THE PIGPEN A GO GO by Peter Nolan Smith

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

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

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

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

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

The stagnation was all-powerful.

40 would become 50 and 50 would run into 60.

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

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

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

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

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

I always brought my Shi-Tzu.

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

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

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

Bad.

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

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

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

"We go upstairs. We get warm."

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

"Dirty movie?" New shook her lovely head.

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

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

"Champoo sing?"

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

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

The man took off the towel.

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

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

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

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

"New."

"Nice and a nice night for it."

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

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

"I'm as happy as a clam."

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

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

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

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

"So you're opening the bar?"

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

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

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

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

"How so?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're still with Ort?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four years of two wars.

Five years of OBL on the loose.

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

Thailand was twelve hours in advance of Eastern Standard Time.

It was 9/11/2006.

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

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

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

Heavy black clouds spread across the afternoon sky.

Even a blind man could predict tonight's weather.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fabo darted out reach.

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

"Jamie?"

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

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

"Our first guests."

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

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

The clouds had darkened from gray to black.

"Boston-born, so no free beer."

"Almost thirty years in the East Village."

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

Jamie clapped his hands.

"Girls, it's Showtime."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We were Americans far from home.

The DJ played Chuck Berry's MAYBELLINE.

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

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

A party of trim Thais entered the bar.

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

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

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

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

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

"Fucktherich," I babbled fast on tequila.

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

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

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

We drank more.

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

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

A tap on my shoulder.

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

"Time for what?"

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

"Five years ago." I picked up Champoo.

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

"Krung-Bin."

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

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

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

"Thailand. Thailand. Chai-yo."

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

Jamie gave the old geezers Cialis.

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

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

They could have cared less about the 77 virgins.

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

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

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

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

ANARCHY IN THE UK.

The old guys were mostly British and knew every word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To repeat last night would have been a sin.

Just like re-living Woodstock.

Thai Tattoos Too -2007

Pattaya must be the per capita capitol of farangs with tattoos. Shirtless westerners parade the streets to exhibit the beauty of their body art, despite the collateral damage to the colored flesh from the tropical sun. Most tattoos are eagles, dragons, and declarations of never-ending love to go-go girls festooned with vows of fidelity to previous girlfriends. Occasionally you come across tattoos of incredible stupidity.

Several years ago I spotted a twenty year-old Brit with the name DAVID tattooed down his spine.

"Why David?" I asked him.

“So people know who they just saw.”

"You're David?" Conventioneers wear a simple name tag to say hello.

"The one and only." A name tag through his pierced nipple would have been a more effective form of introduction.

"If you say so." David is the second most common name in America. The same has to be true for Britain.

Later I mentioned the stupidity of this particular David to my friend, Jamie Parker. We sat at the Buffalo Bar on Sai 3. More than a few of the girls had tattoos and a trio of British lager louts bore years of blue ink on their forearms, necks, and faces.

"Can't you imagine Michelangelo's Statue of David with a tattoo?"

"Good, unless it wasn't on that little acorn of a penis." Jamie hated male nude statues and their mini-cocks. "You know that I don't have any tattoos. "

I didn't say anything about the tracks on his arm. Jamie had been clean for ten years now.

"Me neither." The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills warned their students that any skin art banned them from heaven. I had none, even though my faith was atheism. The sisters were excellent teachers.

"Last thing I needed as a kid was an identification scar or body marking." Jamie had been a criminal in his younger years. "In prison cons tattoo to their bodies out of boredom or rebellion. I was always thinking that one day I'd be on the outside and I intended to stay on the outside, but a couple of months ago I was taking a whitewater rafting trip at the Sabaii Massage."

"I know the place." Whitewater rafting was the local euphemism for a soapie with a naked girl or two.

"This one spinner had the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE to the American flag tattooed on her back. Being with her made me feel a little patriotic."

"I can imagine the feeling." Neither of us had been back in the USA for years. "I have a friend who had MADE IN THE UK tattooed on his forehead."

"Stupid place for a tattoo."

"Even worse his mother told him he had been born in Poland."

"Dumb Polack."

"What about Thai tattoos?"

"I don't talk about that. I'm a guest of this country and those tattoos are magic." Jamie had a healthy fear of red-lom.

"Traditional Thai tattoos or 'sakyant' are supposed to protect the wearers from misfortune and evil spirits and anyone getting men tattooed are asked to obey the five following rules; honor your parents, be faithful to your wife, no drugs, don't eat any fruit from off the ground, and no oral sex with women."

"I'm good with honoring my parents, faithful to my wife, and fruit off the trees, unless you're hungry."

"I'm good with most of them too." The oral sex was impossible." "My problem with tattoos has been finding one I could live with the rest of my life. 69, Born to be Wild, Mom, the name of my son or daughter might have fit the bill."

"But not the Pledge of Allegiance."

"Not a chance." I don't need to prove my allegiance to the USA."

"I doubt that poor girl knows what she’s wearing."

"Probably true, but America salutes her patriotism."

We lifted our beer glasses to toast her.

"USA USA USA."

The Brits at the bar glared at us. Jamie glared right back. We weren't going to heaven, but we were in Pattaya and as anyone knows who has lived in the Last Babylon for more than two weeks it's paradise on earth.

GO GO Safety

My cousin Sherrie performed exotic dances around the world. Her skill with a firepole was legendary and a smile graced her face through every routine before a devoted audience smitten with a drool factor of 10. The slim brunette was their goddess, but even goddesses feel pain like mermaids with feet.

No one saw her grimace upon getting backstage or heard her mutter, "My feet are killing me.

Not only her feet, but her hands thighs, knees, and back ached from the exertions of the strenuous acrobatics under the spotlight. She swore the worst damage came from wearing high-heels during these shows.

"Barefoot would be better, but it's so no class."

Things haven't changed much since Sharon's retirement, however a safety class opened in the once notorious Patpong district in Bangkok, so that go-go girls can mesh their fluid movement on a fire pole with elegant dance steps destined to prevent injury usually suffered by ballerinas.

"Go-go dancing should be upgraded to an art," stated Empower Foundation director Chantawipa Apisuk during the Patpong go-go contest of 2006. Her non-profit institution has development many courses for go-go girls and bar workers to improve their lot in life. The contest stressed introductory courses in jazz and ballroom dance to prevent injuries to the over 5000 girls employed at the Patpong bars.

Safety regulation for dancers are non-existent other than for their extra-curricular activities outside the nightclubs, but go-go dancing is an art and should be treated as such by the dancers and spectators. Most girls lazily shuffle side to side.

Beautiful? Yes.

Exciting ? No.

Even the best are imitating the moves from pop stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

Boring, because most real men don?t want to have sex with those pop sluts.

But better the go-go girls of Patpong and Pattaya concentrate on the learning real dance rather than the spinning firepole routines, because then the real stars came become erotic choreographers for future go-go dancers. Most girls haven?t a clue how to dance and it shows. Not that the beer slobs care. They haven?t seen a naked girl in the flesh in years. And it shows by their appreciation of the less than skillful performances.

Applause for sucking on a banana.

I guess so, but real erotic dancing in the style of Salome comes from practice.

And safety always comes first especially when you want to cut off the head of your rivals. The best acrobatic go-go was GG Barnum?s in New York. Transvestite strippers put on a trapeze act, where they would take off their g-strings in mid-flight. 1978 New York New York It was something back then. No place like that now.

SKATING ON THIN ICE by peter nolan smith

The monsoons coincide with low season in Pattaya. Hotels offer special rates and the bargirls call everyone ‘sexy’, but the government’s repression of the ‘red-shirts’ and the global economic downswing had forced the Thai Tourist Board to revise their typically optimistic projection for arrivals to the Land of Smiles, especially after monumental rains flooded the center of the country.

Cities and villages were underwater. Transport was impossible on the inundated highways. Food grew scarce to find and the monsoons weren't expected to ease until October.

My family and I lived up the coast from Pattaya and news of the empty bars filtered north.

“Thailand not have farang,” said Mam, as we drank Leo Beer at our small house in the hills.

You have me and so does Fenway." My son was happy. My son had his father to drive him around SriRacha.

Many girl go back home."

"To Isaan?" The impoverished plateau supplied Bangkok, Pattaya, and Phuket with a steady crop of bar girls.

Better to live on rice farm. Pattaya not have old men. Not have young men. No men. No rice. Everyone get skinny.

"But never as beautiful as you." We had been together for years, although most of the year I worked in Europe or the USA. I had two families to feed.

"Barg wan."

"Yes, I have a sweet mouth. More beer?" I looked at the sky.

Dark clouds approached from the Gulf of Siam.

Black lined the bottoms.

Lightning crackled through the air and Mam ran inside to unplug the TV and fridge.

I shut off my cell phone.

Electrical storms were a force to fear in Thailand.

The rain came down hard, then harder, and even harder.

I lit a kerosene lamp.

Fenway didn't like the dark and I held him close.

Thirty minutes later the storm passed over SriRacha heading inland.

The sun came out and the street steamed with a rising mist.

I turned on my phone and it rang immediately.

Sam Royalle was on the other end.

"Did it rain by you."

"Not a drop." Sam resided in Pattaya.

Twenty miles to the south.

"Bucketed down here." I hadn't seen Sam in a while. He had been working on a new website.

16 hours a day, so I was surprised when he asked, "Feel like coming out for a beer tonight?"

Sam Royalle liked go-gos. We drank shots of tequila. He conversed with people despite 110 dB levels. His Bedford accent worked well in loudness.

"If it isn't raining."

"No excuses. I'll take you out for a steak."

Sam had been living in Thailand over ten years, but remained a boy from Bedford.

"You ever think about changing your diet?"

“What you expect me to eat? Thai food?”

"It's good enough for 60 million Thais." Few of them were overweight.

"I'm British. We eat British food. Only British." The Brit did like a good plate of curry and pad thai, which I never ate. It had no kick.

"So see you around 7." He gave the address of a new steakhouse. "It's very classy."

"I remember classy. Seven, then."

Back in the last century only the Dusit Thani was the only classy resort in Pattaya, but times had change.

"You go out with friend?" asked Mem.

Fenway was eating ice cream.

"Sam wants to have a drink."

"Go-Go bar."

"I guess so, but I only think of you."

"Hah, all men lie. Think of me with naked lady. You very funny."

"It's the truth." It was the truth, but no women will believe that.

"True not true. Same same. I know you. One drink look lady. Two drink talk with lady. Three drink only think drink. That truth."

"Yes, it is." I liked holding hands with a glass of gin-tonic.

Mam, Fenway, and I ate at KFC.

She dropped me at the bus stop at Tuk Com on Sukhumvit.

Traffic was heavy and the sun was going down.

I kissed her and hugged Fenway.

"Mai mao, papa."

"No, I won't get too drunk."

Mam gave her blessing.

“Sam take care you. You take care Sam.” Her spies covered Walking Street. Their network posted agents on every soi. I was a good boy and good boys never get caught doing bad.

"Lak ter."

And I did love her, as I jumped on the bus.

Thirty minutes later I got off at Pattaya Klang and hopped on a motorsai, telling the taxi driver, "Walking Street."

The ride to Pattaya's Second Road took less than ten minutes.

I walked over to Walking Street.

Farangs were rare on that gauntlet of lust. The desperation on the go-go girls’ faces was a cruel mirror of hard times. Every girl sang the same chorus “Take me home.”

"Bang thi teelang."

"Maybe later. Maybe never. All farang kee-nok."

Sam and I ate a great ribeye steak at the classy restaurant.

He looked healthy for the first time in years. His new business venture was off the ground. Sam was looking at a million dollars in two years time. It all sounded good in a go-go bar.

Sam suggested hitting Heaven A Go-Go. The upstairs bar was the best in Pattaya. I hadn’t been there in months, but several girls knew my name. They were friends of Mam. We drank beer. Two bottles. The owner of Heaven bought several rounds of tequila. Paddy had run a pimp bar in East St. Louis. He was most men’s hero.

65 and running a go-go bar. He was my hero too. East St. Louis was tougher than Pattaya back in the early 70s.

“Any girl you want. No bar fine.” I thanked Paddy for his generosity, but refused about twenty nubile dancers before midnight. I told them the same story.

“Mai mii keng leng.”

“I can give you power.” Their bare bodies smelled of youth and a promise of a trip to heaven or hell. I wasn’t interested in either destination after ten beers and deserted my bar stool at Heaven Above a Go Go, telling Sam Royalle that I was going to the bathroom. Three naked girls were on his lap. He wouldn’t notice my absence.

The night air on Soi Diamond was strangely cool. The moist wind carried the threat of rain and I walked to 2nd Road rather than be tempted by another drink on Walking Street.

Two transvestites grabbed my arms at the top of the alley. The pair were armored in black shiny leather. They towered over me in their spiked heels. Masochists would have paid to lick the their feet.

One hand slithered into my pocket. Her fingernails raked my thigh for plunder. The Shim found my wallet. It only had 500 baht, but all my ATM and credit cards. My struggle to break free was futile, until the pickpocket yelped with pain.

“Pai loi.” The voice belonged to Jamie Parker, a friend from the Lower East Side. “Get fucking lost.”

“We go. Come back too.” The taller TV sneered with a helium alto. Her manhood throbbed in a leather bikini. I felt inadequate.

“Good luck then.” Jamie stood his ground. Almost 60 he carried the menace of the killer after eleven year hard time.

"Yet mun." The she-boys strode off to find easier prey.

"I had things under control."

Didn't look it to me." He handed back my wallet and coughed like a backfire from an out-of-tune Harley, although I suspected his hack hadn't come from smoking cigarettes.

“You're right. Those ka-toeys are tough.” Bruises would color my arms tomorrow. The indentation from their nails would fade faster. Mam’s suspicious mind wouldn’t clear for months. “What happened to you?”

Jamie’s body was perennially thin. Drugs and diet, but his face was gaunt and Panda black circles masked his eyes.

“I look that bad?” He stared at his reflection in the 7/11 window. He wasn't the type to lie to himself about his looks.

“Yes, you look that bad.” Ja-bah bad. The cheap speed was addictive. “You need some money?”

“A thousand wouldn’t hurt, but it isn’t for what you think.”

“Jamie, you can do what you want with it.” I was no angel.

After dark any money you give a friend had to be consider a gift. I pulled out a purple note.

“I don’t feel like it, but then I'm not the boss.” He stuck the bill in his jeans pocket. “Mind if I walk with you a bit?”

“I’m just going to get a taxi.”

The eyes of a passing policeman convicted Jamie of several crimes. He could never go back to New York. His sin against the state had a long statute of limitation.

“Let me give you a ride somewhere.”

“Yeah, there’s too much light here.” He lowered his head like someone might be following him. I fought the temptation to look over my shoulder. A taxi took us to 3rd Road for 200 baht. It was safer than a motorsai taxi.

At the Buffalo Bar I ordered him a beer and waved for the girls to leave us alone.

“Man, it’s been a hard month.” He sat on the stool as if he had been on his feet for days. “But you don’t want to hear about it.”

My mother had prayed for G her second son to accept an avocation to join the Cloth. I refused the priesthood after hearing Led Zeppelin’s first LP in 1969, but she had been right. I would have made a good priest or at least a confessor. Everyone liked to tell me their secrets. Even more so after two beers.

Jamie drank both in less than a minute.

“I’m all ears.” I downed my first in 65 seconds.

“You ever hear of Ice?” he whispered the word with guilt-ridden worship.

“Crystal Meth.” The drug had hit the fly-over of America hard. The cops had cracked down on traditional drugs and the dealers synthesized a smokeable speed from ephedrine, the basic ingredient for over-the-counter cough medicines. The substance was equally available in Thailand.

“That’s the one. The Nazis used to give chocolate bars laced with the stuff to Luftwaffe pilots.” Jamie was a vast abyss of useless knowledge. “Kept them flying for days.”

“And you started smoking it here?” Drugs are readily available in Thailand, although opium, heroin, grass have been supplanted by ja bah and ice thanks to the repressive interdiction of the Thai Police and DEA.

“With Ort.” He shrugged to indicate his complete surrender.

“Ort?” I knew Ort from Soi 6. I hadn’t seen her since her boyfriend left her for a transvestite. The little vixen wanted to be my geek. I had refused with deep regret. Ort was very sexy. 25 and looked 16. She was every man's vice.

”How you run into Ort?” She was a girl around town. I stayed out of her path.

“She was dancing at Paris A Go-Go. Told me to meet her after work. We went back to her place. A little furnished studio. Bed, TV, AC. She asked if I minded if she smoked some ice. You know me. Anyone can do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.” Jamie’s heroin addiction had stolen his youth. Cocaine took away his edge as a comedian. His taking up with speed in his 50s could be a show-stopper. “Don’t look at me like you were a Parole Officer who discovered a bad blood test. You’re no angel.”

“You’re right.” I had disappointed Nancy Reagan too many times by saying ‘yes’, instead of no’ to throw any rocks without hearing the sound of breaking windows in my own house of glass, but I tried my best to avoid drugs in Thailand.

“And you’re right too.” Prison here was worse than any of Jamie’s stateside time. “I knew it was dangerous, but did it anyway.”

“And how was it?” Jamie didn’t need a lecture and I was curious about ice and Ort.

“Ice is nothing. No rush. Shooting speedballs is a thousand times better for a high.”

“So what the attraction?”

“Sex.” Jamie spoke low, which was a little strange in a bar where every girl was looking for a date. “I thought she wanted me only to buy some ice. 1000 baht. But once we had a few pipes, she said she was hot and asked if I minded if she took off her clothes. Another bowl and mine was off. A day later and we were still at it.”

A binge. “How many days?”

“3-4. I took Cialis to keep up my strength.” Speed and Cialis were tough on the heart, however Jamie was hardy enough to survive hardcore XXX games. “And then another 4 days and we had sex the entire time. I had to stop because the skin on my penis wore off. Ort wasn’t happy and started screaming for it. It was like being with a nymphomaniac. A tyranny of sex. I told her I was going to the ATM. I didn’t go back.”

“How much money you spend?”

“About 15000 baht and lost about 5 kilos.”

“Cheaper than Jenny Craig’s or Weight-Watchers.”

“I don’t have the weight to lose like you.”

A loss of five kilos would put me close to the fighting weight of my early 40s.

“And you didn’t go back?”

“Don’t trust myself. It’s not the Ice. It’s the sex, the ice, the lying in bed with nowhere to go.” He drank his beer with a thirst to quench another demon. “Sawan.”

“Heaven.” I was impressed Jamie knew the Thai word for paradise. Nah-Lok meant 'hell'.

“A little hell too, which we both like.”

“Without sin, there is no pleasure.” I loosely quoted Luis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealistic film director. “So now what?”

“I changed my SIM card # and started clean again.” He ordered another beer. They were going down smooth. “Not 100%, but close enough. Another few days and I’ll be back on top of the world.”

“More like top of the slag heap in this town.”

“As long as it’s a foot higher than anyone else, you can see the stars.” Jamie had a way with words, which slurred after our fifth beer.

I invited him up to SriRacha. He made Mam laugh. Fenway liked playing with him. On the third day he left for Pattaya. I drove him to the bus stop on Sukhumvit.

“Take care.”

“I know how to do that.”

“And how not to too.”

“Something else we have in common.”

At the end of the week I was packing my bags for New York. My flight left in the morning. Mam hated being alone. Fenway is a very busy boy.

The phone rang in my pocket.

It was Jamie.

“Are you okay?”

“Excellent.” He was running promo events for bars and restaurants during the low season. The next is an erotic hot dog eating contest at TiggleBitties Tavern.

“What about Ort?” I whispered the name. Mam has good ears and a jealous soul. Some people question her love. I know better.

“Haven’t seen her or been to anywhere she goes.”

“Smart move.” Ort was a girl to avoid, which is why I don’t answer her calls anymore. Like Jamie I’m too weak to skate on thin ice. “I’ll see you next time around.”

“Send my love to Mam and little Fenway.”

“They will like that."

I went into the living room. Fenway was trying to load two discs at the same time into the DVD player. I told him, ‘No.”

He didn’t like hearing that word in either Thai or English, but just saying ‘no’ can save your time these days, especially when you’re skating on thin ice.