I couldn’t really blame Ted or Susan for their business venture. Thailand was a place that was hard to live with, and even harder to live without. Ted and Susan wanted to surround themselves with the familiar in a land that worked strange magic on its visitors. It was their defense; their plastic bubble that shielded them from something dastardly they might become. You had to have one—a defense. If you didn't, you were cooked. I wasn’t sure what my defenses were, but I had the feeling that they were fading fast. I began having incredible mood swings three or four times a day. I hated everything, then I loved everything, then I hated it all again. The only time it all flowed yin and yang like was when I drank heavily. I drank Singha beer and smoked Krong Thip cigarettes. Neither was very good, but it was better than having my night ruined by the sight of some sad-eyed dog and wondering how much farther down the evolutionary path he really was.
On one particular evening, I was doing my drinking in the Full Moon Bar, located across the street from a string of guesthouses. The Full Moon was where the backpacker crowd hung out during their stay in Ayutthaya. It was the crowd I did my damnedest to avoid. I had yet to find a bar without “entertainment,” usually in the form of some brown eyed angel singing Cha Cha Cha numbers, so I went to the Moon with the same hopes that I took to any American Bar; that no one would talk to me and I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone in return. It all went well for the first beer. The only other people in the place were a pair of Canadian girls talking about skydiving, the bartender, and an overweight prostitute looking through an outdated guidebook of Paris. I sat listening to the girls without really listening at all and Leonard Cohen was playing on the CD player and I thought how nice. At last, I had found some peace.
Halfway through my second beer, another farang took a seat at the bar. He didn’t resemble any sort of backpacker I’d seen in there before. Not that he was dressed oddly. The clothes he wore were normal, even nice. There was a shock of brown hair on his head and a pair of black-framed glasses on his face. Thirty-one? Thirty-two? He was so strangely polite in his mannerisms that a guy like me couldn’t help think; letter bomber, arsonist, serial killer. He ordered whiskey, drank it down, and ordered another.
The prostitute lit on him first. “You ever go to Paris?”
“No,” said the fellow, “I can’t say that I have.”
“I will go to Paris in June.” The girl leafed through the pages, then closed the book and held it out to him. “You want to look?”
“No thank you. I’m not terribly interested in France. You don’t know where I might find a pool table, do you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Have pool in Jao Prom Market.”
“It’s not pool,” I interrupted. “It’s snooker.” I looked down the bar, past the hooker, and realized I was breaking my own rules. “John,” I said.
“Bruce.”
“What are you doing in Thailand, Bruce?”
“Teaching high school. You?”
“Elementary.”
“Elementary, huh? That saves you a bit, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I find myself attracted to a vast majority of my students.”
“That’s bad.”
“You’re telling me,” said Bruce.
One of the Canadian girls at the table ordered two more beers. She had red hair and sunken, almost hollowed out eyes that were not without a beauty of their own. “Excuse me,” she said to the more respectable looking of us. “Do you live here?”
“Yes,” said Bruce.
“Do you know of anywhere in Thailand where we can go skydiving?”
“You mean you want to jump out of an airplane?”
“Well, yes.”
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
I suddenly caught the eye of the prostitute between us. She smiled a genuine human smile. Hell, it wasn’t her fault if we were all half cocked. She just wanted to get to Paris.
“I take it you’ve never skydived?” asked the Canadian girl.
“No.”
“I made my five hundredth jump just before coming to Thailand. It’s better than sex.”
“Nothing,” said Bruce, “is better than sex.”
“How can you be sure if you’ve never tried it?”
Bruce looked at the prostitute. “You ever jump out of an airplane?
“I never ride airplane,” said the prostitute.
“If you did, would you jump out?”
“Maybe if I fall in Paris.”
“Forget I mentioned it,” said the girl.
The prostitute shrugged her shoulders and got off her stool to go to the bathroom. Just then, the barroom door swung open. In walked Ted and his circus of foreigners. He had somehow managed to rope them together. There was Richie, the dope smokin’ kid, Dale, the pipe smokin’ dope, and a tall one that I hadn’t seen before. The group of boys moved through the bar, pushing against each other, jabbering about the “atmosphere” and fixing their eyes a little too long on the Canadian girl’s breasts. Ted moved to the unoccupied stool between Bruce and I and put a hand on each of our shoulders.
“Hey fellas!” he yelled.
“Hello, Ted,” I said. “Where’s Susan?”
“She didn’t feel like coming out tonight. She’s tired, you know. Listen, who’s your friend? I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Bruce. He’s a teacher in Ayutthaya.”
“Bruce?” said Ted. “Bruce Shelton? Wait a minute, you’re the teacher at Ayutthaya Commercial, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Bruce. “The one you tried to get fired.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“OK,” said Ted, laughing nervously. “There was a mix-up.”
“A teacher told me all about it,” said Bruce. “This guy and his wife came to my school yesterday and told the director that whatever foreign teachers they have working are illegally employed and should be dismissed immediately. Otherwise the school could be shut down. They claimed to be from the FBI.”
“You did that?” I asked.
Ted looked dumbfounded. An expression of hurt innocence crossed his face and he leaned back on his stool as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“OK,” said Ted. “I never said FBI and I never said the school could be shut down. That was a misunderstanding on their part.”
“Excuse me,” said Dale from the table he and the others now sat at. “I’d like to place my order now.”
“Listen,” said Ted. “No hard feelings. I’ve got all these teachers here and none of them are happy with the schools I’ve placed them at. Rich doesn’t want to work in Ang Thong because it’s too remote. Dale doesn’t want to teach little kids, and Terrance, who just arrived this afternoon, doesn’t want to live in Bangkok. I’m going nuts trying to find schools for them!”
“Well don’t get me fired for cryin’ out loud!”
“I’ll straighten it all out tomorrow. Look, the beers are on me.”
Ted went back to playing host for his teachers while Bruce and I finished our beers. The Canadian girls left first, then the prostitute. Ted kept asking us to join him but the space at the bar was much quieter and safe. Soon, Dale and Terrance grew bored and wanted to go back to their guesthouse. Rich was going to get a massage. Ted just sort of disappeared in all their plans, eventually getting on a motorcycle and promising something to everyone before speeding home to his sleepy wife.
I looked at Bruce. “You don’t look like a traveler. You look more like a shoe salesman.”
The bartender poured us each a whiskey, then one for himself. Bruce knocked his back, then slammed the empty shot glass upon the bar. “Line one up for the shoe salesman,” he said.
Well I’ll be dammed, I thought. One from home.
§
Our next teachers meeting took place a week into the new school semester. My schedule hadn’t changed. I still had the first, second, and third grades. Monty was given second through fourth. Ted had the older kids, and Sue was asked to play mother farang for the preschoolers. After a week into the swamp, Madam Gamonwan wanted to know how we were faring. So once again, the lot of us sat around a table and took turns speaking. Monty went first. He talked about the difficulty he was having with the students who didn’t bring their English books to class. He said it would be a big help if the Thai teacher explained to the children that they must bring their books every day.
“Monty,” Ted said, “I heard you teaching yesterday.”
“The whole school could hear you teaching yesterday,” added Sue.
“I don’t know what you were going over, but it wasn’t anything out of the book, I can tell you that.”
Madam Gamonwan looked from one to the other.
“I’m sorry,” said Monty, “could you refresh my memory?”
“CORNBALL!’ yelled Susan, rubbing her temples. “CORNBALL! CORNBALL!”
“You must have said it fifty times.”
“And don’t you deny it, either!” said Susan. “I could hear you all the way up in my apartment.”
“I’m not denying it,” said Monty.
“Then what in Sam Hill were you teaching?” asked Ted.
“I’d have to refer you to the textbook.”
Ted looked around the room in disbelief. “Is the word ‘cornball’ written anywhere in those books?”
“How about you, John?” asked Madam Gamonwan. “Are you having any problems?”
“No,” I said.
“I can not to teach preschool,” said Sue. She had done something to her voice, raised it a notch and left out the correct grammar. Like a badly programmed robot. “I no have supplies,” she continued. “I no have nothing give to students when Thai teachers do not help. Children no pay attention. Children wrestling on floor. Children go to bathroom in corner of room. Children grab my breasts. No let go.”
“Yes,” said Madam Gamonwan with a baffled look on her face. “It’s a problem.”
“It is problem big big but what you do to fix problem?” asked Ted, in the same manner of speaking.
“I’ll talk to the teachers, yes? And you, Ted, anything the matter?”
“Yes, I have a problem too. I think we all have problem same same. Maybe it little problem but if you can fix, farangs very happy.”
“Why,” I asked, “are you two speaking like idiots?”
“It’s the only way to get them to understand you,” said Susan.
“Who’s ‘them?’”
“The Thai!”
“What’s the problem, Ted?” asked Madam Gamonwan.
“Chullingsat teachers make food,” Ted continued. “But Sue and I here one month and already bored. You kon Thai. We kon American. Not same same. We miss American food. We think Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays should be American food day. Hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, chocolate cake.”
“No rice,” said Susan.
“Another idea is to have a menu.”
“Menu?” asked Madam Gamonwan.
“Menu for Thai food. Maybe Sangwan could bring menu at four o’clock. We tell her ‘Tonight, we will eat chicken and cashew nuts.’ Then she give order to cooks. Same same in American schools.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. Susan immediately shot a look. Her eyes were two small hornet’s nests locked in round holes.
“I do miss chocolate cake,” said Monty.
“When the Chullingsat cooks prepare the food, they prepare it for four hundred workers and teachers who live on campus,” said Madam Gamonwan.
“Is that why it tastes so bad?” asked Susan.
Madam Gamonwan stood and said “OK.” She had apparently dismissed their request as a joke and was ready to adjourn the meeting. “Maybe we can send for an American chef to cook for you.”
“Hey!” said Ted. “Why not?”
§
The new semester brought in a handful of new Thai teachers as well. Among them was Miss Malika. Bee stung lips, Chinese eyes, and black hair that she wore piled on top of her head. The first time I saw her made me stop dead in my tracks. Jesus, what kind of a country was this, with beauty so widespread and rampant? But I had learned my lesson. Pornpimone, Sucheeda, Nit. I was cold turkey on women for a while.
Miss Malika taught the fifth grade. Ted saw her more than I did. She drove him nuts, too. During lunch hour, he’d stop by the English office where I sat studying Thai. His uniform was too small for him and the sleeves of his undershirt hung two inches past the sleeves of his shirt.
“Jesus Christ!” he’d say, within a safe distance of his wife. “Have you seen Miss Malika today?”
“Yes.”
“She’s on fire!”
“Mm hmm.”
“If I wasn’t with Sue, I’d—” I never did learn what he’d do. A new idea sprang up in his mind. “Say, you don’t have a girlfriend. Why don’t you go for it?”
“No,” I said. “That would be a bad idea.”
“OK,” he said. “But she’s beautiful.”
Bruce, I learned, was having similar problems at his school. He couldn’t remember any of the teacher’s names that he worked with, so he solved his problem by giving them nicknames. Listening to him talk went something like:
“First of all, there’s Sweet Tooth. She’s always got a sucker in her mouth. I started giving her chocolate bars but I later discovered that she hides them in her desk. She doesn’t like chocolate. Only suckers. Then there’s Chippy. She’s got a chipped tooth right here. Every time she smiles, she covers her mouth with her right hand. She’s friends with Space Cadet and Talky. But the one I’m really in love with is the copy woman.”
“What do you call her?”
“I call her ‘the copy woman.’”
I should have been suspicious of Ted from the very start. When Miss Malika began to pass by the English office, looking in on me, I thought nothing of it. When she used her free time to sit outside the classes I taught, I thought nothing of it. But when one of her students, a little girl named Weepawan, hand delivered a note to me in Miss Malika’s handwriting, my first thought was Ted, Ted, Ted.
The note went like this.
I think for you.
You think for me?
What you think for me?
I wait answer.
Malika
I waited in the English office for Ted to show up. He always did. He liked to hang around for ten minutes and arrive late for class. He also believed that no one cared if he left ten minutes early at the end.
“Hey pal,” he said upon arrival. “What’s up?”
“What have you been telling Miss Malika?”
“Nothing. Why?”
I showed him the note. He read it with a big grin creeping across his face. Then he gave me a slap on the shoulder.
“All right!” he said. “It’s in the bag!”
“And you haven’t said a word to her. You’re sure you haven’t said a word to her.”
“I might have told her that you were single. Look, buddy, I was only trying to help.”
“Thanks, Ted. Thanks a bunch. I’ll remember to inscribe that on your tombstone after the lynch mob draws and quarters you for being such a friend to everyone. ‘Here lies Ted: He was only trying to help.’”
“Oh, come on,” said Ted, moving around to my side of the desk. “How about a hug?”
“A what?”
Ted rushed forward and wrapped his arms around me before I had the chance to move back. I was too stunned to do anything but stand there and hold my breath. He finally let go and walked out of the English office, smiling. Before disappearing entirely, however, he backed up a step and said, “Don’t forget! All the foreign teachers are getting together this weekend at the Full Moon for a Fourth of July party. I figured everyone gets a little homesick around this time of year. Anyway, they’ll all be there. Dale, Richie, Bruce. You should ask Miss Malika to come along. OK, pal, gotta go.”
And he went.
Later that night, I asked Bruce whether he knew about Ted’s Independence Day celebration. He didn’t, of course.
“Listen,” I said. “Maybe we ought to get out of town for a night or two.”
“What have you got in mind?”
“I’ve got a list of bars that a fellow in Hua Hin gave me.”
I brought out the list and laid it on the table.
“These wouldn’t be a-go-go bars by any chance?”
“If you’re against the idea,”
“What, and stay in Ayutthaya singing three cheers for the red, white, and blue? I didn’t come to Thailand to work on my patriotism.”
That Friday, we boarded a bus for Bangkok. Without telling Ted, of course.
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