And pedophilia feeds Cambodia. Danny saw them daily. Old men boarding tuk tuks or taxis…driving out of town to hunt for exotic sexual tastes. Young. Multiple. There was nothing western money couldn’t purchase in Cambodia. A land fractured and pitted by war and genocide. Corruption runs deeply. Anything is for sale. Politicians. Children. Whole communities. Mothers sold their daughters into the sex trade, often as young as five. Taxis and tuk tuks got kickbacks from pimps when they delivered customers. Bars. Police. All in on it. All part of the movement of people from cities to provinces, rich seeking poor, predators seeking prey.
And they came in droves. New flights daily. Men and women. Young and old. A parade of pedophiles feasting on the children and disadvantaged. Blind eyes all around turning to avoid the obvious, or seeking a cut of the profits.
Danny was both sickened and intrigued by what he saw. He watched it like waiting for trains to collide. He couldn’t look away. Calamity attracts the voyeur.
He looked up a bit annoyed as someone took the stool next to his. He moved his beer over, and turned more directly to the street, making his space smaller and moving his focus away from this intruder. He was further annoyed when, after ordering his beer, this new stranger spoke to him.
“I love the view here,” he said, aloud, simply speaking loud enough to be heard above the music. Danny always hated bar etiquette…speak loud enough to get someone to turn their head, and then you are their new best friend. When Danny only nodded, he spoke again. “Name’s Mike,” he said, and Danny saw his hand coming towards him.
Though he was annoyed at the disturbance of his observation, he gave a slight smile, offered his own hand, and said, “Danny.”
“Hey Danny. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, likewise.” He hoped that would be the end of it, but Mike didn’t take hints well.
“I love to sit here and watch the people go by. Looks like you like the same.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“It’s like watching the human condition all on one city block.”
He let out a “huh” as a small laugh, and then agreed. “Yeah, strange indeed.”
“I often sit here and drink beers into the morning, just watching what goes by. I love to see the mix of foreigners and locals. Phnom Penh is such a dynamic city. I love how it balances on the razor’s edge of madness and sanity…never choosing to fall on either side.”
Danny gave him a look…eyebrow cocked up. “Dude!”
“Was that too corny?”
“Ha ha…yeah…”
“Sorry. Just feeling a little poetic tonight.”
“Okay, man.”
“So look, I’m not bothering you, am I?”
“Well…no…” He hoped Mike would take the hesitation as a hint. He didn’t.
“Ah, good. So are you meeting someone here?”
“No, I’m just sitting here having a couple beers and people watching.”
“Ah, cool. I like to do the same thing.”
La was standing next to them. She smiled and nodded her head acknowledging her interruption. “Danny, you want another beer?”
“Yeah La…thank you.” She paused and smiled at him.
Then she looked to Mike and asked, “Do you want one too?”
“Yes, please.” La moved back to the bar, Mike looked at him for a second. “Dude, are you dating her?”
“La? No, man.”
“Okay…”
“Why?”
“Well, she seemed to really like you.”
“Well, she probably likes everybody in here.”
“Nah, she is polite and nice to everybody, but she seems to like you. Maybe I’m wrong…”
“Well, I come in here a lot. She just knows me.”
“Seemed to me like she liked you…but what do I know?” he asked with feigned indifference.
“Maybe…you never know. Everybody here has a game.”
“You saying she’s a scammer?” He looked back over his shoulder at her.
“No, not at all. It’s just that we’re all here playing games of some kind, yeah?”
“You mean me?”
“I mean all of us.”
Mike was ready to be offended. “I’m not here for any game. What do you mean?”
“Don’t be upset. I mean, what are we all doing here?”
“Not upset,” though he was, “Just don’t know what you mean. I’m here to travel and see the world.”
“Nothing else?”
“Like what?”
“Everybody I meet here is running from something.”
“Well, I’m not. Just trying to see the world and have a good time. Are you running from something?” His sarcasm was purposeful.
“Yes.”
“Yeah?” He was surprised by Danny’s response.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, okay. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Let’s change the subject.”
“What are you running from?”
“Never mind. Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay. Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to come across shitty.”
“No, you didn’t. I get it. We all are living our own lives for our own reasons. I shouldn’t have judged, Mike. I should’ve only spoken for myself. So how long have you been here?”
“I’ve been here in ‘PP’ for a few months. Before that I was in Hanoi.”
“Ah, Hanoi. I need to get there. How did you like it?” Danny now turned and regarded Mike.
“Well, it was kinda cold. I like the warmer weather down here.”
As he finished his beer, La was bringing them their orders. He had lost count of how many he had already. He felt a bit lightheaded but not drunk.
“Akoon, La” he said. She smiled.
They sat a bit quietly, and Danny drank some of his beer. He was looking out into the street, watching traffic and people again. He felt the conversation with Mike had gone as far as it would go. They were out of small talk, unless someone introduced a new topic. Mike did.
“So do you want to go to a girl club?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“Air Force, I think.”
“Okay.” His heart wasn’t in it, but he was already tired of this place. He couldn’t admit to himself that La’s flirtations were noticed. He couldn’t admit that he was attracted to her. He couldn’t admit that the thought of being with a woman scared him. He knew he wasn’t ready. So leaving was better, he thought.
As the tuk tuk pulled up into the Wat Phnom area, they saw the rows of bars, and the girls waiting outside to lure in customers. Mike paid the driver $2, and they walked up to the bar. They were greeted by three girls sitting outside. “Hello well come to Air Force Bar. You come inside okay?” They felt the hands on them, taking note to feel where the hands were going. Danny had not yet been robbed, but he always knew hands were probing his awareness.
As they went inside, the thick smoke, crowded room, multi-colored lights, and old Air Force pictures hit them all at once.
“I love these old, cheesy Air Force pictures. They’re so 1970,” Mike said, speaking loudly above the music and the catcalling girls.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. That’s an old F-4 over there,” pointing to a large painting on the back right wall.
“How do you know?”
“See the air intakes next to the fuselage like that?”
“No, I mean, ‘how do you know about jets?’”
“I was in the Air Force for a few years…got tossed out though.”
“Oh, bummer.”
“Yeah, was stupid,” he lowered his voice as the last song ended. When the music began again, he again raised his voice. “I got popped on a urinalysis…stupid to keep smoking when I joined, but I was young.”
“Sorry to hear that.” He didn’t know anything else to say.
“Anyway, they had already retired these old jets when I was in, and I got out a long time ago.”
“Well, I guess these pictures date
to when we were in Cambodia.”
“Yeah. Vietnam War. Makes sense.”
“Sure.”
On the way to a back table, they ordered two Tiger beers from the bartender. As they did, hands from the working girls touched them, tugging lightly at their shirts. Mike felt a hand on his butt as well. As veterans of Cambodia’s bar scene, they ignored the touches, and kept moving on. The gentle grabs released when they walked. They sat at the table and waited for their beers.
The smell of Cambodian bars is unmistakable. Musty, dried sweat, coupled with cheap beer, cheaper perfume, and musky body odors, both bitter and sweet at the same time. Thankfully, the air conditioner battled the outside elements. Danny carried a small hand towel in his pocket, and he used this to wipe the sweat from the outside.
“No matter how long I’m here, I never get used to the swampy heat,” he said, absently, almost to himself.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Hanoi was nice weather-wise, if a bit cold…but pretty boring compared to Kampuchea.”
“Here they come….” Danny noted, as three bar girls approached. All three were rather weathered—too plump for the short-shorts they wore, and too much belly hanging out from their short t-shirts. He saw too many dark, empty spaces in their mouths. Too many stretch marks on their partially exposed bellies.
“Hey dare guys, you want party wit us?” the oldest of the three challenged.
Both Mike and Danny knew the routine…they were going to be stuck with these girls…no amount of naysaying would chase them away. Danny was happy that Mike took care of it.
“Sorry, girls” Mike said in a very firm voice. “We don’t like old, ugly ladies. Do you have younger sisters? You’re too fat for us.” The whole bar heard it, and all eyes were on them.
The ladies, visibly upset, cursed in Khmer and pointed among themselves, walking away with snarls and extended fingers.
“Well, that worked!” Danny laughed. “I’ll have to remember that!”
“I hate wasting time with the old, toothless ones. The better looking ones drift in and out, but these old-timers never seem to leave.”
“Well, they figure they can badger you into buying them a drink. That’s about all they have.”
“Yeah, I get the game…just get tired of it at times. The girls in Hanoi were more…demure.”
“I need to get there.”
“You really do.”
They paused for a bit and looked around the bar. A song was playing, but it was in Cambodian, so neither of them thought much of it. An old Western man past his sixties was chain-smoking near the front door, and he had been doing it a while; the room was more smoky than usual. By him sat a girl in her twenties. Slim. Distant look. Pretending to be listening to him as he smoked and talked. Pretending the smoke in her eyes didn’t bother her. This was the reality of the professional women in Southeast Asia…trying to close the deal with a man old enough to be her grandfather, and listening to stories with no meaning to her in a language she barely understood.
As they sat and sipped their beers, they watched the show. Cambodian and Western men talked with the prettiest girls in the place. The girls quickly sipped their “lady drinks,” that the men would purchase for the pleasure of the lady’s company. The ladies earned a portion of the drink, and so they drank them as quickly as they could, without appearing to be doing so. They drank faster when they sat with Western men.
At the bar stood two men, one black with an African accent, and one white with a European accent. With them sat three girls, all sipping drinks in a workmanlike manner. They were talking among themselves, and the girls whispered and nudged each other, no doubt checking the plays they intended to run. The men were speaking English and French to each other, a bit too loudly. The alcohol had turned off their quiet voices.
Danny disliked them immediately. He knew the increasing volume of their voices meant a good chance of things getting out of hand, as people did when on vacation here. Tourists always annoyed expats.
“Don’t worry about them, man,” Mike said.
Danny turned and looked at him. He suddenly realized he had been staring at the men at the bar, and they were already looking back, though casually so. “Sorry, man…I hate that drunken type here. They’re always a buzzkill.”
“Yeah, I hear you. We can leave after these beers if you want.”
“Nah, it’s okay. If I left every bar that had someone too drunk or too loud I’d never be able to drink. So tell me about Hanoi.”
“Well, it was crazy in many ways. Great city, but just a bit mad, not that Phnom Penh isn’t.” When he named the city, he purposely adopted the strangled accent of the locals, making it sound like ‘Pi-nom Pin.’ He continued. “Traffic was insane there. It could take hours to get somewhere. Car horns would go all day and night. But I used to love to get outside the city. Halong Bay is absolutely stunning, the most beautiful place in the world, in my humble opinion. I’d spend long weekends there and just relax. I tried to get out of Hanoi whenever possible, but it was hard…trains are so slow, and the airport was a disaster.”
“What’s not to love?” Danny chuckled.
“Yeah. Ha ha. But yeah, it’s crazy, but that’s part of its charm. And it’s a bit crazy here, especially with traffic and all that.” As Mike was talking, he began to look past Danny, whose back was now to the bar. After a few looks, Danny turned around and looked.
He now noticed the increased volume at the bar, and when he looked he saw both of the men were facing them. The bar girls did their jobs and tried to distract the men with flirtations. They were uninterested. Danny saw their eyes. They had hatred in them. They had murder in their eyes. He was trying to understand what they were saying.
“Hey man, I talk to you. Vas da fuck you looking at?” the European man said. Danny thought that his accent sounded German, but wasn’t sure. The table next to Danny emptied…the three Cambodian men sitting there walked in single file past the bar and to the door. When neither Mike nor Danny replied, the man again addressed them. “I say, vas da fuck you looking at, man?”
“We’re not looking at anybody, man…we’re just having a beer,” Mike replied.
The African man yelled, “I saw you looking at me, man. You dink I fuckin’ stupid?” His dark face was flushed, and his shoulders rolled out. His arms tensed, like he was ready to throw a punch.
The girls worked harder now…they started talking to the men, almost yelling at them. One said, “Hey man, don’ star truh-bull here. We don’ like fightin’ here…” The bartender began to yell in Khmer, issuing orders to the girls. The sharp staccato of his dialect was blistering to the ears.
Danny noticed the African man held a bottle in his hands. He was holding the neck of it, as if he meant to smash it and cut somebody with jagged edge. Danny felt panic. He felt fear again.
“Call the police!” Danny shouted, involuntarily.
“No man!” Mike hissed. “We don’t want the police. They’ll arrest us all and we’ll have to bribe our way out.” Mike stood up and he took his beer bottle by the neck, facing the two men.
Danny’s heart was beating so loudly the pulse in his ears was drowning out the other noises in the bar. This was not why he was here. This was not what he wanted. Instead of cursing his fear and fighting it, he embraced it.
“I don’t want this, man! I don’t want to fight, Mike!”
“I don’t either, but I’m not gonna let these pricks get over on me. They probably just don’t want to pay their bar tab; they’re probably doing this so they’ll get tossed out of the bar.”
And then it was over. The music stopped and the lights went up. The bartender was out from behind the bar and stood in front of the door. He had a large silver revolver in his right hand, and it was pointed at the backs of the men at the bar. He loudly cocked back the hammer. Danny jumped down on the floor, and hid behind the back of the seat. The bartender was loudly addressing the room. With no music, his voice was razor sharp.
“A
ll yoo mutha fuckah…you think I stupid? You an you” he waved the pistol at the two men at the bar. “You pay you drinks. Put money on bar.” They looked at each other for a second, and then pulled out money from their pockets and put it on the bar. The girls looked at it, and shook their heads. The bartender took the cue. “NO, yoo pay ALL yoo drinks, ass ho!” The men pulled out their pockets, and showed they had nothing left. Danny, peering from behind his seat, knew that Mike had been right.
The bartender now stepped to the side of the door. Again addressing those men, he said, “Now yoo geh out my bah! You not come back! I see yoo agin, I shoot yoo mutha fuckahs. You unna stan me?” Both men didn’t hesitate, and with heads down walked to the door and out.
After they were out, the bartender walked back to where Mike and Danny sat. “An yoo…brave man…an yoo” he was leering down at Danny, “yoo geh out too!”
Mike protested. “We didn’t do nothing wrong!”
“I don’ fahcking caeh! Yoo pay you tab an you get out my bah!”
Danny didn’t need to be told again. He stood up, put $20 on the bar, and walked to the door. He heard Mike behind him.
“You okay, man?” he heard Mike ask as they got out into the hot night air. The sauna heat slapped them in the face. Danny was scanning around, looking for the two men. They were gone. They were happy to be on their way without having to give money they didn’t have.
“Yeah, I’m okay…” but he was breathless and shaking.
“I was worried about you. Thought I was gonna have to fight them both myself.”
“Sorry. I don’t like guns.”
“Neither do I.”
“I like them less than most,” he said with a shaky laugh.
“I guess you do! Ha ha ha” and his laugh was loud. He slapped him on the back. “Don’t worry, man, everything is okay. These bartenders don’t want to shoot somebody. Bad for business. He just knew these guys were trying to get tossed so they wouldn’t have to pay their bill. I’ve seen this happen a few times. Happens a lot in ‘Nam.”
The One Way (Changes Book 1) Page 13