Bangkok: Just Under the Skin

Bangkok—Just Under the Skin

Grant J. Venables

Published by

Grant J. Venables

at Smashwords

ISBN: 9781476464978

Copyright 2012, Grant J. Venables

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Also available at Smashwords by Venables:

BOLD (free download)

Coming soon to Smashwords by Venables:

A Sense of Place (poetry)

the meaning (novel)

the difference? (novel)

Close her Eyes: A Bangkok Affair (novel)

Table of Contents

Mirrors

A Piece of Shit

A Question of Interest

Again

by God

Dive

Elk

Just Another Fuck’n Writer

Only in Bangkok

Heartbreak Squared

Save Face

Still

The Angry Brit

The Contract

The Page

Turd

Visions

Wake

Who’s the Whore?

The Author

Notes and Thanks

Mirrors

He arched like a cat in front of the sliding patio-doors and looked at his figure. Not too shabby, for forty, he reflected, looking at his twin in the glass. (Fuck, I'm doing it again.) He sauntered off, after playfully slapping his naked belly twice to the beat his stereo’s disco din. In the recesses of his grey-matter folds, he feared becoming too much like them, the women he loved yet knew he shouldn’t.

The night before he was with the ladies once again. At least they get paid for admiring themselves, he laughed at himself. The music had been loud, intolerably so; the bass was no more an instrument of music than stuff used to dissolve stones in a man's kidneys: Thud! Tha-Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! — Thud! Tha-Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

The ladies were his friends in this land of slender, tanned insecurities. But to them their only friends were the mirrors—they showed all that mattered. Perched upon their various small branches, they looked through him, through all of the gathering, slathering masses, to their own fragile likenesses smiling back at them: the only ones they ever trusted, the only ones who really knew them...the only ones who truly loved them.

He hadn't always been so drawn. There was a time—was it a century ago?—when he would maybe go on the odd soiree to these haunts of ill repute—have a drink, have a look, head home—but with repetition slowly seeped endearment and subtle assimilation. Their smiles, laughter, charming ways, and intelligence had set an invisible, irremovable hook into his very fabric. Once properly set, he had to return—again and again and again—like some sadly fated, Sisyphean-koi, lured back to the same inviting, open flame at night, in the same limited, cement pool.

He put on his Vaurnets from atop the dresser, sucked in his belly, and again admired the glass; this time it was the gold-plated mirrors on the bedroom door. He smiled demurely at his own sulking image. (Shit! I'm doing it again.) His hips even moved to the bar music’s dull thud in his apartment. I gotta get out of here, he contemplated lightly (because he knew he should think this). I gotta find something new. But these were only so many penny-words in a land of big baht and perfect smiles.

It wasn't as if he didn't have any alternatives. He worked for a prominent engineering firm that was in Thailand helping build pipelines to siphon natural gas from Burma to Bangkok. He had signed on for a two-year contract and had stayed, now, for six. After his once-wife left to go back to the frozen, Canadian north two years into their stay, many of the office ladies, and friends of friends, had been lined-up and dated. He saw most of them so as not to disappoint his well-intentioned work-mates. You’re going to love Sheila. She looks great for her age and makes decent coin, or Noi is a successful Thai. She has her own place, and she speaks great English. You wouldn’t even know she’s an Oriental! He would smile, look pleased and nod, but it was not these nice ladies whose company he desired.

Speaking in silly pidgin English, playing the bar games of chance, buying the ladies drinks, smoking cheap Dutch cigars, and being loved, even if he had to pay for it, were all the reasons he had for rising each day and going through the motions of work. His company of choice was these lovely lonely hearts of the night; it was where he had to be.

Another thing he liked about this scene was that none of the other punters in these smoky houses of dreamed reality would ever really make eye contact: married men. They would all check each other out through the mirrors, sure, but their reflections were enough. He had none of their concerns of fidelity and prudence, nor was his merely a prurient pull. He and the ladies shared an aesthetic more addictive: their magically reflected images, their pained eyes, their killing smiles: Narcissus’ curse.

Caressing their chrome security poles, these ladies, too, would check out the mirror-men, but their furtive glances were so veiled and so discreet that one had to have a crafted guile to catch them at it. They also didn't like to stray too far from the true lovers of their sensual actions—their own images in glass.

Smoke clouded and pondered and painted eerie images through the myriad small lights. Ladies, once returned to earth from their celestial posts under lasers bright, would take on a more modest air; no longer the objects of so many sets of hungry, greedy eyes. Still though, their icons could not be lost, and their own eyes would check themselves in a thousand plates of reflected assurance from every angle. Their reduplications would passionately whisper: this is real, you are beautiful, you are wanted, you are worthy...you will, one day, be loved.

John had been swallowed by their society and saw no means of escape, didn’t even want to find one. Even when—and this was more often than not—he didn't take one of these women out on a date, he yearned for their company, and understood the subtleties of relating to their existences: compliment them furiously, don't ever take more than one girl from the same spot at the same time, remember little details from their lives so you’ll always have some fodder for conversation, try not to lie too much, and forever and always remember that they are ladies.

He sucked it in slightly and pulled on his jeans, repositioning his package to best show his wares, then ran his bony fingers through his thinning pate. The hair was going, sure, but you could only really notice from the mirrors on the ceilings. He untucked his T-shirt enough to conceal the slight roll around his centre. His disguise met his twin’s nodding approval as he strolled past his reflection on the bedroom door, stopping for a second to arch. He shut down the stereo, turned off the lights, looked—once last—in the mirror by the door, lit a small cigar, smiled, pushed down his shades like some cool-cat from a movie, then left. The windowed front of the apartment reflected his image as he faded and disappeared into another Bangkok night.

A Piece of Shit

A Piece of Shit: A colloquial phrase for a distasteful noun…and also my life…really. Read on.

It starts out at 4 A.M. I wake in wet sheets. Being too well trained to wet the bed, and not being lucky enough, any more, to enjoy wet dreams, I deduce it must be sweat. My room at night, usually as cold as an early September morning in northern Alberta, is the same temperature as the world outside my thin walls—about 32 degrees Celsius. How can I sleep? I have been tainted by air conditioners. A foreigner in Thailand without air-conditioning? Doesn't work. I get up and check the breakers. Ok. The switch looks fine. I'm no electrician, but I infer that the air conditioning is busted. I know, brilliant…and it’s a piece of shit machine to boot.

I go back to the bed and find the dry side. Being recently divorced (well, not really, but close enough) has allowed me the luxury of having two sides of the bed, once again. I haven't had this privilege for some ten years, ever since I was plucked from my tender youth at 23 and was wed, but back to more pressing matters. I lay and sweat and turn in moderate discomfort. I get up. I shower. It's five.

Reaching the lights in the kitchen, the first things I see are two roaches dancing on my counter top. Pieces of Shit! And they have defecated all over my neat and tidy place! And these are not the wimpy cartoonish insects made famous by that skippy Mexican dance. No. These are birds without feathers, prehistoric marvels of natural engineering: as tough as bolt-cutters, as bold as heavily tusked boars, as wise as an evil-sorcerer’s aged owl. These are worthy adversaries. I freeze. They freeze. Somewhere, western showdown music plays.

My squinted eyes scan the immediate surfaces for suitable weaponry. Some ancient battle adrenaline rages in my streams. A medieval instinct to armour-up consumes me. A noble righteousness yearns for a beaver-down, lance-up charge. Instead, slowly I move to yesterday’s Post, still neatly folded on the table. Silently I roll it, never taking my eyes off those six-legged foes, and I prepare for the battle. This one won't be pretty. Ones this size generally take a few well-placed swats before the bug-juice flows freely. I breathe in deeply and ready myself for a swift and bloody assault.

I swing. They scramble, splitting directions cleverly. (They've done this before, or at least talked about it.) I swing again and miss, but make brilliant contact with an orange juice bottle left on the counter, cleaned and ready for recycling. As if in slow motion, I see it spin, once, twice, thrice and then it hits the floor…the roaches are hiding, watching, beside themselves with cockroach-laughter, pieces of shit that they are, that they always have been since prehistory, and will always be, long after our minuscule forms have vanished from this orb. I stumble from the momentum of the mighty but impotent blow. Splintered glass enters both naked and fragile feet. Pain. I clean up the glass, trying to balance on the heels of both feet, resulting in the further cutting of my tender Canadian tootsies. This does not please me. Soon, washed and cleaned, my feet are blotched with bloodstained cloths. It is painful to walk, but I do—Bruce Willis did it in Die Hard, so why can’t I?

For no good reason, I curse aloud my ex-wife. (Well, we haven’t signed the papers yet, but that's a mere formality.) I dress and gingerly pedal to the office to get in some early, solitude-filled Saturday work.

Arriving there, I find no guards. I cannot get through the gates. I rattle and I wail, clang and call, but all to no avail. I am trapped outside work…and it pisses me off.

Slowly—agonizingly—I begin to climb the three-meter chain-link fence. My feet ache as their bloody forms are contorted to fit the small spaces in this green wire wall of sadism. (A picture flashes on my inward eye of the painfully bound feet of the historically tortured Chinese woman.) I finally breach its height, land in a shock of pain on the other side, find a guard, and get the gate opened. The guard, piece of shit that he is, was playing cards with his fellows and was close enough to have heard me: Piece of sentinel shit!

I park my bike, make my way up to my office and work. I don't mind playing catch-up on Saturdays. I enjoy the solitude, relish the understanding that I am here and this is what keeps me on top of so many others at this barn of a business, keeps this big dog out and ahead of the rest of the mutts and the mongrels, and the obnoxiously chattering Chihuahuas.

Ex enters: Solitude shattered.

She begins by yapping on about how little she’s been sleeping, about how much she’s been partying, since leaving our bed. Seems she's been screwing her way through the Queen's former colonies and is currently humping some guy with a girlish name from Ghana. She says he's nice. Nice? What a meaningless, nebulous word. She's a nice piece of shit, she is I tell ya. I mutter something rude enough so that she'll leave. It works. She does. She yadda-yadda-yaddas on as she exits. Her voice throbs in my ears as a festering cold sore does on one’s pulsing, extended lip. Piece of shit! I respond, in an overly dramatic howl. She shrieks out some haggard, unimaginative obscenity. She's so predictable that it's not even fun anymore.

It's coming on nine, and so I call my pal, Rob. He's staying at this posh joint downtown. I get him in his room. He says they have a free happy hour from four till six, and that I should come down and imbibe with him, perhaps have a cigar. Sure, says I, and I plan the rest of my day around those two hours of manly discourse and collegial yammering. The day begins to look worthy. I feel a grin coming on—smouldering as it were—and begin to whistle. He's a prince, he is: Bonnie Prince Robbie.

I work and work and work, content in the knowledge that my pal, my stalwart Yankee chum, is there for me on this day thus far so filled with decrepit defecation.

I get a lot accomplished. I clean up my space. I'm ready for the Monday morning ass-lickers, the vile, boss-sniffing-shit-noses, even the horrendous nuisance of the heel-biting and ever-yipping Chihuahuas. Monday they arrive en masse and pounce on me like so many heroin-starved street dogs—all twisted of whisker and crooked of tail. I hate Mondays and I'm openly misanthropic towards my colleagues too, but still they come; they always do, like some unstoppable, reoccurring nightmare. But now I live for my congenial American amigo. Life might be good. There's a chance, and I'm rolling the dice.

My boss arrives and asks the usual innane questions: How is it going? What you doing? Where you going tonight? What the fuck does it look like I'm doing, me thinks, jacking off a dozen, well-fed goats? I tell him that I'm meeting with Rob and where. He offers me a new shortcut that he just tried out from the freeway to the hotel; says it cut mega-time off the trip. He smiles like a cat, like a clown, like a piece of shit. I jot down his sagely advice. He's said something intelligent and I must remember to mark that on my calendar.

The masses claim that we all have a double somewhere in some paradoxical universe, and if so, my twin must have had a wonderful start to his day which is now turning really shitty, because my day is starting to look too sweet after starting in such depths of despair. Sorry double-guy, but this has been a long time coming, and I'm going to ride this wave all the way to the beach chairs. Hope the rest of your day really sucks, doppelganger-man, really.

It's one o'clock, and I move to the office fridge and take out this ratty-looking processed cheese sandwich I’d left there on Wednesday. It's all wet and depressed in the middle, like some small, damp mouse circled twice and settled in there for a nap. Oh well, I've eaten worse. I will munch it on the way to my bike thus filling the gap whilst walking to my mode of transport, hence saving valuable time: ultimately clever. What a wily rascal, thinks I of me, a right wily old rascal. I eat while skipping down the stairs and as I stride to the parking lot. Painful feet aside, I’m rolling, now. But hey, what's this connecting my mouth to my meal? A long, black tightrope threads myself to my sandwich. What's the deal? I don't have long black hair? Neither does my ex-wife. (She shaved most of her hair off as some lame-ass tribute to K.D. Lang.) I don't have any girlfriends? I don't even have any hairy animal friends? What gives? Why me? Who's been rolling about in my mayo?

I begin to gag. Piece of shit sandwich! I toss it to the ground in utter disgust. The street dogs will get it, and if they’re too slow, the ants will devour it. If the ants arrive first, pity the dogs: they will be skinny, wormy dessert. In the tropics, you don't mess with pissed off ants.

Home. Showered. Changed. Rewrapped bloody and aching feet. Ready-to-roll.

Brass in pocket, I’m on a motorbike taxi heading to the highway to snag me a cab. I will be early, for once, thanks to the big boss and his secret trails through the city of lights, the city of wonders, The City of Angels. Can't wait to sit with good old Rob, friendly neighbour from the south that he is, a pit-bull of a man from New England. I greatly anticipate the witty repertoire we will share: me, the ever-faithful Canuck, and he, the hearty Boston-Whaler.

Six cabs stop, but no one wants to ferry me to into the traffic-ensnarled heart of this auto-entangled metropolis. All six are pieces of flowing, carbon dioxide-spewing shit. One stops who's an old-school, no meter guy; says he'll take me there for five hundred baht: three hundred more than the meter charge. He knows he has me by the balls, and as one crafty old badger that I used to work with would say, When they've got you by the balls, your heart and mind soon follow. Well, this piece of shit had me by the balls, and all else went along for the ride, including my five hundred baht. Oh well. Two hours of free tippling with a brazen buddy awaited me. How can you place a price on that?

We head down the highway at anything but warp speed. This vintage wagon does not only have a meter, it also doesn’t seem to have anything past third gear, and of course the air conditioner feels much like the one of my rancid, early-morning waking nightmare. I see the exit I was told to take and so inform cabbie to take it. He doesn’t much want to, but I say I can show him a new way. He says if it doesn’t work out, I have to pay an extra hundred baht. My Thai isn't great, but that much I understand. Want to play little games eh, little-Thai-taxi-no-meter-man? I am the sage in this coach. Cockily, I laugh it off and agree. Whatever you say, brother, is my chipper response. I’m high on a momentary wave of self-assured, boss-proclaimed knowledge. I’m smug, even, happily so—why not? I have the boss’s secret map and the no-meter-guy is about to get shorted a hundred shiny baht. My smile is broad as the sun streams in through the tinted glass. Sometimes it’s almost too good.

Sooner than I care to admit, we were hopelessly lost. The instructions were bogus. My boss is such a piece of shit; he deserves nothing less than a slow, painful death in the hands of a tribe of starving, acid-crazed cannibals. We are in the bowels of Chinatown when I admit to taxi-man that I know not what I am doing. He says he can still get me there and he laughs to himself while muttering, short cut, Bra-dur, no prom-pen, Bra-dur. Piece of shit squared, cubed even.

It's ten-past-four. I had planned to be there by three-thirty. We arrive and taxi-guy is still grinning while counting and recounting his newly found fortune. Poor Rob. I think how he waits and anguishes over my tardiness.

I find out he is staying on the Executive Floor and they won't let me in unless he signs me in. No problem. Just call him and the old true, red, white and blue pal-o-mine will be signing away and then we two will drink, laugh, heads back, smiles glorious.

No go.

I call, but he isn't answering. Perhaps he’s engaged with the fairer sex, as often is the case with my manly mate. I page him in the lounge and still, no Robby. What goes on? The pretty lady at the desk looks at me