker was a good friend.

"Just John."

"And not Anthony."

"Certainly not Anthony.

On some things Alice and I agreed completely.

"I don't think we will be able to pull off the show. Everyone is fighting for the limelight, except Klaus." She was mostly talking about Susan Hannaford, who thinks she is a genius. I can't stand her, but have never told Alice that. The Hillbilly ingenue was on the verge of tears. I held her in my arms and told her everything was going to be alright. I hoped it wasn't a lie.

Mark Mandrell is in Thailand. He quarantined two weeks in a Phuket hotel. I want to go so badly, but my finances are desperate, since I can't really work in my condition. Heavy labor seems to be the only things that comes my way. Old Yellah can't seem to get it in her head that I am sick. Not so sick that I can't walk or lift things, but I need my rest.

Nothing like sleep and even more than sleep with my family in Sri Racha and Ban Nok.

Loneliness On The Day Of Love

The snow fell with silence
The clots of flakes feathered the sidewalks
Snow shovels scrapped on the concrete
I threw out no salt___

Drifts collected by the bottom of brownstones
No one came to shovel away the floes
That was an old man's job
Mine___

Snow loves the cold
I have good gear against winter
I wish I had a warm body waiting for me
Sadly my wife awaits around the world__

Thailand
Sriracha
Hot
No snow. but the shops in Sri Racha sell snow beer
The bottles covered with frost
Even at dawn___

It's Valentine Day 2021.
I stayed home without a love in sight.
A lone man content to hold hands with a glass of wine, but
I will be complete Planes will fly again
Soon I will be with my families
One day even stranded sailors will find a ship home
It is our calling___

Rising Of The Gulf Of Siam - VDO

Sri Racha pier - April 2022

To view this video, please click on the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LdLS6KxnnQ&list=TLPQMDUwODIwMjLjCZ8PRnnntg&index=2

The Roam of Ghosts

My youngest son talks about phee or ghosts. Fenway is not scared of these spirits, but he doesn't want to go to certain houses on our soi in Sri Racha, since the four-year-old sees birds with voices. His mother thinks that he has the 6th sense. Mam says that she is not frightened by ghosts.

"Not zombies too." Mam weighs 45 kilos. Zombies like fat people. She is mostly skin and bones.

I explained that zombies weren’t ghosts, but flesh-eating monsters.

“I not see them eat Thai people in movie. Maybe not like taste. They like eat farang, not Thais.”

“What about the ghost that eats people’s intestines? Phi Krasy?”

Mam shivered like a ghost entered the room. “Don’t say that word.”

“Phi Krasy?”

MAM didn’t talk to me that night and I slept close to her body, if only to protect her from the dead, because there are lots of ghosts in Thailand and here's a list of thai demons or phi-saat complied by Stacker on http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4792

Phi Krahang - A glowing fusion of a man and a bird dedicated to a diet of offal.

Phi Krasy – this demon lives within a witch’s body. the succubus leaves the sleeping host to consume your intestines. Eyes incapable of blinking and can’t look anyone in the face like a TV newscaaster.

Phi Phrai – The spirit of a woman who has died in childbirth and whose body has been used to make phi thai hong lotion. A sorcerer must hold a candle under the corpse’s chin, and from the resultant melted oil essences are manufactured which drive men mad

Phi Tai Ha – The spirit of a woman who has died of malaria. The ghost will also spread this disease.

Phi Thuk Khun – The substance of a living person which has to be sent out on astral journeys every week, or harm will come to its owner,

Phi Khamod – A spirit in the shape of a red star which, like a Will o’ the Wisp, misleads wanderers.

Phi Nang Tani – A female tree spirit which is essentially beneficent and may fill the alms bowls of itinerant monks.

Phi Pa – A forest spirit. Hunters may leave a piece of the foot, lip, tongue or eyelid of a killed animal to show respect to this spirit.

Phi Poang Khang – A spirit in the shape of a black monkey which likes to suck the big toe of people sleeping in the jungle. It is said to live near salt licks.

Phi Ka – These spirits are inherited through women and can be contagious. The Ka, if not properly treated (with raw eggs) will attack and possibly possess people without the owner’s knowledge. Perhaps understandably, ordinary people are said to be reluctant to marry into Ka clans!

Phi Hai – Hungry, amoral spirits associated with places where people have died an unnatural or violent death. Phi Hai are easily offended, and take every opportunity to possess people. Normally, they can be induced to leave their victim if suitable offerings are made, but on occasions an exorcist has to drive them out. In such cases, when incantations and lustral water prove insufficient, a whip may need to be employed.

Phi Pob – A malicious and very dangerous spirit which manifests itself as a beautiful woman. Phi Pob float through the air because they have no legs or lower body. They generally appear as a length of internal organs and intestines suspended from a strikingly lovely face – therefore, beware beautiful women gliding mysteriously by in long dresses! This type of ghost is probably more feared than any other species in Thailand.

They're coming to get flesh.

More on me than Mam.

And I'm a better meal than Fenway.

By at least 70 kilos.

THE END OF BABYLON by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya had long been recognized as the world's leading destination for sex addicts and lowlifes attracted to the sordid city on the Gulf of Siam by the countless bars, the easy women, lax enforcement of law, crooked police, rampant drug use, stunning ladyboys, and young boys. My ten years in the Last Babylon furthered my research into the darker side of life without any desire to reform a single sinner. Pattaya became home, then again everywhere is home once you buy you're first roll of toilet paper.

My friends remained men on the run from the banality of western life. Our pasts were forgotten as long as our pockets were filled with baht. We were rich men in the Orient and I thought that this anti-Eden would last forever.

Sadly my booming fake F-1 enterprise was shut down by the Thai cyber-police, who treated my crime as a misdemeanor to the annoyance of the Ferrari representatives. The cops suggested that shutting down my business was in my best interests and I complied with their wishes.

Without this income I was forced to return to the USA.

New York to be exact.

I resumed selling diamonds on 47th Street and traveled frequently to Thailand to see my children.

Both families had decamped from Pattaya. My time was split between Chai-nat and Sri racha. The allure of a go-go bar could compete with my love for Angie and Fenway, plus Mam, my son' mom, was the only woman in the world for me and she swore my fidelity wasn't the result of a magic love potion or sa-neh-haa.

"I am cute. I not need magic to make you love me."

She has that straight and I spent most of this last sojourn in Thailand with her along the Cambodian border visiting her two other children. My step-kids; Fluke and Noy call me 'papa' and I call them 'luk'. Saying they aren't my kids are fighting words and I have a short temper.

We returned to Sri Racha is a little less than four hours flat. I dropped Mam and Fenway and a cousin at our small house west of the town and headed to drop off the rental car in Pattaya.

I was six hours late and called from Sukhumvit to ask how much extra I should pay. The Thai mechanic said, "Up to you, but a small pack of beer would be nice."

400 baht and 4-pack of Leo beer was a bargain.

Pisan's repair shop abutted a shrinking swamp off Soi Bongkot. The wetland remained a haven for birds and mosquitoes. I parked the car under the makeshift awning of corrugated plastic. Pisan and his son were burning old tires. A toxic black smoke floated over the marsh. I handed the beers to Pisan and we drank talking about the old times, as his 18 year-old son tended to the mad blaze at the water's edge.

Pisan regarded the encroachment on the wasteland.

Pattaya's coconut groves had been razed to provide retirees over-seized bungalows. The corner restaurants serving spicy Isaan food had been replaced by KFCs and 7/11s. Condos shadowed the Beach Road and huge shopping malls dominated the tourist market. Babylon was falling under the onslaught of globalization, but a few places remained true to the tradition of a-tham-ma or lawlessness.

"Nothing same. Puying old now. Not beautiful. Only have farang old too or fucking Russian and dirty Arab. No fun." Pisan shook his head, thinking as much about the loss of Babylon as his youth.

Neither of us could pretend to be young anymore except with a younger woman.

"You want to meet at the Buffalo for a beer later?" We didn't drink in the bar. The stools were reserved for farangs. A warped bamboo bench along Sai Sahm was our spot.

"Sorry, I stay here. Live here. Go nowhere. For what?" He was paying 8000 baht for an elevated patch of land. His shop had no fences to protect against thieves. This was home. He even had some chickens in the back.

"Enjoy the beers." I thanked him for the rental and headed off to my tailor on Sai Song, calling several friends from the back of a baht bus.

Sam Royalle was busy with his kids up at his house on the reservoir, but Big Al and Ulf were available.

"Meet me at the Buffalo around 6."

My suit was ready.

I had an hour and a half to kill and took another baht bus to Soi 3, which was a short walk to the Welkom Inn. I had been a faithful afternoon customer for years. None of the girls in the front courtyard recognized me, although the service girls in the garden asked for my dog. I never left home without Champoo.

"She's good." Champoo was up country with my ex-wife. "How's business?"

"You look. You see what?" She pointed to the new hotels rising over the trees. "Pattaya change. Now city want family. Not want men like you."

"We're a dying breed." The tired farangs at the bar were nursing their beers like they were the last beers in the world. No one was sitting at the tables and I asked, "Has it been like this long?"

"All year." The bargirl put ice in my beer. It kept it cold. "You want lady?"

"No." Not that she believed any man could be 100% faithful in the long run. I couldn't believe it either considering the playboy nature of my younger years. Mam was running me on a long lease. She hadn't called once. I tip the bargirl and said, "Thanks for offering."

After finishing my beer I walked along the Beach Road to Soi 6, the wickedest street in town. The bars were fronted by packs of short-time girls. Not one of them caught my eye and they were more interested in stuffing food in their mouths than a single older male. I was no longer 'sexy man', but neither was anyone else. The street was dead.

A motorsai taxi driver drove me to the Buffalo.

This bar had been in business for over 20 years. It was around the corner from my old house. The girls behind the bar greeted me my name. I was not a forgotten man here. I bought a round of drinks for my old favorites; two lesbians no longer in love. I was the only farang at the bar.

Big Al showed up first and commented on my weight.

"Better watch out for your gut." Big Al tipped the scales over 300.

"I can still see my feet." My BMI was a little over the edge and I sucked in my gut. I hated looking fat to someone as big as Big Al.

"As long as you can still touch your dick, it's okay." The ex-extreme fighter had left the USA for good, although all his businesses had failed in the past two years. "Even worse my wife found out that I went short-time with someone her family knew."

"That's not good." Thais hated losing face or nah sia.

"I should have known better." He explained that his wife was more pissed at his spending money on another woman than his butterflying on her. "I calm her down, but I got to get something together."

He told me about a film project about a detective in Thailand.

"It's a long shot." Making movies require money. Big Al had none. He wasn't even drinking beer.

Ulf showed up at the bar. The German bank robber had traded Pattaya for the Philippines, but his bar had failed in Angeles City. He had returned to my old business; selling first-class motor-sport gear.

"Working bad almost killed me. Trinken, trinken, trinken." Ulf enjoyed a good time, but drinking six nights a week was a deadly pace for men like us. He had been with me the day that I met Mam. We had been toasting a fallen comrade after the temple service. Mam had smiled my way. I had been her prisoner since and happy about it too.

"A friend of mine had offered me a job running a bar here."

"And?"

"I turned him down." I wanted to reach 60. Go-go girls and drink would lead to drugs, which was a fatal combo for anyone with my vices. "For health reasons."

I excused myself from the two men to go to the bathroom. The two ex-convicts were a little alike and now reformed in their ways. I returned to the bar. Big, Rolf, and I talked about robbing banks. They used guns. Mine were only in thought.

A girl grabbed my arm.

"Where you go?" She was about 23, long-legged and beautiful.

"Home to my wife." I didn't have a watch, but I knew the clock was ticking back in Srirahca. I bid farewell to my friends.

"I'll see you in the new year."

I got back to Mam's house before 7.

She looked surprised to see me. Fenway was happy with the toy I brought him. I kissed Mam on the cheek.

"You go short-time?" She had to ask.

"Not one second." And it was the truth.

Happy to say it, but the Last Babylon is gone for me.

Same as 42nd Street, which is now a shopping mall for fat people, but it doesn't really matter, because as the Wicked Witch of the West rued as she melted at the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

"Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? Ughhhh!!! What a world. What a world!"

What a world indeed.

The Roam of Ghosts

My son talks about phee or ghosts. Fenway's not scared of these spirits, but he doesn't want to go to certain houses on our soi in Sri Racha, since the four-year-old sees birds with voices. His mother thinks that he has the 6th sense. Mam says that she is not frightened by ghosts.

"Not zombies too." She weighs 45 kilos. Zombies like fat people. Mam is mostly skin and bones. A Biafran beauty.

I explained that zombies weren’t ghosts, but flesh-eating monsters.

“I not see them eat Thai people in movie. Maybe not like taste. Scare farang, not Thais.”

“What about the ghost that eats people’s intestines? Phi Krasy?”

Mam shivered like a ghost entered the room. “Don’t say that word.”

“Phi Krasy?”

MAM didn’t talk to me that night and I slept close to her body, if only to protect her from the dead.

Here’s a list of thai demons or phi-saat complied by Stacker on http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4792

Phi Krahang - A glowing fusion of a man and a bird dedicated to a diet of offal.

Phi Krasy – this demon lives within a witch’s body. the succubus leaves the sleeping host to consume your intestines. Eyes incapable of blinking and can’t look anyone in the face like a TV newscaaster.

Phi Phrai – The spirit of a woman who has died in childbirth and whose body has been used to make phi thai hong lotion. A sorcerer must hold a candle under the corpse’s chin, and from the resultant melted oil essences are manufactured which drive men mad

Phi Tai Ha – The spirit of a woman who has died of malaria. The ghost will also spread this disease.

Phi Thuk Khun – The substance of a living person which has to be sent out on astral journeys every week, or harm will come to its owner,

Phi Khamod – A spirit in the shape of a red star which, like a Will o’ the Wisp, misleads wanderers.

Phi Nang Tani – A female tree spirit which is essentially beneficent and may fill the alms bowls of itinerant monks.

Phi Pa – A forest spirit. Hunters may leave a piece of the foot, lip, tongue or eyelid of a killed animal to show respect to this spirit.

Phi Poang Khang – A spirit in the shape of a black monkey which likes to suck the big toe of people sleeping in the jungle. It is said to live near salt licks.

Phi Ka – These spirits are inherited through women and can be contagious. The Ka, if not properly treated (with raw eggs) will attack and possibly possess people without the owner’s knowledge. Perhaps understandably, ordinary people are said to be reluctant to marry into Ka clans!

Phi Hai – Hungry, amoral spirits associated with places where people have died an unnatural or violent death. Phi Hai are easily offended, and take every opportunity to possess people. Normally, they can be induced to leave their victim if suitable offerings are made, but on occasions an exorcist has to drive them out. In such cases, when incantations and lustral water prove insufficient, a whip may need to be employed.

Phi Pob – A malicious and very dangerous spirit which manifests itself as a beautiful woman. Phi Pob float through the air because they have no legs or lower body. They generally appear as a length of internal organs and intestines suspended from a strikingly lovely face – therefore, beware beautiful women gliding mysteriously by in long dresses! This type of ghost is probably more feared than any other species in Thailand.

They're coming to get flesh.

More on me than Mam.

And I'm a better meal than Fenway.

By at least 70 kilos.

Whitey You Dog

The name Whitey belonged to one man in Boston for the last fifty years.

Whitey Bulger, arch-criminal out of South Boston, had lived in the Old Colony, America's first housing project. His first arrest for larceny predated my birth by nine years. He sold heroin in the projects. He killed friends, family, and Mafia. The FBI entered his name into the MOST WANTED list on 1999, despite his status as an FBI informant for several decades.

Whitey Bulger had remained at large all those years. Police sources had cited the fugitive as living in a number of countries without extradition to the USA. Some had even mentioned his hiding out in Thailand. The Land of Smiles has always been friendly to a man on the run, since Thais see every farang the same. Some foreigner who doesn't belong here, but they'll tolerate as long as he has money and doesn't make any Thai lose face.

Whitey Bulger and I never crossed paths. I stayed out of South Boston except for St Patrick's Day. My criminal activities in Boston were limited to simple traffic violations. The FBI could beat me with rubber hoses without my saying a single word to harm the fugitive. It was easy to hold your sand when you know nothing, but back in 2007 I adopted a white dog in Sri Racha. Khao or 'White' had belonged to Mam's step-uncle. The truck driver treated the dog like dirt. We adopted Khao and I thought to change his name to fit his new life, except he didn't answer to Jo Jo.

I always liked the band Jo Jo Gunne.

Mam and Uncle Nai and Fenway called the dog 'Khao'. Fighting for Jo Jo was futile, however I Americianized 'Khao' into Whitey, although he doesn't look a thing like #458 on the FBI's Most Wanted list and I'm glad about that. The last thing I need in my life are the FBI. They are always a bore and Whitey Bulger is a rat murderer.

Always.

adn I am happy he is dead.