True Hardcore

Not a lot going on lately. It's the rain season so I am sleeping more than usual -- this makes for good sleep but it also makes for entire days shot to hell by the steady pound of rain on my patio. I blew my last paycheck in something like 5 days so now is the waiting period in which I eat less, smoke cigarettes to the goddamn filter and slow my heartbeat. I wake up, check email and ESPN.com then I listen to 4 hours of podcasts of the Adam Carolla Show, have a couple cigarettes, play Spider Solitaire. After this I force myself to take a shower and shave, go outside and buy something to eat -- usually either pat krapow moo which is spicy pork and greens over rice or kao pat gai which is fried rice with chicken, egg and vegetables. I buy two cans of coke and some potato chips and some oreos and a pack of smokes. Then I go back to my room and eat while watching Jimmy Kimmel Live which this guy posts in 10 minute clips on youtube everyday. Then it's nap time.

A couple weeks ago I realized I haven't had this much freedom to do what I want with my time, or had my life set up in such a way where so little was expected of me, since I was 5 years old. I have this distinct memory of the week before I started kindergarten, my last day before school started. I'd watched my brother and sister get yelled at to turn off Gilligan's Island and go catch the goddamn bus enough times to know what was in store for me. I was 5 and I would wake up every morning while it was still dark out, like 6AM and go across the street from my house and catch frogs in this tiny pond all day. This is all I did. This one day, the one I remember, was the last day before school started and I was walking through the wet grass to the frog pond with nothing to do for anybody else all day, just gonna go catch frogs for as long as I wanted. I was passing this huge oak tree and I had the thought: my life will never be this good again.

This is kinda funny: I was coming back from the market last week and there was this huge elephant tromping down the sidewalk with a guy riding it. As me and a small group of dental assistants (they were all wearing the pink dress uniforms, every one of them) were passing the elephant, it decided it wanted some water from a fountain that bordered the sidewalk. The rider made a move as if to steer the elephant away from the fountain but immediately saw it was no use and just shrugged his shoulders and stared ahead as the big guy sucked a bunch of water into his trunk and started slapping the trunk on his side and spraying the water. The women all screamed and we tried to avoid the spray but we all got wet. Hot, elephant-snot Bangkok water. I thought my skin was gonna come off.

Elephants are everywhere here and it's scary sometimes because you know they can do whatever they want and the only reason they aren't stomping the life out of everybody and tossing people around is that they just haven't thought of it yet.

Typical Idiocy

Yesterday I went out to eat at 12noon, with no plan but to eat and do the crossword in the International Herald Tribune. I got home after 2am, piteously drunk. As I approached my door the security guard jumped up to open it. In Thai, I said "It's okay, I am okay, I am okay." He said "You are not okay." It's been awhile since I had a night like this. At noon I ate panang gai at New Wave Pool Bar, a big place with six tables. I like to call it New Wave Hookers Pool Bar but no one ever gets it.** Panang gai is chicken in red curry over rice. Very spicy. After breakfast I shot a few games of pool. I was playing well but I kept having to play dudes so I went to another bar. Also they were playing this awful Michael Bolton cover album. His version of "Whiter Shade of Pale" was the last straw. So I went to Hillary II, which is a smaller bar and is usually empty in the afternoon. There I shot pool versus a cute waitress named Dia and a silent black dude from London. It was one of those leisurely Bangkok afternoons; too hot to be outside, a wide open agenda and an excellent vibe in the bar so I hung out. Around 4pm the girls started showing up. Then it started pouring rain, with tons of thunder ("faa-long" I learned). I was buzzed and shooting like a champ. Because it was raining no other customers came in. A girl watching me play got my attention and asked "Why are you so handsome?" I told her it was because it was raining and there were no other farang men in the bar. She laughed really hard at this and got embarrassed. Her name turned out to be "Meow" which is the Thai word for cat. Around 7pm I decided to go see this girl I met the other night when a visitor was here and I was waiting for him to finish bar fining (having sex with)** a girl. The girl I went to see works in Nana Entertainment Plaza, which is a cul de sac of pulsing Bangkok nightlife -- a hive of interconnected open air bars on the ground floor surrounded by three stories of neon blaring go go bars. There are probably 800 girls total in the various places. I was a little drunk but okay. I just wanted to get a read on this girl, to see if maybe she likes me or not. She's very, very cute and sweet so I am thinking of taking her to a movie or something. I have stopped nailing random girls and am actively looking for some kind of "girlfriend." May (her name) was really skittish when she saw me so I wasn't sure what to think. Plus all the other girls in the bar were laughing so I felt weird. I also realized she's a pretty young 21, like she might not even go with customers. So I split. She made me promise to take her out sometime before I left so I did figure that out at least. But she's really a kid so I don't know. From there I went to Voodoo, a go go bar, and had a coffee at the bar outside it and played video games for awhile. When I went inside to pee I saw this girl who was given to me as a birthday present two birthdays ago. I know, sick, sorry. It's different here. Anyway, this girl is stunning. Whenever dudes are here Voodoo is the first place I take them because not only are most of the girls beautiful, my girl really impresses the shit out of them. I want them to get a good impression of go go bars right away. Also I can never believe I actually had sex with this girl once and visitors are a good excuse to go in and buy her a drink and talk to her again. I bought her a drink and another girl made eyes at me as I was sitting down. Then there was this threesome possibility in the air. This doesn't happen so much anymore so I got kind of psyched. I was suddenly really happy to live in a place where just this idea could be hanging in the air regardless of the fact that I had pretty much no intention of going through with it. But maybe ....you know? Fa (birthday girl) recounted pretty much everything that happened with us two years ago, remembered my driver's license picture as being particularly good and asked why I never bar fined her again. I told her she was too beautiful and that whenever I come to her bar she already has a customer. She said "that's not true." Then she had to go dance for awhile. After she finished dancing this old guy -- bald, frowning, easily weighing three bills -- called her over and she never came back. I left as she was hoisting herself up onto his disgusting lap. Besides the overwhelming urge to kill myself on the spot I also felt relief as I now had an excuse to go somewhere else. I crossed over to this place where the girls are not so cute but I like them, I like the bar. They're all funny. I had a beer, ordered a drink for one of the girls and told them I just got dissed by birthday girl. This wasn't really true, but a good way to take the pressure off of them trying to get me to bar fine somebody. The head bartender is older, kinda tough and plain-beautiful. Is that a word? Whatever, I love her. They were all drinking tequila. Apparently the mama-san had found a bottle of tequila on the way into work so they were drinking some of it. They made me have a shot which I did not want or need but they were laughing and screaming and having fun so I acquiesced. The bartender marked the bottle, showing where they would stop drinking and start selling it. Then I was dragged into the adjoining go go bar by this girl I like who makes a beeline for me every time I have ever gone in this bar. She's like a short, chubby Mira Sorvino. No lie. But we've never gone together as I am always with a friend or something. Who knows, there are a million reasons I can't bar fine girls anymore. While talking to her I realized the tequila shot had kind of leveled me and this girl (I can never remember her name, it sucks) doesn't even drink so I was like "I am too drunk to be here," apologized and left. I went back outside and asked the not so cute girls why they had to give me that shot. They all laughed and showed me the tequila bottle which was now empty. The mama-san was wasted, head down on the bar and everything. The bar was chaos. Then I went up to the third floor, to Carnival where I, um, rode a mechanical bull. One side of this bar is girls dancing on a rotating stage and the other side is a padded ring with a mechanical bull and a girl I love in hot-pant shorts basically getting fucked by it. I always ride the bull. I talked to the girl once but she was all business at 19. Like a con. Kinda scared and depressed me. As far as the bull goes, my high score is 46 seconds. Make it a full minute and you get a drink or something I don't know. From there I crossed over to Hollywood bar, which has insanely white decor, like something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This short, fully-packed girl who looks like an asian Bjork and is named Yao (I always always say it "YOW!") and I rolled around in a booth making out for while but I decided to move on when she had to go dance. I gave her 500 baht. Things get hazy from here. I made plans with a girl to score and do ecstasy at one place. Then I went to meet the dealer but realized I was too drunk to do it so I bailed on it. What tipped me off to being too drunk was the fact that as I was leaving the bathroom at this bar called Big Dogs, I slipped and took out some tables. I didn't knock over any drinks though, luckily, but it did cause something of a scene. I got in a cab. It was 11pm. I went to this part of town called Soi Cowboy (me and the cabbie talked about the fact that, too drunk to fuck, I was going to Cowboy to find a girl to cuddle with. He thought this was hilarious). After coffee I depressedly visited the bar an old girlfriend I am still hung up on named Bong used to work before some Australian dude married her. Boring. The night ended in some place I found called Toy Bar where I bought like 50 tequila shots for the girls. I went outside, ate some watermelon and came home. I woke up this morning in a state of panic because of how much money I blew and the fall-down. Then the security guard came up to my room with a book someone sent me and I got an email from my boss that I thought was gonna say "you're fired" but was not that at all. He just wanted to talk baseball. Then writing this I realized I had a really fucking good time yesterday.