Bangkok Boy

by Chai Pinit

  I could scarcely believe Arun was responsible for nearly killing me. We’d been drinking buddies when we worked as go-go boys, but he started taking drugs and was never the same again. The police had arrested him numerous times, and his rap sheet was a veritable litany of charges involving either assault or minor drug possession. The police had him over a barrel at this point and threatened to prosecute again unless he participated in drugs stings. All the go-go boys knew what he was doing and so naturally didn’t trust him. He brazenly asked for a ‘loan’ to buy drugs, supposedly for one of these stings. He was clearly lying though, and was only looking to fund his habit. When I refused him, he cursed my name and stormed off.

  Arun disappeared and it was several months before he resurfaced. When he did, it was as if nothing had happened between us; he was civil, so I assumed he’d put our differences behind him. I was clearly wrong though; he’d been nursing a grudge and was waiting for an opportunity to exact revenge. I should’ve known he was a loose cannon, and that he was capable of anything.

  Arun openly boasted that he’d fought as a child soldier for Heng Samrin. He claimed he’d been part of a movement backed by Vietnam and the Soviet Union to overthrow Pol Pot and bring an end to the Khmer Rouge’s regime. He loved to brag about his exploits, even several times claiming to have eaten human flesh in order to survive.

  It’s hard to imagine, but it would take 12 hours before I was found lying unconscious. During the morning the soi is deserted. Being home to bars and businesses, it doesn’t come to life until late in the afternoon. An acquaintance happened upon me and, spotting me lying facedown, didn’t pay much attention because he presumed I was just sleeping off yet another night on the town. He shook his head disapprovingly and was ready to walk by. It was only as he came closer that he realised all was not right. I was lying unnaturally still and my limbs were placed at awkward angles. He tried to shake me awake but I wouldn’t budge. So he turned me over and the sight of my swollen, battered body sent him reeling. I was completely limp and he was sure I was dead, so he called the police and paramedics. Amidst blaring sirens and flashing lights, I was loaded into the back of an ambulance. They rushed me to the nearest hospital which happened to be an expensive private facility. On seeing I had no identification on me and that I might not have insurance, they refused to admit me, despite the fact I could’ve died. So I was reloaded into the ambulance and sent to the nearest public hospital instead. I have no notion of any of this as I only barely regained consciousness four days after I was admitted.

  Nuan told me she hadn’t recognised the bloated, shaved-headed man whom the nurse insisted was me. I was wrapped in so many bandages I looked like a mummy. It was only when Nuan lifted the bedcovers and took a peek at my feet that she believed the disfigured shape was me.

  When I finally came to, it was as though I was in a waking coma. I was incoherent and confused. I had no idea where I was. I was convinced I was in a different hospital—one I had been admitted to in the past. I suppose I remembered that the staff in that hospital were always very kind to me so subconsciously I wished I was there. When Nuan insisted I wasn’t in that hospital, I became irate. I was convinced the staff in the current hospital were inferior and insisted I be transferred immediately. I was vocal about my misgivings, accusing the nurses of looking down on me and mistreating me. My belligerent behaviour definitely didn’t earn me any friends and eventually caused the nurses to shun me.

  When I regained some strength, Nuan recounted how she’d found me. After I vandalised our room and stormed back to the bar in a huff, she returned home with Chuan to find the landlord angrily blocking the entrance.

  ‘Your belongings are in a garbage bag. Don’t ever come here again. Tell your good-for-nothing husband he isn’t welcome either,’ he yelled.

  Nuan was distraught. She rang a friend of hers who runs a small laundry shop asking if she could offer temporary refuge as she was completely broke. Thankfully, Nuan’s friend’s husband was working in Lopburi at the time and felt it’d be good for his wife to have company. So Nuan and Chuan were made welcome. Nuan tearfully told her how I’d let her down yet again, saying that if she’d known I was still addicted to alcohol she would never have reconciled with me.

  Nuan promised to earn her keep working in the laundry and helping out with household chores. She called to a grocery store in Soi Twilight to ask if the owner, Auntie Pin, knew of my whereabouts. I often bought liquor from her store so she knew me well. Auntie Pin replied, ‘I’m sure Chai is just drunk somewhere close by. Don’t worry, dear. He probably hasn’t stumbled too far.’

  Arun had attacked me in the early hours of Sunday morning. By Monday evening, when Nuan still hadn’t received word of my whereabouts, she collected Chuan from school and searched Silom looking for me.

  Passing through the soi, a good-humoured grilled squid vendor stopped Nuan to ask her how I was. Nuan knew the woman vaguely and was surprised when she enquired, ‘Is your husband getting better? Only good merit will get him up and walking again.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Nuan asked.

  ‘Didn’t you know he was attacked? They say his skull was cracked open. There’s very little chance of him . . .’ The vendor managed to catch herself before disclosing the seriousness of the situation. But her body language had said it all.

  Nuan frantically asked what hospital I was in and sped off to find me.

  Since the Patpong ‘tell-a-friend’ communication services work better than the telephone, Sao caught wind of my assault and made an unexpected visit to the hospital. She disclosed that she’d been struggling to make ends meet while working as a bar girl. She said that she needed me and implored me to return and help support her. I saw no reason to get back with her, but still kept these thoughts to myself. She’d given away Phot, so I would have to be insane to return to such a negative situation. Rather than risk an unpleasant confrontation, I just told her that we’d talk once I got better. I never heard from her again, so presumably she got the message.

  My time in hospital provided both Nuan and me with ample opportunity to talk things over. She knew Sao had visited me but refused to fight with her. Nuan told me I was free to go back to her if I wanted. Instead, I chose to give our small family another chance and asked her to do the same. I reassured her that after my release from hospital I wanted to really change this time—no more false starts.

  All in all, Nuan has been fantastic; she managed to juggle her daily visits to the hospital with raising Chuan. She insisted the police should take action and put pressure on them to bring Arun to justice. I respected her more and more with each passing day and began to realise how fortunate I was to have her in my life.

  After she gathered as much information about the attack as possible, she headed to the police station and filed an official complaint. The police officer working the case called Sophon in for questioning. He asked why he hadn’t done more to stop the assault, or at least taken me to the hospital after it. Sophon told him that he thought it best to let the bar owners take care of the matter. But a simple phone call to the police would’ve sufficed and he didn’t even do that.

  I really can’t understand his logic at all. I was attacked at around 5am and he had plenty of time to go get help; instead, he just left me for dead. When the ambulance finally came, there was a huge crowd of onlookers gathered to see what all the commotion was. We have a saying, Thai mung, which translates as ‘a Thai stare’. It’s a cultural thing. If an accident occurs everyone rushes to peer at what has happened; few do anything to help the situation though. It’s as if an accident is a welcome distraction from the monotony of their humdrum existence, by providing them with something new to gossip about. I must be careful not to become embittered about this outlook though. In reality it was my own fault I ended up in hospital. It’s about time I stopped blaming others and started taking responsibility for my actions. The indiffer
ent world won’t readily lend me a helping hand, that’s for sure.

  My doctor initially told Nuan there was very little chance I’d regain consciousness and even if I did, I’d be a vegetable at best. My recovery exceeded the doctor’s expectation though. Meanwhile, Nuan was becoming increasingly frustrated with the police and their failure to take action. In a moment of utter disgust, she accused them of allowing scores of known criminals roam the streets, and even brought up the issue of my father’s murder. She reproached them for failing to deliver justice and said that she hoped my case would be different. She warned them that she’d take the matter to the Crime Suppression Bureau if the local Metropolitan Police didn’t prove good. Nuan was clearly very upset about the attack and was worried Arun would come after her and Chuan. To be fair, he was completely deranged, so there was no telling what he was capable of. Nuan told the police that she’d already been disappointed by them once, and that she wouldn’t settle for such incompetence a second time.

  It was over seven years since my father was murd-ered; my sister Nit took the matter to the police department a few years back but the commander responsible for investigation asked her to withdraw her complaint. He assured her if she did as he requested he would personally see to it the murderers were brought to justice. She was afraid of him and backed down but she never heard a peep from him again. Nuan refused to be bullied, reasoning if she left the police to their own devices and didn’t continue to put them under pressure then justice wouldn’t be served. Thankfully, her insistence paid off.

  A friend informed me that Arun was working in front of a hotel in another district of Bangkok. His working outside of his usual domain was obviously an attempt to keep a low profile. I passed this information on to the officer working my case and he immediately issued a warrant for Arun’s arrest. He was to be charged with physical assault but I believe it should have been attempted murder. That would be difficult to prove though. Arun protested his innocence, insisting that we’d been friends for a long time and he’d no reason to harm me. Arun is currently in the prison awaiting trial.

  When I was first admitted to the hospital I underwent a blood transfusion, receiving six litres in total. I was bleeding inside my skull due to the head injuries I’d sustained and the volume of blood was putting a lot of pressure on my brain. I had to have several operations that involved opening my skull to relieve the pressure. I received 100 stitches to my head alone.

  My medical bills amounted to over 100,000 baht. But Nuan begged the hospital to cover my costs under the governmental 30-baht healthcare scheme and thankfully, they agreed.

  During our many heartfelt conversations, Nuan and I would discuss our future plans for raising Chuan. Nuan worries that he’ll one day become a bar boy, a kind of karmic punishment for the fact that it was bar-boy earnings that fed and clothed him during infancy. Indeed, he is highly familiar with the sights and sounds of Soi Twilight as he and Nuan used to call to collect me after my shifts. He could easily have been led to believe that being a go-go boy is about having fun and partying.

  We both agreed to find alternative work, and planned to save up money to put a deposit on a modest house far away from the bar scene and red-light districts. Soi Patpong and Soi Twilight might feel like home to me, but they’re simply not suitable places in which to raise children.

  After the attack, a few bar owners kindly sent small amounts of money to help with expenses. These men were never part of my drinking circle yet I consider them true friends for their kindness. They were always the ones warning me to curtail my spending and to watch my behaviour. I can’t thank them enough for the kindness they showed me.

  This might not make sense to Westerners, but I believe that the terrible karma I committed in my past lives rendered me incapable of seeing the error of my ways in this one. We Thais say ‘karma has thrown a veil over my head’. Until I’ve paid for my former sins, I’m fated to stumble blindly on through the obstacle course of my present life. No amount of warning could lift my karmic veil and keep me from going off the rails.

  Thais like all kinds of fortune-telling; be it palm-reading, tarot cards, horoscopes, or dream analysis. I’ve visited different fortune-tellers down through the years and all of them have confirmed that I’m shadowed by a karmic hex, and burdened by a large amount of karmic baggage.

  My last reading prior to the attack was done by a man who had a table next to a charity foundation that is best known for their rescue work. I sometimes donated money to this foundation to make merit. The money is used to buy coffins for people who don’t have anyone to cover the expenses of a funeral. In most cases, the dead do have friends or relatives but for some reason these people don’t want to take responsibility for them. There are several such foundations and they employ ‘volunteers’ to race around in pick-up trucks, ensuring they are the first to arrive at the scene of an accident, murder, or some other type of tragedy. They get paid for every body that is taken either to a hospital, morgue, or to the foundation. On occasion, the jewellery and wallets of the injured or dead disappear en route. For this reason their activities are jokingly referred to as body-snatching. Since employees work on a commission basis, some rival foundations have been known to fight over bodies, especially during major disasters. Sometimes employees will ignore the rules of the road and actually cause accidents themselves in their haste to get to the scene of an accident.

  You may wonder why I bother to donate to such operations. Well, in their defence, they are often willing to do some of the less desirable jobs like cleaning up after a road accident, jobs at which even the police baulk. These foundations also donate to prisoners annually and help to hospitalise the dangerous or mentally deranged among them; and these are just a few of the many other good deeds they perform.

  Whenever I visited the foundation, I handed my donation over to the officer on duty and he issued a receipt which would be pasted on one of the empty coffins. Dozens of these coffins are lined up side by side, and there are gory pictures of all types of horrific accidents adorning the walls. Little did I know I’d soon come very close to filling one of these coffins.

  It’s normal practice to have one’s fortune read immediately after merit making, so I obligingly visited the nearby fortune-teller. He asked for my date of birth and also for the exact time. He wrote the figures down and pored over them for a few moments, while carrying out some mental calculations. A shadow passed over his face.

  ‘This year will be a very bad year for you,’ he said.

  He instructed me to go to a certain Chinese shrine and worship three specific gods otherwise a great tragedy would befall me. He also commented that I was unable to return to my place of birth for some reason. I admitted I was a former juvenile delinquent and had offended many people in my village. What followed was a tirade of ethical mumbo-jumbo, the essence of which was that I needed to learn how to control my temper and be more patient. Had he not issued such a self-righteous lecture I might have taken his ominous predictions more seriously.

  There wasn’t really a need for me to visit fortune-tellers. All my life, the people closest to me were already warning that I was travelling along a self-destructive path. Even then I knew they spoke the truth but I was blinded by pride. Hell, even my own son rebuked me when I drank. If he was in a bad mood or was exceptionally unruly he’d dismiss my corrections, telling me that I was a bad example and therefore not worth listening to.

  Having barely made it out of the hospital in one piece my perspective on life has been irrevocably altered. All deities, karma, and mortal beings aside, I’m finally coming to the conclusion that I am responsible for my own actions. I feel that if my life is to change for the better it’s up to me alone to steer it in the right direction. I can’t allow myself to obsess over the past, nor find scapegoats in the various people I’ve crossed paths with; neither my bad friends, nor my abusive teacher, nor my first farang client. What good will
it do for me to point the finger at these ghosts? I may not be able to rewrite history, but I can change my attitude towards life now to secure a good future.

  It’s clear that drink most certainly doesn’t suit me. Abstinence is only the beginning; I have a lot of work to do. I’ve been blindly blaming others for all my failings, waging war on a faceless adversary only to discover that the greatest adversary is none other than myself—I am my own worst enemy. It’s only now I’m ready to lay down my weapons and make peace with myself, while at the same time vanquishing the demons which have haunted me for so many years.

  EPILOGUE

  A year has passed since I last wrote, and I thought it was time to wrap up my thoughts. The reason I have waited till now is that I thought I still lacked a proper conclusion to my story. Now, at last, I believe I can provide one.

  I’m back on the streets. This time it’s different though. I’m able to walk and am still in my right mind, remarkably enough. I can also talk, laugh and wheel and deal once more. However, I think the gods have short-circuited me since my accident: even if I wanted to, I simply couldn’t drink as much as I used to. My body gets tired and just won’t permit me; it’s as if the gods have made a divine pronouncement over my life saying, mai owe laew, that is ‘no more’. This, I reckon, is the payment that has been required of me for their good will in keeping me alive. But I’m even forbidden to drink coffee—they really do have a sense of humour I think. So I resort to eating sweets as a substitute for these forbidden luxuries. I suck and suck, as if to swallow all my cravings for the destruction I once poured so copiously down my throat. As I walk I hope that I might continue swallowing these yearnings in future. If I overstep the ordained bounds, I will further damage my brain, which surely would signal the end. I’ll actually become the vegetable the doctors had predicted I’d be. So, I obey the doctors, pray, suck my sweets and, most significantly, I do not drink.