This one's name was Tasiporn. She was a waitress at one of the bars Bob and I frequented on our weekends in Ayutthaya. I thought she was older than she was, hell, she looked older than she was. When she turned out to be seventeen, I counted the years between us on both hands and used all but one finger. Bad, bad, I thought. Stick with Sucheeda. Sucheeda was closer to my own age. But Tas wore a black dress and had a face like a cat and all it took was one giggle from her to convince me that THIS was the woman castles were built to hold and knights were sent to slay dragons for. By the end of the night, I had given away my watch, my driver's license, and a small address book that I bought at the store but hadn't written a single address in. The next morning, I looked to see what goddam time it was, completely forgetting that I had given my watch away.
“Hey, Bob!”
“Yeah, Chief?”
“Have you seen my watch lying around somewhere?”
“Aw, you gave it to Tasiporn last night.”
“Now, Bob. Tas is just a little girl. I've told you that before. I'm almost ten years older than she. If I were thirty-nine and she were thirty that would be a different story. She's still a teenager. She reads magazines with pin-ups and hangs pictures of unicorns and ballerina shoes on her wall. I mean, you know, the Thai equivalent.”
“I'm telling you, Chief, you gave her your watch.”
“Fuck, I did, didn't I?”
Bob was no longer interested in my women. His jealousy had overcome him. Whenever we went out together, it was a given that the girls were going to be attracted to me. Bob was short, hairy, and had a squat nose. I was tall with a big Gerard Depardieu smack dab in the middle of my face. When Bob and I sat together, the girls had their eye on that nose of mine. When I went to the bathroom and left Bob alone, the girls gave him the once over and turned away. Then me and my nose came swaggering back and you could just feel the excitement return to the air. What's he gonna do? What's that nose of his gonna do? This was good fun for a couple of weeks until I began to see its effect on Bob. He was becoming more and more serious about marriage. His girl from the Philippines had written back overjoyed that he hadn't forgotten her. He spent his free time working out the prices of airfares to bring her to Ayutthaya.
One morning, he showed me a photo and asked what I thought.
“She's pretty,” I said.
“And a great cook,” said Bob. “She makes great fried rice. And she's small. I like a small girl that I can bounce on my knee.”
The screen door opened and closed. It was Miss Sangwan with breakfast. I practiced Thai with her while Bob sat and stewed. She was telling me something about America but there were too many words in her sentences that I couldn't understand. All I got was “Office, nine o'clock.”
“She wants us to be in the office at nine o'clock.”
“Thanks, Bob. I'd be lost without you.”
“Do you want to know something? I went and got laid on Saturday and I'll tell you; it's getting worse and worse. I didn't feel the least bit satisfied when it was over.”
“What, she didn't let you rub your whiskers against her belly?”
“I think I'm ready for marriage.”
The screen door opened and didn't close. Monty came strolling in wearing a sarong. Only it was tied all wrong and resembled a pair of colorful diapers on an overgrown baby.
“Good morning!”
“Christ, Monty, put some clothes on.”
“I'm already wearing clothes, if you haven't noticed. This is traditional Thai.” Monty adjusted himself and sat down. “Sangwan told me that Madam Gamonwan wants us in the office at nine o'clock. I couldn't understand just why she wants us in the office at nine o'clock, but that's the information she gave me.”
“You know what I really miss?” said Bob. “A good Ranch salad dressing.”
“I just wanted to let you know, FYI, that the movies that are shown on the third floor of the department store are dubbed in Thai with no English subtitles.”
“Thank you, Monty.”
“You know what movie I'd like to see again?” said Bob. “Spartacus. Not there was a movie.”
There was no meeting at nine o'clock, nor was there any reason to be in the office. Oddly enough, however, Bob's talk of marriage soon turned into action. He wrote a letter, which he dictated to me, laying it all out on the line. He wrote to his girl about how he's never stopped thinking of her, how he misses her cooking and her great body. And about how he's been faithful to her all this time.
“What a crock!”
“It's not a crock,” said Bob. “I haven't told any other girl that I've loved her.”
“But you've banged half of the hookers in Ayutthaya.”
“Banging's different. Besides, my whoring days are over.”
So Bob sent off his letter and sat around waiting for a reply and went out and banged more prostitutes and came back worried because he was back to having a good time.
“It figures, doesn't it?” he said. “You pop the most important question of your life and all of a sudden, whores are fun again. You ought to try one, Chief.”
“Can't. I'm in love with Tasiporn.”
“How's that going, anyway?”
“I've got a date to teach her English on Saturday morning. I'm going to try to get my watch back.”
The all-deciding letter arrived on Friday. Bob was so nervous, he had to run out and buy one last hooker before opening it.
“Well?” I asked.
“She says she'll come if I send her the money.”
“And?”
“I'm sick of hookers. I want to get married.”
The next morning, I met with Tasiporn at a small ice-cream shop. Out of her black waitressing uniform and lipstick, Tas looked as old as she actually was. When she smiled, she was as cute as a button. When I smiled, my face tended to fold up and my skin looked as if it were going to drip from my face. I sat and looked at Tas and thought: what am I doing here? I'm in love with Sucheeda.
We taught each other some new words and ate ice cream and parted ways. No more, I told myself. No more Thai women. Except for Sucheeda.
The following weekend, Bob's bride-to-be arrived from the Philippines.
§
Her name was Marie and everything that Bob had said about her was true. She had big brown eyes and a great big smile. And she was small. Bob could bounce her on his hairy knee. The first thing she did when she arrived at the house was fry up the cooked rice that Sangwan had brought for lunch. Bob sat at the kitchen table, smiling like a cat with feathers in its teeth.
“Sit down, Chief, you're in for the best meal you've had in Thailand.”
“Thanks, Bob, but I'm sure you two have a lot of catching up to do.”
“Oh, no. We did all that on the way from the airport. Didn't we sugar-plum?”
“Hah?” said Marie.
“I said I luh-uh-ve you!”
“Ooh! Bub, you car-ay-zee!”
“Bub!” said Bob. “She calls me 'Bub!'”
I decided to leave the happy couple and go to the market to buy a newspaper. The newspaper helped keep my mind off women. I never actually read the newspaper in America. I scanned the headlines and read the Strange But True section, but I mostly had the feeling that the newspaper writers were trying to convince me of something that I couldn't be convinced of. Thai news was something else altogether. There was a phrase often used in letters from farang readers who wrote in with their complaints. “Present oriented.” When I first saw it, I assumed it was one of those generalizations like everyone from California owns a surfboard. But the longer I scratched the surface of Thai culture, the more I understood what it was to be “present oriented.” The news reports were full of mishaps that resulted from a present oriented society. Besides the daily traffic death toll, there was The Corruption Page. Government corruption, police corruption, bank corruption, all kinds of corruption. Not that corruption was so unique, but the fact that so many criminals got away with their crimes was quite amazing. In Thailand, it was natural for the rich to steal from the poor and go unpunished for their actions. When the poor themselves arrived in the capital to make a stink they were told that they were causing an embarrassment and sent home like naughty children. So they continued to starve and send their children to Bangkok brothels where they could grow up to be full time prostitutes. I always finished the newspaper in a bad mood. I was not “Thai-friendly” after finishing the newspaper. Out on the street, what did I have? I had dogs. Skinny, three legged dogs that no one would care for or kill. Crossing the street, I was caught behind a bus. Only it was not a bus. It was a rusted out box with wheels that coughed black smoke into the air. I made it across the road to the river, the glorious Chao Praya, where I watched an old woman hoist two bags of garbage into the water. They floated away like two enormous turds.
I had to get some confirmation. I had to know that I wasn't alone.
“Excuse me,” I said in Thai to a pair of girls who happened to be passing by. “Do you see that? Do you see those two bags in the river?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what do you think about it?”
“Mai pen rai.”
Mai pen rai, the girls walked off, giggling over my nose. Mai pen rai, the bags disappeared around the bend. Mai pen rai, the whole nation moved an inch closer to actual shit. Not the imitation shit that you see on TV, but the kind you can scoop up with your hands and show to your friends and say “See that? Shit!”
But once I calmed down, I realized that it wasn't the traffic or the government or the pollution that had me upset. It was the realization that I would always be at odds with Thai society. I had moved out of the postcard and onto the street. It was like being drunk and hungover at the same time.
Mai pen rai
Thai say
Mai pen rai
Foreigners say
Never mind
I went to the tuk-tuk stand and asked around for the three baht taxi that would take me home. “Where you go?” said a driver. I told him. “Seventy baht.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “I live in this paradise.”
§
When I got back to the school, I saw Bob in the office making copies. There weren't any other teachers around.
“Where's Marie?” I asked.
“She's back at the apartment talking to Monty.”
“You left her alone with Monty? Isn't that spouse abuse?”
I stepped in and looked at the pages shooting out of the copy machine. They were all blank.
“I had to get away for a moment,” said Bob. “I used to work in a copy store back in high school. The noise relaxes me.”
“So what's up? She seems to be everything you described her to be.”
“She's actually gotten a little fatter.”
“It's called getting older, Bob. Happens to us all.”
“It would take up the rest of my money, but I could conceivably send her back to the Philippines.”
“Better yet, why don't you take her to the butcher's shop and hang her in the freezer until you want to get your rocks off again?”
“Look, I'm going to take care of her. It's the forever part that I'm unsure of.”
“Will you turn that damn machine off!”
“It's easy for you. Women are no problem. You've got that nose!”
“Leave my nose out of it. You wanted a woman who would cook for you. You wanted a woman who would clean for you. You wanted a woman who wouldn't say no. I'm not saying that it's right that you found one, but you found one. Congratulations. Now why don't you do the right thing for once in your life and marry her?”
Bob snapped his fingers. “Bingo!”
“What?”
“I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier. This solves everything!”
“What?”
“I'm pretty sure that if we get married in Thailand, it's only legal in Thailand. If I change my mind about her, I can always annul it by going home.”
Bob jerked his hand up in that high-five gesture that is popular among sports fans and Neanderthals. It was pure reflex. He realized what he had done and put his hand down, embarrassed. I stared at him another moment, then grew sick of looking at him altogether. Back in the house, Marie had cleaned the kitchen and was busy scrubbing the toilet.
“Don't look at me,” said Bob. “I didn't tell her to do it.”
Monty sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a PBJ made from my bread, my peanut butter, my jelly.
“Are either of you familiar with the concept of —?“
“Go home, Monty.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Now.”
Monty went home. I went upstairs and turned on the classical music station. I got Beethoven. The music was so good I felt like throwing the radio at the wall just to release the glory from the black box it was trapped in. But in doing so, I'd only break the damn thing and the glory would end just like that.
Two weeks later, Bob and Marie were married.
§
Days of pleasant wind and night of cool yellow moon were coming to an end. I began sweating in front of my students, sometimes dripping right on their homework. I sweated, but it was only the heat. I knew how far I could go with my lessons and the kids knew how far they could push me. I managed to hit a happy medium with most of my classes, even the first grade, and might have even taught them a few words in between The Hokey Pokey and Bingo Was His Name-O. After four months of playing English teacher to a bunch of kids, I was ready for a break. I didn't want to be in the company of anyone who didn't have their colors down, no matter how adorable he or she might be.
I was going South. First to Malaysia to get my passport stamped so that I could stay in the country, then work my way up to Bangkok. I had a month in which to do it. Bob and Marie were headed to the Philippines to visit Marie's parents. They planned to move to Bangkok on their return.
“I know we've had our differences, Chief, but I've really gotten used to having you around.”
“Yeah, well,”
Bob thought for a moment. “I don't think I'll miss Monty.”
The only other person I had to see before I got on the bus was Sucheeda. Sucheeda, who I thought I had really come close to having a relationship with, but had been ignoring for weeks. Ignoring and avoiding because I didn't know what else to do. I stopped by her classroom that Friday after all the students had gone home. She was sitting at her desk in those ridiculous white ruffles that the women teachers were made to wear.
“How are you?” I asked.
Sucheeda smiled and scrunched up her nose. If she just would have said “I'm fine,” it would have been so much easier.
“Mr. Bob go to Philippines?” she asked.
“Yes. He won't be coming back to Ayutthaya.”
“Mr. Monty?”
“He's not going anywhere.”
“And you?”
“I'll be back.” I took a step into the classroom and saw from the look in her eyes that she wished I wouldn't have. “Sucheeda,” I said. “I'm still so new here. I've barely got my feet on the ground. Then you come along and—”
It all sounded so horrible. Like a cheap romance novel.
“OK, never mind,” she said. “You are American. I Thai. Not same.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Mai pen rai.”
Sucheeda put her hands together and waiied. That was all she wrote. I returned the wai, then had no choice but to walk out and leave her to her work. It felt like a piece of something important had been pulled out of me and fed to the dogs. But it wasn't Sucheeda who pulled it out. It was me. And if I were given the option of reopening the wound and setting this important thing back in its place, I'd choose not to do it. I'd choose to leave it out. If it came banging on my door some rainy night, I'd pick up a piece of wood with a fucking nail in one end and whack it dead.
Back in my room, I packed a bag full of clothes and told Miss Sangwan not to bring any meals for a while. I told her I was going traveling.
That night, I was on a bus headed south.
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