Anita Pallenberg You Bet I Would

Why are bad girls so delightful?

Get that time machine running.

Not her as much as me.

The Aging Of Beauty

"Would you want your daughter to marry a Rolling Stone?"

Most parents would have answered 'no', however many of their daughters yearned to be seduced by a member of the Rolling Stones.

Few succeeded as well as Anita Pallenberg, an Italian actress/model, who had romances with Brian Jones and Keith Richards, plus a short affair with Mick Jagger.

The elegant blonde beauty had a wicked side and according to Tony Sanchez's account of his time as Richards's bodyguard and drug dealer, "Pallenburg was obsessed with black magic and began to carry a string of garlic with her everywhere — even to bed — to ward off vampires. She also had a strange mysterious old shaker for holy water which she used for some of her rituals. Her ceremonies became increasingly secret, and she warned me never to interrupt her when she was working on a spell."

Heroin was her sacrament.

Mick Jagger said that Pallenberg "nearly killed me"

Anita lived hard, but survived many others, although mostly as Keith Richard's Portrait of Dorian Grey.

Time hasn't been kind to her beauty.

Time isn't on everyone's side, but as long as you can draw breath, Life is a thing of wonder.

Especially when you look like Keith Richards.

Yesterday Gone Tomorrow

Back in 2010 my friends left Raspberry Island off Acadia in Maine en route to Millbrook, New York. They experienced a long delay at the Maine Turnpike's Kittery toll booth.

"That's to be expected there and then." It was the weekend and everyone was heading north or south.

"I was still hell," said my friend.

"More purgatory than hell."

I didn't tell him about the back road to avoid the turnpike the chokepoint, but when I later mentioned this travel tidbit to my Uncle Russ said, "You know they're planning on tearing down Memorial Bridge."

"What for?" The through-truss lift bridge has been spanning the Piscataqua River for almost 100 years old.

"Cost about as much for a new bridge as repair that one."

"You know that is hooey." I had heard the same crap about the Big Dig in Boston. $17 billion to get 20,000 commuters to their jobs 5 minutes faster. Paying them a million dollars each would have been cheaper.

"New Hampshire seems willing to foot the whole bill. No federal funding either, since the Memorial Bridge is almost listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

"Probably put up a bridge without any style."

"That's what it looks like."

"Who's surprised?"

I hung up the phone and opened a can of beer.

Another sad day for the past, but then there are too many of them to mention.

96 Days And Counting

The GOP and Democrats have found their candidates for the 2016 Presidential Election.

Donald Trump has won the hearts and minds of white voters who recognize that they have been left behind in the New America.

Hillary Clinton scored big with women wanting to see a woman in the Oval Office.

I can vote for neither candidate.

Donald Trump has a KKK pedigree through his father.

The frontman for the TV Reality Show THE APPRENTICE has the geo-political savvy of most white Americans, although he has traveled to his golf course in Scotland and his wives have come from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and the USA. A man in his position only has one way to see the world which is through his wives.

Especially the latest.

Melania

She is almost as beautiful as a Thai Ladyboy.

But not ladyboy Karn.

Hillary Clinton is certainly more knowledgeable and talented than her GOP opponent.

She has been Secretary of State and a US Senator.

Unfortunately her close ties to the banks and a vote for the Iraq War exclude her from the ranks of progressives.

Plus those pant suits are so pastel Chairman Mao.

I don't mind how she eats a hot dog. I don't like mustard on my pant suits either. Hillary also has been known to knock back wine and harder liquor.

Donald Trump has no history of drinking and I don't trust any other who isn't a Muslim who doesn't drink.

Hillary would be more appealing as a bull dyke.

I would love to see her steal Melania from Donald.

But that might have already happened in the past.

After all they are such good friends.

Bill's certainly isn't dressed for the occasion or else Donald is over-dressed.

Probably a little of both.

Chek Bin Carpe Diem

Several years ago Fabo and I were sitting at the garden bar of the Welkom Inn on Soi 3. I hadn't seen the Belgian oil explorer in a year. Both of us had suffered exile from Pattaya. His place of banishment was the North Sea. I was stuck in New York. We were equally glad to be away from either. He greeted me with a hug and the bargirls on the patio regarded us with neglect. We were old-timers in the Last Babylon and gesture with disgust. They only liked straight men. Newcomers to Thailand spent money like bankers on a cocaine binge.

"Papa." Fabo thought that we resembled each other.

"My son." I didn't see the likeness.

I drank San Miquel. It was made in the Philippines. Heineken was my pseudo-fils' beverage of preference. He was 31. I had been in Brussels at the age of 36 in 1988. A Walloon girl had taken me home to her parents. They had made breakfast for us in the morning. Her mother was glad that I was white.

She wasn't Fabo's mother, but he liked to think that she was.

"Good to see you>"

"Welcome back home." Fabo's skin was tanned from the sun's reflection off the sea.He had been three months without a drink. We ordered beers. The time was noon. Loso was playing on the radio. He told me about his stay on the oil rig in three seconds, "No fun. No beer. No girls."

"New York. Cold beer. No girls." Six syllables to his seven. The economy of age.

"One plus. Two negatives." Fabo had once shown a photo of his mother. The skinny punk girl with wide eyes looked familiar, but not too familiar.

"Now we're here." His nose had been mashed by too many accidents, but his eyes were arctic blue. Mine were high Nordic steel.

"Paradise."

"You mean sa-wan," said Prueng said the Thai word for heaven. "You want go short time?"

"Sorry. No can do. I have a wife."

"Your wife not here." She was an angel with soft hair and small breasts, but I was blind to her allure.

"I know, but I love her." I had no choice, but to be true and I ordered another beer.

"Same as you love your wife." Preung's girlfriend worked at a big hotel. They were saving money to pay for her penis operation.

200,000 baht to change from a woman to a man.

I gave her 200. Fabo handed over a 500-baht note.

"Thank you."

"It's for a good cause."

"What mean 'cause'?"

"Good for your wife."

"Good for me too."

Preung went to take up her position at the door of the Welkom. She had a long way to go to hit 200,000 baht.

"Ah, ouais, paradise." Fabo didn't mention his wife or her German lover. Saying SS Tommy's name was unlucky everywhere in the world.

"You can say that again." The heat of May gave any human a thirst."

"Here is paradise and all paradises are close to the equator.

"The equator?" I had heard his hypothesis on more than one occasion. My one attempt to explain it to Mam had met with her contempt. She had little patience for 'tawh-lay' or bullshit. All women say the same about men.

"Only 1200 miles south of here."

"I know." I had crossed the equator in the jungles of Sumatra.

"The relative speed of the earth's rotation sends more blood to your head."

"It doesn't depend on speed, but the reformulazation of the theory of gravity." Fabo recognized his conjecture was full-on mad or 'bah mak' as say the Thais and we argued about acceleration measured in m/s2, air resistance, and the downward weight force.

We were happy to sit at a bar far from the North Sea and New York.

The afternoon stretched east. We watched the men run the gauntlet before the entrance of the Welkom Inn's bar, where the interior was perpetually night and the ancient mama-san played any song from any year. The male clientele liked 1977. No matter what the nationality everyone knew the words.

Around 5pm we were surprised by the arrival of four Mid-Eastern men.

Jeans.

White shirts.

No robes.

Normally Arabs frequented the smoking bars at the end of Walking Street.

"Egyptian." Fabo sniffed the air. Strong tobacco.

"Kuwaiti."

I bet Fabo 500 baht on their country of origin.

They bar-fined Preung and a few other girls.

Everyone was happy.

A half-hour later they exited from the bar and bought a bottle of Sky Whiskey before departing for Beach Road. They had paid for the short-time in Thai baht, but had tipped Preung in another currency.

Preung waved good-bye to the Arabs.

"Where were they from?" I asked her.

"Bahrain."

Fabo and I had both lost, but Preung flourished a handful of banknotes. The colors were strange.

Not dollar green or the green, blue, red, and purple of Thai currency.

Her co-workers cheered her order for more whiskey.

Five minutes later she brought two glasses of whiskey-coke to the bar. We were too polite to say no. Preung slapped the foreign money on the bar. It was a big pile and each bill had a lot of zeros.

They were Zaire Francs.

Fabo had worked oil platforms in the Congo and sat frozen on his seat. Someone had to pop Preung's balloon, as she reached for the free drink bell. There were about 33 people with the range of its peal.

"Drinks for everyone."

"Don't."

"Why not? I happy. I want everyone happy. Same me."

"Because." I read the finance section of the Herald Tribune and studied currencies.

"How much worth?"

An exchange rate came to my head.

“62 baht per million.”

Preung was holding ten million.

The buffalo herd for her father was kidnapped by disappointment. Her girlfriend stayed a woman. A 600 baht tip for a short-time wasn't bad, but no trip to paradise. Preung was Thai. Happiness came and went fast and her hand dropped from the rope hanging off the bell

"I not win. I not lose. It was nice rich one minute. You want go short-time?"

"No."

"Your wife still not here."

"She's in my head and in my heart."

"Kee-neo."Preung was accusing me of being cheap, but Fabo seized the chance. "I'll go with you."

He had been at sea three months. No fun, no beer, no women, and I was one hour late for Mam.

"Just think of it as another 1000 baht closer to 200,000." His arm encircled Preung's waist. She was no longer an heiress, but a common girl from Isaan with a good heart and smooth skin. Fabo paid the bill and they strolled to room 101. It was the closest.

"Bonne nuit, papa."

"A vous aussi, mon fils." From behind Fabo did look like me.

Only me from thirty.

Not young, but younger and therefore rich, because youth was always worth billions in both dollars and baht.

But never Zaire Francs.

ps Preung means bee in Thai.

But this Preung never stung.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF NEW YORK by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the 1920s New Yorkers returned from Florida holidays with baby alligators. The little reptiles grew fast and their owners flushed the saurian relics down the toilet, thereby creating the myth of albino alligators slithering through the city sewers seeking to devour cats and dogs. While this urban legend has been broadly dismissed as hooey, a sewer worker reported an alligator sighting in 1935. A hunt was organized by the commissioner, who announced that the alligator problem had been solved by the hunters.

Thomas Pynchon wrote about this legend in his novel V and reported sightings still reverberates through the marrow of the city, since few people know what lies underneath the city's concrete surface.

Even less now, but in October 1978 my good friend Mike S and I were taking a short-cut through the abandoned rail yards west of Hell's Kitchen. Freights trains rumbled along the warped tracks at a slow speed. Several hobo encampments were huddled underneath the concrete bridges. One settlement seemed to be laundering cast-off clothing.

Mike's fearless dog acted as point on this expedition and Merlin barked at a doorway in the abutment.

"What do you think?" The lanky Long Islander was as fearless as Merlin.

"It has to go down."

"To what?"

"Only one way to find out."

Mike pulled open the battered door.

Stairs led down to an unlit tunnel, which dimmed ten feet down the steps to complete black.

"You want to see where it goes?" Mike came from California. He was a sculptor. His wife had left him for another man.

A painter.

"Can't see why not." My girlfriend disappeared in Europe. She wrote a good-bye letter from Milan.

"What if there's an alligator down there?"

"A blind albino alligator?"

"Then we better go prepared for the worse."

We had nothing to lose.

Mike and I returned to his loft on West 45th Street for a compass, flashlights, batteries, baseball bats, a .22 revolver, and a sawed-off shotgun. Mike handed me the pistol and stuffed his pocket with shells.

"You think this will stop an alligator?" The gun was light in my hand.

"No, but it will get its attention and I'll kill it with the shotgun. We'll make the front page of the New York Post."

"That's always been one of my ambitions as long as I'm not in handcuffs."

"Then let's go." Both of us were wearing heavy gloves, engineer boots, and leather jackets.

We almost left Merlin, however the valiant dog barked out a warning.

We ween't going anywhere without him.

"Okay Merl, but no fighting with 'gators."

We left his apartment with bags over our shoulders and walked to the train yards. The afternoon had another few hours to run until sunset and Mike pointed to his watch.

"We go down for two hours and that's all."

"Two hours should be more than enough."

"Are you scared of the dark?"

"Who isn't?" I had been in a few caverns in the White Mountains. They snaked into the granite shield for several hundred feet before narrowing into impassable crevices. Without a flashlight there had been no light. "We have extra batteries, but if we run into anything dangerous. We leave."

"Of course." Mike was broken-hearted, not suicidal.

We stopped before the door.

Merlin barked that he was ready for this expedition.

Mike pulled open the door.

"This might be like the entry to Hell."

"Or the subterranean world like in Jules Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTER ON THE WORLD."

"Or a forgotten world like in ATTACK OF THE MOLE PEOPLE."

"I love that movie." It had presented on a semi-annual basis on the old UHF TV horror stations.

We descended the stairs and darkness swarmed from the walls. The Stygian passage reeked of urine and stench of shit rotored into our noses. Wrapping bandannas over our mouths and noses filtered the foul odor.

Merlin hung by Mike's thigh.

His eyes showed an uncharacteristic caution.

"Merl doesn't like this."

"Neither do I."

"You want to turn around?"

"Not yet. You?"

"We're here to see what there is to see."

The flashlight played on a concrete corridor and the farther we walked from the stairs the smell of excrement was replaced by the aroma of damp dust. Puddles of rainwater gathered on the floor.

At a split in the tunnels savaged rat skeletons were piled in the center.

"They look like something had bitten them in half."

"Something bigger than a rat."

"An alligator?"

"That's just a myth."

"Down here anything is possible."

"Which way?" Our flashlights revealed nothing to the left and right but more darkness.

"Merlin?" Mike asked his dog and Merlin barked to go straight.

The core of Manhattan.

We continued in that direction without speaking. It was, almost as if the city overhead had been bombed into oblivion and we were the last three creatures on Earth, but we weren't alone. An ominous scratching was coming our way. Merlin barked with terror. Mike pulled out the shotgun. I lifted the revolver, expecting an albino alligator, but the twin beams caught a beast with a hundred eyes.

Rats.

Thousands of them.

The pistol barked out several times without stopping the gray mass of gnarled teeth and fattened bodies.

A bar hung from the ceiling.

"Mike, grab it." I dropped the flashlight and gun and grasped the rusted metal. Mike joined me. The railing creaked under our weight, as we lifted our feet to escape the scrabbling horde of rats.

Merlin was caught in action by the two flashlights. He snapped at dozens of the sewer squirrels, his teeth flashing with blood. The rodent deluge was over in seconds and the rats disappeared down the tunnel. Mike and I dropped to the ground. He checked Merlin.

Not a scratch.

"Let's get out of here."

“Which way?” The rats were headed toward their headquarters. Any direction other than that was good with me.

Merlin barked twice and trotted down the swamped corridor.

"Follow Merlin. "

Merlin led us to a steel door. It looked like no one had touched it this century. Mike and I manhandled the rusted steel plate and we climbed the stairway to a sub-basement of a building.

It was a fall-out shelter. Dust lay decades deep. The entrance was not locked from the outside. We emerged from the underground on 8th Avenue. The pedestrians stared at us in horror. Michael held the shotgun in his hand and I carried the 22.

We stashed both of them in the bag. Mike checked his watch.

"Four blocks in an hour." The sun was setting over New Jersey.

"I don't think we have to do that again."

"No, what you think, Merlin?"

Merlin barked out his agreement and Mike bought him a bone from a 10th Avenue bodega. He was a good dog against rats and probably alligators too, for something had to be living on rats down there and I was happy to never discover whether it was big or small.

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.