Friday, October 24, 2014

Bangkok Coup Special



small stories from beneath military rule


June 2014, Bangkok




Wanderers
He never imagined, before he began to wander, how many other people were wandering too, not quite living anywhere, just floating about, how many other people were naturalized citizens of the country called, “I have no place else to go.”  A lot of other people, it turns out, had also done the math and figured that they could live for a very long time in a cheap country and, because ties had grown so weak, had immediately done so, without ever deciding what, exactly, they would do during the day, without recognizing that sanity is just as fragile as any other form of health.



Appearances
The first night the curfew is relaxed, Bangkok plays to an empty house.  The girls on their bar stools, the boys in white shorts, the rows of fake watches with no one to love them.  Even for the indomitable, maintaining the appearance of cheer is a strenuous task, like a devoted mother who makes her voice sound cheerful every time she walks into the room of her beautiful son, lying there hooked to machines.  Almost everyone is capable of heroics.  The trouble is that trouble goes on and on.



Lucky Lost
He was lost.  He recognized that he was lost.  He did not wish to be lost.  He did not want to go on being lost for a long time.  It was exhausting being lost.  It was better than wanting to die.  He knew that he was lucky to be lost in this way, in what seemed the luckiest possible way to be lost: alone in a bright stark room with white walls, white linoleum, blue polyester curtains, with desk, attached toilet, even a small refrigerator.  He did not wish to be lost and still he did not neglect to be grateful that he was lost in this way, so empty, so clean and so bright.



Thank You So Much
Those men who say, before removing their pants, Please ignore me if I say totally stupid and crazy things during sex, like I love you.



Ice Age Updates
Often it seems to me that return visits to the gay scene in Bangkok are essentially updates on the progress of meth, on an ever-encroaching ice age.  Sneaking up to hug an old friend from behind, hands over his eyes, Guess who? he turns, and I find his eyes like gutted candles, a smile but no one at home in it, and that voice, the voice of ice -- the words all the same, all correct, and the tone like reading aloud from old newspapers.

Sure, he’s using some, he admits, but only on weekends and he’s totally keeping it together, absolutely together, tight, the same four skin creams in the same order and all his porn alphabetized, the door knobs covered in plastic wrap and the shoes lined up, the bottles of poppers lined up, everything neat as a spice rack and he can tell you everyone he hates, either alphabetically or in order of intensity.

Even then there are surprises.  Like the news that one friend, long since zombified, has taken vows as a monk and returned, by all accounts, to being quite recognizably human.  Such is the state of affairs: losing another friend makes me shrug, but the news that one has returned leaves me here crying helplessly into my breakfast of rice soup with chicken.



How is Bangkok?
People want to know.  Speaking as a queer wanderer, Bangkok is fine.  Fine as long as it is enjoyed in a very ordinary way: for bags of sliced papaya, pineapple and guava, for aimless wandering in Lumpini Park, for the pleasures of a clean and silent room, for orchids and sidewalks.  Coup or no coup, the rule is the same: Bangkok is fine as long as you do not attempt to have fun.  If you attempt to have fun, the dogs of misery are at once set upon you.  The trouble is not so much the price list as it is being reminded you are worthless. We do not require the army to police us.  We have been policing ourselves all along.  Try to have fun and you will have toes shoved in your mouth by men who wish to make themselves feel big.   Attempts to have fun are besieged with old pictures of oneself, regrets, catty remarks.  Attempts to reprise one’s career in pornography result in a kind of cascading nightmare.   But if you give up, if you do not ask too much for yourself, it is all right.  Sometimes it can even be fun.



Economy
I heard a British woman ask, with zero irony, “Is there a coup rate?”



Insults
My very rich friend is part of the Chinese-Thai aristocracy.  He calls deposed prime minister Yingluck, that whore.  When the U.S. makes clear it disapproves of the coup, he refers to the ambassador as that bitch.  Nowadays almost every one of his sentences includes one of these words.  If he’s useless in sex, if there’s shit on the sheets, he says, “I’m Yingluck!”

My other Thai friends are not rich and they hate him.  Chink, they call him.



So true
This sign at the cafe that reads
Beware of your belongings. 



Hung
When he jacked off I was astonished by how far out in front of him his hand was, as he tugged on the first third of a cock so remarkably long that it seemed a great distance away from the rest of him, like Florida, or even Alaska.  Reminded me of the photos I’ve seen of Matt Hughes.  Not Matt Hughes the boxer. Matt Hughes eleven inches.  Didn’t look like he’s jacking off.  Not exactly.  More like he was strumming on a small guitar.

As for him, he was rightfully offended that people assumed he was a prostitute just because he was young and black and had a perfect muscular body, as well as a gigantic penis.  “People with big penises need sex too!” he insisted and I agreed vigorously, as vigorously as I could, while trying, at the same time, to seem neither patronizing nor desperate.



Warning
One of those things that isn’t mentioned nearly often enough:
You deserve to be warned that more than half the people who urge you to follow your dreams will never forgive you for doing so.



Seeds
Every day I buy fruit from a vendor on the side of the street.  I feel lucky to be in a place where buying fruit can be such an ordinary thing.  Not like Tokyo, where buying two kinds of fruit that aren’t bananas is classified as an event.

I noticed that the kindly man who chopped up the guava always threw away the central part with the seeds, but that part is tasty too, as well as nutritious, so that I learned to say, in Thai, “give me all of it” and I practiced and then, when I went to buy my fruit, I said it to him, and he looked happy and surprised that I had learned a little Thai.  He put every part of the guava into the clear bag.  When he handed the fruit to me he grinned and asked, in English, “So -- where’d you learn to say that?”



Tuning
The military has arrested the son of the former prime minister.  He was released after “a talk to fine-tune understanding”.

Because that is just what armies do.



5 Boats
I dreamt I was looking down steep stairs to a river, as though I had returned to Benaras.  Lined up in the water were five very narrow boats.  In each of them a young man was lying calmly, face up, with eyes open.  Each man gleamed, as if lightly coated in oil.

As I watched, the first young man was set on fire.  He had already been doused in kerosene.  His face contorted in agony and then the flames consumed him.  After a few minutes only a black husk was left.  Then it was time for the next young man.

I watched helplessly from the top of the staircase.  I did not understand why these young men had chosen to sacrifice themselves.  The second young man screamed and burst into flame.  The next three waited quietly, staring up into the sky.



Remote
If you are fortunate enough to receive an invitation, the host will greet you at the door with a plastic basket for your clothes and a remote control wrapped in plastic wrap.  “This is your remote and that is your TV,” says the host.  It is one of six flat-screen TVs lined up against the wall in a large room which has been cleared out except for the TVs, two cots, a sling, and a table in the corner with bottles of poppers and sugary drinks.

Each television has a memory card with hundreds of movies.  The movies are grouped according to both studio and theme.  You can choose twinks, bareback or Brazil, as well as HotHouse, Treasure Island, or MenAtPlay.  Thus every man can have exactly the porn of his choice.  It is no wonder that the host is renowned and that everyone wants to attend one of his parties.

Here at the orgy you may do whatever you like -- but you must not lose track of your remote and you must not touch anyone else’s.  Any man who attends a party must be both adventurous and versatile.  You must be beautiful and/or hung.  You can fuck the men or get fucked, suck or get sucked, you can fist, you can piss -- in the area designated area, please!  You can do anything -- but you must not touch anyone else’s remote.  Anything else you can do.  The man won’t mind.  He may not notice.  He is watching his television.  Even with his cock is buried in the back of your throat, he has his remote in hand and he is fast-forwarding, searching for the very hottest scene in Viral Loads.

Even if you are one of the passionate minority who believe that a man on the screen -- horsehung, ripped and gleaming -- cannot compare to an ordinary man in the flesh with hair on his belly and his briefs around his ankles, it is of no use.  The man has his remote and he is not letting go of it for anything.



Smile
The deposed former prime minister in exile, the man who is perhaps the cause of it all, is asked to comment on the coup.  He says, “I hope the military will soon return smiles to the faces of the people”.

Because, again, that’s just what armies do.



Flip fuck
“Sure, I get fucked, I want to feel what my man feels like, but mostly I am a top.  I like to flip fuck.  If you fuck me, then I am going to fuck you, that’s my rule.  Of course Antonio Banderas and Sean Connery can fuck me, but mostly I am a top.”

My friend is 71.  He makes a fine Manhattan and has just attempted to blow me on the fire escape.  He is upset because he has only gotten fucked in his fancy temporary apartment, he hasn’t fucked anyone, and he can only afford two more months here on the 21st floor.

I ask him what he will do when his visa runs out.  He says he might fly to Sweden -- because who doesn’t want to fuck a tall blonde Scandinavian?  “But it’s expensive,” I say, because I am a paragon of good sense and caution.  He says, “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”  Then he runs his fingers along my neck.  “I assume you’ll be staying over.”  I explain that I am a person who needs a lot of time alone.  It’s my all ages excuse.  He says, “For breakfast I brought croissants.”

I take my shoes from the shoe closet.  I kiss him quickly on his fuzzy mouth.  I didn’t bring flowers or fruit or wine or cheese to dinner with him.  I didn’t bring anything.  Manhattans were my father’s and grandfather’s favorite drink but I had never tasted one.  I don’t wait for the elevator.  I run down the emergency stairs, all the way down twenty-one floors.  It feels good to run.  Nothing will ever change unless I change it.  My bad habits are not going to just peter out on their own.



Good-looking
“He got everything he ever wanted for his funeral.  Except he didn’t want an open casket, so on that we fudged a little.  I decided it was OK because he couldn’t have imagined how good he was going to look!  He hadn’t looked that good in years.  Except they did his hair wrong.  So I got his comb and combed his hair the way he liked it.  He was a good-looking man, I realized then.  I hadn’t really known before.  He was my man and I loved him, but I didn’t know what a good-looking man he was until he was in his casket and I was combing his hair.”



Broad river
Making to love to a tender tall broad-shouldered man in the afternoon behind blue curtains on a clean hard white bed at the infamous and eternal Malaysia Hotel, I feel that my lover and I are just the surface.  Beneath my body, his body, the sheets, the bed, the Malaysia Hotel, there is a broad red river of molten earth and blood and we are just appearances, ripples, in that molten river, which is nothing like I have described, or is only so from this perspective, which is itself entirely dreamlike, an appearance.  That river is a hum, is being.  I see the river as a current underground, but in fact the river is all that is going on.

As I saw this, I carried on kissing him, holding him, tumbling with him, and although I suspect he guessed that something was a little strange, he was a great broad-hearted man and he did not mind.



Mirror
The sense that a disaster would at least provide some structure.  Surely this is a more popular option than is generally recognized?

Because it is exhausting to make each day from nothing, and then to try to determine what the days before meant, or if they were worth anything.  Such a temptation: to want to know that you are doing it right.  I ought to have agreed on who I was for just one day, knowing full well that it was arbitrary, that I was not that.  I should have at least provided for myself a working title.

When I visited her in the hospital, my friend told me about the first time she ever smoked ice.  “For the first time I was fine just as I was.  I wasn’t being crushed to death.  Everything was so bright.  

“I went to take a shower and, as I dried off, I stood before a full-length mirror.  I looked at myself, at my whole body.  For the very first time in my entire life I did not feel ugly or ashamed.  Even then, high as a kite, it seemed to me a little sad that I had decided to destroy myself, just at the moment I discovered I was all right.”










Monday, October 20, 2014

Not Until They ASK: The Rules of Helping in America



Not Until They ASK: The Rules of Helping in America




The United States of America is a profoundly spiritual nation.  To truly appreciate it, you must understand its spiritual underpinnings, its roots nourished by many faiths, and above all the words of Jesus Christ who taught, You’ve just got to stay positive!

As the bearer of “the good news”, Jesus was persecuted and finally crucified by critics who couldn’t handle his incessant optimism.  Jesus came to Earth to teach us to love, care for and help others.

But there is a very important clause.  (Thank God!  How else would we ever find time for ourselves!)  You are only ever allowed to help someone if they ASK for help.  They must ask.  Otherwise it’s no good.  Helping before you are asked is no good at all.  It’s interference.  It’s totally wrong.  You must not interfere with anyone’s process.  Especially if they’re in the process of dissolving their organs.  That’s, like, practically sacred.

If a person is ready for help, they will announce (to you, to the greater public, and in the presence of an authorized notary) the nature of their problem and their total helplessness in the face of it.  

For example, someone may say, “I am addicted to alcohol, shopping, and frozen desserts.  I have borderline narcissistic personality disorder and I cannot tolerate gluten.”  

Then you are allowed to help.  But not until they ASK.  Always remember: grovelling first!

People must ASK for help.  They must ask for help directly and specifically.  Then and only then you can help.  It’s not enough if they call up and say, for example, “I am covered in my own filth,” or “Honestly it’s difficult sometimes, living here under the bridge” or “I have burnt through my esophagus” or “Excuse me, would you mind if I borrowed a plastic bag, a roll of electrical tape and some barbiturates?”  No!  That’s not enough!  Don’t make a mistake.  They must ASK for help.  

In the meantime, while you are waiting and very carefully refraining from helping, what should you do?

Why not focus on yourself?  You’re an important person!  Your time is valuable.  Eat right, meditate, do workouts.  Practice the union of Pilates and Dzogchen.  You need all your force to bring your unique gifts and talents to market in this time of economic uncertainty.  Do you feel fulfilled?  Have you found your unique life path?  Are you receiving the recognition and love that you deserve?  Focus on YOU.  You are the only person you can change.  Be your very best you!  

Also, you need your strength because it is very likely that, by the time your friends and family members ask for help, there will be very little of them left.

America prides itself on efficiency and comfort -- and what could be more efficient or comfortable than ignoring the misery of those around us?  (Ignoring the wretchedness of those at a distance comes naturally.  Ignoring the misery of those in the same room with us requires special reasoning -- and is still totally easy.)

Nothing works -- about that we can agree.  Nearly all pious busybody interventions come to nought.  The simple truth is that many if not most of us, and many if not most, of those we love will be needlessly hindered by our addictions, habits, compulsions and fears.  Our bodies and minds will be damaged and destroyed, our beauty ruined and our talents pointlessly blighted.  

Nothing mysterious about this.  As you no doubt have noticed, life is often painful, not infrequently excruciating, and the desire to throw ourselves on anything that might make us feel momentarily better is well-nigh irresistible.

This is just the situation: pious interventions and equally pious non-interventions both fail most of the time.  The most brilliant and gorgeous people we know will go on drinking and we will watch helplessly as the system shuts down piece by piece: stomach, esophagus, colon, liver, kidneys.

This is the point at which the genius of America really comes to bear: in the assumption that averting our eyes will have a magical effect.  This is the triumph of positive thinking.  We can do little, so doing nothing must be right.  You’ve just got to stay positive!  

We are important people, after all.  We have so very many things to do.  We need more achievements, more successes, more credentials, more influence, more connections, more talents, more romance, more fulfillment.  Why should we waste our mental energy on what is probably a lost cause?  Life is short, people!  

Why should we be haunted by the suffering of those we love?

This is the daring Gospel of Jesus Christ, who said of Judas Iscariot, “You’ve got to let him hit bottom!”  Then wiped him clear out of his mind.  This is Jesus, after all, master of positive thinking and time management, who had the whole Holy Land atwitter and no doubt guessed his gig as World Prophet would be brief.

What is the use of grieving?  Why should we allow our hearts to be broken?  If we went on telling the truth all day long, how could we ever go on being positive positive positive?

You can’t understand America unless you know the Bible, on which the forefathers founded this great nation: Moses and his Ten Commandments, Jesus and his Twelve Steps.  “Not unless they ask for help,” says Jesus in the one of the Gospels.

Then of course there is that other Gospel, on which America was also founded, the Gospel wherein Christ teaches, “Never ask for help. Never ever EVER.”




Thursday, October 16, 2014

The Hipsters Are Not All Bad


(Denver, 2014)


Welcome to the United States of America

I was born in the United States of America, I was raised there (by house cats, primarily) but, as soon as I could, I left the country and did not come back for a very long time.  More than twenty years had passed by the time I flew into Denver and thought I might stay.  Naturally I worried a little about how I might feel.  But I reckoned the U.S.A. would still feel like home.  I’m American, after all.  I thought it would seem, you know, normal.

When I admit I’ve been gone a long time, everyone says the same thing.  “I thought your accent sounded funny!”  Then, they say: “Didn’t you miss American food?!”  What am I supposed to say?  The truth is, I’ve had a stomach ache since I came home.  And my intestines appear to be tangled.  All my life the food has gone right on through.  Now I fear it’s getting lost somewhere in the middle.  Ever since I came back to America, there’s been this really weird knot.

I thought this was a problem because I’d been away so long.  Different water, food, bacteria, altitude, whatever.  But, no, it turns out that nearly everyone has the same trouble.  Bizarro allergies, sensitivities, digestive troubles, cancers.  And everyone seems to think it’s quite normal.  It is very American to be ill.


Hasids Dressed Down?

As is well-known, Americans are very friendly.  Right away I made friends with two men in my neighborhood.  I assumed at first they were Hasids, dressed down for some inexplicable reason.  I thought beards as voluminous as theirs were worn only by the most gung-ho of monotheists.  When they evidenced no religiosity, I thought, “Must be money in jazz nowadays” because, in Tokyo, a beard like that means you’re a musician.

At last I realized that these two gentlemen were examples of what is now called hipsters.  Hard as it is to believe, the ‘solitary forest hermit’ look is currently very fashionable.  And the hipsters are in fact adorable.  No forest hermit’s safe from me!  Crash me through the underbrush any day.


 Man Oil

When the hipsters invited me to a farmer’s market, I agreed enthusiastically.  After all, I grew up on a farm.  I looked forward to meeting Colorado farmers and finding affordable sources of fresh  local food.

I’m sorry if this sounds naive to the point of idiocy.  But this is  what a farmer’s market was, back when I left the country.

At the market the hipsters and I moved from one tent to the next.  We sampled limoncello poppy seed jam ($15), admired air plants in crystal hangers ($35) and ate biscuits and gravy made with portobella mushrooms ($11, but we didn’t pay it.  The hipsters had a connection to the biscuit truck.)  The hipsters were especially fond of a bergamot-scented oil with which they anointed their lush and enormous beards.  Man Oil, it’s called.  ($20)

As this was a farmer’s market, there were also a few cucumbers and eggplants that were organic, special and important.  They must have been because they were like a buck apiece.  Apiece, you may recall, means for one.

Thus I came to understand that a vegetable that tastes like a vegetable and hasn’t been saturated with poisonous chemicals is now officially a luxury item.  You may recall that, as chickens were once a symbol of prosperity, vegetables were once synonymous with poverty.  Think of potatoes in Europe or pumpkins in Japan.  Nowadays the poor have microwaveable burritos and the Value Menu; if you wish to acquire real non-toxic vegetables you must belong to the Vegetable Class.

It was the Vegetable Class I saw around me now, clutching thirty dollar jars of maple-bourbon beef rub.  The men with impeccably groomed beards, the women with gravity-defying breasts, the super-deluxe pets and the children who looked as though they’d been clipped from advertisements, like coupons from the future.


In Defense of Hipsters

As most of my friends are, at mid-life, struggling to remain living indoors, I understand that it is easy to be critical of hipsters, who appear to be living on great rafts constructed entirely of cash.

Just the same, I must insist that hipsters are not all bad.  The two I met had many positive qualities.  I will assign them some, arbitrarily,  just as I do for any person willing to go to bed with me.

(You may wish to keep this in mind.  It’s an easy way to acquire positive qualities overnight!)

My hipster friends turned out to be a couple of hunky woodsmen in love.  But they weren’t jealous.  (Jealousy is now passe, again, at least among persons providing explanations for their behavior.)

“Aren’t I kind of old for you?” I asked.

“We go to bed with plenty of guys older than you,” they said.  “It’s the daddy thing.  Daddies are in.”

Yipes!

Thus you will understand that I am not saying everything about modern life is bad.  Not at all.  Honestly I am excited to be alive now, when the very existence of life on the planet is threatened and, as compensation, the hipsters are enlisting me for threesomes.

In fact, there is something quite moving about the hipsters, at least those I have met.  There is good reason why they are so self-consciously decorative and avid for rarefied pleasures.

The hipsters understand that they have been given the world for only a very short time.  I suspect this is the reason they are able to make love without jealousy -- because they understand that this is most likely the end.

It’s like men have been saying for years: if the world ends in an hour, then let us pray that the stacked blonde executive assistant will permit us to ravish her right there on the Big Boss’ desk!

Let’s have a few more tall glasses of pomegranate juice, a few more nights at the oyster bar and, a few more thirty-eight dollar beard trims.  If you’ve got the money in your pocket, why not?  What are we saving it for?  It is not as if we, are anyone else, will be retiring to Arizona in twenty years.

Do not hate the hipsters.  Like young people everywhere, they want to enjoy themselves.  And they understand that they do not have much time.