She still works in a bar (a beer bar, not a go go bar) but doesn't go with customers so much, according to her. She says she works the bar as a favor to her friend who is the manager and only goes with guys if they are so drunk it's likely they will pass out before anything happens, which might or might not be how we met.
When I go to her house we play fighting games on the Playstation. She has a fridge stocked with big bottles of Chang. When she wins the fighting game I have to drink an entire beer. When I win, she puts on her school uniform and ... ahh ... forget it. Anyway, these are her rules. When I wake up in the afternoon, she has bought spicy pork over rice with this like fried egg omelet on top of it for me to eat, new t-shirts for me to wear when we go out, potato chips and candy bars for when we get back. She says she likes me because she wants a "simple man" and since I don't dress flashy or have mousse in my hair and also am living in a utility closet with no AC then I am "simple and not like other farang." I tried to explain that maybe she was getting the terms "simple man" and "late stage alcoholic" confused but she didn't really get it.
I ran out of money last week but she's been feeding me so I am okay and not freaking out. She shows up at my house every night at midnight or 2 AM or 3 AM, after working the bar, with food and beer and we sit on my floor and wolf it down. The other night she came over with a big bottle of brandy. She says "Here take these pills, they're fun" and gives me 2 because she's drunkish and I am sober, to catch up. An hour later she's putting two more in my mouth as we are finishing the bottle of brandy on my roofdeck. She tells me about killing rats to feed her family when she was a kid and even describes the method which, not surprisingly, involves a pointy stick.
Then the next thing I know I'm in a restaurant with her, it's 5AM and I am sobbing. I can't stop crying. I haven't cried in 5 years. I sleep for like 19 hours and have a fucking David Cronenburg movie of a dream. When I wake up I ask her WTF dude? She's like, "My ladyboy friend gave me those pills. He puts them in men's drinks and takes their money when they pass out."
For a few weeks she'd been talking about this drug she wanted me to try, called "gao." I told her sure I wanna try it. Finally one night she shows up at my house with "gao," which turns out to be a can of rubber cement and some plastic bags. I had never sniffed glue and she had to show me the correct way to do it. It took me awhile to get the hang of it but eventually I did. It’s similar to whip-its, only slower. It’s like that part of the whip-it where your body relaxes to a jelly-like state and everything floats, but for a longer time, not 3 seconds like with nitrous.
We were on the roof of my building. At 4 AM the terrorists at the mosque a mile away start singing and, as the city is silent, the prayer is all you can hear, just this mournful chant-song. It's really beautiful. On this particular night, the sound was bouncing off the buildings around us as if there were people on either side of us singing. I was hearing this extremely far out and beautiful sound and the glue trip unexpectedly peaked and Pin turned to me and asked, "Is that sound real?" I giddily nodded yes and she started walking towards me smiling and she transformed into a glittering skeleton, not a skeleton really but a being entirely made up of sparks that were in fact tiny spinning bones, little white bones -- she was walking towards me smiling and there were showers of sparks all around her. But she was all bones, and the sparks themselves were bones, spinning and twinkling bones in perfectly symmetrical patterns. All I could think of was the Grateful Dead and how she had turned into a Dead album cover. I actually had this thought: "This is the most psychedelic moment of my life." It was religious. It really was, but we both woke up with unbelievable headaches.
***
I wrote the above about 2 years ago, when it all was happening, but at some point I was like "Well one of us is gonna die here" and broke it off. Since then I haven't seen much of Pin. Her boyfriends both stopped sending dough and she became very despondent, really dreading the possibility of working in a go go bar and she started spending most of her time back in her hometown Pisanulok. She called me once and asked if I could lend her money, which I did and was glad for the opportunity. Since I was not going to be able to give her the money for 2 days, I asked if she had at least food to eat while she waited, and if not I'd bring her some 5 baht noodles (I literally had 20 baht til I got paid). She said "Well, I have a mackerel." I don't know why I thought this was funny. I ended up giving her twice the amount she asked for, partly because I screwed up and partly because I'd happily give this girl 8000 baht any time she needed it for as long as I lived and still owe her. I mean she gave me that picture up top for one thing.
***
I wrote the above about 2 years ago, when it all was happening, but at some point I was like "Well one of us is gonna die here" and broke it off. Since then I haven't seen much of Pin. Her boyfriends both stopped sending dough and she became very despondent, really dreading the possibility of working in a go go bar and she started spending most of her time back in her hometown Pisanulok. She called me once and asked if I could lend her money, which I did and was glad for the opportunity. Since I was not going to be able to give her the money for 2 days, I asked if she had at least food to eat while she waited, and if not I'd bring her some 5 baht noodles (I literally had 20 baht til I got paid). She said "Well, I have a mackerel." I don't know why I thought this was funny. I ended up giving her twice the amount she asked for, partly because I screwed up and partly because I'd happily give this girl 8000 baht any time she needed it for as long as I lived and still owe her. I mean she gave me that picture up top for one thing.
