THE NORTH ATLANTIC-MISSION BASEBALL LEAGUE & ASSOCIATION

For folks who played in this league, you'll find a link to Strike Four below -- all the box scores, recaps and stats from our 23 games, in a word file that I was supposed to print into a book and make available a thousand years ago but didn't have the money probably. I'm putting it here to kind of park it somewhere. Plus, who knows, maybe you wanna see how many doubles you hit off me. No, I really don't know if this matters to anyone besides me but it's at least worth it for the email Curt Scharfe sent the group on the eve of the world series, when he was stuck in Germany with green card issues. It's on the first "page." I, for one, am psyched we kept all these stats. They're fun to see. I pitched 81 innings! I struck out 89 batters! Those are MLB numbers! I also gave up 165 runs on 164 hits and am pretty sure I hit every girl at least once. In 2007 about, I got an email from Mariah Gardener (24 at bats, .500 batting avg.) that said "I miss getting hit by you." L-O-L. Basically, if you played one game, your double, HR, K or triple is in here. I just might not have gotten your name right. And if you played regularly, it's all here.

To explain, the North Atlantic-Mission Baseball League & Association (or, um, ... N. A. M. B.  ... forget it)  was a fast-pitch, hard-ball baseball league, with two teams -- the Treat Street Fingerbangers and Folsom Street Fingerfuckers, which eventually became the Bangers and the Fuckers. It was co-ed and no one who'd played beyond high school was allowed. I'd been yelled at for not throwing to the cut-off man by some bitter AAA cast-off at the one Men's League or whatever it was game I'd played and, since we almost had enough people to field two teams, we put together a game. Also, I wanted to pitch. The first game was fun so we scheduled another. Two teams organically emerged and we ended up playing every Sunday for like 8 months (!). I sent out a recap with cut-and-pasted box scores (lifted from ESPN.com but accurate -- we had a book we kept stats/game info with) every week, so you could keep track of your batting average. The level of ability started out pretty atrocious but, over the course of games every Sunday -- for months -- we got a little better. Things like double-plays and catches in the outfield never became less than a major event but the magical quality of baseball came through and people who had hated sports all their lives became, uh, ball players. We also had a 3-game world series played on consecutive days and a banquet where we passed out trophies for Batting Champ, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and MVP. There were Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards. We also had the Three Mile Island Meltdown in the 9th Inning Award, the Billy Martin Dead On Christmas Day Award, the Glans Penis Award For Most Foul Tip, etc. At the banquet we wore cleats with our tuxedos and evening gowns. It was pretty awesome.

The link below leads to a download hosted on GoogleDrive and because there's so much lifted HTML and the photos are all copies, not jpegs, you're gonna get all these scary messages:

"The file Strike Four.odt cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents."

"The file is corrupt and cannot be opened."

"Word found unreadable content in this document. If you trust the source of this document, click Yes."

But it's just box scores and filthy language, so just click "Yes" and it should work. If it doesn't and you want the file, email me and I'll just send it to you.

Also sorry for the shoddy formatting, I cleaned it up the best I could. Lemme know if it looks REALLY effed up. Okay, have fun. There are some great pictures in here.


STRIKE FOUR
The Story of The North Atlantic-Mission Baseball League & Association  

SOME STUFF ABOUT DEE DEE

I started using a walker about two years ago. I had gone to a National Ataxia Foundation conference in L.A. and had seen all these people booking around with them and thought, "I gotta get one of these" and mentioned it in passing to my friend Kate. Then, because she's a gift from God, two weeks later one showed up at my house. The top-of-the-line model, too. I never see it. Whenever I see people with a crappy one with no compartment for 12-packs, I feel really good -- the tiniest bit superior, I can't lie. I also always say "We should race." Thankfully they never do.

Anyway, in the interest of saving time, or if I'm exhausted, sometimes I'll sit in it and one of my friends will push me. There have been four instances where we hit uneven pavement and went down. I've never been hurt, but the driver is always mortified and I think it's actually worse for them. I've been in their shoes. I have this story about dumping my wheelchair-bound sister Dee Dee which I'll get to in about 10,000 words. This got pretty long. I broke it up into parts but I apologize in advance for any eyeball cramps. The awful moment of dumping is part of a real clusterfuck of a trip to Fenway Park that happened 10 months before Dee Dee died and must be told.

My earliest real memory of Dee Dee, one I can put into words, happened somewhere around when I was four or five. My parents had gone out and put her in charge of me and my brother. She was either 11 or 12. It was dusk and the three of us were at the kitchen table, probably eating, when there was a loud rapping at one of the windows in the back hall. It cut the air and startled all of us. When we went over to see who it was, there was nobody there. At that same instant, louder rapping came from a window on the other side of the house. Then there was banging on what sounded like every window -- loud, violent banging. In the space of about five seconds, the thoughts in our heads had gone from "Kevin Flannery is here!" to "A Satan-worshiping cult is about to break in and kill us all" -- Satanic cults were a major fear in the '70s -- and we were fucking terrified. Dee Dee went to the drawer in the kitchen and pulled out the big knife -- a chef's knife -- and the three of us climbed up on the dinner table and got behind her. She sat cross-legged, holding the knife out in front of her as we all waited for the door in the back hall to open. I feel like the F word was used. She was as scared as we were but I knew anyone coming through that door was getting stabbed. We were gonna die but at least there'd be stabbing first. I remember registering this emotion of defiance when faced with futility that I had seen in my mother. The banging stopped and no one in black hooded robes came in. Eventually, we decided it was our neighbors Cosi Favaloro and Kevin Flannery trying to scare us but I don't remember anyone owning up to it and it definitely seemed like the work of more than two people.

Years and years later, in 2008, Dee Dee was visiting Massachusetts, from her home in Florida. She and her three kids -- Evelyn (16), Eamon (15) and Kevin (11) -- had a room at the Best Western in Fresh Pond, Cambridge. I hadn't seen her since 2005 when I went overseas and, because I'd been on a mission of self-destruction in Thailand for three years, I hadn't been in contact with anyone in my family. I'd only been air-lifted out of Bangkok about a week earlier. In Thailand, I had found out that months before I had finally called my father and gotten an update on my sister, she had separated from her husband and was living in a nursing home, at like age 42. That's young to be spending the rest of your life in a nursing home. I had visions of pee-stench hallways and Alzheimer's-ravaged old people jabbering while they shit themselves. Yikes. The fact that I had missed these major events in her life freaked me out but when I finally got her on the phone and couldn't understand a word she said -- not one word -- I was really freaked out. I felt like a shitty brother. I hadn't spoken to her in a year and we had a two-minute conversation that was basically me saying, "What?" fifty times and Dee Dee finally giving up, getting off the phone.

Clearly, she had degenerated a ton since I'd left, but this inability to talk to her on the phone was unbearable. SCA1 doesn't affect the brain so much but it completely takes away your ability to communicate, which I think makes you go crazy. My mother, at least, seemed pretty pissed off about it, as well as shut down, at the end. She was totally alone. Maybe it was the administration of anti-anxiety meds my mother didn't have the benefit of that kept Dee Dee completely socially vital right up til the end. But over the phone, without contextual cues or eye contact, I couldn't understand her at all. Talking on the phone had gotten harder and harder over the years but this was a new level. I couldn't even tell if she had said, "Don't worry about it. I'll talk to you later" and hung up or "Go to hell" and hung up. I just knew it was one of the two.

So this is where I was at when my brother and I knocked on their hotel room door a few months later. I was immediately relieved when Kevin opened it and we were greeted with huge smiles and hugs. I was also shocked by how much worse she was (non-stop head motion, herky-jerky arms) but more jarring was that Dee Dee had shaven her head and looked totally freaky. Apparently she had done it to show solidarity with a female friend at the nursing home made bald by chemo but she also said it was to show support for the troops. Whatever. The thing is, when a woman shaves her head she can look beautiful, but she can also look like a nutjob. It's the same with dudes. Hell, not even Britney could pull it off. I love my sister but she definitely fell into the nutjob category. Still, it was the same Dee Dee. Sure, she was sick as hell and looked pretty weird but she was still funny, the nursing home wasn't so bad and her description of negotiating the airport was a riot. I also bonded with my niece Evelyn over cigarettes in the foyer of the hotel. I guess it makes me a bad uncle but I was actually excited to learn my teenage niece smoked. The way I saw it, cigarettes'd be an opportunity to hang out. Plus, I don't care what anybody says -- Newports taste good. I was told they had six tickets to a Red Sox game and that they were gonna go on a tour of Fenway and did I want to go? I said yes knowing full well that as the ablest-bodied adult, I was the point man, kind of. I also knew that there'd be utter pandemonium, but it'd be fun.


PART II 
On the day of the game, my niece Alison and I got ourselves to Yawkey Way and waited for Dee Dee and her kids. Riding the Red Line to Kenmore Square, I said to Alison, "You know this is gonna be a major clusterfuck, right?" Alison was like, "Oh come on, Uncle Mike. It'll be fine." I said, "You have no idea." If there's one thing I know, it's that the chaotic family outing is among the oldest and most reliable of McGuirk traditions, highlighted by my drunk a-hole father yelling "I WAS SHOOTIN' GOOKS!" in a Chinese restaurant to remind us of his military service (spent during the Korean War and ENTIRELY in France, drunk); a mechanic in Lake Winnipesaukee telling us that if we smelled gas while in the car, get out because it's going to explode; and being asked to leave a hotel because, the night before, a member of our party had punched the desk clerk for telling him the pool was closed. Good stuff. You get the idea. Where two or more McGuirks are gathered, chaos is just a matter of time.

It was 4 PM, first pitch was 7:05. All I knew was that we had tickets and were taking a tour of the park. There were signs offering them all over the place. There were also hundreds of people clogging the closed-off street in front of Fenway. Dee Dee arrived in a car and got dropped off on Brookline Ave. This can't be true but as I remember it, the car didn't pull over. Instead, in the glut of traffic, the car stopped and I ran over, opened the trunk and got her into the wheelchair and across the street as quick as I could, waving and saying, "Sorry sorry sorry" to both lanes of traffic. She had a 7-Eleven Big Gulp of soda. We were running a little late and the drop-off had been stressful but we were all excited. And I was psyched to see Dee Dee, to be with all the kids and to be doing this whole thing. I sent Eamon to go figure out where the tour was. He came back with the info that they all ended at 4, all the signs were for tours that had already left.

I had been holding Dee Dee's wheelchair, and when Eamon told us there were no tours, I decided to investigate for myself. I was the grown-up after all. I started towards the nearest kiosk. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dee Dee rolling. But she was going slow -- she had removed the footrests on the chair, and often propelled herself with her feet, pulling herself forward, rather than the common method where people put their hands directly on the wheels -- I decided she was walking. Our mother had done the same thing. She was definitely walking, in her way. Right? That's not rolling, right? Then horror of horrors, she was definitely moving too fast. And I could now see that what had seemed like flat asphalt was not flat at all, there was a slant that went to the curb, and Dee Dee was speeding towards it, totally out of control. I've told this story a hundred times but, writing this, I have the same sick feeling in my stomach I had when I did the math of where she was and where the curb was and what was about to happen to her. I dove. She hit the curb and came flying out of her chair, the Big Gulp soaring. There were ice cubes in the air. I somehow caught her before she hit the ground. At least 50 people saw the whole thing, and just stood there, rightfully judging me. Dee Dee said,"You aahhsshole" but she wasn't as pissed as she could have been, really. She was kind of already laughing half-way through "aahhsshole." It was an incredulous I-cannot-believe-you-just-did-that laugh but a laugh all the same. Then she said, "I  want a beer. Right now." The whole chain of events unraveled in the space of approximately five seconds.

PART III 
They weren't serving alcohol outside the park so I corralled the recently traumatized kids who'd just watched their mother practically face-plant thanks to my idiocy and we headed to the nearest bar, a massive, soulless money-factory attached to the park called Game On, where our brother Joe was a bartender. As we made our way there, I couldn't stop thinking about what had just happened. I remember thinking, "Well, I know what I'll be seeing in my brain every night for as long as I live. It's gonna be fun trying to sleep with that shit bouncing around." Game On was insanely crowded. The wheelchair got us past the line outside and to a table in the downstairs lounge fairly quickly but it wasn't long before the blaring Hard Rock Cafe soundtrack chased us out. I was trying to get my niece's drink order for the fifth time over "Love Removal Machine" by The Cult when I gave up and made a "Let's get out of here?" signal to my sister and she nodded.

Plan B was anywhere off the beaten path. We ended up at a Sizzler-type of place about a half-mile from the park. It was 5 PM or so. The game was in two hours. Plenty of time. We could have dinner even. So we sat on the patio looking at menus. I got a Heineken and Dee Dee got a Margarita. Uh, blue flavor, whatever that is. We asked for it to come in a pint glass and with a straw. The waitress was really nice, we started to relax and have fun. I lit up a cigarette. When we ordered, I got the steak. Kevin ordered chocolate cake. The waitress was like, "Really. Chocolate cake." Dee Dee shrugged and the waitress walked away laughing. We were all laughing. I asked where the tickets were and Dee Dee said, "I don't know. Will Call, I guess." Then she told me to call her friend Donna (who'd bought the tickets) and find out what name they were under.

When Donna answered the phone, she was screaming. "I've been trying to reach you guys since one o'clock! You were supposed to be there at 1:30!" It was then that I realized that this wasn't just tickets to the game. Donna had put together a Make-A-Wish Foundation type of thing. Kind of a big detail to not tell me about. The tour wasn't A tour, it was OUR tour. "They were gonna take you on the field! You were gonna meet the team!" She said, "If you guys aren't at Gate D in 10 minutes, they won't even let you in!" I stood and made the round up motion with my fingers, "We gotta go. RIGHT NOW" The waitress saw the scrambling and came over, I said, "We need to cancel the order and get going, sorry." She said, "No problem" and turned but I know for a fact that she saw Dee Dee putting the Margarita in her lap and covering it with a napkin. Surreptitiousness isn't exactly a thing with ataxia. At the same time, my 19-year old niece Alison was standing and pounding my beer. I didn't blame her. Another bad uncle bonding moment.

I told Eamon to run ahead to Gate D and tell them we're coming as fast as we can and told the others to get moving while I paid the check. When I caught up to them, Kevin was pushing his mother's wheelchair at a full run.

Despite some short cuts that didn't pan out, we made it to Gate D in time, where Eamon was waiting for us with park personnel. They were really nice anyway, and even got us on the field for a couple minutes before ushering us to our seats out in mid-right field, in the last row of grandstand level seats behind Pesky's Pole and pointed directly at the Green Monster. These are bad seats for BLIND people so we were a little shocked. Usually, handicapped seats are choice. It didn't matter, though, we could see home plate by turning a bit. And we'd made it. Talk about relief. I'd dumped my sister and we'd almost not gotten in but we were there, and, boy, were there ever some stories.

I didn't watch much of the game. I gladly got Dee Dee Mike's Hard Lemonades whenever she asked for one. Between the fans booing Keith Foulke in 2005 and management letting Pedro walk that same year, I had begun to hate the Red Sox and their fans. Then when they booed Manny at this game (possibly his last as a Red Sox), I decided I would never go to Fenway again. Do any Red Sox fans remember what they did for us in '04? I know it's asinine to care about sports but it's true, and I can't explain it, but my life is actually better now because they beat the Yankees in the '04 ALCS. If Keith Foulke doesn't pitch a thousand innings in that series, we are STILL Jeter's bitches. The dude's career ended because he was tapped after doing it. If you ask me, every single one of those dudes gets a free pass for life, infinitely. So, fuck those people who booed Foulke and Manny. Really, fuck them.

There are two more details about this story that need to be related. One is that, after the game, after the park had emptied, I pushed Dee Dee to the elevator and we waited in the saddest, most grotesque line that ever existed. Twenty or thirty (no lie) cripples in varying states of gimpiness were silently pushed onto the elevator three at a time. Nobody said a word, and it took a half hour for us to reach ground level.

The last thing is that on the way to the pick-up rendezvous, we were passing a guy selling souvenirs on the sidewalk and Dee Dee decided she wanted to browse. She pointed to a T-shirt, a cup and a pennant, talking to the guy the whole time, in her trumpeting ataxia warble. He did his best to understand and we all translated but I could see he was freaked out. Between the shaven head, crazy arms and totally non-handicapped-person fearlessness Dee Dee had when she talked to people -- healthy people have a threshold they reach when dealing with a handicapped person. It's natural but it's definitely there. I could see the guy thinking, "Does she have MS, cerebral palsy or cancer, or all three?" Then when Dee Dee went to pay him, fumbling with her purse, he was like,"You know what? It's cool. Here, just take the stuff." Dee Dee said, "Really? Okay.Thanks!" and we pushed off. I said, "That's awesome. That dude was so freaked out, he gave us free shit to get rid of us!" Dee Dee goes, "Oh, shut up, Michael. He was just being nice."

DREAM ABOUT MANNY

From 2001 to 2004, my brother, sister and I went to Red Sox Spring Training in Fort Meyers, FL. Dee Dee lived three hours away, so Joe and I would fly down and drive from her house. Once we brought her kids, and in March of '04, we brought Joe's two kids also. I remember one year the Sox were playing the Expos and the Expos had a rookie named Vladimir Guerrero. I thought, "What a name!" and, "That dude is huge!" Plus he killed the ball. I think he hit a grand slam. I was also astonished by rookies named Milton Bradley (!) and Coco Crisp (!!). I feel like it was the same year but they all run together.

Anyway, in March of 2004, like all Red Sox fans, Dee Dee, Joe and I had had our hearts ripped out of our chests and eaten while we watched our whole lives thanks to a laundry list of spectacular last minute failures, the most recent (and, for me, worst) of which had been only five months before. We were no different from every other Red Sox fan. Red Sox fans: remember the hell we lived in before they won? Losses in April put a pit in your stomach, ruined whole weekends. All our hopes on Frank Castillo and Mike Lansing. Jose Awfulman. Yipes. For non-baseball fans, lemme just say there was a time -- years in fact -- when wearing a Sox hat had an unspoken, vague shame that went with it. I forget what year it was, but I was in a bar watching Bryce Florie's face explode and the Yankee fan next to me said in all honesty, "The Red Sox will never win the World Series," and part of me believed him. I remember ascribing to a theory that they couldn't win because of the Green Monster. That's insane.

You get the idea. They were never going to win. There are a thousand places to hear the story of how they did finally win in 2004 -- historic, down 0-3 to the Yanks in the ALCS, blah blah blah. But before all that happened, in March, a couple days before I was getting on a plane for Florida, I had a dream. In the dream I am at the Sox facility and me and a group of strangers are sitting on the grass watching the team work out. The workout ends and the team starts leaving the field. Manny Ramirez, my favorite player since I was a kid, since Louie Tiant -- my favorite athlete -- walks up to the group, points at me and says, in a Latino accent, "Are you ready to win it all?" He used to never give interviews because he was embarrassed of his broken English so I'd never heard his voice. I remember feeling kind of scared. It was more of a challenge than an assurance they'd go all the way. I answered with an uncertain, "Yes?" and he walked away.

When I woke up, I didn't think much of it at first. I was like, "I had a dream and Manny was in it." Then I remembered. Manny POINTED at me and said, "Are you ready to win it all?" That's a message from God. Or at least Manny Ramirez. No, but it couldn't be about the Red Sox winning -- that was never gonna happen -- "Are you ready to win it all" meant that you can have everything in life, you can have more than you ever dreamed -- everything -- but you have to allow yourself to have it. And that is something you need to learn, to be ready for. There's a lot there. Life is a gift if we make it a gift. No. Ugh. That sounds awful. The thing is, we CAN have a life that is a gift -- we can have it all -- if we don't let the bad shit in our brains fool us into thinking we don't deserve it. I'm not talking about The Secret, or some such "I'm entitled to a yacht!" b.s., I mean happiness, and joy, but also hard stuff -- "it all." Also in that challenge are two things. One is the fact that we make our lives. Sure, there are things that happen that are random but it's the decisions we make that put us wherever we end up. That's a lot of responsibility. The other thing is that life may have some shitty things in it, but that is part of the gift that it is.

Jesus, that sounds a whole lot better four beers in. Less preachy. Less pie-in-the-sky-y. But I wanted to write this whole thing out so I could figure out how it'd work as a chapter in the book or something. We're both learning here. The thing is, "Are you ready to win it all?" totally became my motto after this. That morning I called like 10 people to tell them about it. I really did start thinking in this way, and still do. We make our lives. Two weeks after the dream, I had gotten laid (a rarity, no lie), in October, the Red Sox went on their unbelievable run and a year after that I somehow found myself floating in a massive pool in Thailand, shooting pool and playing Grand Theft Auto pretty much all the time. Talk about joy. I also got diagnosed with this disease that summer (2004). That's the "all" part. You can't have it all without bad stuff.

Some stuff about Manny Ramirez. Non-baseball fans may know his name because he got suspended for PEDs twice and had a kind of awful fall from grace. But you should also know there are like 50 things besides that that get overlooked. Most of it good. Just this year, after playing in Taiwan for awhile because nobody wanted him here, he's managed to get himself signed to a minor league contract with the Texas Rangers and has said that if he makes it to the big leagues, his salary will go to charity. When he basically got run out of baseball a few years ago, he said his plan was to go fishing with his father. One time he made a catch in left field, ran up the wall to slow his momentum, HIGH-FIVED A FAN, then came down and threw the runner out trying to get back to first, making for a double play. Nobody does shit like this. I remember being at Fenway, in the 8th inning, with the Sox down, men on base, and the whole place chanting his name, super loud, and he hit one out, I remember the ball soaring over the Green Monster, getting tinier then disappearing into the night. It was the definition of baseball magic. Once he totally freaked out Boston by using the song, "Good Times" by Styles P. which prominently featured the  lyric "I get high" for his walk-up music. He reportedly used the death of his grandmother more than once as an excuse to come to Spring Training a week late. He was missing from left field during an inning and emerged from the Green Monster as the pitch was thrown. The reports are that he was peeing into a cup but I say he was doing bong hits. There are tons of these stories.

Manny's greatest hits:
Petting

Homer

Inexplicable Cut-off

Blooper Reel

Best Play Ever

SCORING SMACK IN BARCELONA

Couple things here. First of all , I used to think doing heroin made me cool. I don't really think that any more. Secondly, this was written in 2005 probably, not long after getting to Thailand. Kinda clearing out here. Putting it here means I can stop emailing it to myself so I don't lose it. Barcelona was beautiful but really boring. They all sat in cafes and drank these tiny beers, then at 2 AM they'd go to some cavernous room and dance to throbbing techno cranked way too loud. It seemed like there was always a parade of people dancing down whatever street you were on. I remember deciding I hated any culture where "the beat" sets you free or whatever. Is there anything worse than a dude who knows/thinks he's a good dancer? Puke. Also, I really wanted to be able to put "Can buy drugs overseas" on my resume. No lie, it took me two weeks  of research before I was confident I wouldn't be sharing a cell with Brad Davis. And lastly, the title totally sounded like a Steely Dan lyric to me: "What's he doing now?"/"He's scoring smack in Bar-ce-lo-na"

I went down to Sant Pau in the Ravella around 4 in the afternoon. I had been going to a tiny, shitty park inhabited by the ghosts of prostitutes that a zombie woman told me about but was having no luck. This was a Monday and there were cops everywhere. Before I got into the actual spot where drugs are sold I saw a deal of some kind in progress so I approached the dudes and asked, “Amigos. ¿Dondé puedo comprar un poquito de caballo?” I had learned “caballo” from this dude who stole my drugs from me the first time I scored. I had thought it was cocaine and was checking it out in a doorway when this drunk guy walked up and said yeah it’s coke I love coke can I do some with you? When I said I wanted heroin he said ”Caballo?” and told me he’d help me find some. He didn’t, he just led me to a bench and snorted all the drugs. I was like “Que pasa bro?” but he just looked at me. I wasn’t mad really, didn’t care but as I left I said to him, “Dios recuerda.” Like, “God remembers.” He said, “No existe.” And I patted him on the back and said “Dios recuerda. Buen suerte” and left. Anyway I have since decided that that was in fact heroin (I hadn’t expected it to be white powder) and not cocaine but I don’t know for sure. So on this day in the same area I was armed with the correct term for what I wanted to buy. The two guys I approached didn’t speak any English but were real helpful. One seemed super fucked up and looked Jimmy Buffet-ish -- dirty Hawaiian shirt and shorts, dirty hair. The other guy was short, very neatly dressed in khaki pants and an open collared white linen shirt, with amber-vision sunglasses pushing back the hair on his head, short hair. They took me through the square, past Ravella’s Rambla and up the lane to a spot with a church on one side and a street of ancient walkups perpendicular. I couldn’t understand a fucking word they said to me but I did get that they thought I really looked like a policeman. I was like, “But I’m an American.” I look pretty American. Maybe they use undercover Americans there though I don’t know. One stayed with me while I waited for the other one who went into one of the walkups. He came out with a little green balloon. I said “It’s real? You sure it’s real?” He shrugged and said “Come on.” Like gimme a break I am honest. He told me to meet him there Friday between 6 and 6:30 for more.

I went home and opened the balloon convinced it would not be heroin. When I dumped it out it was white powder. I figured only one way to find out and did a line. It hit in a little ways into the song “Jukebox Boogie” by Dr. Isaiah Ross and I knew it was real so I did a bunch more. I laid the lines out on the case that my little-used Italian language CDs came in. After a good 20 minutes of sitting there motionless listening to live Doors I got up and went to a couple bars and rubbed my face marveling at how ridiculously good I felt and the shit was. I kept thinking it had passed but then another rush would hit me. It kept waving in and out for hours. By the time I went back home, the waves were receding and the only drawback became this palpable comedown that actually felt like coming off speed or something. I got really anxious and stared at the ceiling until daylight. I did the rest of the bag the next night and basically repeated the same experience.

Friday night I showed up late and missed the guy. I ended up back in the area but it was way late and I got beat by these two guys I’d never seen. I bought two bags and asked if it was real, I’m here for two months you can make more dough off me and all that. They said it was but it turned out to just be sugar and flour or something. Drug dealers who sell fake drugs are stupid. It turns out to be less money in the end. At home, as I was dumping out the non drugs, I picked up the old bag to throw out in case one of the roommates walked in my room and it turned out to have a huge line left in it. Crazy.

This CD case sat on my desk with heroin all over it for the rest of my time there. I kept worrying they would see it and think I was doing coke.

The last time I scored was in the daytime and I spent like a half hour convincing this guy I wasn’t a cop before he would sell me anything. He made me buy two bags and I was leaving for Thailand in two days so I didn’t know how I would do it all. Also my breathing was starting to get kinda bad by now because it was like 2 days on 2 days off 1 day on and one day off so 3 out of 6 days. My lungs just seem to inflate if I do it this much. I also tried smoking some because both my nostrils were too plugged up but the shit completely ravaged my throat. Anyway I found ways to get it up my nose and then spent the last two days in Barcelona fucking high as a kite. I went and sat at this fountain near the zoo with gorgeous statues of Poseidon, Pegasus and a huge elephant and plumes of water spraying into the warm night air, I drank a coffee for 2 hours near the apartment and I sat in a bar trying not to fall face first off my stool. I also floated around the apartment sucking on my inhaler and telling my German exchange student roommates and their boyfriends that I had a cold every time I coughed which was every two seconds and sounded like I had flaming gravel in my chest.

The day I left to go to Thailand I packed my backpack and set off at 5AM for the train station my roommate told me led to the airport. My breathing was so bad that I had to walk very gently because with the pack on I could overdo it really easy, start fighting for breath and then need to use the inhaler. When I went down into the station I went down the wrong stairs and had to come back up. This almost killed me. I literally could not breathe; it was like someone was sitting on my chest. I saw these two guys talking and went up to them to ask where the fucking train to the airport was and in mid-sentence I started to faint. I quickly took off my backpack and sat down on it. One of the guys was clearly homeless, the other one was wondering how to get away from the guy. The homeless one said in English, “are you okay?” and I gasped, “where do I go --- for the train --- to the airport?” Apparently my roommate had given me bad directions because the guy led me out and across the plaza to a bus station. He chatted with me and stopped whenever I needed to and when we got to the bus station I was able to drop the pack, sit for a minute and get okay with the breathing. If this guy hadn’t brought me here, I would have been in serious serious trouble, wandering around choking. I bought him a coffee and he split. I missed the plane anyway and my breathing didn’t get back to normal until approximately ten days after arriving in Thailand. The other day I realized that during every exchange with a dealer I had asked “Is it real?” which is (in my Spanish) “¿Es verdad?” But I had been saying “verde” instead of “verdad.” “Verde” means “green.” So I asked all these street dealers if the heroin I was buying was green, was insistent on it even. “¿Es verde? ¿Es verde?” Jeez.

RACE WITH THE DEVIL, AND CHICKEN WINGS

A couple years ago, I was living with my brother in Cambridge, MA. I had just started using a cane. This had been a big step for me, the cane. Weeks before, when the time had come for me to get one (read: when my friend Jay kindly bought me one) I had chosen one of those four-pronged stroke canes (I just asked the internet and google told me it was a "Quad Cane"), as it looked more stable. Otherwise it didn't look very good -- people with broken ankles, or under 100 years old, don't use stroke canes. It's the equivalent of a walker with tennis balls instead of wheels. The thing screams "handicapped and probably in some kind of assisted living" -- but my friend Lila painted it gold so it looked kind of cool. This was back when I still cared about my appearance.

Anyway, I was walking back from Central Sq. in the daytime and an elderly couple and I entered a crosswalk at the same time. These were old people: white hair, shuffling. You know how when you're in a crosswalk with old people, or anyone really, you decide that you need to pass them so as to avoid being stuck behind them on the other side, or any awkwardness as you go in separate directions? I have always done this, we all do, it takes one second. So I picked up the pace and started to pass them. I noticed that I wasn't passing the old guy. Then I realized we had the same idea, and HE was trying to pass ME. Then I realized we were RACING! We were racing, and I was losing! I was losing a crosswalk race to an old dude!

I let them go ahead of me and luckily they peeled off and went to a parked car before there was any uncomfortable shuffle-dancing at the curb. It wasn't til later that I realized I had raced with, and lost said race to, a guy like 30-plus years my senior.

Another funny thing happened in a bar, here in San Francisco where I live. For some stupid reason I got chicken wings. Pretty much everyone I know has heard me describe eating as like something out of a Jerry Lewis movie. There's a lot of flailing, the spoonful of food falling back into the bowl literally a centimeter from my mouth multiple times, somehow getting pasta on my eyebrows  -- all kinds of slapstick comedy -- so fighting with bone-in chicken wings in public is NOT gonna go well. But I got them for some reason. I did my best to not make a scene, luckily the pretty girl next to me had her back turned and I basically only had a carpet of chicken skin and meat within my personal space. But once, as -- horror of horrors -- I watched a pretty big chunk of chicken meat fly through the air and bounce off her back, I got the idea that it'd be a pretty funny scene in a movie if I was sitting at a bar, struggling with the wings and talking to my friend when the camera angle slowly widens to reveal the girl next to me and the back of her pricey sweater is just carpeted in wing-detritus -- skin, meat, bones -- but none of us are aware of it, with the attendant double- or spit-take when I DO notice it. I think this'd be goddamn funny.

Final Dispatch From Bangkok

Gentle Reader,
Please Please Please don't start here if you wanna read the Thailand stuff from '07 and '08. Anywhere but here. The way, way bottom is best but it doesn't matter as long as you read this last. Is that dicky? agh do whatever you want and thank you, and thanks for reading.


I have a new neighbor friend in my building, a Thai dude named Jam. I ran into him in the foyer one night a month ago at 2AM as I was coming back with the last food and money I was gonna have for 3 weeks. I had literally spent my last 40 baht on some kao pat gai and was heading upstairs with it. Jam was going up to his apartment and said, "Come on, come have beers with me." This is what Thailand is like, you spend your last money and someone comes along with beers.

The thing with Jam, besides a true generosity, is that Thai people can't bear to be alone and his wife was not due back from her province up north for a few days. He'd been alone all month and when he saw me he was like "Holy shit, let's be friends!" Jam is a driver for some rich farang and he speaks almost fluent english, if with a strong accent. We made fast friends over Leo beers and a trip to the all-night restaurant for more. He told me about an American friend he had made 10 years ago and traveled Thailand with but that the friend had lost trust in him over a woman Jam had introduced him to and he had subsequently married. It's a common story actually. The guy, Chris, had asked Jam to find him a woman to marry. Jam chose a girl he thought would be suitable, Chris married her and then promptly moved back to the US alone and charged Jam with keeping tabs on her. Of course the first time Jam went up to Isan to check on her she had gone back to sleeping with her ex-husband, a Thai. Honestly what else was she gonna do? Jam was not able to tell Chris about it, out of the Thai "conflict-avoidance" thing. The details get fuzzy here but what ended up happening was Chris told Jam to go eff himself and either brought the girl over to the US, came here to live, or divorced her. Jam suspects she told Chris something to drive a wedge between them because he (Jam) knew she'd been unfaithful and had to be eliminated from the equation. 10 years later the dude is still haunted by the whole thing. He brought it up every time he'd had a couple drinks.

For the next 3 weeks Jam called me whenever he got home from work, whether it was 2AM or 7AM and asked me to come downstairs. I'd go down there, he'd open a bottle of Sato, a rice wine from the Northeast of Thailand, and we would trade shot glasses of it while his wife prepared these massive Laotian meals. Then we all (Jam, his wife Porn, her brother Charlie and me) would sit on the floor and eat it all. He started having me teach the brother english, which I tried my best to do.

One night Jam got off work early and he and Charlie came to my room with all kinds of beer and Sato and we all got plastered listening to Jam's choice of Eric Clapton and CCR. I said "I am getting paid any day now, and when I do we will all go out somewhere for dinner and to shoot pool and I will pay for everything" like 50 times. He'd say "Don't worry about that."

After they left that night I got an email telling me I had been paid. Beginning sometime last year my monthly reaction to the news that my bank account was now fat with cash has been a moment of jumping adulation followed by sudden, uncontrollable and totally dry wretching. Tonight, after I was done gagging over my sink, I didn't change my clothes, brush my teeth, turn off the lights or lock my door. I went straight to the outdoor street bars that border Soi Cowboy. There are 5. I rang the bell at each (this means I bought drinks for every girl at the bar). At the last one I rang the bell 3 times and barfined this girl named Biw after handing her my ATM card, telling her my PIN # and saying "Go get us 5000 baht." This is a thing I've been doing alot these last few months, with different girls, none of whom took the dare and ripped me off. The sun was coming up so I took Biw to Texas Lone Star and we proceeded to ring the bell there. I sent her for another 5000 baht. I went to the bathroom and when I came back she had lined up 3 tequila shots each for both of us.

The last thing I remember is us both downing the first one and Biw clapping her hands and saying "I ring the bell 3 times!" I said "Good girl."

I have no memory of this but Biw later told me that I did the shot, immediately fell backward off my stool and began projectile vomiting.

I woke up with my clothes on in my bed. Both my knees so sore I fell down a few times when I tried to move between the bed and the bathroom. My right foot felt like all my toes were broken. I checked my back pocket and my wallet was gone. There was a foul-smelling towel that was not mine and was covered in dirt in the bathroom. I went back to sleep.

This was Friday night and I had work due but instead of doing it I lay in bed and prayed for sleep which came in intervals, and death which did not come at all. The next afternoon I got out of bed and saw that I had trashed my room -- the TV had been knocked over, my fan was in two pieces and I had broken a chair. The wallet and ATM were gone but when I checked my balance online I saw no more than the money Biw and I had spent together had been withdrawn so I knew she hadn't stolen it. She had the PIN # after all and I don't have a phone or her number to track her down. It would have been easy. I didn't know how I had gotten home.

When I could walk I went and found Biw to ask her if maybe I had given her my wallet. I hadn't. She'd taken it out of my pants and placed it on my computer when she left but hadn't locked the door (since it wasn't locked when we came there in the first place, or the 2 other times she'd spent the night with me). I decided someone had come in my room and seen it on the computer and taken it. Whatever had happened I no longer had an ATM card or access to the money in my account (for like the fifth time in 3 years).

Monday morning I managed to get my hands on some of my money thru a friend and Western Union. I put all my laundry in to be washed and went to get a haircut. After the haircut I decided to have one beer. I had $500, enough to cover my rent, food and smokes for the next few weeks while I waited for the replacement card. I got my sneakers shined while I had a second beer. It was 1PM or so.

I shot some pool and ended up sitting outside a bar called Country Road smoking cigarettes with my friend On who works there. She tells me, "I have had three customers not pay me this week." I can't believe this. I ask her "You had sex with them and they didn't pay you after?" And she says "No, they didn't." This is a girl who, despite being perfectly cute, regularly pays her own barfine so she can go home early, and ex-pat Bangkok lifers who try to get free sex from girls who are working are a particularly low form of life. I ask her why she doesn't have some Thai male friends to call when this happens, to muscle dough from the dudes. She explains she doesn't want to get involved with mafia types. I say, "Okay. Well, bad luck comes in threes so maybe now you will have good luck." She says, "But the two customers before that -- one guy was ... this word ... sadist? And he tie me up. Then he is chok-wow." ("Chok-wow" is a Thai term for jerking off) "I say to him, Please, mister, can I go? and second customer -- he is small, more than me, we go together to his hotel room, we are crossing the street," she points to Asok, a major road 100 feet away, "In the middle he stops me and says he wants boom-boom in the street. In the middle. I say no thank you. I go away fast." Then she points to her waitress uniform (which I hadn't noticed before) and says, "I don't work the bar anymore, now I am waitress. I am scared of farang."

At the same bar around 5PM I ended up in a conversation with this fat dude with a handle bar moustache. He'd been living in Thailand for 8 years, was a pretty funny guy and a good talker. Talking about baseball is a luxury even bargirls can't compete with when you've been away from other Americans long enough and I was only too happy to talk about the Cleveland Indians with this guy as On stared off into the distance, refilled my beer and prolly thought about the short dude who wanted to fuck in the street, and how totally insane Western men are sometimes. The dude with the awesome moustache said, "Come on, let's hit a go go bar" so I went with him to Tilac where the girls dance at poles with mini skirts on and no panties. The idea is to look up their skirts as their knees are at eye level. I used to love places like this but at some point (actually the second time I was in one) they became impossible for me to handle. Either I was too into it or the whole idea was too fucked up -- I don't know why my reaction turned but it did. In the space of one 24-hour period in Pattaya last year these types of bars went from the best thing I ever saw to one of those Thai sex industry things that make me want to walk into the ocean with rocks in my pockets. Don't get me wrong, there really aren't a great many things about the Thai sex industry that make me feel this way, there are only a few to be entirely honest. Like anything involving ping pong balls for instance.

Anyway on top of all this, me and my new fake friend hadn't been sitting there 5 minutes before the guy was putting his hand way up girls' skirts and shoving his pointer finger in and out of a girl behind the bar's mouth. I couldn't deal with it. I mean the guy lives in Thailand for 8 years and he still treats the bargirls like this? Like he got off a plane an hour ago and has been reading sex tourist websites for 2 years? I hightailed it out of there, staggered across the way to Toy Bar and ate some fried chicken. Well, the truth is the chicken was fed to me by two girls who work there.

The next stop was a bar my third-to-last Thai girlfriend had worked at before getting married to some Australian dude with one hand. As I approached, the mama-san knew I was there to see Bong, told me she wasn't in Bangkok, showed me to a stool and motioned a girl over. The girl dialed Bong's #, talked a second and handed me the phone. I apologized to Bong for inadvertantly criticizing her English the last time I saw her (this may have been the only time I ever saw a Thai person actually get really pissed off, she had wanted to kill me). Bong said something I didn't understand and we hung up.

At 2AM, after a thousand more beers and back at the late night Cowboy street bars Biw gave a driver my address and put me in his cab. A couple minutes before I had heard myself asking strangers at the bar to please kill me and realized it was time to go. Miraculously I still had most of the $500, in my left hand pocket. Seconds after the taxi pulled away from the curb I convinced the driver to take me somewhere besides my house (an alley of bars I like close to where I had started the day). Somehow we ended up in a gas station parking lot where I paid him and got out of the cab and immediately fell directly on my face.

First I came to the realization that my two front teeth were now broken, then I realized they had gone through my lower lip and there was blood spurting from my face. I crawled to a sewer grate a few feet away and went to sleep. I was barely there 5 seconds before a Thai person saw me and came running over and put me in his truck, washed the blood from my face.

After my mind cleared a bit I said "Let's have beers! Do you want beer?" and fished some money from my breast pocket. Then we sat on the tailgate of his truck where I thanked him and said I’m sorry a hundred times. I unsuccessfully assessed the damage to my teeth and lip. This little street kid walked up and checked out my broken face. In perfect english he told me that besides the split lip, I had cuts above my mouth and on my chin. Then the guy tried to take me to his home because he could no longer understand what I was saying, but before leaving he left me alone for a minute and I wandered off figuring he'd done enough and didn't need to have me in his apartment too.

I ended up crashing onto a drunk ladyboy’s lap after falling down again and practically crawling to the embankment she was sitting on. A non-drunk friend of hers came up and was like “wtf, bro?” and I pointed to a street bar a few feet away and said "Beers?" They agreed and we had a beer. Checking my pockets I discovered the remainder of the $500 had been lifted from me (most likely from ladyboy#1 when I sat on her lap, or maybe the kid somehow through some Bangkok sleight of hand sorcery. Or maybe I just threw it in the air, who knows. I only knew I had still had the wad of thousand baht bills while sitting on the good samaritan's tailgate). After I discovered the money was gone I was genuinely relieved. My thought was "Ahh. This is over now." That money had been gone since the second I ordered the first beer of the day 14 hours before. Me and the two ladyboys hung out awhile and I explained I now only had enough money left in my breast pocket for the beers we were drinking and a cab. Every time one of the ladyboys asked me a question -- "Where you from?" "You live Thailand?" -- I asked them both to kill me. They just looked at me a second when I said this and after awhile hailed a taxi for us all.

Ladyboy #1 passed out in the taxi and rode on as non-drunk ladyboy wrestled me into my building's elevator and then my room. Then incredibly, tried to get me to have sex with her even though I had no money, wallet or atm card, and my lip was shredded and quickly turning like 6 colors. But I told her I'd only do it with no condom and I would put my dick in her ass and she better have AIDS. "She said "You want to die?" And I was like "What do think? Of course! I asked you 50 times already!" Also I kept trying to sleep on the floor. I guess she split. Last night I realized she took my PS2 with her.

This is how it ended for me here. I canceled my ATM card and called in the cavalry to get me out and back to Boston. Now I have to go back to the States and act like a normal person again. I've been crying for three days because I am breaking up with my girlfriend Thailand. It sucks but when I found my wallet and ATM card behind my bed yesterday while packing up I accepted that my departure had to happen and is a thing of fucking karma. Uuhh. Over and out.

Europe

This is from 2005, written in Barcelona before I left for Thailand

My boss gave me the brilliant idea a few months ago that because my job is done over the internet, I could live anywhere. I could continue to work and go live in some faraway place and kind of restart my life. Not that I had a bad life, it's just that after seven years in San Francisco I was ready for a change. I also wanted to learn Italian and I had a friend living in Florence. So I chose that as a destination. When he flaked on me a month before my departure date, I decided that God had given me lemons so I should make lemonade. No problem, I would find somewhere to live that was cheap and on the ocean instead of an expensive city like Florence. I would drink cappuccino, smoke cigarettes, write and have a deep tan.

As for learning the language I figured there were only a few things I really needed to know how to say:

1. Yes, those are big meatballs

2. Sorry I farted and called you Kate

3. Maybe if I calm down for a minute it'll work

4. I am addicted to inhalants, please help me find a hardware store

Below, I give a day-by-day account of my attempted move to Italy.

Day 1

It was easy after all. Everybody speaks English. I ended up buying a train ticket to Lecce because they didn't have my first choice, a beach town called Peschici, as a destination. So I am going to Lecce first. Looking at the map, Lecce is pretty far south. It's practically in Sicily.

Day 2

The train ride from Paris to Lecce stretched on for so long that I decided to get off in a town called Foggia, which is inland from the jut of land I want to check out first, where Peschici and Vieste are, but features access to it. That's all it features though as I seem to have found one of the only ugly towns in Italy. I got off the train and walked to a bar and had a cappuccino. Then took a cab to Hotel Venezia where I am staying, literally 100 feet away. The cabbie charged me 10 euro. Ow. After an exchange with the hotel clerk that really seemed like it was gonna end with him pulling out a gun and shooting me for not understanding a single word he said -- not one word -- and after many frustrated repeatings of the price and check-in time (3 hrs away) I had a room. I took a shower and then set out trying unsuccessfully to find food thanks to the labyrinth of opening and closing times they have here. A few more unbelievably humiliating exchanges and I was hiding in my room.

Day 3

When the hell do these people eat? In the morning all you get is a brioche or croissant or whatever and then at 1 everyone goes home to bed. At 5 it all closes again until 8. People literally walk around in circles all day. I tried to go to Peschici but the train guy said to take the bus and the bus guy said to take the train. Although who knows what they were really saying. I understood it to mean "go over there" but they could have been giving me football scores for all I know. I did manage to buy a ticket to Bologna though and even this happened after the guy answered my question with a "no"

"Un bigliette a Bologna ahh para domani, per favore?"

"No. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah".

"No? Really?"

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah?"

"Uhhh, si?"

"Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah treintesette."

"Oh I can buy it? Okay. Good. Yeah trainta y sette. Okay."

Not so much good communication today although I can finally understand it when someone says a number to me. I know this because this afternoon when a waiter ripped me off for the .50 change from a 2 euro coin I gave him I knew exactly what was going on. I'm going to Bologna. I need a city I think while I learn Italian. I feel too conspicuous here. I am acting like kind of a pussy right now, too. Today I slept for like 16 hrs but I did learn a couple things: Italians spend money every second of the day and facial hair is non-existent on anyone under 70 years of age. I realized part of the reason people seem to fear me is the beard. Another thing that came to me is that in the States, when you hear a foreign accent you immediately think the person is stupid. The fact is they ARE stupid, because they don't know the language. I have an accent here and I am very very stupid. There's your proof. Maybe a month from now I will be less stupid.

I have no idea how I am gonna pull off getting an apartment when I don't even know the word for "apartment." Apparently it is neither "apartamente" nor "apartamento" as I had been kind of banking on. I need to figure out the food thing, too. Before I starve to death. Today I ate a gelato. That's it. I kept being asleep during business hours.

Day 4.

Reached Bologna today. The first thing that happened was that I stepped in dog shit. My hotel is so far from the city center I think I may actually be back in France. I saw an apartment advertised for $245 a month. So they exist.

Day 5.

Late last night I became convinced that a kid in an internet point in Foggia had gotten my ATM card and gotten all the money in my account and spent it on sleeveless yellow shirts that say "Rich" and pink plaid shorts and hair product. Within minutes I was left with my only option being a plan to go out to the train tracks 10 feet from my window, lay my head on them and wait until a train came and killed me. I'm not exaggerating when I say trains are howling past my window every 6 minutes. It felt like a sign. So 4 days in and I am already on the brink of suicide. Things aren't going so good. I started out the day so happy to be in a city where I was less obviously out of place. I decided I could "dress cool" in Bologna, unlike the small town I had started out in where I looked like a terrorist to everyone. A big win there. I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant. I think the baseball hat and Blue Oyster Cult shirt I was wearing really pissed the waiter off. He totally ignored me. It didn't help that during the painfully stilted ordering melee, anytime he asked me something I nodded my head like an idiot. "Do you want wine?" Nod. "Red or white?" Nod. "Red or white?" Nod. Then, "Oh yeah. Um..blanco?" Fucking Spanish. Agh. To be fair I was so hungry I couldn't see straight. To impress him I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. There was a point where I was waiting for him to bring me the stupid wine (which he intentionally didn't do 'til after my food came, I know it) and I began to think "I am in a struggle of wills here with this fucking waiter. Things aren't going so good. Things are going very wrong."

There was a French couple next to me, an ancient British couple toasting their zillion-year relationship next to them and some Germans in the middle. The old British dude got drunk and started forcing the French people to listen to his itinerary of the past two days, which was visiting all the Italian and Moroccan or whatever cities he was stationed in during the Second World War. He was in the Eighth Army which was impressive. The French guy politely listened and tried to get out of the conversation a couple times. The Germans quietly ate roasted Jew-meat.

PART II

Day 6.

Today I walked around muttering "Don't look at me, greaseball" under my breath and fantasizing about going back to America and living in Key West where I could listen to Jimmy Buffett all the time and drink myself to death. I have decided that I am glad I'm American. I mean if anything at least I don't dress like I'm colorblind and gay. These people are stupid. If I don't get an apartment tomorrow I am going back to America and living in Florida or New Orleans or something. This decision came to me today after a bus drove past my waving hand. Of course once I made the decision I started having fun interactions with people, one of which was a beautiful girl. I walked around and around in Bologna, like everyone else, but with a pissed off look on my face, muttering.

Things I need to write down:

The move to Italy may have been a disaster but at least I got to see a woman actually kick her child.

They make the sign of the cross even when they just pass a church. I saw a woman do it from inside her car as it made a left turn in front of one.

Today was the first time I didn't think, "Eee..yore ..oh, what the the fuck is eeyooreohh?" It's "euro!" They talk different!

Anytime I have an exchange with someone and I understand what they are saying I grin and make a stupid thumbs-up signal. I must stop this. Not only does it make me look like some kind of fool, who knows what a thumb means here. They have all these hand signals. They're like referees. I could very well be saying, "Yes I would like it up my ass, please" for all I know. I have to stop doing this.

There are a lot of Italians wearing American sports shirts. The Rams are popular and strangely enough, so are the Celtics. Today there was a guy wearing a shirt that said, "CUSB" in the Cubs font. See? Stupid. No, maybe it was some soccer thing, I don't know, or care.

Honestly I don't think I am gonna make it. I am thinking pretty hard about going to some nowhere beachtown in Florida or some shit and hiding out from everyone I know who keeps emailing and asking how my awesome life tanning on the Adriatic has turned out. The Adriatic turned out to be polluted and I don't think my money will hold out if I go down to Amalfi/Salerno and try the west coast.

September 6, 2005

I haven't been able to write for like a week or something. What ended up happening was that I got this apartment in Barcelona from the 9 th of September till the 5 th of October. I will use this time to regroup and make some money. I went to Barcelona on Aug 30 to get out of expensive fucking Italy. I had to borrow $600 from my ex-girlfriend to make up for the lost Miami ticket money. Ten days to kill before I can move into the apartment.

The second night in Barcelona I ended up at a Brazilian bar with two Australian girls from the hostel. Both times I went to the bathroom, Spaniards kept talking to me as if I could understand them so I felt good. They thought I was local. I told this to the girls and they said it was because of my tan. Very deep tan right now. Anyway I was feeling good. Later on I had to go to the bathroom again and was in line with all these women when I realized I had been using the ladies room all night. They weren't talking to me because I was tan. They were talking to me because they thought I was some kind of American fag-perv. This is how it is. I do everything wrong.

The other day I was looking for a library (for the third consecutive day) and found this university area where I could practically smell a room of computers that I could hook up to the network on no problemo. Even though I never understand the directions given me I decided to go in a bookstore and ask where the library was since it was very likely ten feet away. Part of the problem has been that the word "library" in Spanish is "biblioteca" and the word "bookstore" is "libreria" so I ask for a biblioteca and they immediately think I'm looking for a bookstore and say "libreria?" and I'm like, "No, library" and they say "Oh yeah no problem, it's right over there." Then I say "Really? Gracias!" and make the stupid thumbs up signal and go and every single fucking time it turns out to be a goddamn bookstore. Anyway I went into this bookstore figuring they would know I was not looking for a bookstore if I was actually inside one when asking for the library and the girl behind the counter was on the phone. I waited patiently and leaned on the counter feeling like in Barcelona, especially in a university area, an American looking for directions was not so exotic or upsetting as to elicit the open mouthed staring that seemed to follow me everywhere in Italy. In leaning, I put my hand on the counter and had a look around the silent bookstore. My hand came down on a clear plastic display holding pamphlets and books that was triangular shaped, with a lip. The lip came off the counter just enough so that when I rested on it, the weight of my hand turned it into like a catapult and the pamphlets and books went shooting straight up in the air and then all over the floor behind me. I made some kind of "aaagh" noise and cleaned them up and left. At the next bookstore I went in and didn't touch anything. The girl behind the counter said the library was a big white building right around the corner. I asked her to write it down but she was like "It's RIGHT around the corner." So I went and there were two huge white buildings, one of which was the museum of contemporary art and the other one looked like a prison and had no door.

One major success was finding a beach outside the city. I was given directions by an Australian girl who was like, "You just take the Metro to gagthla-pass-ay-eege-d-grashasgagala and catch the train to blah blah blah." And I was like, "ok whatever." But found it anyway. The town did turn out to be pretty much for gay men only, dashing my pathetic daydream on the train that involved one of those traveler-meets-also-traveling-girl-and-they-have-sex-in-a-bathroom stories you're always hearing, but I found it. I was ordering food at this place and these guys were snickering at my inability to speak Spanish to the waiter or understand that the menu really only consisted of either skinny hot dogs or fat hot dogs when, tired of being looked at all the time, I turned to them and growled "What is the fuckin problem?" which I guess scared them because they turned away fast. This was before I realized it was a gay hotspot town (like the biggest in Spain of course) and they were just trying to flirt with me probably. Now I feel guilty.

Day ?

I slept almost all day today, to avoid spending money. The best part of the day was the last hour when, over the stereo system that plays throughout the hostel -- in the common area and in the hallways -- they played an entire Doors collection that had lots of good live stuff and of course finished up with "The End." I could hear it from my bed, echoing through the halls. The natural reverb made the song sound even more ethereal and foreboding than usual.

I move into the apartment where I can start working and making money again in two days.

Two, three weeks later:

I moved into the sublet. Life has become easier and I was able to make some money. Maybe too easy. Last night I bought myself a plane ticket to Bangkok where there is a room in a mansion available for $200 US a month. I was gonna stay in Barcelona, or go down to Cadiz but decided that Europe is the same as the States, just with less fat people and no pool tables. I am going to Southeast Asia. I am going to have a silk suit made for myself and it will fit me perfectly. I will pay a dollar to have sex with teenagers and I will smoke heroin out of a human skull in a foxhole in Vietnam.

Things I Need To Write Down

I was on a bus on the freeway, going 60mph or so and we passed a garbage truck going at approximately the same speed in the lane next to us. Because I was elevated in the bus I could see the roof of the truck and there was a guy asleep on top of the cab. On top.

I was in the front seat of a taxi on the way to Patpong one night, with two girls in the back seat. We were in one of these huge Bangkok traffic jams and had been sitting behind a pickup truck for maybe 25 minutes when I finally noticed the back of the truck was piled high with this pink, jiggling quantity. I looked closer and realized it was pig carcasses, all gutted. There was a guy holding a pole standing on top of the pile, to make sure none fell out. The pile was actually higher than the cab of the truck and my first thought was "I can't wait to be eating those tomorrow."

Later in the same traffic jam I had to get out and find a place to pee. It was an emergency. Finding a spot to pee took forever and when I went back to the taxi, it had moved maybe 25 feet. I said "Come on, let's just walk" since we were only a half mile from our destination. The girls talked animatedly a second and eventually agreed. So they got out, I paid the cabbie and we walked. This was in my first year of living here and now that I think back on it, doing what we did was something Thai people would never, ever do. Pretty sure it's a Buddhist thing, or the shame of showing an emotion besides glee maybe. In any case it was one of those situations where the farang in the group wanted to do something unthinkable or impolite and they just had to go with it.

I live next to a very large Wat of some kind. I have been told it's a place were they hold funerals. Early evening one night I was walking past it and there were 5 or 6 monks near the car entrance repairing an iron fence with a blowtorch. They were all barefoot and wearing their bright orange robes. The guy clumsily working the blowtorch had a welder's mask on but besides that he had no protective gear on at all, just the silk robe. There were sparks flying everywhere. Two of the monks were hunched down next to him apparently giving advice while the rest of them milled around laughing nervously. They clearly had no idea what they were doing.

I was lurching through a darkened area one night and was descended upon by a gang of ladyboys looking to pick my pocket. I made it through the first group unscathed but the second wave, a single dude working alone, put her arms around me and got to my wallet before I could. In fact got it out of my pocket before I could even get my hand back there to block her. In Thai I said, "Please, I only have a thousand baht. Please. I am not lying" and wai'd her (which I never do because I don't really understand how and when to do it right). She looked at me for a second and then handed me the wallet and pointed at the ground, where my money was sitting. This all happened in a split second -- she had gotten my wallet and tossed my money on the ground so fast I couldn't have seen it without a slow-motion camera.

Another thing about wai'ing. I really have no idea how and when to do it but I know it is an important part of Thai culture and expression. Because I wanted to do something when people address me and because I had seen immaculately dressed security guards do it at malls here, I started saluting people. I don't know if this is seen as acceptable or weird or what but for years now when I leave my house, the gang of motorcycle guys at the end of my street all salute me, and as I walk down my sidewalk to the skytrain, the waitstaff at a restaurant I pass each time all stop, straighten up and give me a crisp, grinning salute, which I return. I love this.

I took this girl named O to see King Kong when it came out. She worked at a truly reprehensible go go bar called Red Lips. Ugh what a hole. One of the times I went there I was sitting at the bar outside it, having drinks with O who was eating dinner. She had put her food aside and was giving me a long description of her 2 hour daily commute (motorcycle to taxi to skytrain) when I noticed a pretty big rat on the rail nibbling her food. I pointed to it exclaiming, "Holy shit!" O said "He won't eat much." But she did throw the food away. When we went to the movie, we were sitting in our seats as the lights went down and O said "I have not been to the movies in 10 years. Farang only take me short time." I was like, "Yeah I know, sorry. Weirdo." When the movie was over she was crying. She hit me on the arm and said "Why you take me to sad movie?"

Mistakes Were Made

A few weeks ago I had a girlfriend of sorts. I met this girl named Bee who spoke excellent english, was patient with my awful Thai and was very sweet and was also way out of my league looks-wise. She liked me for a little while and we had a couple dates. On the best one of the dates we ate fancy Thai food at a restaurant called MK (one of the dishes was this plate piled high with indescribably roasted duck) and bought stuff at a big department store attached to it. Good date. In the store I handed Bee 5000 baht and said, "Make my room nice. Like yours." So she bought really nice sheets, fat pillows, a new fan, a rice cooker, Q-Tips, a new toothbrush, two small rugs, expensive soap and fluffy towels. I bought her a pair of shoes, a bathing suit and a blow dryer that she spent 25 minutes deciding on ("It must have power, but I want it is small"). Then we went back to my apartment and I assembled the fan while she put the sheets on the bed and took care of the pillow cases and made a small kitchen area on one of my tables for the ricer, set up the toiletry stuff. It was awesome! Awesome. Then she had to leave and go work as a prostitute. That was not as awesome.

She was 26, smart, beautiful -- everything. But I screwed it up, in a big, ugly way. The last time I saw her I was in her bar. She was sitting with a customer but kept coming over to talk to me. This is a bar right on the edge of a busy Nana Plaza corner and I like to sit there and smoke cigarettes and watch the other sick bastards walk by. I hadn't realized she had a customer while I was sitting there and when I did make the connection I was like, "Don't worry, you don't need to keep coming over here. I am not gonna get weird." Really I should have called first. I wasn't jealous and she wasn't hiding anything from me, it just would have been better if I had called and given her the option to say "Yes, come here" or "Not a good night to come here," or if I had not gone in at all. Either way, not the best decision. I didn't want to complicate her night and she didn't want me to feel shitty. It wasn't tense in any way and she wasn't upset and neither was I but when I got up to leave she came running over and said, "Gimme a hundred baht." This is where my chance at a nice sweet girlfriend went up in smoke.

I had only a single 1000 baht bill til I got paid (anywhere from two to five days) and had already worked out in my mind how much of it I was gonna drink (900 baht's worth of it). So there was that. Also I had just bought her three drinks (which puts 120 baht in her pocket from the bar). And lastly I felt weird handing her the 1000 baht bill and waiting for her to go make change. This seems crass doesn't it? I should either give her a hundred baht bill or the whole thousand, right? Right? Agh. And a hundred baht is such a tiny amount of money, I figured it could not be that big a deal. So horror of horrors, dick of dicks I said, "I don't got it. Get it from the customer." Bee smiled and said, "Sure, okay" but that was it. Game over.

****
I was shooting pool in a bar the other night and the first Terminator was on the TV and the girls working were astonished when I explained to them the guy in the movie was governor of California. Schwarzeneggar was firing a machine gun into a crowd of people in a disco, training the red light laser scope right onto the middle of Linda Hamilton's forehead and the girls were like, "Him?" I said, "Yes. Some day he will be president."

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.