Shanghai

I arrive leaving my passport on the plane.  In the terminal I turn toward a door and walk down a metal staircase into a thriving marketplace.  To the right standing on a stage a gorilla with an exquisite British accent acts as a barker describing the times and places of the events of the day.  Further into the underground chamber a giant two-headed American man silently overlooks the scene.  I turn away and look for an exit.  Perhaps, I might find a door which would open into the city.  Suddenly, I am in the arms of a middle-aged Chinese woman.  She keeps kissing me as she moves me back to the metal staircase where I am met by a tall, young, Chinese man.  He presses up against me.  I feel like grabbing him by the shoulders and rolling him over.  He’s threatening me, but it’s a standoff.  I climb up the stairs and reemerge in the terminal.  Back on the plane, I am travelling into the sun, into the land of the moon, to Bangkok.  The plane is filled with Japanese.  When the Japanese speak with one another it feels like a battling, a grappling.  It seems to me their keen appreciation of emotion derives from their feudal upbringing.  About an hour into the flight I get into a long conversation with Jim P., from Washington D.C.  A Vietnam Vet organizer, my age, he’s an Indianian.  We have mutual friends and he looks a lot like me.  He even wears a hat like mine.  He’s a lobbyist for the Amerasian kids.

At one in the morning Bangkok looks like Newark in 1960.  I sleep at the Hotel till five and then get out there into the Tai Chi dance, the macho wiggle of Bangkok traffic.  I'm expecting my friends.  I’m expecting them to be beat but valiant trekking from Katmandu to Anapurna – a zigzag from subtropical to the base of time – their goal to get through the pass into the sanctuary.  There are four:  a winged horse, Feaster; an ex-marine, Greenie, rugged and taciturn; Lee, brother-in-law of Feaster – game – but not as experienced; and Kennedy, my lawyer, old man moon of crew-ex Antarctica Navy Air Force – first time to South East Asia.


It’s cool and quiet in my room.  I begin a letter to the King:  Though this is my first trip to your glorious people I have bonded with them.  The dichotomies are heart-wrenching.  On the one hand you have the resurgence of a splendid gene pool; on the other you have dropped them, without blame, into a vat of carbon monoxide.  Sipping Singha, I continue .  Around Four, there’s a knock at the door.  It’s Feaster standing, beaming saying, an almost perfect trek.  We’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes.  Kennedy is across the hall.  I knock on Kennedy’s door.  He is tired but beaming.


Kennedy, Feaster, Greenie and I sit around my room and toast a successful journey.  All are wasted legs like twigs and stiff too.  Lee burnt still in room.  Wants to get back home.  Only one not to make sanctuary, but he will join us for dinner.  We walk to Mama San’s patio.  The trekkers walk bowlegged with a grim look on their faces.  At the dinner table, they tell stories about living in the Himalayas – Sergio Leone country.  After dinner, we saunter over to legendary Soi Cowboy, a little Disneyland of dancing girls.  We settle in at Susie Wong’s.  Really vibrating.  Fall in love with a twenty yr, old honey, pony tail, nice tits with Mick Jagger type lips.  I buy.  We’re about to leave and I feel someone looking at me from the corral.  Pale, lovely freckled – older serene looking through the bars of the cage.  Captivated, I say, I’ll take that one too.


Later that morning I ask girl with Jagger type lips to leave.  Have hands full with devout and real thing in Nookrai.  Give bye bye girl 1000 baht-remain friends.  Return to Nookrai.


It’s 5:30 p.m. the following day in Susie Wong’s.  The staff has assembled cleaning and getting the joint ready for tonight’s party.  The bar girls, food vendors, money counters and counselors wander in and out.  Each dancer looks as if she has just dropped in from California.  They crouch in front of mirrors and create alluring faces.


As 6:00 p.m. approaches the music shifts from romantic Thai to American rock.  The girls dance tossing their hair, mocking passion.  They dance whether farong there or not, but they need an audience to turn on; a bit languid without.


More fat girls at Susie Wong’s than anywhere else.  Fat man like Thailand.


I’m the monkey swaying back and forth in Dooley’s cage on Patong Beach.  Watching Nookrai sleep so smooth ruffled by an occasional crying.  A snake comes to her that night, and I stand there watching and then holding her; she never awakens.