conversation with a hooker in Saigon

23 feb

Conversation with a hooker.

It is about 430am. The streets have begun to calm down. My Norwegian friend and I are wandering home drunk. We are chatting outside our hotel when an ageing, crack-head hooker comes stumbling over. She just stands there staring, quietly waiting for us to acknowledge her, which we are at some pains not to do. Eventually the conversation goes something like this:

Hooker: You like take me to your hotel room?

Me: That’s a very kind offer but I think we’re okay thanks.

Hooker (to Sverre): You?

Sverre: No thanks.

She stays standing there for some time, eyes looping around the back of her head.

Hooker: So you like take me to your hotel?

Sverre: Look can I just have a conversation with my friend please??

Silence

Hooker: Why you no like take me to your hotel?

Me: Because this is my boyfriend and I’m going to his hotel.

Hooker: Oh. Why you no stay in same hotel?

Me: Cos we’re ashamed of our love so we must hide in the night.

Hooker: Me too.

Silence

Hooker: So you want take me to your hotel?

Me: I’m sorry it’s not going to happen.

Hooker: Why?

Me: Cos I like boys.

Hooker: How you know I not a boy? Maybe we go to your hotel room and find out?

And on it goes. I thought pretending to be homosexual might be something of a genius out clause, but no. She has more tenacity than an Ozzie chugger in Earl’s Court. She also has a wicked grin and a soft soul in her face, still visible through the narcotics’ haze and the years of thick-set German geriatrics she dwells behind. For now. I’m sad to see her finally slope off, wondering if in another life we could have been friends.

stumped by my own logic (again)

22 feb

Ok I have taken up smoking again. I don’t want to talk about it. That shit’s a lot harder than they make out! It’s funny isn’t it: if ever you were looking for proof that man, in the last instance, was not a rational animal, then smoking would provide the evidence. Despite my certainty that it could kill me I persist. I have decided to wait until I get a job. The rationale for this is that I will no doubt be stressed until then, and giving up smoking when you’re stressed is a bad idea, as is giving up smoking when you’re on holiday, or you’re likely to be drinking, or your girlfriend smokes, or your flatmates, or you fancy some Bohemian living without rules and regulations. In fact, it’s very challenging to find a window to actually give up smoking in!

are we always better together?

21 feb

I seem to be worryingly keen to find a girlfriend / fall in love. There’s a yearning in me that’s too strong right now, perhaps in the balance swings of leaving Camille. You know, some quick fix to the hole 8 years leaves in a person. I’m looking for connections here, meaningful ones, after a few months of just shagging around. Which is ironic really because I’ve put myself in a transient world where these sorts of connections are not really possible. I’ve somehow fooled myself into thinking a few weeks’ passionate affair, a bubble outside of real life and real commitment, will scratch the itch of what I’m hankering for. But then also another part of me knows that I won’t find this quick fix, that I shouldn’t and mustn’t, that there’s something important in this solitude, this being alone and accepting being alone that I need to face. This is a wiser part perhaps, the part that senses that other people can’t really quench our thirst, that resting with the longing, without trying to act on it, is the only way to bring us back to ourselves. But fuck me it’s hard, and it’s counterpart is so sorely tempting. And then of course this division is not so complete; there’s a natural and very human longing to want to share our lives and ourselves with others. I suppose it’s about sharing rather than merging or losing ourselves. How much is it about the other person and seeing them and being with them, and how much is it about losing sight of ourselves in them? Wanting to be swallowed whole? For me, right now, I’m ashamed to say I fear it may be more the latter. And so this solitude becomes the thing.

temples of doom

18 Feb

My taxi driver has advised me to visit a lesser known Buddhist temple in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur and so like a dutiful tourist I concede. It is quite empty and quite stunning. The large golden Buddah face is circled with a halo of colour. Her smile is so enchanting, so knowing and compassionate and joyful, that I feel a tear forming. I kneel in front for a good 15 minutes, enjoying the process of stopping, the momentary revelation that there really is nowhere to get to, even when you feel you haven’t got anywhere yet and you desperately need to.

Afterwards I head to the temple toilets to take a leak. Inside there a 4 urinals. On the far right of me is an old, bald Chinese man with a grin somewhere between lurid and unhinged. Immediately he hops over 2 urinals, mid-flow, right next to me, and literally stares directly at my cock. Not even the vaguest attempt to hide his interest. Proudly holding his own shrivelled cinnamon stick. I try to hover round sideways but am just jutting my ass out closer to him. I squeeze that pee out like a gall stone, turn on a 6 pence and leave. Most irritatingly I head the wrong way out the door into a dead end courtyard and have to double back. The grinning sex pest is waiting. As I approach he starts making a wanking sign and pointing to the toilets again. Ridiculously, I start grinning and just shoot by shaking my head at him. It is then that I notice his striking resemblance to Mr Miyagi and witness the death of yet another childhood fantasy. Honestly, language is a funny thing. I can’t even give a taxi driver directions over here but the wonders of international hand signs can allow an aged sex-pest to offer me a free wank. At least I hope it was free. But why oh why choose a temple toilet? I’ve heard the Buddhists are very accommodating, but really?

Outside I am glad that I am old enough to laugh and swear with incredulity and shake it all off my shoulders.

Temple 2 – back on the horse

I have signed up to visit another temple the next day, armed with a particularly feisty teacher friend of mine for protection. If I’m honest I’m not a very keen sightseer. It just doesn’t do much for me. Read this plaque, follow this exhibit map, repeat for hours bla bla bla; it all just makes me feel overwhelmed by a kind of cattle farm tedium. I do quite like temples though, just to sit and soak up the vibe and remind myself of all the ways in which my life is distinctly unspiritual and in which I wish it was different.

The Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur are wide enough and high enough to house a whole galley of pirate ships. They soar about 150m upwards into stalactites that loom from the shadows and pierced eyelets to the sunshine above. The sheer sense of cavernous space is overpowering and oddly calming. The musty air rings with Hindu chanting. In contrast to Christianity, where one Church suffices, the Hindus have filled each corner of the cave with a separate temple, each with its own unique carved Gods and priests. The effigies are enchanting. Another comparison you notice with our crucifix is that Hindu images are almost always smiling. The message is not one of penance but celebration here. In addition there are significantly more women. Some of them are a shade of luminescent blue which gives them a kind of ethereal glow. I don’t know what they mean and have eschewed the audio book option, but I’m pretty sure they’re meant to give me the sense of calm I have now.

In one of the busier shrines a priest is trying to sell me a candle. Hard experience has made me unduly cynical of links between tourism and money, even when it comes to religion. But the Ghee filled shell candle looks intriguing and I feel like offering a prayer to the future. He asks for 1 Ringit. I give him 50, my only note, and he gives me 40 back. Bartering with a Hindu priest is a little embarrassing, but shame be damned he ain’t ripping me off that badly. I ask for another 5, which he concedes to before also giving me a plastic bottle of children’s milk called ‘Smoo’. Hhmmm. I move on round to the shrine and another priest asks me my name. My name is actually almost impossible for Malaysians to say so I settle for being Waywaw. He sings a maudlin chant, throwing flowers over the alter and filling a half coconut with fruit before laying it at their silver God’s feet. ‘Good luck for you’ he assures me afterwards, whilst proffering the donations tray again. I ignore this, grinning inanely. So he gets a black cord and ties it round my wrist, before anointing me with ash.

‘Good luck!’ he says again.

‘More Good luck?’ I ask.

‘Yes, all year!’ he grins, again hovering with the bowl. Well that’s got to be a bargain no? He’s won me over and another 5 Ringit come out, which he gracefully pretends not to notice as I drop it in the bowl. I leave feeling a little cheapened to be honest. In another temple there is a priest giving blessings to a waiting circle of devotees. I want to watch so I hover in the background, trying to respectfully not be a part of it. But when the priest is opposite me he beckons me forwards. The other worshippers grin and welcome me. I am again anointed amidst some resonant chanting. This time there is no donations bowl. The priest simply says ‘you are welcome.’ And so I suppose that’s how it goes; even amongst the religious men you have the chancers and the charitable shoulder to shoulder. On the way out there is an effigy that seems to sum it up. It’s a cow with large udders, the tail of a snake, woman’s breasts and the head of a moustached man, all topped off with bull horns. The sublime and the ridiculous.

smoker’s paradise

19 Feb

Smoking

I am giving up smoking. Today. I gave up with great difficulty nearly 10 years ago. I then took it up after splitting with Lisa because I felt like I wanted to ‘go wild’ in a no holes barred kind of way. For 6 months I have smoked and drank and caned it and partied far more than a respectable teacher should do. DVD days for the kids are fairly common. (‘Sir, why is Pirates of the Caribbean related to our Shakespeare poetry unit?’ Me: ‘if I have to spell it out for you Elizabeth then you won’t be learning much yourself will you?’) And smoking has crept in and taken hold. Even more so here – pack of 20 Marlboro lights for 2 quid anyone? Plus, all the hot French girls smoke.

But no, it has to go. Last night I took an overnight bus and sat next to 2 Chilean doctors. They did not want to bore me about the dangers of smoking that everyone knows, but I pressed them all the same. They convinced me of the following:

1. Smoking causes irreparable damage to your lung capacity immediately. The longer you smoke the worse it gets. And just to clarify even if you stop you can never get back to where you were.

2. There is a scientific formula to work out your chances of cancer from smoking. If you smoke 1 pack a day for 1 year then that works out as 1 point. 10 years is 10 points. Half a pack a day is half a point over a year. When you hit 10 points on the table, things start looking bad for you. 15 points and over and you’re in serious trouble. Smoking joints is even worse because they’re unfiltered. I’m probably on about 6 on the scale. And that’s high enough for me thanks.

There is something I would add:

3. Most of the time smoking makes you feel shit. End of. There is the occasional prime pint / ciggie combo, but 9/10 cigarettes just leave you a bit lethargic and apathetic.

So all in all smoking doesn’t have much place on the free-wheeling express train. In fact, that shit’ll kill you. The only reason to carry on smoking is because I can’t stop. Which is pretty much the opposite of freedom. And no fun at all. Oh and maybe those French girls…

future fear

13th feb

The march of time continues, I remain unemployed and my new found love of $5 Margaritas is draining my credit card well. I am late to jump on this boat it seems. Most of this year’s teaching jobs have gone, dished out in job fairs in January. Shit. Still, stuff is appearing on the TES, and there’s a job conference in Bangkok in March. I shall have to trust that something will work out. But I’m getting a bit scared now. What if it doesn’t? August comes and no cigar? I can’t envisage going back to the UK. It feels like retreat and disillusion. I’m not ready to go home. If I can’t get a job, I’ve decided I’ll try and volunteer for the year, work for an orphanage or with street kids or the like. Perhaps I can trust that if things go that way it’ll be for the best. Imagine that experience! But then the inescapable practicalities come to bear. I have no money. I cannot pay my accommodation or food anywhere for a year. And I very much doubt charities will fund you even minimally. It is, perhaps, pie in the sky thinking. Shit! I’ll see how the conference works out. I’ll give myself till the end of March to make a decision, and delay intense worry until then! Hmmm, if only it were so simple to still the beast of future fear.

the long and winding road

18 Feb

Today is the first day I have felt really homesick. Or perhaps lonely is closer to it because I’m not sure I want back the home I left. The idea of it perhaps. I wake up in my teacher friend’s flat after she’s gone to school. There is a day alone ahead of exploring the city, just to get a ‘feel’ for it, and I don’t want to go. It feels as if it has an odd aimlessness to it. I’m on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the traffic and construction drills whining in through the window, the vast unfamiliarity of the city stretching out, and it all makes me feel small. I have a longing for connection, for belonging, for the shared jokes and squeezed shoulders of old friends. I am not really clear why we go into these uncharted spaces, or what we hope to learn from them. But I feel somehow that it’s important we do. That this atomised feeling should not be avoided by a search for constant companionship. That the aloneness and the togetherness pivot around each other. I don’t know though. Perhaps it’s all just reasoning to make it more bearable. But I won’t push it away. I will get up and face it and be in amongst it.

Hamlet in Hat Yai

You are sitting on a night bus watching the city of Hat Yai sprawl past in the dusk hues. The day had been unbearably hot and the sleeper train you had envisioned as your saviour is fully booked for 2 days. You have bartered with travel agencies for seats that don’t seem to exist. Money changed hands and you followed a guy you didn’t trust who’d laughed at you through back streets and got tetchy when you ditched him, refusing for some time to give you your money back, saying he had a bus in the morning. But you’re determined not to stay in this fly-ridden inland inferno. You’ve had 2 hours sleep, already an 8 hour mini bus journey on which you left half your stuff only to watch it disappear into the bowels of Thailand’s transport system. ‘Lost Property’ is not a familiar concept here, and you don’t know the Thai for ‘Jumper’ anyway. And you’re hungover to shit. You don your ineptly loaded rucksack and sweat your way through a labyrinth of contradictory directions and nameless streets in search of an Internet cafe to try and get some travel advice. That idea misfires and costs you valuable body hydration, so you take to prowling the travel agencies for spare tickets. But it’s Chinese New Year (who knew?) and the whole of Asia is on the move. Finally you’re ready to dig out a hostel-room-cum-sauna.

Suddenly there is a last ticket available from a lady who smiles. She directs you to a restaurant where the lady owner tells you how to buy cheap water for the journey and personally escorts you there, showing you how to haggle over the price of some ear phones along the way. She’s delighted your going to Vietnam as her son is there and she proudly shows you the postcards. It’s cool in there and the food is just sublime – yellow Massaman Chicken curry with sliced baby corn and courgette. 5 tedious hours later and you return to the bus station. The same lady is still making calls all the time though it’s 8pm. She’s been on since 8am at least. All the markets are open and folks of every age are rolling into the night. Outside your bus window the streets are cooled at last but still ablaze with activity. The ‘work and play’ divide seems redundant. Life is incessant here and tough in a way your soft Western sensibilities can’t imagine. From 5am in every town you see see a flurry or hands chopping, peeling, sorting, wrapping, scrubbing, all crouched down together amidst volleys of banter. Then you pass a bubbling restaurant, plastic roadside chairs filled with old friends grinning and slapping each other. You watch all this trundling past your window. And you think what a thing life is. ‘What a piece of work is a man’. And it lifts you on a breeze of gratitude. Just to be a part of it.

raped paradise

Ko Phi Phi is the Frankenstein’s monster of the Thai islands: an impressive assemblage of parts roughly hewn together by the doctor of Western expansion. You have stunning beaches, tropical jungle, sheer karsts jutting out of the bays, beautiful tanned sirens, cheap cocktails in lazy low-slung beach bars, Thai massage parlours aplenty and endless golden rays. But the blood in this monster’s veins, the daily throbbing injection of urban hedonist-fetishists hell-bent on 10 days of bucket-fuelled, booty-filled escape, well this blood has totally failed to animate. Perhaps it’s the Americans pissing in the sand and throwing their fag butts in the sea, or the Colombians demanding room service and a comfier mattress, or the Italians hollering at their hostel owner over 50p, or the Thai waiter screaming ‘fuck you and fuck your Mum too’ when someone kicks up the litter he’s swept, or the sun-lobsters crawling through the streets lager in hand, or the constant whine of ‘you come, good massage, happy ending, yes yes, penis massage, you likey likey’, or the 5 adjacent beach side clubs blaring out dub step over commercial pop over classic rock over techno into a melange of tuneless ear splitting proportions, or the clutches of neon ‘I heart pee pee’ vests or the fucking Irish pub or the middle-aged Glaswegian alcies decrying the local whiskey whilst throwing it back nonetheless, or the shimmering walls of fake Raybans, or the clogged arteries of permanently full guest-houses, rapidly being augmented by skeletal constructions carved ever higher into the jungle, or whatever other cynical import from the Blackpool night scene or, weirdest of all the 10 to 1 tourist / Thai ratio. But whatever the final straw was, Ko Phi Phi has almost entirely lost its charm. Still, if you can’t beat ’em and all that – I have spent 3 days in various combinations of inebriation or hangover or sleep, the folks that aren’t just massive nobheads have been pretty damn friendly and lashings of English irony has resulted in a fecking good old giggle. I can’t say the same for Vincent who has been in a particularly French mood ever since we got here. Occasionally he we will drawl ‘I cannot talk to these dumb people’ before returning to a slumber in the one reggae bar he actually likes until it’s time to go home. As we left today he rasped ‘goodbye raped paradise’. And I had to agree; I’ve enjoyed it here but I’ll never come back.

who’s drumbeat is that?

15th Feb

It is 8.30am. The beach cafe is still empty and the sun has that buttermilk haze that doesn’t yet sting your eyes. I am alternately sipping a mango lassi and an espresso, enjoying the trails of smoke from a Marlboro light. I love to smoke in the sun. In a few minutes the waiter will bring a bowl of fresh tropical fruit muesli and yoghurt. I catch myself sigh as my head rocks back. And I realise something: for the first time in a decade, looking forwards and backwards my life has become my own again…

Since I left university, 11 years ago, I have worked constantly. I have never taken more than a two week consecutive holiday. Most often breaks from the grind have consisted of a week long binge with a hoard of old friends not seen often enough, followed by a week long stint of hungover stock-cupboard crouching back at work. Before that point, more or less, my life belonged to me and my time was carved out by my own desires. I didn’t even notice this dramatic shift when it first happened, so enticed I was by the game of ‘making it’. The years hustled past with minor successes and major headaches, always struggling to get a foothold in this venture called adult life. Despite my attempt to follow my creativity in the film industry, I actually almost never got to do what I wanted to do. Years of tea-making and chauffeuring skills were finally usurped by endless clerical work. What time I had to call ‘free’ was spent frantically tapping out my own stories, ratcheting up 1000s of hours that have yet offered precious little recompense. Since then secondary school teaching has supplanted writerly concerns with the tireless demands of teenagers. True I have adored many layers of this, but it has hardly been time to call my own.

And so now I stop. Change the beat. For 6 glorious months. It is an experiment of sorts; what will happen if I once again live my life exclusively for myself? How on earth might that feel? How long can you content yourself doing nothing productive at all? Some latent Victorian ethic lurches at the idea. Indulgent, decadent, spoilt even. My father is a man who was ‘constructively occupied’ even on holiday – restore that reclaimed lifeboat, scale that Scottish Monroe, stumble out onto the water at 5am to catch a fish (because they’re easier to catch at night apparently. Can that really be true?) But I have always been drawn to idling. And now I shall endeavour to make it a profession. We shall see…