NO MAN'S LAND by Peter Nolan Smith

Farangs consider themselves smarter than Thais. This superiority complex is based on the centuries of Western domination over the rest of the world. Foreigners boast about their education and well-paid jobs to each other with pride. The Thais regard farangs kee-nok or bird shit. The West never conquered Thailand. Farang food is tasteless and the men are drunks.

Western prestige means nothing.

Thais love Thais.

Farangs come and farangs go.

Thailand forever.

I had moved to Thailand to raise a family . Her mother betrayed my trust by signing another man's name on our daughter's birth certificate. She told me it was her cousin. I refused to marry the farm girl at the wat or city hall, but stayed with her to raise our daughter. I loved Angie every second. Her mother none.

After three years her mother went up-country with the car. I kept asking about her return. Her excuses for staying varied from month to month. I didn't lift them to the light, because the truth is an onion with many layers. Once you peel them all, you have nothing.

Neither did I question her returns, which coincided with my wandering farther from home. I was happy to end my pseudo-philandering, because their arrival meant I got to spend time with my 3 year-old daughter.

During my 'wife's' visits, my friends understood that they wouldn't be seeing me at the Welkom Inn or Buffalo Bar. My daughter and I swam at the Shaba Hut and rode around town with our little dog in the motor scooter basket. No bars, no late nights, and I laid in bed reading WINNIE THE POOH to my little angel in horrible Thai. I was happy and my 'wife' wore her misery like a chador.

Five years ago the monsoon season had given way to the glorious weather of November. My 'wife' had been in town two weeks. She wanted to see her older sister. Pi-yai and I had nothing in common. The fishmonger was after my money and I wasn't giving her any. Her little sister suffered a lost of face and her older sister berated her for having found a farang without money.

"You go out. I go see sister. See friends. Get mao with farangs."

A freedom pass was an easy command to obey and I busted out of the house off Soi Bongkot with a fugitive's dispatch.

Sam Royalle was waiting at Heaven Above A Go Go.

His girlfriend had a posse of girlfriends retired by out-of-town boyfriends. They were stars on Walking Street. Men surrounded our table offering drinks and money to the trio of beauties.

I was soon bored by the action. They were too loud to speak over the boy band disco and ’suck-my-dick’ rap. Naked girls held no thrill. Not when they’re shuffling the old bored one-two step, but Sam kept ordering tequilas. After three my tongue reverted to Neanderthalism.

As Sam called for a round of Kamikazes, I escaped from Heaven and staggered down the stairs to Soi Diamond. Every step was a challenge and I wondered how to negotiate the two blocks to my parked bike. A catapult seemed my only solution, until a New York voice commented, “Man, are you really that fucked up?”

"Fuck you."

"Are you sure about that?" It was Jamie Parker. "You're in no condition to fight."

The ex-con slipped his arm under mine. My legs regained partial use.

“Tequila on an empty stomach.” I tried to pull myself free. My head hit the headrest wall. Jamie caught me before I hit the pavement.

“Are you thinking about driving home?” Jamie had a good hold on my arms.

“I’ve driven in worst condition.” I hadn’t seen the Lower East Side native since the memorable 9/11 opening of his defunct PIGPEN A GO GO.

“Which is why your wrist looks like a Klingon warship.” He was referring to my near-fatal motorcycle crash on the Burma border.

“I wasn’t drunk then, only distracted.” My concentration had been distracted by the ageless scenery of opium fields.

"You're drunk now and you're not getting on a bike. You have a daughter, remember."

"And a 'wife'."

"Another reason you're not going home." Jamie and I went back to New York. Our tempers were well-known in East Village. Few expected us to live past 30. "You're not getting on that bike until you can walk in a straight line."

"Straight line no problem." Free on his grasp I veered right and then left with my arms swirling to regain my balance. I hugged a wall like a mountaineer clinging to a cliff and lolled my head back onto my neck. "Jamie, I'm all yours."

Jamie frog-marched me over to the Jennie Bar, famous for the world's most beautiful TVs in the world. He ordered a gin-tonic and a soda water. A tall kathoey sat next to me.

"This is Glaie. She will nurse you back to sobriety." Jamie tipped her 200 baht.

Glaie was the spitting image of a young Beyonce minus 20 kilos.

"Dhim." She held the glass of soda water to my lips. Her hands were devoid of veins.

"Yes, m'am." I obeyed Glaie without hesitation. She was six-feet tall in three-inch heels. I would do anything she asked me to do, which wasn't a good sign.

"I saw something weird today."

"Only one?"

"I was on a visa run to the Cambodia border this morning. I get on the minivan. 6:30. Crack of dawn. Sleep two hours. Listen two hours to the various bullshit from the other visa-runners. The only one not speaking was this old guy. Maybe 65. He’s reading a book. I like reading like you and ask him what he’s reading. He says with a German accent, “Zarathusa, but this version is called BANGKOK 8.”

"We spoke about the ubermensch and the untermensch. The old guy originally from Austria. Fled the Nazis but he wasn’t a Jew. Father was a commie or a criminal. He’s been out here since before electricity. Runs a restaurant in Made in Thailand.p

“I know the place.” His wife made a great veal schnitzel. “His name’s Frank.”

“Yeah, that’s right, but I have bad news.”

“What?” I was expecting him to ask me for money

“Frank’s dead

“Frank’s dead?” He was only 65. I knew his daughter. She was beautiful.

“Yeah, we crossed the border into Cambo. No problem. He’s fine. Gets his visa stamped and lowers his head into his book. I thought he was asleep and went to get a bottle of wine. Nice Bordeaux. I come back and see he hasn’t changed position. I touch him and he’s cold.

“Frank's Dead."

“Deader than a bucket of nails.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I told the guide and he said the same thing. We had a little conference and decide to risk taking him back across the border. I mean, I didn’t want him stuck between the borders like Orson Welles in A TOUCH OF EVIL.”

“No one would have wanted to take responsibility for him.” Frank could have been stuck there for days. “Bad luck

“The guide wasn’t too happy about the situation, but we got him upright. You ever notice how heavy dead people are?”

“A bucket of mud in a plastic bag.” I had worked as a janitor in a terminal ward during university. The orderlies were my friends and I helped them move the dead to the gurneys. The difference in pay was five cents an hour.

“You know the border. Shitty muddy waiting area. Crappy bridge.” Jamie downed his drink and ordered a refill for my soda water. Glaie poured it down my throat, as if she had learned her trade from a CIA water boarding school.

"Get him another." Jamie sipped at his gin-tonic. "So where was I?"

"Frank's stuck in no-man's land between Thailand and Cambodia."

“We get to the passport control. The officer looks at Frank and asks what’s wrong. We say he’s drunk. The officer knows drunk. Frank is more than Mao-kah and he signals us to come to the side.”

“How much he want?” Thai border officials are quick on the take.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

The guy had been stamping Frank's passport for years. One more newer visa was no big deal, but only if we declared him dead in Thailand.”

“Good guy.”

“That’s why we live here. Thais understand reality.” A Britney Spears look-a-like TV sat on Jamie’s lap. “We carry Frank’s body into Thailand. Everyone waied his corpse. They respect him as an old man who loves Thailand. The minivan driver sat him in the front seat. The other farangs never noticed he was dead."

"Good." Nosy farangs were a pain in the ass. Glaie made me drink a 3rd bottle of soda water. I was about 50% and thanked her for her ministrations with a 200 baht tip.

"How Frank's wife take it?"

"She cried a bucket.”

They had been together more than 30 years.

“Guess we’ll be going to the wat for cremation.”

“Better than being buried in a box.” Jamie and I never thought we were going to die. We clinked glasses and I headed home to sleep on the couch. It was the final refuge of the unloved, but my daughter would understand why I got drunk.

She was my blood and flesh.

As for her mother.

I didn't give a shit what her mother thought.

And that was a good thing.

The Shadow Of The Man

Orson Welles achieved fame early in his life with the controversial radio broadcast THE WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1938. He was only 23. Three years later CITIZEN KANE was acclaimed the greatest movie of all time. His success freed him from the reins of the Hollywood studios, although the movie moguls were experts at repressing rebels and his subsequent films were hacked by editors according to the whims of the producers controlling the market from screenplay to popcorn. Orson Welles responded to this treatment by gaining weight at an alarming rate during his forties. In LADY FROM SHANGHAI he supposedly ordered the cameraman, "Shoot me from the fifth rib up." Welles sought solace from the studio's mistreatment by dining for three or four a gourmet restaurants around Europe. At home in Hollywood he was no slouch at the dinner table. His housekeeper said, "It was not unusual for me to prepare him a couple of big Porterhouse steaks, a dozen eggs, a plate of biscuits and a pot of coffee. Orson Welles could really eat." In order to play the role of the portly King Falstaff the actor had to go on diet to get down from his epic 400+ pounds. After his death in 1985 a rich friend of mine found a cape of the late great Welles at a Martha Vinyard antique shop. The fabric was black cashmere with a equally black silk lining. The director name was sewn above the interior pocket. My friend was tall as Orson. 6-1. He tried on the cape thinking that it would make a good conversation piece, however the expanse of material was so immense that my friend thought that he looked like a circus tent under the cape. The salesman told him that everyone felt the same way and my rich friend thanked him for the experience of wearing Orson's cape. I wish I had been there, for at times in my life I've tipped over to the fat side of weight, but that's no sin as long as you aren't shy, for as Orson said, "Gluttony is not a secret vice." He was a good eater.

NORTHERN MAINE by Peter Nolan Smith

Bing Crosby couldn’t have sung WHITE CHRISTMAS on December 25, 1991.

The New York sidewalks were bare of snow, sleet, slush, and ice. They stayed that way through the first month of 1992 and the population of the Northeast celebrated the end of winter.

Scientists had been warning about global warming the publication of a SCIENCE article in 1975. This ‘inadvertent climate modification’ was gobbledygook to the normal man terrified by the threat of a 'nuclear winter' after an atomic bomb exchange between the USA and USSR. American oil producers pooh-poohed the National Academy of Science warnings of carbon increases in 1979 and it wasn’t until 1988 that ‘Global Warming’ was mentioned before Congress. Our representatives shelved the warning of the impending climate shifts changes the eagerness of a football fan changing the channel from PBS to the SuperBowl.

At the end of January the New York Giants beat the Buffalo Bills 20-19 in Tampa and every trendy Manhattan fled the city for a weekend in Miami Beach. I rejected the exodus to the newly discovered art-deco district east of US 1. Too many people who regarded themselves VIPs were crowding on Ocean Avenue for my tastes.

I came from New England and wanted to see snow.

My friend Philippe ran a nightclub in the Meat Packing District. The long-haired Englishman was equally put off my the fashion elite’s transformation of old Miami.

"I liked it better when no one knew it."

"So what about doing the exact opposite of everyone and head north until we find snow." I showed him a map of New England and pointed to Moosehead Lake in Maine. "Winter is always winter up there."

"How we get there?"

"I have a car in Boston. We drive up the coast to Bar Harbor and then swing inland hoping for the best." I had phoned for the weather up north. The temperature was below freezing in Portland.

"Count me in. The Eurotrash can have Miami Beach. We're going for the snow."

Two days later an Amtrak train transported us from Penn Station to Boston. My father met us at the 128 station and drove us to my family home in the Blue Hills south of the city.

The grass behind our house was a withered yellow. My mother was cooking beef stew in the kitchen. I looked at the thermometer outside the window. The dial was stuck on 45 F.

"Did you get any snow yet?"

"Not once." She smiled at me. "You boys hungry?"

"For your stew? Always." Her recipe came from my Irish grandmother. It was a good winter meal, even if the season was more like autumn.

"Smells delightful, m'am." Phillipe had good manners.

"Let me show you our ride."

My car was in the garage. The gray 1982 Cutlass had good heat and a working stereo. The passenger window was paralyzed by faulty wiring, but the V8 was tuned for a long road trip.

"I only use it on weekends in the summer." I told Philippe and we entered the den where my father was watching TV. He liked road trips and I asked, “You want to come with us?”

“I know what winter looks like in Maine.” The seventy year-old Maine native had spent two of the long seasons in Jackman for the phone company. “The trees crack from the cold. They sound like cannons. Why can’t you be normal and go to Florida?”

“I want to see Lake Manicouagan.” A five-kilometer meteor had struck the Laurentian Shield to create a ringed impact crater.

“The roads that far north will be closed for the season.”

“It has been a warm winter.”

“Nothing is warm north of the St. John’s River.” The four-hundred mile stream served as the border between the USA and Canada.

“And that’s why were going there. To see winter.”

My mother understood my reasons. She loved to see the world. We ate her stew for dinner and drank wine on the sun porch. My father and she went to sleep and I showed Philippe his room. "Have a good night's sleep. We have a long ride ahead of us tomorrow."

I went to my old bedroom and lay on my bed to read Kenneth Roberts ARUNDEL, a forgotten novel about the invasion of Canada. My eyes shut before I reached page 25.

In the morning my mother made us breakfast. The sky was clear and the temperature had risen to 48.

"You won't see snow until after Bangor." My father put down the newspaper. He subscripted to the Boston Globe. A blizzard had buried Northern Europe. Scores were dead.

"We're not stopping there." I wanted waist deep snow.

"A waste of time, but have a good time." He walked Philippe and I into the garage. We loaded the car with our bags and I hugged my mother.

“Be my eyes.” She kissed my cheek and pressed $40 in my hand. “Buy yourself a nice lobster.”

“Drive safe.” My father was firm believer in defensive driving.

“I’ll keep the car between the lines.” I hadn’t had an accident since 1974.

Getting out of Boston took the better part of an hour. We took 95 as far as Portsmouth, then exited onto Route 1.

Philippe and I listened to NEVERMIND skirting the coast. Nirvana was as good on US 1 as it had been on the highway. Wells Beach, Old Orchard, and Portland were devoid of snow. In Falmouth I pulled off the Route 1 to see my old house.

“When I was a kid, my older brother and I jumped from the roof into the snow drifts.”

“You would break your legs doing that today.” The grass was as yellow as that in our backyard south of Boston.

“My grandfather used to say there were two seasons in Maine; the season of good sledding and the season of bad sledding.” I got back in the car. “He never said nothing about the season of no sledding.”

A half-hour later we stopped at LL Bean where Philippe bought real winter clothing good for -20 Fahrenheit.

“Better to be prepared.” He looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy in his new down jacket. The temperature in Freeport was 40. Sweat poured from his face in the parking lot and he stashed the jacket in the back seat before we continued along on the old two-laner through Bath, Wicassett, and Rockland. Each town held a story from my childhood.

I told Philippe each one.

We arrived in Camden at dusk. The motel cost $40 for two. The picturesque seaside resort was asleep for the winter. The temperature was below freezing and hoar frost rimmed the rocky harbor.

We ate at a restaurant overlooking the falls. The heavyweight bartender in her late-twenties weighed in excess over 300 pounds. She wore a flannel shirt and overalls. The fashion sense for the other women in the bar varied between shabby and manly.

“Is this the norm for women up here?” Philippe lifted his head from the plate of broiled halibut. The waitress promised that it was fresh. In Maine fresh meant an hour off the boat.

“"This isn't up. This is Downeast, but any woman in Maine is twice the man either of us will be.”

A man at the bar was eyeing Philippe in a funny way. The Englishman was near-sighted same as me, but refused to wear glasses. I didn’t mention the attention of the stranger.

The next day we drove farther down the coast. The temperature hovered over freezing. Patches of snow hid in the woods along US 1. We reached Bar Harbor mid-afternoon. After finding a cheap motel Philippe and I headed over the Shell Beach. The polar air was crisp as a potato chip. Small waves rippled through the tidal ice.

"This was the first time that I had been cold this year." Philippe was happy in his down jacket.

"It will get colder soon enough."

That evening we ate lobsters in Bar Harbor. Philippe and I were the only two diners. No one was drinking at the bar. 

The fat woman serving beer looked like she had been spawned by salmon. The bleached blonde waitress at the restaurant in Bar Harbor was missing two front teeth. The skinny thirty year-old had a big nose. I was attracted to her and pushed my short hair into shape.
Philippe had stopped my flirtation by ordering the bill.

“I liked her.” Skinny was better than big in my book.

“You were only leading her on.” The bony Brit was into petite Asian women. New York had plenty of those.

“And she me.” I hadn’t expected it to go anywhere further than holding hands. 

“She’s uglier than sin.” Philippe had eaten every morsel of lobster. His shirt was unstained by butter or stray meat. Mine was spotted with morsels which hadn’t made it into my mouth.

“Nothing wrong with ugly.” I had drunk enough to make me good-looking in the bathroom mirror.

“You’d regret it in the morning.” He was scared of having to share the room with rutting Mainiacs. As I paid the bill, the bartender asked Philippe, “You want some fun.”

“He’s with me.” I thumbed at Philippe.

“Then have a good time.” The fat bartender winked, as if she wanted to watch us

“Aren’t there any attractive females in this state?” Philippe asked under his breath.

“Not many.” I was pissed at him for having ruined my chances with the skinny girl. She was talking to the chef. He looked, as if he thought he was going to get lucky tonight.

“I’ll regret nothing.” I started for the kitchen. “You’re a buzzkill.”

Philippe dragged me out of the restaurant before I could do something stupid. A million stars traversed the clear sky. My breath was the only cloud in the air. The temperature had to be in the 20s. My fingers felt the cold and the car had a hard time starting. It was a good sign. We were getting north.

The next day we traversed the barren potato fields of Aroostock County. The snow deepened past Dover Junction. The grey skies didn’t renege on their promise of snow. Thick flakes clotted the air. The highway was plated by the tire-trampled residue of a recent blizzard. The temperature was hovering around 10F.

Old US 1 ended at its northern terminus of Fort Kent. Key West was 2377 miles to the south. Snow drifted chest-deep against the houses. Philippe tested his new jacket.

“It works.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else from LL Bean.” I was wearing layers. Heavy boots were a must. We had reached winter and night was falling fast this far north.

We got a room at the motel nearest the ice-clogged river. The grinding floes filled the frozen air with horrid crunches.

“Tomorrow we’ll drive to the St. Lawrence and catch a ferry to the other side.” Icebreakers opened the seaway for ships throughout the winter. “We can reach Manicouagan Lake in two days. If the road’s open, I can make Newfoundland. It’s no Miami Beach.”

“I can’t go to Canada.” Philippe held his hands over the motel’s radiator. The interior surface of the windows were glazed by ice. A naked man wouldn’t last thirty minutes outside.

“Why not?” He was English and I thought he might have a prejudice against French Canadians.

“I have a visa problem.” He avoided eye contact.

“What kind?” French Canadian women were attractive. Their Gallic beauty came from not eating potato chips. Winter would only get more winter farther north.

“My visa is out of date.” He was embarrassed by this admission.

“How long?” Mexicans were called ‘wetbacks’. Up this far north illegals were known as ‘snowbacks’. They were mostly Canadian.

“Two years.”

“Damn.” We were 673 miles from Manhattan. I had a car and money in my pocket. I had dreamed on standing on the shores of Manicouagan Lake for years. I grabbed Philippe by his arm.

“Put on your coat.”

“It’s cold.” He protested without conviction.

“This is northern Maine. Of course it’s cold.” I forced Philippe to get into the bulky parka that he had bought at LL Bean. We walked down US 1 to a snow-covered steel truss bridge. The wind off the frozen river was twenty degrees south of zero and Philippe’s long hair whipped across his face.

‘That’s Quebec.” I pointed to the black bank across the St. John’s River.

“I know.” He refused to look at the other side.

“They have good food in Canada.” The French had colonized the region over four hundred years ago. I appealed to his weakness for good food. We had eaten lobster the previous evening. Fort Kent’s cuisine consisted of doughty pizza and greasy burgers. “There’s a great French restaurant in Clair. The Resto 120.”

The restaurant had been recommended by the motel manager. Her last name was Quelette. Fine cuisine was a specialty of the lost tribe of France. She wore her weight well.

“Tourtires, soupe aux pois, et pommes persillade. Cheese. Wine. Good bread.”

“Really?” Philippe was a hearty eater for a thin man.

“And French girls are cute.” They ate ‘frites’ not potato chips.

At Old Orchard Beach the sexiest girl in the summer were from Quebec City. They looked like either Brigitte Bardot or Francoise Hardy. Philippe was almost sold by my sales pitch, but he had a girlfriend back in New York.

“I can’t risk it.” They were in love.

“What’s the risk?” No one was guarding the bridge. “On the way back you can hide in the trunk. It’s heated.”

If the technique worked for millions of wetbacks, it couldn’t be too much trouble to run a snowback operation at a sleepy border crossing.

“No way.” Philippe shook his head. His nose was red from the cold wind.

“It’s either that or burgers.”

“Sorry.” He walked away from my grasp.

“Sorry?” I trailed him thinking about dragging him across the desolate bridge.

“You can come back in the summer.” 

“I have no idea where I will be in the summer.” Kidnapping was out of the question.

“Me neither, but it won’t be a deportation cell. Burgers and fries tonight It’s on me.” Philippe stormed over to the nearest bar. Neon signs FOOD and LABATT BEER flashed in its window. I stared across the icy river with disappointment. This was as far north as I would get this year.

“Fucking Brits.” I joined Philippe in the Moose Inn. It had a pool table, jukebox, and wooden bar with draft beer.

He didn’t take off his hat. Everyone in the bar was wearing theirs. I couldn’t tell the difference between the men and women and threw my watch cap on the bar.

“Fuck the Resto 120.” There were no pommes persillade on the Moose Inn’s menu.

“What?” Philippe asked to appease my anger.

“Shut the fuck up.” I was in a bad mood. I ordered a beer. The Labatt went down in less than thirty seconds. The second took two minutes. The third lasted almost a quarter of an hour.

We ordered burgers and fries. My fifth beer washed down the hockey puck of a paddy and the sixth took care of the sodden fries. At least I was warm.

The bar filled with loggers, snowmobile sledders, and the state road crew.

A storm was due in two days, so everyone was getting in their drunk tonight. I bought drinks for the road crew. Philippe played DJ on the Jukebox. The crowd danced to LOUIE LOUIE. My battery was on E. A thickly bearded drunk tapped my shoulder.

“What?”

“You mind if I dance with your date?” The man had a cross-eyed squint. One lens of his glasses was cracked. For a second looking at him was like seeing my personalized ‘Portrait of Dorian Grey’. We were both forty.

“My date?” I was confused for a few seconds, until he glanced over his shoulder at Philippe.

Long hair hid his face.

“You’re saying that you want to dance with my date?”

“She’s better looking than any of the other girls in this town.” He lit a cigarette with a match. It flared over his thumb. The townie didn’t register any pain and said with a dull vice, “Girls around here weigh as much as moose in a peatbog. I like them skinny. You mind?”

“Be my guest.” The Englander’s illegality in America had halted my exploration of the North and I smiled as I said, “Just a dance.”

“You got it.” The townie staggered off to Philippe.

His mouth mouthed ‘you wanna dance’. I put down my beer before I spit it out laughing. The Brit came back to the bar and picked up his beer.

“Some guy just asked me for a dance.” Philippe was outraged by the offer.

“And you said no?”

“Of course I said no.” He was horrified by the thought that I presumed that he might say ‘yes’.

“Just so you know, he had the politeness to ask me if it was okay.”

“And what you say?”

“I said okay. Let’s face it, you have to be the prettiest girl in northern Maine by a long shot.” I figured that we were even.

“Thanks.”

“Did he offer to buy you a drink?” We were running low on money.

“Yes.” Philippe had said the magic word.

“So get to it, Thelma.” I went over to the jukebox and dropped two quarters to play KC and the Sunshine Band and Nirvana. They were good dancing songs.

Philippe gave me the finger.

I returned the favor, for I was ready to party along the St. Johns. The meteor lake was for another day or year. I ordered tequila. The logger gave me a joint and everyone joked about him asking Philippe to dance.

“I’m not gay.”

“Only blind.” I tossed down the tequila.

Philippe danced with a fat woman.
He laughed with the drunk about being mistaken for a woman.

No one asked me to dance.

I wasn't their type, then again I wasn’t the prettiest girl in Northern Maine.

The dead of winter was 2200 from Miami Beach was a good place to be a man and I didn't see anything wrong with humming WHITE CHRISTMAS.

Even if I was off-key.

Clear Skies, Cool Air

Yesterday was unseasonably warm for January in New York City. The temperature was in the 50s. Today is a little chillier at the Fort Greene Observatory, however I don't see any snow on the horizon. Where are you, Mr. Snowman?

Hotter Than Before Almost

The Friends of Science actively refute the majority of scientists churning out warnings about the threat of Global Warming. The Hoaxist website disputes the claims of the radical rise in temperatures, the danger of man's carbon footprint on the planet, global warming's adverse effect on weather patterns as well as the shrinkage of glaciers and polar ice packs by stating that Earth's atmosphere is in a constant state of flux with Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe leading the charge as a member of the Senate's Standing Committee on Environment. Last summer when a relentless heat wave scorched the South and central states with a merciless stretch on triple-digit temperatures, Senator Inhofe argued on the floor of the Senate that global warming was a hoax. Several of his opponents booed his assessment as denialism.

According to the New Times a third of the nation’s population experienced 10 or more days of summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Among the cities that set temperature records in 2012 were Nashville; Athens, Ga.; and Cairo, Ill., all of which hit 109 degrees on June 29; Greenville, S.C., which hit 107 degrees on July 1; and Lamar, Colo., which hit 112 degrees on June 27. The City's Observer Newspaper argued that New York surpassed the previous record of 106F from 1934 with thermometers topping 107 on July 7, 2012. I was in Thailand on that day, so I cannot verify that information, but I am a believer in Global Warming, however have differed from the majority consensus on the causes of climate change. My good friend Jamie Parker avowed that the planetary increase in temperature was a result from our Solar System passing through a warmer region of space. I theorized that sweating fat people added to the problem. Both of conjectures were trumped by my counterpart in religion, the ex-model from Paris, has sent a damning email claiming the prime reason for global warming is that many people have lost their faith in God and after dying they are sent to Hell. "More sinners to burn, the warmer the planet, plus people are fatter than before so they burn in Hell hotter." Jamie and I agreed that this made sense, if you believed in an after-life. So repent sinners and save the world. There will be no smoothies in Hell.

Death By Gravity

Two days ago a LA man in his 60s was killed by the toppling of his basement refrigerator. To paraphrase the last line from KING KONG; "It was not beer that killed the man, but the beauty of beer."

THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after my arrest by the Thai Cyper-Crime Unit I was drinking at Donovan's Sports Bar on Pattya's Sai 3. Most of the clientele was watching a golf match. I concentrated on drinking a vodka-tonic. Golf means nothing to me.

Tiger Woods had birdie a hole. The TV went to commercial break. Conversations of a normal nature resumed between the drinkers.

An oil worker complained that his new girlfriend slept most of the day.

His friends said that their girlfriends suffered from a similar somnalepsy.

The oil worker hailed from Texas. He was overweight and bald.

"And when she wakes up, she eats like an escapee from a concentration camp then watches Thai soap operas before dropping into a coma."

"Same with me." His two friends were also dumbfounded by the malaise. "Sleeping 20 hours a day has to be a disease."

"I'm just glad that it wasn't infectious."

Donovan's owner had a 4-handicap. To the oil worker this skill was genius and he asked Steve, if he had any idea why their girlfriends slept like the dead.

"I don't have a girlfriend." Steve was the smartest man in the bar. His Thai waitresses understood more English than they let on and he changed the subject. "Think Tiger Woods will play the Hong Kong Open?"

The golfers bailed after another drink. Their tee-off at Khao Kheo Golf Course was scheduled for 9. I paid my bill. Steve forestalled my departure with an offer of another vodka-tonic. He knew my story. The police might not have thrown me in jail, but their geek shut down my website. I couldn't leave the country until my trial. My money was very tight.

I accepted his buy-back with gracious humility.

Steve and I discussed Eli Manning's Scramble in the Super Bowl, which gave the Giants the win.

"In the regular season he would have been whistled dead. Caught in the grass. Then again rules are made to be broken by the refs in the Superbowl. They had a lot riding on the game." Steve felt that the only people who can fix games were the officials. "The secondary stopped playing defense to watch him get his." I believed that the NFL officials were also on the fix.

"Never stop playing until you hear the whistle." We clinked glasses and I asked about his bachelor status.

"I don't have a girlfriend, because I hear too many stories from my customers about theirs."

"I won't ever tell you about winning the Worst Girlfriend of the Year in 2001."

Bee had left me for an Italian fiveive times in two months. I wanted her to go. She just couldn't say good-bye. She was stuck in my life like gum in hair. She had to be cut out in the end.

"Thanks, my head filled with enough unhappy endings to write a soap opera, but I have a question. Why you think Thai girls sleep so much?"

His question echoed off an unspoken affair whose mysteries defied his rational mind. I speak Thai. I know bar girls on a platonic level. They tell stories about 'customers'. Some of them might be true.

"The most obvious answer is the one no one wants to believe."

"Which is?"

"They're tired. You try spending a night with a drunken farang sucking down beers and tequila like the Taliban were at the city gates. I promise you that you would be a little slow to get out of bed."

"But that's not the real answer, is it?" Steve wasn't accepting the easy way out.

"No, their sleeping sickness is either pretend or a reaction to having to spend so much time with a farang. Faking sleep keeps a farang off them. Not many people have a fantasy about sex with a sleeping woman. The second option is that they are so freaked by being with a farang that they wrap sleep around them like a blanket. You have to think of it like astronaut in suspended animation for inter-planetary travel only Thai girls sleep after they've landed on Mars. They have no interest in the Martians."

"You mean us?"

"Did you ever see BOB CAROL TED AND ALICE. Ann Margret sleeps throughout her affair with Jack Nicholson. Why? Because she didn't want to be there."

"So what do you do when your girlfriend sleeps?'"

"I certainly don't wake her." The peace during their slumber was priceless.

"Let sleeping dogs lie."

"As long you're in bed for when they wake up."

We clinked glasses again and another drink was pushing my budget. What the heck. Mam was already asleep. She was so cute under the sheets. She was safe and so was I. Tomorrow morning was another story.