CARTOON

 I still love this girl. Her name was Cartoon (that's what she told me). I took her to the bars in Bangkok and one of the girls got mad at me and said, "Her name is not Cartoon it's Tun." So I think she was named that by some British sissy. 

I met Cartoon when I was not leaving this town called Plataya. I was supposed to leave but I didn't want to. This town was basically the size of any town you know let's say Santa Cruz except every room had a pole with girls dancing around it. This town was incredible. After 2 days you're in your hotel room with a gun in your mouth. I went into a bar, claiming the rain kept me in town. This bar was called The B-52 Bar. When I went in there was kinda nobody there, meaning they didn't have customers. It was totally empty except for the girls working. This never happens but the prettiest girl in the bar came over and started talking to me. Usually the prettiest girls leave me alone so I was kinda shocked. She had a spiked dog collar and leather cuffs and camouflage pants, totally heavy eyeshadow. We're talking big black eyes. She looked like Avril Lavigne in a fucking good way. We shot pool and she was clearly good at it. We had a real good game.

Eventually, after a couple hours, she said she'd stay with me all night so we left. I was just beginning with the illness so even though we walked everywhere I was nervous. We walked to these pool tables that were wicked far away but we shot on them. Then we went to some bars, then we walked all the way back to the B-52 Bar and got a hotel room across the street. 

When we were in the room for the night. We started to fool around. Cartoon took off her clothes and said, "I am not perfect" and showed me her foot. Her right foot was backwards. She was totally deformed. I remember thinking, "I'm not perfect either, don't worry". I literally had no idea about her foot and I made her walk everywhere on it. The next day I still didn't want to leave this town. My apartment was 2 hours away. I invited Cartoon and we hired a taxi and went all the way to my house. 

Cartoon stayed a couple days and then took the bus back to her job. She called me every night and accused me of cheating on her. I was like, "There's no way I would do that".  One time I just stopped answering the phone after awhile. One morning I woke up and looked at my phone. I had 50 missed calls. Talk about annoying. I called her and said, "I have not gotten a girl, I don't have money for any girls. I haven't eaten for 2 days, I really don't have a dime." Cartoon says, "What?" and hangs up. I am sitting at my computer watching a baseball game (because of the time difference there was a ballgame on at like 6am). While I'm sitting there, after 2 hours, the door suddenly flies open and Cartoon is standing there with food. She comes in, puts the food down, puts 500 baht on the bed (with the exchange this is like $75 and it's plenty to live on for awhile. Meals are a fucking nickel). Still, I could not believe it. I said I hadn't eaten and Cartoon heard that, went to the bus, came to my house, bought food, and came in my room. 

Another thing about Cartoon, in Thai culture people often believe that deformity is a result of a evil past life. I don't think Cartoon believed this. She was fucking angry at everyone all the time. I'm not kidding, she wouldn't even hold the door for people. They all do shit like that. 

The last time I talked to Cartoon we hadn't talked in a couple months our hangout had ended She called and I answered, knowing it was her. She said she wanted to leave work. She wanted to leave all bar girl type of work and move back home which was way south Thailand. Practically Burma, hella far away. She needed train fare and money to give her dad when she got there. I was like, "Whatever you need I have". I Western Union'd her 5,000 baht, this is about $200. When I had to move back to the states the plan was to go back to Thailand, find her and write a book about the whole thing. That never happened.