Chapter 28

Now, to not be all alone, separated from this mad world he meant to separate himself from, to not hear so clearly the inner voice which, in a change of attitude, he now did not want to hear fully, to not think of himself as an affluent but still aimless drifter or a delinquent parent in a fatherhood that had come about from this game of massage and ejaculation concocted by two women yearning for a child, to not be a broken aching man with a broken throbbing arm and clavicle, the gifts of a wife who despised him, to be free of that recurrent guilt-ridden memory of a girlfriend suffering from postpartum depression who leaped from a balcony to elude him, that nightmare of a mutilated corpse always fresh in his thoughts, and to stand in the eternal compass of love without a diminutive man-made version that was broken fragments in his hands, would be his ultimate rapture.

Nawin--of course the word was a name change, a mere alteration of a label from that hapless creature, "Jatupon," fleeing the past of noodle servitude to his brothers and whoredom to one of them--no, not a sex slave per se, as he had been with him from volition with all that serotonin, adrenalin, testosterone, dopamine, naivety, inexperience, youthful trust of feelings, and all the rest making him madly in love (mandates and mastery by chemistry, so hardly slavery in the traditional sense of the word which would imply an external factor); and it was done because a Buddhist monk had advised it to be done. So why, with women let alone anyone else, should he want to feel this spurious emotion of "love" once again? A time and a half had been more than enough.

"So you're not groveling back to your wife, wounded and wanting her tender mercies. I had you all wrong--good for you," he daydreamed the Laotian as saying and himself providing the response of, "No, with any violent altercation or, at least a conclusion in my mind that neither party is any good to the other--the wife to the husband and the husband to the wife, my allegiance changes."

"To a different sex than what you are involved in?"

"Why would you think that?"

"I have my reasons. Come on, all pent up in your head with no one to talk to, wouldn't you like to confess to one person?"

"Not really."

"All right. So be it; if you want to stagnate that way. It's entirely up to you."

"Well, if you have to know, it can change or be for none at all. I'm not afraid."

"Of what? Me?"

"Of disengagement. Of saying my goodbyes."

"But you followed me here" he laughed incredulously. "Why's that Pree [older brother] Nawin?"

"Yes."

And he remembered that in the last year or two she, Noppawan, would mutely convey that most indifferent of yeses to him, her retired, worthless husband who no longer had the stamina to pussy-hunt beyond the domain of his two women, and did not even have the virility to raise a paintbrush as, he concluded, his paintings did not have either enlightened vision or the titian colors of the Greats, and that he was a commercial whore more than an artist--wives of course always wanting money and possessions, always buying and making plans for the renovations of their nests (empty with infertility as they might be), and the buyers of his canvases whom he catered to needing their luscious prostitutes to exude testosterone throughout their stiff cadaverous bodies to transport them from the mundane. And when he tried to share the poignancy of the seemingly blasé and inconsequential of a given day of his leisure and meditation at the zoo, various parks, and at park benches (the patterns of clouds, the black diamond sparkle of shadows of leaves on the ground, the lofty fan of bold pigeons perching on his table to steal his Styrofoam container of rice, wind carrying the smell of rejuvenating blades of grass--that same perennial and eternal smell he remembered from 35 years ago) often she, Noppawan, would continue to make dinner in silence, mutely conveying that most indifferent of yeses to him, pony tail nodding indifferently against the nape of her neck in affirmation of nothing.

He needed to urinate and obviously so did the younger man who was no longer looking at the road but toward the land with forest behind them, and a pasture with free roaming emaciated water buffalo at a distance. Unzipping his pants, the Laotian aimed the release of the arch of his liquids to nature and to the exhibition of all passing cars.

"How long are we going to wait out here?" complained Nawin in his somniloquy. That which he was hearing did not seem to come from himself at all but an invisible presence with the utterances of his own voice projected like an actor off screen, and the Laotian an alien performance put in front of his face, so as to be more real than any real being, a surreal and magnificent presence, magni-real in a sense. To be able to stare at him justifiably, words had to supply a pretext, and so the complaint spilled out of a mouth of a man who wanted to see another male's nakedness.

"Until it comes. Glad to know that you aren't dumb and mute after all," he said--he who went under the nickname of Boi. Whether this one was really Boi 1 or Boi 2 would depend on perspective; but, in either case, he judged that it did not matter. If there was something that mattered it was that these traumas he had experienced in Bangkok were making him transfixed by boys.

"I speak occasionally; but there isn't much sense in rattling nonsense so that everything seems less empty, is there? Besides, I like to think and be quiet."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It makes me feel alive."

"To not say anything to anyone?"

"Yes. To not be in the commotion of others too much. It's a trade off--which voice seems most important at a given time. But I know that it comes from affliction, early pain and reticence I never overcame. Seeking color in darkness. What are you doing?" Nawin smirked.

"What it looks like."

"Yeah, well I mean, out here?"

"Looks like I'm shutting it down with some wanks. Do you need to piss?"

"Yes."

"Then pull it out. Who's stopping you? There's no five star hotel around the corner where you can do your nasty business. Look around you. What you see is the entire country--nothing."

Nawin smiled painfully. Space and nature and Jatupon whose only essence could be found here and, in part, within this impecunious stranger, were the only allure. .

As the two men admitted by action that they were no different than beasts of early man urinating freely without repressions, restraints, and repercussions, neither of them feeling that they had been a detriment to environment and morality, each regained manhood. It was restored unto them in the flooding of their small respective areas to the demise of a few insects and vegetation. As they did this Nawin wondered how it came to be that a shirt removed in casual situations meant nothing while two penises dangling out in the open were such an ignominy and he felt a further sense of exhilaration as though in this petty, untoward action he were being launched to a different side of the galaxy. Superfluously, the Laotian multi-jerked himself once more. Was it to interrupt the last trickle? Was it to interrupt this spiritual retreat of him who did not believe in a spirit?

"I wish one of those straw hat milk maidens from one of the dairy farms would come by for a bit of my wet sausage," he said.

Nawin smiled awkwardly at the words that gave proof to an impalpable conjecture and made him assess how trite human interaction was. Unworthy of the god of the human animal, still it was exhilarating. Relinquishing the mind and plunging into human interactions, it was as if he were at last experiencing a bit of life, here across the boarder, and no longer needing to atone for his sexual liaison in Nongkhai and elsewhere. Caught in the predicament of opposing thoughts and emotions, he said nothing. Perhaps, he thought, this was the real source of his reticence.

"Do you hear me, Mute?"

"Yeah man, I hear you. You want a milk maiden to milk you. What do you want me to do about it?"

"That's right. What do I want you to do about it?" he chuckled.

Nawin waited in brief silence for an answer that was not immediately forthcoming. How titillated he was by so little; and for a moment he dwelt on the fact that such petty and banal interactions brought ribald pleasure, and the ambiguity of motives a sense of suspense to life's limited beings.

Now he was yearning for permission to become the animal that he was--permission to follow the mandates of initial impulses which were essential to salubrious man free of the conflicting venues of attempts at self restraint. As coupling had to be done as that, a couple, he needed him to pointedly say that he wanted sexual relations with him, although mentally he hoped to have nothing of the sort. His feelings and refined feelings, thought, were moving around each other in contrary motions, pulling him tautly while twisting him into knots that he recognized as the essence of civilized man, and this too he wanted no part of.

"I'm not all that particular--A police woman in her communist uniform making rural rounds; a coca cola driver pulling off the edge of the road, coming to stretch his legs and finding himself hungry before he remounts his beast and drives away. That would be fine. Then I can't think of anything more that would be needed and so wouldn't have to do a thing--just watch it go down. You think you can do that?"

Nawin wondered of the ambiguity of language. Was it such because it was inadequate in conveying intentions, that the motivations of a man were multifaceted theses and antitheses, or that to keep motivation and the inner workings of the mind safe, replies were obfuscated? In any case it seemed dubious that the grunts of language were really the best attribute of man.

And he imagined, daydreamed, or dreamed that a man shaped like a zero was being sodomized in the weeds by the stiff broad boned four of a female; that on this most garish of days, Father's Day, King Booby's birthday, when all were supposed to dress in yellow attire to commemorate him (dare he mock the kingly puppet god of the military who nodded silently in the earliest of days when they knocked off his brother, and from it was deified on the condition of staying perennially silent? It was the first time he had done so even in his thoughts, but recent tragedies and experiences had unctioned his mind and under garish cynosure made all normal ways of behaving known as the artificiality of man-made-rules that they were), he and this second stranger were interlocked in a naked embrace on sodden Laotian earth bereft of yellow flags, were coupled together fetid and wild as stray dogs--a product of nature and uninhibited will denuded of pretense. And he dreamed that he was in communion with a reptile ("Listen," he imagined himself saying to the indeterminate specie, "If one doesn't hold onto his own breath why should he hold onto people? Why should he be afraid that more will not flow in? No specific one is needed, although it might seem as though he were; interaction is needed (be it with a person or dog), an outside stimulus to dilute the intensity of one single group of accumulating thoughts foundering one to extremes, but this is all. And if I can dismiss a wife after she broke a clavicle and an arm with a frying pan, I can do it of a stranger--this stranger." "No you can't," said the creature, "for she was the stitching of the wound that could be undone in time. But the train acquaintance is a resemblance of the wound itself, the wounder, and wounding, the trinity, and it possesses you--the erect cock, the blade that will pierce your death intimately." "He's not even playing with his knife any longer. He's no danger to me. He knows me now." "When your guard is down he will strike, and then you will have your intimacy.").

Then a second bus passed them by but the Laotian seemed as wholly impervious to the sensation as before. It was a bus (the right one?--that he did not know--but a bus nonetheless) so raised head and attention askance would only have been natural.

"Why didn't we get on that one?"

"It's not the right one," he said.

Nawin finally admitted to himself that there might not be a right one, and suddenly, at least in feelings, he ceased caring all that much. All that he wanted was to lie in the stink of the earth. Now there was a butterfly fluttering about his feet. If he were to lie down it would fan away the sweat that was collecting at his brow, there would be beauty in the sordid, and there, without compunction he would plunge into dreams thumping as the voices of frogs at a distance.

"Come here," he told the Laotian. Boi came over to him. "So young," he said as he touched a wisp of hair that stuck out over the boy's ear and was salient in his sense of beauty. "You remind me of someone I once knew. It's like the world recycles the same stuff. What do you want from life? I mean not what is real and before you but what you really want."

"What point is there in that? I'm here. My sister's here. When the crops are bad we get jobs elsewhere for as long as we can and then we return. I guess when I was younger I wanted to be a pilot for what it's worth now."

"A pilot?"

"Once upon a time."

"Once upon a time," repeated Nawin thinking of a time when family was an eternal concept in a young boy's mind and one's life was rife in possibilities. He felt sadness, the eternal sadness, reflected in this one who called himself Boi and he knew that he loved him. He tried to kiss him but the Laotian feigned a laugh and pulled away.

"Quit that, you joker. Save your kisses for beautiful Laotian women. I know what you want. You wouldn't be much of a man if you didn't. Thais with money are no different than other sex tourists that come to this country for a piece of Laotian pussy. All those paintings--you must be a real ladies man. Well, it looks like we will be here for a while. We might as well be comfortable as we wait. Let's cross over there and sit down." He pointed to a small shack and an awning at a distance. "You buy the drinks and we'll motion for the bus to stop when it gets here."

"You mean we have been waiting on the wrong side?"

The Laotian laughed. "Well, not exactly. There's a different way. There always is. It's sort of like a bus." Nawin felt ill at ease but did not say anything as the two crossed this infrequently traversed highway where a dead possum lay before them on the edge of the road.

"People deny that they are going to die by looking forward to a new day that brings them closer to death. It's most ironic," said the gecko-monitor as it rode on one of his pant legs. It was a non-sequitur that he could not place in the context of what was happening but then, as such, it seemed no different from anything else. And although he was not terribly alarmed, he questioned whether or not the man crossing the road with him was in fact the Laotian, but as everything changed anyway he could not see that being accompanied by someone else really mattered.

They sat at a second table behind two middle aged men. "Sabaidee mai?" he heard the acquaintance say to them and they reciprocated with the same greeting. If sabaidee was their sawadee he was not sure how he would understand these Laotians in all this shifting of semantics. He understood the acquaintance to say, "He's the Thai I told you about" to which one of the strangers said a word like benefactor in something to the effect of, "Does she like your benefactor." "I'm her brother," the Laotian responded. "She'll do as she is told." Then, as though conscious of him, there was a lot of small talk in which the acquaintance asked about where they worked and lived. Then the conversation changed to that of a football game at the university and, to him, it all seemed staged on his behalf. The acquaintance said, "Drink, you are on vacation. Loosen up" and so he drank two shots of whiskey that appeared in tandem before him. As both head and body heated up, and the stationary environment began to wobble, he tried to reassure himself that although everything changed it did so one moment at a time. He then noticed a bald spot on his acquaintance's scalp. It seemed to be floating hurriedly in the ethereal like a satellite and the biological structure of Nawin cringed at this defective counterpart. The train acquaintance, if he were such, now seemed older than before, and the liquid blueprint, which he was subconsciously yearning for, a less viably transferable product. This Boi asked them other questions in the Laotian tongue that he could not comprehend at all on the fourth shot of whiskey and their furrowed faces answered him although the substance of this he could not determine firmly.

And as they imbibed beer ever more gluttonously and he quaffed more shots of whiskey, becoming the sensation of an entity aflame, the substance of fire, he became conscious that he would be the one who would pay for all these drinks. Thus his hand began to flounder into various pockets for his wallet until finding it in his shirt pocket but with nothing inside its dark brown lining.

"My money--there's nothing there," said Nawin.

"Is that a fact?" said the Laotian.

"All of my money is gone."

"You are my friend. I am concerned for you and I am keeping your wallet so that you don't lose it. Also we have to pay these guys to take us to the farm. No more busses going that way this late." Then to the owner who was now attempting to refill the glass from a whiskey bottle he said, "No, enough. Nothing more for him." The gecko, sitting on his shoulder, imparted a long melodramatic look of consternation and worried skepticism which also seemed staged. The reptile was stirring the puddle of his eyes, watching the ripples and it continued to do this until they were outside and the truck was turned on. Bored, it too needed to make more from the rock of the planet.

One of these drunk companions deliberately skidding the vehicle on dirt roads to provoke reactions within the clouds of dust; wet patches where the pickup labored more than once to get itself out of a rut; then, after this long journey of front seat revelry, back seat asphyxiation, the arrival at a shack stilted like a cabin; and inside an extended family eating som tam, mangos, and sticky rice on a barren floor. Was it merely this he had unwittingly yearned for all this time--a gift of a surprised and welcoming smile from her whom he had met once before on the train? Through all the expended energy of his own version of spirituality and standard decadence it was just this expression that he had wanted all along--an expression which could make and remake a diminutive man. Alacritous, she served to him his share placed on a banana leaf that was on a bamboo placemat. The rest of the family was nice enough. Why wouldn't they be with a rich man of humble sensitivities there to be exploited, a man who was spinning out of his mind while the food was making him sick. Boi put him on a scattered blanket inside a dark bedroom. There he heard the continual barking of dogs through the window. Here in this cockroach infested room, to think of something not so painful, not so dreadful, he imagined the women cooking insect curry and roasted frog and the males smoking in the main room. The barking of dogs was mordant to his thumping head, and it took a half hour before he was asleep--the cascading of sleep only interrupted when the pallid sister poured him tea, squeezing a lemon exclusively into his glass, serving unto him while he was lying there.

"You don't have to do that," he said.

"I want to," she said as she tilted a glass toward him.

"You've come here to see us and now you are sick because of us."

"Not so sick. And certainly not because of you. It's my own foolishness in drinking."

"I think this will help. Mother's remedy."

"Thank you. I shouldn't be taking someone's room. Whose is it?"

"It's mine. It does not matter."

"Where will you sleep?"

"I'll find a place?"

"Where?"

"Where you want me to."

"Where I want you to?"

"Yes."

Helping him off with his clothes after the tea was drunk there was a kiss and a reciprocal denuding--he was being set up as nothing was this easy, but he did not care. "All for you," he imagined the Laotian saying to him as he noticed her lower body slightly distended. Still, he did not care for he needed a release. Feeling the body, entering it, ravaging it, he groped for the end of impermanence and acquisition of human flesh, and for family to cover his nakedness.