DUST THEN MUD by Peter Nolan Smith

Bangkok was an impossibly hot city in the dry season of 1990. Tall trees thankfully shaded the airless sois. The fetid klongs led to the Chao Phyra River. Weary barges languidly transported rice from up-country. The air-conditioning of Patpong's go-go bars chilled the flesh of the dancers. Outside all farangs wore a sheen of sweat. Always. After a short stay at the Malaysia Hotel, I was ready to head to the mountains north of Chiang Mai. The fabled Golden Triangle.

I had read of Lanna Thai or the Kingdon of a Million Rice Fields in the travel books. Roads became dirt and then buffalo paths in the mountains . Opium was the dominant crop. The tribespeople lived on less than $1 a day and the Thais didn't consider the Lisu, Karens, Hmong, Yao, Lahu, Lisu, Akha, Lua, Khamu, and Thin Thai. Warlords and secret armies governed this wilderness dedicated to cultivation and transport of Fin or opium.

I booked a 2nd Class AC sleeper at Hualamphong Station and vacated the Malaysia Hotel.

I killed the six hours to the evening train at Kenny's Bar on Soi Duplei. Fon tried to convince me to blow off my departure. We had been friendly for several days. I promised to see her on my return to Bangkok.

"If I here. I here. Chok-dee.” We all needed good luck.

A Tuk-Tuk brought me to Bangkok's main station, Krung Thep Aphiwat. The train pulled out at dusk on time. 6:40 pm. and slowly snaked through the trackside ghettoes into the central plains. Sunset along with the black of night.

Dinner in the sleeping cars was strictly for farangs or foreigners. There was another option and I walked to the train’s rear car. A full Thai kitchen with tables and chairs. No farangs. I sat next to an open window. The wind warm.

I drank 80-proof Mekong Whiskey with off-duty cops in the dining car. They stripped off their shirts, Their skin glowed with sweat. Mine too. Buckets of ice chilled our drinks and the ice cubes slightly diluted the powerful liquor, but not enough, and I crashed in my A/C berth around midnight.

TThe next morning I woke with the dawn. Sleeping past that hour was discouraged by the staff. They kicked everyone out of the beds and gathered the sheets, blankets, and pillow cases. Breakfast was served by a surly porter. I headed for the dining car, where I poured the last of the Mekong into a cup of watery instant coffee. Kai Jiaoo or scambled eggs on rice was than the cold fried eggs with small hot dogs served in the sleeping cars..

The train pulled into the Chinag Mai station on time. 6:40. A tuk-tuk conveyed me over the Ping River to the Top North Guesthouse. On the narrow sois young children of all ages wore various school uniforms according to their grade. Sidewalk stalls fed the young and old in the Ancient City.

The Top North had been suggested by a police officer on the train. The hotel in the ancient city had a swimming pool. I spent most of midday wallowing in the shallow end. Once the sun dropped behind Doi Suthep, I wandered along narrow roads to ancient temples and beer bars near the old Silk Road city's brick fortifications and moat. Close by the East Gate, a farang bookshop rented dirt bikes.

125 cc MTXs and 250cc ATXs.

$10 OR $12 a day.

None of them were new. The studded tires in good shape.

The Aussie owner was yellowed by malaria. Tobie's wife glowered in the kitchen. She clearly didn't trust falangs or westerners.

"He's an American. Not an Israeli." Tobie wagged his nicotine-stained finger at his diminutive wife. A big Singha beer of a table. Not his first of the day.

"All farangs, all men, same. Kee," she said, wrapping herself in a wraith of wrath.

"Kee?" My Thai consisted basically of 'sawadee kap' and 'ek nung kyat beer' plus 'u-nai hong nam'. Hello and more beer were almost as important as 'where's the bathroom', since my stomach was having a hard time adjusting to Thai food.

"Kee means shit. The Thais are the French of the Orient. They think they are better than anyone else and in some ways they aren't wrong. This country had never conquered by the West." Tobie smiled at his wife, happy to be Free of the French, who were still despised in Laos, Cambodia, and Viet-Nam. Thais were happy to be Thais.

The Thais had supported the USA in Vietnam, but only had committed troops to Laos and survived the Communist avalanche to disprove the 'Domino Theory'. No battles had been fought in Lanna Thai for hundreds of years. I preferred mountain paths to battlefield and said to the Aussie, "I was thinking about taking a motorcycle trip."

"The North has great trails." He whipped out a map of the tribal hills skirting the Burma border. "None of the good ones are on a map."

"Mai Hong Son was one of the last market towns on the Silk Route." The broken nail on Jerry's index finger tapped a location to the west of Chiang Mai.

"You could fly there for $15. Driving on a dirt bike can take up to ten hours. It's hard riding and busts your ass. Every corner is a turn into the 15th century, especially in the dry season. The Thais are trying to pave it, but the steep hills devour the road like land sharks. This time of year the road has dust deep as your knees."

"Better than mud."

"Yes and no. What do you want rent?"

"I'll take the 250."

"Good choice."

I gave Tobie my passport as a guarantee and motored around town like Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONES. The bike's short pipes glowed red from the exhaust. The backfires spat out blue flames. I returned to the hotel and dropped into bed early. Ten hours on a bad road could easily become fifteen. Thailand was as famed for bad roads as was the North of Maine.

The next morning I ate a quick “jook’ or rice porridge. The barman at the Top North Guest House looked at the hazy sky and said, "Lon Mak."

And he was right about the heat.

It was already 91F and I drank a 'bon voyage' Singha. It was as cold as the air was hot.

After checking my bag with the hotel, I strapped a small daypack to the bike and set north from the old city. The Trans-Asia Highway was smooth as a baby's bottom.

50 Kilometers out of Chiang Mai was an elephant camp. Tourists rode the massive khangs through the forests. I snapped a few photos and kept on going. It was a long way to Mae Hang Son.

Heavy construction trucks labored up the two-laner. The road washing paved for the future. I weaved through the swatches of plowed road in 2nd gear and climbed into the mountains scarred by the slash-and-burn agriculture of the Hill Tribes. The centuries disappeared with every mile. I made good time to the Mai Hong Song turn-off. The centuries disappeared with every mile.

I made good time to the Mai Hong Song turn-off.

Outside of Pai the ankle-deep dust replaced the pavement. I wrapped a scarf over my mouth and nose. Sunglasses partially protected my eyes, but within a mile, powdery dirt coated my denims and dust caked my teeth and nostrils.

Opium trucks rolled past police barriers without inspection and I promised myself a taste in Mae Hong Song. Chasing the dragon or smoking opium would go good with a cold Singha.

As the sun rose in the hazy sky, the air grew too hot to breathe . The sun was strong enough to make me think that someone was ironing my skin. I drained my water bottle and looked up the word for water in a Thai dictionary. It was ‘nam'. Bottle was 'kuat' and I repeated both and sped by dry rice paddies, hoping to reach a village soon.

Water buffalo wallowed in troughs of mud.

Buffaloes were called 'kwaii' like the movie BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAII.

By noon I estimated the temperature in the high 90s.

There were no towns or villages. Only the road and dust. I twisted the accelerator to the max. The wind offered no relief.

Fifty miles short of Mae Hong Son, I entered a Lisu village. The various tribes lived pre-industrial lives. The young tribal girls sold iced water. I bought three bottles and gave them all candy. They thanked me with a bowed 'wai'.

Two miles farther west I topped a pass. The hot season had scorched the trees brown. Parched leaves huddled at their trunks. Three buses were parked at the bottom of the valley. I slowed  to a stop. Their passengers sheltered under withered trees’ miserly shade. The drivers gathered at the edge of a 10-meter bog. A trickling stream had transformed the red dirt into a thick muck. The Thais looked at me. I looked at them. We studied the seemingly impassable road.

One of the driver smoked a Krueng Tip cigarette.

He pointed to his knees to indicate the depth of the mud.

"Mai bpen rai," I said, which was all-purpose Thai phrase meaning 'no problem'.

I revved up the engine and the Thais shouted out, "Farang Bah."

I thought it was encouragement.

I maxxed out the 250cc engine. 6000 rpm.

A beautiful Lisu girl caught my eye.

I smiled at the twenty year-old and roared 200 meters back up the road for a good running start.

One of the drivers waved his hands to warn that crossing this mire was impossible.

He hadn't seen Evel Knievel leap over Caesar's fountains in Las Vegas and I u-turned the bike spraying a rat tail of damp earth. The Thai men on the roadside rose to their feet. The women stopped eating. The children ran closer to the soggy road. They knew that there was going to be a show. In their minds, all farangs were crazy. I goosed the accelerator and torgued out the bike at 7000 RPMs. I wasn't wearing a helmet.

My only protections were my courage and stupidity.

"Farang bah!" I shouted and raced toward the muck at full speed. The front wheel hydroplaned over the mud and then buried itself up to the fender, catapulting me into the air with outstretched arms like Superman. I was no George Reeves, the Original Man of Steel, and bellyflopped into the puddle.

I rose from the mud covered from head to foot like a troglodyte and the Thais laughed insanely, as the men hauled the stalled bike to the other side of the bog and I promised to buy them beer in Mai Hong Sing.

"Farang bah," shouted the driver.

I shook off the slop like a wet dog. The stranded Thai passengers laughed harder.

"Farang bah. Farang bah."

Later I learned that 'farang bah' meant 'crazy foreigner' and that I was. A farang bah, but I waved to the Lisu girl and she waved back. Seconds later I remounted the bike and punched my fist in the air before speeding away dripping clods of wet earth.

The sun baked the mud to every inch of my body. I loved riding in the mountains. I was free.

Mae Hong Song was a small town and I pulled into a restaurant across from a small temple and ordered beer. I drank several and each one tasted better than the previous one.

The bus rolled into town at sunset. The passengers sat down and joined me. They told the store owners the tale of my failed feat. I bought beers. Everyone laughed and the driver raised his bottle and said, "Chok dii."

Good luck.

"Chaii yo." I was happy not to have been hurt by my failed feat.

The Lisu girl sat at my table. She opened the paper bag and peeled off the insects’ antennae. “Khin.”

She stuck the body in her mouth. Legs and all. I obeyed and did the same. The grasshoppers were crunchy and tasted nutty. A great bar snack. I ordered ice for the beer. Cold Singha beer went well with fried grasshoppers and even better with mud.

The Thais retold my feat to each and every new Thai and let me give the punchline.

"Farang bah."

Each time it earned a big laugh, because even in a remote backwater like Mai Hong Song Thais were used to 'farang bah'.

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

Plenty more to come___ Fotos by Peter Nolan Smith

Thai Fried Rat - 2011

“What did you eat for breakfast, fried rat?” Richie Boy asked his Hassidic friend at Smith and Wollensky’s, after Isaak cut loose under the table.

“It wasn’t me.” The guilty party protested without forgiveness. “He who smelled it dealt it.”

Everyone at the table was over fifty. The restaurant was elegant. Our waiter treated us like royalty. This afternoon Richie Boy had sold him a diamond. A good deal for him and a nice profit for us. Our conversation should have been less puerile.

“Fast food for lunch.” I sniffed the foul wind. “McDonald’s 100% beef means all the cow, except for the moo. They drop whole cows into a vaporizer. Out comes pink poo for a Big Mac.”

“I like Big Macs.” Richie Boy’s friend was religious. His work schedule failed to allow time a healthy kosher lunch.

“Better fried rats.”

“Don’t tell me that you’ve eaten it?” Richie is a bacon Jew. Little is tref for him, but rat is definitely off his menu.

“On occasion.” Rat, owl, vulture, and crow are four animals Americans will never eat. Only owls will eat crow. I’m sure there are several other animals missing from any menu of the 50 states, such as seagulls, seals, jellyfish, as well as a legion of endangered species, especially whale, which I ate as a child in Boston fish market next to Faneuil Hall.

“Rat?” Richie Boy and his friend were aghast.

“It’s not so bad. The field rats in Thailand live in the rice padies. That is all they eat. They never eat garbage not like you.”

This past January I had been in Thailand. Mem, my son Fenway, and I had spent a week in a Cambodian border town. She brought down several fried rats for her cousin, uncle, and me. The rats or noo yang are fat from rice. Her aunt cooked her several splayed rats to bring back to Sriracha. The cousins back home were dying for some good rat.

It’s a five-hour drive from the Cambodian border to the coast. The rats were on ice. At home, her cousin opened the plastic container. Hooey is the top girl at the city’s best Japanese karaoke bar. She wears Ungaro knock-offs and fake Manolo high heels. A model in any other country in the world. Delicate and thin, she bent over the tub of rats. Her nose twitched with a rapture like a glue-sniffer huffing a tube of Dupont after a year’s sabbatical.

“Noo Yang,” she cooed and her step-father pranced like a trained bear in anticipation of feasting on his two rat carcasses. Needless to say, my enthusiasm was a little more decorous.

“You no want eat.” Mem was upset. Cooking rat takes hours. She had saved me the largest corpse. If I didn’t eat it, she would have been insulted by my refusal. Thais have thin skins and long memories.

“Who says I don’t want to eat rat?” I handed her cousin, Nai, money to buy six large bottles of Leo beer and a plastic bag of Lao Khao. The bootleg rice whiskey was strong enough to take the sting out of a scorpion tail, on which I had dined the previous evening.

Mem happily refried the rat and cut the body into sixths. It still looked like a rat and not Mickey Mouse either. New York rat on a plate.

“Why you not eat?” Mem crossed her arms. Everyone else’s eyes asked the same question.

“Wait for it not to be hot.”

Two minutes later I cracked off a leg. The meat was dark. I took a bite. Not bad, in fact good. Rat does not taste like chicken or pig or beef.

Something entirely different yet familiar.

I finished my serving and had seconds. We threw the bones to the mongrel dogs in the street. They fought over these scraps. Mem was happy and the assembled Thais said, “James not same other farangs. He eat same Thai.”

“That’s not true. There’s no thing I won’t eat. Chicken feet.”

Ting gai.

Bleech.

But the Thais love to suck on the rubber feet.

Even my son.

He’s definitely not 100% farang, but not 100% Thai either.

Fenway was scared of rat. He was his father’s son.

Back in the New York steakhouse, Richie Boy asked, as the waiter delivered our steaks, “So how was the rat?”

“It didn’t taste like chicken.” Or chicken feet.

And neither does the steak at Smith and Wollensky’s.

Good boy.

SPICE MAD DAY by Peter Nolan Smith

Last year I celebrated Columbus Day with my doctor on Staten Island. Nick was Italian and cooked great meatballs. The doctor and I had met during our freshman class of European History 101. We had received Bs from the professor.

His kids had the day off. So did both of us. I crossed the inner harbor and took the SIRR to New Dorp. Nick picked me up in his vintage MG. we enjoyed his wife’s cooking. Meatballs, ziti, et al. No one at the table spoke. Certainly not about Christopher Columbus.

"Hey, Nico, I have a question for you."

"Yeah, what?" His oldest son studied film at a state university. I liked his short films.

"What year did Columbus sail to America??

"Why you asking?"

"Because today's Columbus Day."

"And?"

"I was wondering if you knew the year of his discovery. Do any of you?"

"Sure."

"What is it? Any one you."

"It's not a school day," Nico's best friend replied through a mouthful of meatballs.

"So you don't know."

"Nope," they answered in a collective chorus of ignorance.

"Did we know that little, when we were that age?" I asked Nick.

"We went to nun school. The sisters forced us to remember the names of Columbus' three ships; the Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta."

"C'mon, you gotta know." I looked to the young people around the table.

"1882?" His youngest son was the only one brave enough to offer an answer.

"You got two numbers right." The doctor shook his head in disbelief. "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. You never heard that?"

"Never." The kids' ages ranged from 8 to 21. Columbus was a blank to them and I explained that Columbus had been seeking the back door to Asia.

"For Chinese take-out?" His older son’s friend Squeak asked with interest. He liked pu-pu platters.

"No, for spices."

"That's why no one knows about him. No one knows about spices." His oldest son's only connection to spice was the Spice Girls and they hadn't scored a hit since the turn of the century.

"Spices were the most important commodity in the world 500 years ago." I had been a history substitute teacher at South Boston High during the bussing riots of 1975. "Spices are pepper, cinnamon, cloves, garlic, chili, nutmeg and many more."

"Chili came from Mexico," Nick's youngest son announced from the table.

"Correct."

"The gardener told me that. He's from Mexico."

"Yes, but many other spices came from Asia." I had spent the 90s and 00s in the Far East. Nick had graduated from a medical school in Manila. We both liked Oriental cuisine. Almost as much as his mother’s and wife’s cooking.

"Why they need spices on their food when they had ketchup?" Squeak was spinning linguine on his fork.

"Ketchup is not a spice, and it is not a vegetable."

Even if the majority of American teenagers choose Heinz ketchup as their favorite veggie. "I'll tell you a story. Back in 1991 I arrived by boat to Ternate in northern Indonesia. The volcanic island was a backwater then, but in the 15th Century European nations fought to control its treasures of cloves and spices. Hoping to discover a shortcut to the fabled island, Christopher Columbus set sail west across the Atlantic Ocean. His fleet of three ships made landfall on an unknown continent. It was not China, Japan, or Ternate. Undeterred by this disappointment, the Genoan adventurer claimed the new world for the King Of Spain and his patroness, Queen Isabella. He was as good a salesman as he was a sailor and called it the West Indies to promote future expeditions."

The teenagersa the table gazed off into space. Nick’s youngest son and daughter listened to what I had to say. Their attention span respected an adult, so I continued my tale, "Columbus' first voyage was remarkable, for the fact that he was traveling through unknown waters and only lost one ship, the SANTA MARIA on his first voyage. It sank on Christmas Day, but not one sailor drowned in the shipwreck. There was not enough room for everyone to return to Spain, and 39 men elected to stay on 'Hispaniola' to further explore the virgin territory for gold and spices."

"What happened to those guys he left behind?" Nick's younger son was showing promise as a scholar. Julien was a straight B student.

"They were'massacred by Carib warriors, who detested the newcomers' enslavement of the Arawak women, children, and friends, thus initiating the long conflict between Europe and the New World."

"Massacred as in eaten." Squeak was an ace at shoot-em-up VDO games.

"Yes, eaten."

"Did they use any spices when they ate them or just ketchup?" Squeak's comment earned a round laughter.

"I quit." I got up from the table and went out on the terrace with a glass of wine in my hand.

Outer New York Harbor spread beneath the highest point in Staten Island. Henry Hudson had sailed this bay. His namesake river ran straight north into the Adirondacks. He had been stranded in the Arctic by his men.

Exploration was tough on failures.

In truth, Christopher Columbus carried little gold back to his Spanish sovereigns, but he introduced corn, manioc or cassava, potato, the peanut, tomato, papaya, pineapple, avocado, chili pepper, cotton and cocoa to the Old World. It took about thirty years for the chili to reach Thailand, which adopted the fiery spice as its own.

My wife Mam loved chili on her sum-tam or green papaya salad. All Thai women loved the fiery dish and they have Columbus to thank for their pleasure.

Columbus might be forgotten by the young and no longer considered to be a hero by those who blame the destruction of the Indians on his discovery, but I celebrated his discovery of the Bahamas with rum and coke. Nick joined me and raised his glass.

"To Columbus."

He was Admiral of the Oceans.

YELLOW TEETH 2008

Written Dec 31, 2011

I have been arrested several times in my life.

Age 12 for vandalizing an abandoned missile base overlooking Boston Harbor

Age 21 for driving over a bed of flowers at a girl's college in Newton.

Age 25 for running an after-hour club in Manhattan.

Age 31 in Paris for grafitting the British Embassy wall. The gendarmes thought my poem was an IRA protest against the Crown, instead of drunken verses to my girlfriend, who worked on Rue St. Honore opposite the rear entrance of the embassy.

None of these crimes were prosecuted to the fullest. My violent streak never came to the attention of the police. My drug deals were strictly small-time. I avoided contact with the Mafia. They were as dangerous as the Hell's Angels, Hamburg pimps, Colombian cocaine dealers, and conniving transvestites.

My mother had warned me about these people.

"If you see trouble coming, walk the other way."

I was near-sighted, so trouble found me long before I noticed its approach.

Luckily my Uncle Carmine explained his wayward nephews the Golden Rule.

"Only break one law at a time."

His advice stood me well. I avoided any serious consequences with the law for twenty-two years. No one's lucky streak can challenged the odds forever. In January 2008, I returned to Central Pattaya after a pleasant seafood lunch with my steady girlfriend in Jomtien.

It was a good life.

I was living alone in the most wicked town on the planet. My website featuring counterfeit Ferrari clothing and assorted F1 merchandise was # 1 in the Google search engines. I earn good money. Not a fortune. Good money. I had shipped a big order of McLaren driver suits to Germany from the Pattaya Post Office. Another week of good sales and I would be out of debt, then I could get my yellow teeth whitened to a brilliant white.

I entered my estate off Soi Bongkot and parked my motorscooter before my rented house. Another month and the mango tree would bear fruit. Everyone in the neighborhood awaited the harvest with lip-smacking anticipation.

A mini-van stopped behind me. At first, I thought it was my brother-in-law coming for a beer and I wondered why he had brought so many friends.

Except it wasn't Pi-Wot. I identified them in a second. They were the Bangkok Cyber Crime Unit come to arrest me for copyright infringement. The oldest officer in a black suit presented a search warrant. The other cops were undercover in jeans, tee-shirts, and sneakers or nork kreang baep. I was wearing sandals. Running was not an option. I knew this day might be coming. I had not thought it was coming today. ing. I hadn’t thought it would be today. I opened the gate to my house, then the door to my office.

They politely took off their shoes and entered my office. Twenty F1 shirts lay in plastic bags on the floor. They seized the merchandise and the ranking officer asked, "Where’s the rest of it?"

"That's it." Business had been traditionally slow after the holidays.

A computer geek from Ferrari sat at my computer. He wanted the codes to my site. Refusal was out of the question. Cooperation was rewarded with leniency, but tonight I would be spending the evening in a monkey house. Their tight cells were SRO.

"Can I go outside?" My presence wasn’t needed for the dismantling of f1 shopping.net. The long-haired geek knew his business. His fingers swept over my keyboard like a tsunami. F1 shopping net was gone.

The commander nodded and two cops accompanied into the garden. I hyperventilated, as a series of prospective scenarios played in my head. Most of them finished in jail.

One of the younger cops told me to calm down, "Jai yen. Jai yen."

"That's easy for you to say." I had seen MIDNIGHT EXPRESS more than once.

He wasn't being arrested in a foreign country.

"No big problem. Maybe 2000 baht." He explained the fine would be about $60. "We take you Bangkok. You pay bail and then go home. Mai pen lai." 

An American detective from Quantico Ltd. was supervising the operation. His company had been looking for me a long time. Rusty was a Yale graduate. His online persona had emailed my website that his mother wouldn't allow his use of her credit card. I had accepted a Western Union wire to my real name. I had posted him the merchandise, but had written phony addresses on the envelopes, thinking that might protect me from an investigation

At least it was a comfort that my ex-wife hadn't sold me out to the tam-luau.

How they had tracked me back to Soi Sawan was unimportant. Rusty also said it wasn't such a big deal, "Not the first time. Next time you go to jail."

"Message well taken." I had been trying to quit for ages. "I don't want to go to jail."

Jail in Thailand is a bare floor with thirty-plus other misfortunates.

"You won't." Rusty had arrested scores of counterfeiters.

"You seem like a smart person. Why are you doing this?" I hated snitches.

"Why did you do this?" Rusty was in his thirties. His Thai was impeccable.

"So I could stay in Thailand." The other employment opportunities were either a low-paying teaching job or illegally running a bar.

"We all do what we have to do." But I was never a snitch.

The old lady on the street came up to me. I paid Yai to clean my house and take care of my daughter, Angie. She knew about my business. No foreigner was allowed to work in the Land of Smiles. One crime. Counterfeit F1. She had received perfume for Christmas. Third crime. Trust someone.The police had questioned her about me several times. She had never said a word to me. Her neighbor for years. Thailand had been a fascist monarchy since 1935. Its police had studied the ways of the Gestapo. I forgave Yai, since the Thai police’s nickname was ‘tam luat, which sounded like ‘make blood’. I forgave Yai. What else could she do?

"I tell police you good man."

"Thanks." Her testimony was the best a woman in her position could do for a farang.

"These police not same Pattaya. Honest. Not worry."

"Sure." I always worried when people tell me not to worry, but the police never cuffed me or confiscated my telephone. The older officer in charge asked in good English if I had any drugs or guns in the house. I told him the truth.

”No guns. Two marijuana joints.”

"Ganga no problem. Get rid of it."

He sent me into the house and I flushed the two joints down the toilet.

When I came out, he asked, "You want beer?"

"Yeah." It couldn't hurt and I reached into my pocket.

"Mai, mai." He waved his hand in the air and leaned forward. "I talk with everyone and they say you good man. I will take care of you. I not like other farang."

He glanced at Rusty and his employers, Ferrari reps from Italy and the head officer asked if I wanted some beer.

”A Leo.” The lager was Thailand’s most popular brew.

”Big bottle?”

”Big.”

I reached for my wallet. He waved away my attempt to pay and send off an underling for the beer, telling him also to get some gai thot or friend chicken. The old lady had said that these police were honest, but this arrest was unlike any that I had seen on Sophon Cable or read in the Bangkok Post.

I was not in cuffs. I had my phone. I sat in the shade of my mango tree. I drank beer. I called my wife up- country with her family. She said, “Not worry.”

I had called two friends also in my business to warn them. They were also puzzled by my good treatment. When they had been arrested for fraud, one had fled the country and the other, a cripple, had been imprisoned in the Monkey House. His Thai lawyer had arranged bail in less than a day. I expected the same treatment or worse. I had no money for bail. I was thinking MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, the 1978 prison movie based on Billy Hayes, incarceration in a Turkish prison for drug trafficking.

After two hours of checking my computer and packing the illegal merchandise, they transported me to Bangkok in an air-conditioned mini-van.

Halfway to the Sathon Police Station on the highway, they stopped for food and bought a bag filled with a McDonald’s Happy Meal accompanied by another Beer. Still not cuffed. Phone in hand. This was not my last meal and I realized how fortunate I was to have been arrested by Federal police.

A Thai friend in Bangkok met me at the police station. Khim worked as a chauffeur. He explained the process and said, “This small problem. You get bail. Go home."

Strangely everyone was very polite to me. All the other arrestees were led by chain into an ever- crowded cell. My holding cell was an office with AC and a TV with my choice of DVDs. I didn’t feel like watching anything, as I was reading Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME.

Later TV crews showed up to film me. The commanding officer for copyright infringement pointed to a pile of two-thousand shirt. "This farang was caught with 4 million baht and 2000 shirts."

"No, khun tam pit." I whispered under my breath. He had made a mistake. I pointed to a single bag down the corridor. "Those are these."

"These?" Someone had properly not briefed him.

"Yes, 20 shirts. Nothing more."

He waved to the TV crew to shut off the camera. End of interview.

The arresting officers laughed at their boss.

I sat in an AC office watching TV. Movie of my choice. INSIDE MAN. Real criminals getaway. I was fingerprinted and filled out an arrest form. When the cops announced bail of 50k or $1000.. I said I didn't have it. That was the truth.

"40k?"

"Mai mee, kap." Speaking polite Thai helps in situations like this.

"30?" There was no way they were dropping to 20 or 25.

30 it was. A little less than $1000.

Khim and I said, "Yet mah." or motherfucker.

We were short the bail. I had 15 k in the bank and Khim had 500. Nu couldn't sell a motorcycle until tomorrow. The monkey house loomed as a probability, instead of a possibility. No beds, no blankets, cheap rice twice a day, and lots of mosquitoes. The worst of Bangkok in Bangkok.

I made another phone one call. The Old Roue lived in on Soi Nana. I knew Alan from New York. I asked for 20K. He had 15K. Khim drove over to Soi 4 and picked it up. Without the Old Roue I would have been in the MonkeyHouse for who knows how long. I called him to say thanks every few days and also let him know I'm still broke.

"No problem man, I’ll get it when you get it." Khim went to fetch the money.

The whole process from raid to release had taken seven hours with a two-hour trip to Bangkok thrown into the program. The Fed cops had me sign an affidavit confirming no one had asked for a ‘sin bon’ or bribe.

After the money was paid, they cut me loose. Khim spent 200 baht on 5 bottles of Khang. I drank three of them myself.

I fell to sleep happy that I had not spent any time in the 'monkey house'. No chairs, no fans, and lots of mosquitoes as a prelude to the Bangkok Hilton, the Koong Toey jail.

I appeared on national TV that night. Channel 5. The Army station.  The police had said, “Not worry. Not many people watch Channel 5."

Everyone on my soi saw the newscast.

Several Thai friends said I looked handsome. They couldn't care less that I was arrested. It's something that happens.

Everyone was astounded by this revelation of how much money I had. "You have 4 million baht."

My old lady who cleaned my house knew the truth. I was broke and wished I had the 4 million baht. I could get a job at the local school teaching English and make about $300/month. 10,000 baht. 300/baht a day is a big comedown from 3000 baht a day. My wife still loved me.

This story is far from over, since the cops said it would be at least 6-10 weeks until I go to court.

Another day in paradise has gotten a little less paradisaical, but it's always better to be free.

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 line, 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. Sometimes I thought he was too thin. But I loved his laugh.

"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.

2021

Mark Mandrell is in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic. He and his Thai wife had traveled from Australia and now have to quarantine 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 thing 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.

The River Is Wide - 2009

The River Is Wide image.jpeg In August 2009, I took first wife and our daughter Angie to the highest point in Thailand. Doi Inthaton was wraithed by fog and I lent her my jacket, even though I had bought her a bright pink poncho in Chiang Mai. She liked anything to do with me. Angie is my daughter. She and I climbed to the highest pagoda and there she asked if i still loved her. "Pon lak kunh mak." She was my first child. We spent most of her first five years together, until her mother deserted me for an up-country lover. I have almost recovered from the pain thanks to my new wife, Mam, and our son Fenway, but my love for Angie remained strong, despite her mother's betrayal. I had to ask, "Why?" Angie explained that she opened my computer and saw pictures of another baby, Fenway, and none of her. I felt her hurt and held her in my arms. "I will always love you forever," I told her this in Thai with a Boston accent. She made a face like I was speaking Klingon, but then buried her face in my chest. I felt her heartbeat. My daughter said nothing. She has never told me that she loves me. Angie is a funny girl that way. Her mother waited at the car. We had a serious conversation about Fenway. I had kept him a secret. He was no secret now. "Angie has a brother." We drove to Sukhothai in long silence ripped to shreds thirty minutes later by angry accusations. "You left me. You had a boyfriend. You made your bed. You keep up this shit and I'll get out of the car now and you'll never see me again.Is that what you want for Angie." My anger was verging on cold blood. "I love her 100%" “And me?” “Not a 100%.” She sat in the back. Nu shut up. I never wanted this. No one was right, but Angie came first. Night came fast. The road was difficult. Nu took over the driving. My eyesight wasn’t the best in the dark. My phone rang. It was Mam. I spoke with her and explained that Nu knew everything now. No one was happy, although I had Nu stop at a gas station, so I could buy snacks for Angie and Leo beer for me. Nu got a Pepsi. Sukhothai seemed father away every time I looked at the Nelles Map of Thailand, but at 9 pm it was only 30 klicks away. The radio warned of flooding. The Yom River was running over its banks. A flood. Nam tuam.

Sukhothai was the ancient Thai capitol. The Burmese had burnt it to the ground on several occasions. There was nothing in the history of the Rough Guide for Thailand about flooding, but as we reached the city proper, the water rose higher and higher, until it was up to the doors.

"This is fucked up." I kept driving towards the muang bulan. The ancient city was on higher ground.

"Jam dai 5 pii gon. Anthong mii nam tuam." Nu was referring to high waters in Anthong 5 years before.

"Jam dai." Sandbags lined the Asia Highway. Water on tge other side gleamed an inch below the rim. I had never seen flooding like this. It was like New Orleans a day before Hurricane Katrina submerged the Pearl City.

We reached dry road and found an open hotel on raised land. Sukhothai is a town, that closed early. We ate a late dinner, and I had Angie sit on my lap. She was scared of the racing waters in the street. The care was safe. We were safe.

"Mai huang." I told her not to worry. "I will be there always."

I'm certain she didn't believe. And the same goes for Fenway.

We are family and I leave no one.

ps I will always be there for them. Then now forever___

THE TRUE REWARD OF A LIE by Peter Nolan Smith

My flight from Bangkok via Taipei and Anchorage to JFK in 2008 lasted almost thirty-six hours. I wished the trip had taken even longer since I had nothing to gain in America, however we landed stateside on time ending the longest Sunday of my life. The immigration officer asked how long I had been out of the country.

"Seven years." All of it in Thailand.

"Welcome back."

He stamped my passport and I entered the USA without any idea when I might see my wife and daughter again. The 12:05AM Skytrain to Brooklyn carried few passengers, mostly airport workers coming off the late-shift. They spoke my language. This had been my city for twenty-seven years. It should have felt like home.

My friend had promised a soft landing at his Fort Greene brownstone. Andrew had told the truth. His wife was willing to accept a guest for longer than three days. His daughter was the same age as my daughter. I went to sleep dreaming of rice paddies, red dirt roads, and Angie.

Over the next week I fought off the lingering effects of international jet lag and slowly connected with friends. They bought me lunch and dinner. Several lent money. They had heard about my arrest in Thailand. I didn't say too much about my new girlfriend's pregnancy or leaving Angie's mom. I was a hard sell as it was and I needed money for my families.

I visited several galleries with my Jean-Michel Basquiat sketch, except now was not the time to sell anything. Everyone was broke.

April grew warmer with the sun and one afternoon I wandered over to the East Village. I almost rang the bell of my old apartment. Someone else lived there now and I wanted to see the change, but instead I walked down to the basketball courts of Tompkins Square Park.

No one was playing hoop.

My friend JD had said the games died several months after my departure. I stood underneath the baskets. No one in the park knew my name. The East Village belonged to skateboarders and the young Wall Street bankers and I headed down to the F train stop at 1st Avenue.

It was early evening. The sun still had another hour to set. The light glazed everyone with unearthly silver. Couples kissed on the sidewalks. Singles prowled the bars in search of a hook-up. They were young. Life had gone on without me. One person is nothing to a city of millions, especially a ghost of the past.

As I approached the subway entrance, I spotted a familiar face. Thomas was speaking on a cellphone. I decided to wait for him to turn my way, thinking maybe he wouldn't recognize me.

Thomas was a neighborhood real estate developer and I was a pseudo-intellectual seeking to stop the gentrification of the Lower East Side. Our conversations were more arguments and we almost came to blows over the sale of a 2nd Avenue variety store, whose closure he viewed as progress.

I bought my underwear there.

Afterwards a store opened selling tee-shirts for $30.

Several years later at a Christmas dinner for Ornette Coleman, we pigpiled on a TV News producer extolling the networks' sense of truth. Thomas said that all TV News was lies. I called it propaganda. We recognized that we weren't that far apart and occasionally met for drinks. I even introduced him to his girlfriend.

I was too poor for Cara's tastes.

Then and even more so now.

Thomas clicked off the cellphone and slipped the mobile into his well-tailored suit. Times were tough in the USA, but he appeared prosperous.

For a second he seemed to look through me, then his eyes lit with recognition.

"Good to see you. When did you return from Thailand?" He took off the imported sunglasses to examine me better. "You have changed. How long has it been?"

"Seven years. How's Cara?" I wondered if they were still together. Her olive-skinned beauty possessed an Iberian love of laughter.

"As lovely and difficult as ever. Up in the country right now. I bought a farmhouse on 250 acres along the Walkill River. My property was the second largest in New Paltz after a New Age commune?s pig farm. She'd love to see you."

"And me her."

"Last winter I bought a building on North Moore Street and redid the top three floors. 7200 square-feet. I'm having a house-warming this Thursday. You should come. Is your family with you?"

"No," I explained they were staying behind without mentioning about my deportation.

The story was over for the moment. I was trying to start a new chapter. I showed Thomas a few photos. He casually excused himself by tapping his platinum Pate-Philippe.

"I've got to run, but here's my card. Bring a friend if you like."

"You want me to bring anything?"

"No, just don't be late or else you'll miss the lobster."

Thomas turned just in time to avoid a collision with a beautiful brunette. They knew each other. He didn't introduce me. They walked away, speaking in whispers. After several steps she started crying and laid her head on Thomas' shoulder.

I tailed them for several blocks.

They entered the brasserie Balthazaar, where the maitre de greeted Thomas like he was the new owner. I could have been jealous of his new loft, high-paying job, house in the country, fiancee, and the tears of his mistress, except I had learned long ago the envy of other people's triumphs was best suited to those who had lost all hope of achieving their own dreams and planned on attending the housewarming with a Maine native's appetite for lobster.

That Thursday Andrew accompanied me across the river from Brooklyn. He was an architect and I thought maybe Thomas could give him work. My house warming gift of a 19th Century iron was out of place in the loft on North Moore Street.

A Clifford Still hung over the river rock fireplace. Tropical flower bouquets sprouted from the corners of the enormous living room. A liveried bartender tended a well-stocked bar, while wild salmon and thin-shell lobster overwhelmed a long table. The display of wealth was well-mannered as Cara's silver sheath whispering across the teakwood floor.

I introduced her to Andrew. She kissed me on both cheeks and fingered the diamond solitaire hanging from the platinum chain around her elegant neck. Thomas had bought the D-Flawless diamond for an engagement ring and she sensed my concern.

"Don't worry, we're still engaged and better yet I'll persuade Thomas to buy me something extra special at Christmas. But enough about diamonds, I want you to meet someone."

"A friend?" I had offended hundreds of people during my twenty-five years in New York and prayed this introduction wasn't an attempted reconciliation.

"Only time will tell."

Andrew excused himself, seeing two friends. Manhattan's upper crust was a small world.

Cara led me across the room and unexpectedly introduced the brunette from the other day.

"This is Tatiana. She works in film and I've been telling her all about you."

"Like what?" I feared the worst.

"Your diving off a cliff at Lake Minnewaska.? Tatiana?s accent bespoke good schools.

"I didn't dive, I jumped." The crystalline waters had been irresistible.

"From a hundred feet." My friends tended to exaggerate my stories and I smiled guiltily. "More like fifty feet, but it was high."

"Cara says me you're a writer." Tatiana's clothes were worth more than my earnings last year.

I spieled out my latest novel's outline, after which she arched a plucked eyebrow accusingly, "You've pitched that story before."

Before I could plead innocence, Thomas joined us.

"So you two have met."

Tatiana glared in fear Cara and Thomas expected a liaison to birth from this encounter and departed to a gaggle of admirers. Winking conspiratorially Cara left for the kitchen and Thomas asked, "What did you think of Tatiana?"

"She is a goddess, but the other day I thought she was your mistress."

"Mistress?" He sneaked a peep into the kitchen, where his fiancee overlorded the help. "Cara would kill me, if she ever caught me with another woman."

"Why was she crying?"

"She bought her loft at the top of the curve and lost nearly 20% of value with the sub-prime crash. She's fucked like a lot of people."

"Guess we all can't be as lucky as you."

"We make our own luck. Like maybe you and her?"

Tatiana stood in the gentle light of the billiard room. Her devotees were obviously rich.

"She looks like she's hunting for a millionaire.

"You underestimate what you have to offer."

"Those men drive BMWs to the Hamptons. I'm a penniless failed writer, who sells diamonds for a living." I didn't even mention Sirinthep as an obstacle. My mia noi was half a world away.

"When we first met, you didn't care anything about money!"

"That crazy poet might have lost a little of his pride." I refrained from confessing my setback in Thailand. Desperation didn't sell well in this city.

"I haven't seen any twenty-year olds dive off the cliff at Lake Minnewaska."

"I jumped."

"Dive sounds better."

"But it isn't the truth."

"People want to hear the truth as much as they want to tell it." Thomas lifted his finger, as if to signal time-out. "You think I got where I am, because I told the truth?"

I examined the luxurious loft.

"Hard work maybe?"

"Shit, hard work is overrated! Maybe that's not true, because you can't grab the ring, if you're not in position, but the business, the loft, and the country house all hinged on a lie told in the right place at the right time." Thomas eyed the distance of the nearest guest. None of them needed to hear what he had to say and I was good at keeping secrets as long as I didn't drink too much.

"Almost sounds like a deal with the Devil."

"And I would have taken his offer. Ten years ago I got into a tight spot. I owed the bank $650,000."

"Ouch!" I was losing sleep over a five-figure debt incurred in Thailand.

"My only asset was that loft on 16th Street worth maybe $450,000. I told the bank I would sell it. They agreed to this deal, because my bankruptcy got them nothing. Unfortunately the best offer was for $650,000."

"Unfortunately?" I earned barely $30,000 last year. That amount of money was a fortune in Thailand.

"$650,000 settled my debt, but left me with nothing." He grabbed two champagne glasses from a passing waiter. "I had grown comfortable with the good life, so I decided to not tell the bank about the extra $200,000."

"The lie?" We clinked glasses and sipped at the champagne. It was vintage.

"Not the important one. My beautiful plan fell apart, because the bank informed the loft board about the sale. They demanded why I was giving them $450,000, when the sale was for $650,000." His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to remember his exact words. "I said that a sale for $450,000 would lower the value of the other lofts in the building and never be approved by the board, so I lied about the $650,000."

"And they believed you?"

"Yes, I had never lied to them before. That $200,000 bought a small property, which I flipped and soon was back in the money. I haven't told anyone this. Not even Cara."

"So why did you tell me?" Too many grand families in America had sanitized the origins of their wealth, whether it be smuggling of opium, running whiskey or insider trading for me to regard Thomas as a criminal.

"Just so you understand the true reward of lying." He shrugged and said, " Excuse me, but I have to see to my other guests."

I wandered through the crowd, listening to the schemes of rich men. They turned their shoudlers at my approach. I walked into the billiard room, where Andrew spoke with several agitated men on how to best exact revenge from the perpetrators of banking crisis. A balding man in his fifties ventured with a grim grin, "We should confiscate their yachts."

"Who? The government. They'll only waste it on propping up Wall Street," a tall man in an exquisitely black Italian suit countered with what I deemed to be the voice of reason, until he added, "Better to let everyone fend for themselves."

"We do that and we'll have anarchy within a year." A third man with a frail goatee entered the fray. They had all been watching too much business news and Andrew asked me, "Can you come up with a solution?"

"Yes, have international write-off day. All debts canceled. Nothing belongs to any other than what they hold in their hands." I had written a script about this. HEAVEN ABOVE, which had been rejected by several studios. Now might be a better time for such a tale.

"Anarchy is not a solution. Things will get better."

The tall man in the black suit tsked, as if the White House had granted him the concession for selling foreclosed houses in Florida to the Chinese.

"But not this year. Gas will hit $4 this summer. The wars will go on without surrender or victory, but in the meanwhile let's drink champagne. Morituri te salutant."

"Those who are about to die, salute you." Andrew had studied Latin too, but the rest of the men's faces betrayed they thought I was mad and I wandered away onto the terrace to stare at the few stars dotting soft black sky.

None would have been visible, if the Trade Towers were standing together.

Someone put on U2's NEW YORK and a lump choked my throat. I had been born in Boston, yet loved this city and cried like a baby, until the paean-turned-dirge was replaced by Joni Mitchell's CARRIE. Something about her high-pitched soprano dispelled my sorrow, though not as much as the sight of Tatiana in the doorway with two champagne glasses.

"I just got something caught in my eyes."

She had the decency to buy my lie.

"There's a lot of that going around and there will for quite some time." She regarded me, almost as if someone had shed a revealing light about me to which I wasn't privy. "I just hope this crisis isn't forever."

"It's not the end of the world," I told my story of giving blood with a madman on 9/11. "If the insane can recover, then so can the sane. It only takes more time."

"How long do you know Thomas?" Her eyes were steely sapphires.

"We go back."

"He thinks a lot of you." She obviously valued his opinion.

"It wasn't always that way. One time we got into an argument."

"Over a girl?"

"No, over intrinsic value."

"Intrinsic value?" She frowned with disappointment.

"This old variety store in the East Village sold every necessity. The landlord upped the rent and it was replaced by a tee-shirt shop, which Thomas considered the natural course of economic evolution. I argued that no one had taken into consideration the intrinsic value of what the store gave the neighborhood. It got a little heated and people had to hold us back."

"Over a shop selling tee-shirts?"

"Yeah." Neither the tee-shirt shop nor a Blockbusters had succeeded in the space.

"You are sure it wasn't over a woman?"

"No." My soul-kissing his ex-girlfriend had been a joke.

"Men are stupid." She sneered, as if her half of the species was the only worthy cause for a fight.

"We were never friends, until I introduced him to Cara. They were meant for each other like Adam and Eve or Romeo and Juliet. I guess that's was my intrinsic value."

"Everyone has some." Her shadowed profile belonged in a museum and I almost reached out to make sure she was flesh, but she moved to the right like a mirage vanishing from a desert road, only she stopped a pace away and said, "I can't stay here any longer. You mind escorting me to a cab. It's just a cab ride. Nothing else."

"I can deal with nothing else." Her beauty canceled out her heartlessness.

Her suitors couldn't hide their puzzlement of her departure with me. I had no intention of solving the mystery, for it was never good to question the unexpected, especially if the end result was simply a handshake.

I waved good-bye to Andrew.

I had keys and this was going nowhere.

After all I was a married man.

As the elevator door closed, Cara lovingly embraced Thomas. "I didn't suspect that they would leave together.?

"I sort of cheated."

"You tell her he was the heir to a family fortune?"

"No, I said that he had the biggest____" Thomas whispered the rest of his confession into Cara's ear. She laughed raucously and several of the guests turned their heads with knitted brows of disapproval. Cara couldn't care less about what these gringos thought. "And does he?"

"Maybe." Thomas cocked his head to the side, as if it might be the truth.

"Why would you tell such a lie?"

"Because he looked so lonely without his family and I never repaid him for making me a happy man."

"Really?" Like every woman Cara had heard too many lies to believe a single word said by any man.

"Of course, but I still don't understand why he introduced us. It wasn't like he and I were good friends."

Cara pinched his cheek. "I told him to."

"Why?" Thomas asked with all ignorance a man can possess about a woman's wiles. Cara could have hurt his feeling, but she really did love him. "Because you had big feet. Big feet, big shoes. Big shoes____?

"I get the picture." Thomas stared down at his shoes. They didn't seem big.

"Would it have mattered, if they weren't big?"

"Of course not, my love." They didn't have to say another word on the subject. Both of them were happy with the way they were and no one could blame them. After all theirs was a perfect world and that was no lie.

In Honor of Lassitude

Written 6/29/2013

Back in 2008 the BBC had broadcasted a story about a Bogota Museum honoring laziness with a week-long exhibition dedicated to a deeper understanding of lethargy. At last lassitude has achieved respect by intellectuals, who have too often downplayed its importance to human existence. 

Throughout the 80s and 90s my Sundays were devoted to ruminating before the TV in my East 10th Street apartment, taking long baths, avoiding conversations, and finally watching Star Trek, while having a plate of General Tsao's Chicken take-out from China Star on 1st Avenue.

My girlfriend, Ms. Carolina, called this day 'the incommunicado Shabbath'.

In fact the only person to whom I spoke was the six-fingered Chinese deliveryman.

"$4.75."

"Keep a dollar tip."

The door shut and I resumed doing nothing, while the rest of New York returned home tuckered out from a day at the museums, movies, or brunches.

As a child my father couldn't stand idle hands and scheduled a slurry of chores for the Lord's Day; mowing the lawn, sweeping out the garage, weeding the flower beds.

There was no TV, until you were finished, but he also said, "If you aren't going to do a job right, then there's no reason to do it."

I must have been ten, when I tested his saying.

One Sunday he entered the TV den to find me watching the movie SINBAD.

"Are your chores done?"

"I didn't think I could do a good job mowing the lawn, so I stopped."

What could I have been thinking?

My argument for laziness earned a month of no TV.

I didn't get a mention for thatact of juvenile rbellion at the Bogata museum and neither did the Thais, who are perennial Olympic contenders for the gold medal in lassitude in the eyes of farangs, who don't lift a finger in hard labor. Thai workers labor six days a week for less than $10 a day with lazy drunk wewsteerners compaining about their abilitiy to nothing when they weren't getting paid.

In the late 1990s I work at a metal shop.

Every week I carry tons of brass and steel.

I know tired same as the Thai workers.

All you want to do after a long day is drink a beer and lay down for the count.

Today in 2013 I am at rest.

It's a natural state in the universe and farangs can go fuck themselves onmine and Thais' off days.

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

Much more to come.

Sleeping on the Job #1

Written 9/1/22

When I was a kid, white-collared businessmen would see road crews along the highways leaning on their shovels and declared them lazy bastards never having hard to perforn hard labor in their lives.

My father had worked a lumber camp in his youth and tell them, "You've never worked a day in your life, if you say that."

He was an electrical engineer. His hands were soft, but his voice revealed his respect for a working man.

Farangs criticize Thais for laziness without realizing that Thai workers are pushed to the limit.

10 hours a day. 6 days a week. 200-300 baht a day.

The money goes to cigarettes and alcohol to fuel their labor, so they'll find someplace to catch up on their sleep and no one does it better than this day-laborer lying on a steel atop a townhouse.

Comfortable?

Click on photo to enlarge and you'll see how comfortable a Thai can be__

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

Much more to come.

Seagulls in the Wild

The last two years I have spent weekends in Montauk working at Winick Fine Jewelry living in a large tent mounted on a platform. A small bed, an electrical light, the internet, and a fan cover the simplest of my creature comforts. I fall asleep to the sound of waves and wake with the birdsong preceding the dawn. In the morning I wander down to Ditch Plains and swim in the ocean, The sand had been trampled by the season ending beachgoers, but Montauk is approaching Labor Day after which gull prints will cover the shore break. I admire these clever birds' freedom and last weekend I spotted a single male perched on an electrical pole. Its beak into the wind.

Seagulls have been a part of my life on the East Coast; floating behind the Staten Island ferry, huddling against the winter wind on Riis Park Beach, feasting on scraps a the Falmouth Foresides dump, following the Dover ferry en route to Calais, and now gliding over Montauk bluffs. They seemed to be everywhere, until I traveled through the Orient thirty years ago. None in Thailand or Bali where I had once lived. None. I wondered why. I thought that the shrimp farmers had killed them to protect their harvest from the voracious predators. I asked Thais about the gulls and some fishermen said that the foreigners on the fishing boats dine on them, since they are starved by the sea captains.

Seagulls are not featured on any menus from Block Island to Castine, but I discoverdd a recipe for cooking them; Take a sharp knife and put in under the skin at the back part of the neck, and carry down to the tail feathers; after which pull off the skin down to the middle of the legs, and next take out the intestines. Leave the birds in salt and water for eight hours, when their fishy taste will be found to be quite gone, and you can either cook them as you would pigeon pie or in any other way.

The country house, a collection of useful information and recipes, ed. by I.E.B.C. (1866)

Not for me, but further research explained their rarity in Thailand, The sea is too warm for them, which is good, because the Thais will east most everything. Everything, but sea gulls__

In the Bible Levitucus and Jahweh forbids his tribe from eating seagulls as they are are carrion birds tref as are their eggs. Just like bacon__

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

Much more to come

Plastic Plastic Everywhere 2011

Over forty years ago Jomtien Beach was a hidden paradise. The drive from Bangkok took 4-6 hours depending on the tides. The Sukhumvit road was flooded twice daily by the coming and going of the sea. The Old Roué of the Orient tells on swimming at dawn with a lovely Thai girl.

"Fish leapt from the water. It was clear as gin."

Thirty years of tourist expansion have not been kind to the Gulf of Siam.

Two days ago I had arrived in Thailand and taxied south from Bangkok to Jomtien, where my wife lived with my son, Fenway. I sat with my friends on the narrow strand of beach. The beer was cold and the islands on the horizon hovered over the sea like UFOs from Eden. The wind was gentle and holiday makers from Ban Nok frolicked in the shallow water. For many it was their first time seeing the sea. None of them noticed the thousands of plastic bags floating on the surface like desiccated jellyfish. The shoreline was a solid bunker of plastic trash.

I spent five minutes picking up flotsam. Mostly plastics bags. Within ten minutes the beach was clean.

"I don't know why you bother. Everyday. Next high tide and the trash is back." An overweight British lager lout had witnessed my Sisyphean efforts on the beach before.

"I don't care about then. I care about now," I took off my glasses. My myopia Xed out the plastic in the water, but the Brit was right. The next high tide deposited another harvest of trash. 

Once more mostly plastic bags.

Thais blame the sea-borne garbage on fishermen. They are mostly Cambodian. No one likes to blame themselves, since the real source of the plastics are 7/11s and food stalls shops along the beach. The person leave their trash on the beach, as if they city of Pattaya is paying someone to haul it to a landfill on the Moon.

The city depended on the sea.

"Remember in THE GRADUATE," said my friend Richard, who was teaching in Saudi Arabia. No bars. No booze. No women. No porno. The South African's sole form of entertainment was watching old movies. "The man saying the future was plastics."

"He was a prophet." Mark an Aussie mate, detested my crusade against plastic as demeaning for a foreigner. He also hated the plastic. "Some Swede invented plastic bags in the early 60s. They didn't hit the UK until the 80s."

"Fish was wrapped in newspaper. Sometimes the skin would bear the headlines."

"Teenage packers at the supermarket check-out specialized in sorting the right shaped food into the bags." Mark was almost as old as me. The 60s were a different time from today.

"The Thais used banana leaves."

I recalled buying khao or steamed rice surrounded by a leaf. The cook had added spices. The rice was delicious unlike anything in the West.

"Now the stores give plastic bags for everything." Mark pointed to a passing Thai beach vendor carrying a plastic bag of fried bananas.

"A pack of gum or cigarettes." Richard loved his cigarettes.

"The Chinese pharmacist on Pattaya Tai says her customers think she is being kee-neo or cheap, if she doesn't give them a plastic bag. Food candy or chips. They want them no matter the size of the purchase."

"It's free." Mark traveled from free food bar to free for bar. His UK pension shrank with every crisis back home.

"Whenever I refuse them, the clerk regards me as if I were pian or weird."

The Thais are no different from farangs. They regard my trash discipline as that of a crazy man.

"Young people think that is choice or old-fashioned."

"Young people regard us as dinosaurs. "

"And they're not wrong." Fifty-nine years old, however my aversion to plastic bags was spreading across the globe. Bhutan was the first nation to ban the eyesores. Ireland and France placed a surcharge on the bags. 90% reduction of bags entering the garbage centers in those countries. The petro-chemical companies have lost 25% of their global reach due to bans and restrictions. The USA has been slow to buck the plastic mania as Big Oil rules the nation.

"Africa is covered in plastic bags filled with shit. It's called the poor man's toilet." Richard from Jomtien had recently visited his family in SA. He considers nowhere his home.

"Nice image. Shit and plastic. The future is plastic shit." Mark ordered three beers for the beach boy. "Mai oow tung plastic."

The Thai beach boy brought the beers in a plastic bag, saying he only had two hands.

They were ice cold.

Later that evening I mentioned the ban of plastic to Fenway's mom. She thought that I was crazy.

"Not have plastic bag. Have what? Banana? You choice."

Thais throw plastic out the window and expect the trash to blow away with the wind.

Breaking this addiction to ease will take years.

Hawaii is in the middle of the Pacific. Remote and idyllic, yet millions of plastic bags wash up on the tropical beaches every day.

I don't mean to lecture.

I hated sermons.

And I don't mind picking up plastic bags.

Keeps me limber.

But one day I' hope to see none of the beach.

No, actually I'd like to see them never.

Cause that's the way of the new modern world to come, no matter what the wants of the Filthy Rich.

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

Much more to come__

Koh Samui - July 1994 - Journal

July 1993
Full moon on Koh Samui
Rising from the black sea
Lightning flashing
Inside monsoon thunderheads
40,000 feet overhead

Sitting in a beer bar
On Chaweng Beach
Aoy
Sweet
From Isaan
North
"Mother not know
"Father sick. Buffalo too
I work bar.
I like you.
I go with you."___

Her skin
Buttered silk
Smelling of Jasmine
Like the flower on the night air.

Aoy says number
"This not love
This is work."
"Go with me.
Help me.
Help family"
How can I say no?"
"Okay, let's go."

On my motosai
3 km to my crib
A bungalow
Overlooking the pla-muk boats
On the Gulf of Siam

On the curves
To Coral Cove
Slow down to 60
Aoy holds tight
Arms around my waist
Lightning flashing overhead
The moon running with the clouds
And me with the wind
With Aoy
Through the night
To Coral Cove.

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

Much more to come__

Punk Rock Thailand - 2008

Back in the last decade when i was living in Thailand I received an email from Willem Dafoe mentioning his having read Legs McNeil's punk opus PLEASE KILL ME.

"Just finished kind of fun- kind of junky- no pun intended PLEASE KILL ME- An Uncensored History of Punk. All interview excerpts-a lot of bragging about drugs and who fucks who. Some people and places I knew- most I didn't."

I reported to my old friend that I was always surprised by the number of Sid Vicious tee-shirts worn by young Thai kids and that they actually know Sid was the Sex Pistols' bass player, who killed his girlfriend.

"Bhang-tee."

Maybe, right?

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

Punk rock is one of few phrases in Thai that is the same in English.

Thailand has the right combination of negative aspects to instill a small segment of the youth with the feeling of 'no future'.

Punk 101 BOWLING FOR DOLLARS, COBC's ULTIMATE PUNK LOVE SONG and Nicole Theriault's MAI CHAI MAI CHAI are more natural heirs to the Ramones than Big Ass who were originally pop rock fame and fortune seekers like ex-Mouseketeer Avril Lavigne.

My delinquent niece living outside of Boston said of Avril, "She's a poseur."

I threw her CD into the trash.

I love punk rock, having spent 1976-78 at CBGBs and Max's Kansas City. Of the nearly 3000 bands the best show was by the Whorelords.

A one-night wonder with Bobby Steele on guitar who wrote the following; "My first experience at CBGB's was a Patti Smith concert, probably late 1976/early 1977, but it was my second time there, to see The Ramones and Cramps, when I began to meet new friends - like Deb O'Naire, who went on to greatness with the Fuzztones, and Bobby Ebs, who went on to... well, we don't like to talk about those things."

"It was also the night that I first met the members of the Cramps, who, onstage, bore the most intimidating personas I'd ever seen; but offstage turned out to be the nicest people. On my third or fourth time there, for the DICKIES/B52s, I met Xcessive and we ended getting booted out of CBGBs for smoking weed in the Ladies Room by Karen Krystal, Hilly's wife. Once we were outside, Hilly came out, told us to lay low for awhile and then we could sneak back in as long as Karen didn't see us. Hilly was cool.

My first 'gig' at CB's was when I was playing guitar in the Whorelords. Someone had stashed beers in one of the drum cases, and got caught, and our set was cancelled. We tried to argue, and plead to be allowed to play, but once the Hells Angels arrived - we knew it was time to leave.

Then, I joined The Misfits - a Max's Kansas City band - and I had a new home, at least for awhile, as I weathered my exile from CBGB's. Over time, I was exiled from almost every established NYC club that was worth going to, and that was it until I re-emerged with The Undead and, out of necessity, started a new scene a few blocks east of CBGB's in the no-man's land then known as Alphabet City. Once The Undead's name had been established, and while the booking people at CBGBs were still unaware of my new band, I had a friend put us into both of these clubs. I returned to CBGB's and played for my very first time - in November 1981. From then on my relationship with CBGB's...and especially Hilly, was solid.

I'd heard the constant rumors that Hilly ripped off bands, and all the other cliches of disgruntled bands, so I devised a method of keeping track at the door myself...either by handing the doorman 300 Undead pins to hand out to paying customers, and then counting how many were left at the end of the night; or by having a rotating "counter" watch the door, and click a button on the pocket counter. Each time, we were paid for more people than we counted; and the one time we played to a packed room and walked away with a mere $150, I returned the next day and confronted Hilly. He politely pulled out a book, showed me the numbers for the night, and a list of all the "comped guests" - musicians that always get in free. It was a huge list, but I could recall seeing each person the night before... There was no discrepancy, nor dishonesty, and I've defended Hilly on that count, religiously, ever since. This incident was what solidified a mutual relationship between Hilly and myself for the last 25 years.

To me, Hilly was that 'cool uncle' everyone wishes they had. He's owned the coolest dive in the world for how long? When I was hospitalized, he took the time to cross town and visit me. When someone he entrusted to handle the booking got nasty with me - and I stopped playing CBGB’s, Hilly finally asked me why, and I told him. He instructed me to meet him that very next Tuesday at CBGB's, and when I got there he made it clear that I was to get a Friday or Saturday headline slot. No other club owner would ever do that.

When I learned that CBGB's was being evicted - after being the catalyst that led to the improvement of the Lower East Side - I was no less than broken-hearted. When I sought out an apartment, I wanted it to be within walking distance of CBGB's. Now, with my 'home away from home' closing its doors for good - and seeing how the East Village has become Ethnically Cleansed by a lily-white, Liberal populace that would rather not have to look at such unsightly reminders of days past as CBGB's, Bowery bums, homeless - and any darker-skinned races - I can't be more pissed. For all CBGBs has done for NYC, the Lower East Side, the East Village - and for the world of rock and roll... none of the newcomers give a rat's ass. I'm sure that, by this time next year, a new club will have opened at 315 Bowery, and it'll be just one more snooty Jazz establishment, frequented by people who will insist that 'Republicans will eradicate all rock and roll music', as their Liberal Democrat friends continue to rape a once vital and ethnically diverse neighborhood.

Bobby Steele was thrown out of the Misfits and formed the Undead with my friend Patrick Blanck on drums.

Patrick died an early death.

Lots of punks followed the old line, "Live fast, die young."

I luckily survived through no fault of my own to tell about the Whorelords' legendary show at CBGBs with 15 year-old runaways as go-go dancers in torn dresses. Their lead singer attracted that type of crowd, unfortunately the band lead a Johnny Thundersesque existence.

Band History

Bobby Snotz formed this band in 1978 with Tarik Schapli. Because Tarik hadn't been playing guitar for long, Barry (and later Bobby Steele) joined the band as second guitarist. The Whorelords performed live several times while Bobby Steele was in the band; he left when he was asked to join The Misfits. Along with The Whorelords came a group of Whorettes (Charlotte Harlotte, Diedre, Carry Hamilton, and Rachel Rage) who did background vocals. Some members of The Whorelords went on to form Hell Sent, who opened for The Misfits in September 1979. A Whorelords reunion show took place that weekend when Bobby Snotz showed up and replaced Hell Sent's singer Kate K-Mart to perform a set of Whorelords songs. After spending a few years in jail, Snotz reformed the band in 1982. At some point during this time, they recorded a demo tape (with Pete Marshall on guitar) that has never been released. Bobby Snotz and Tarik also recorded as The Fiends on the New York Thrash compilation. Snotz was beaten to death in 1992.

Beaten to death?

Punk rock lives in Thailand and everywhere in the world.