by Dan Simmons
Caroline’s far ahead of me now. Her yellow sweatshirt is very bright as she flashes around the curves and roars ahead on the straight stretches.
I pull back on my stick, slowing to a more sedate descent, one which matches my mood. I want to look from side to side, to see the country go by. I may not be on this particular mountain again.
I hear Caroline’s happy laughter ahead of me and the love I feel for her expands to painful dimensions. I don’t mind the pain. We’ve outrun the storm but I hear the sky rumble and feel moisture touch my cheek.
We’re farther down than I had realized. I can see the bottom now, but we’re far enough away that there’s ride enough left to enjoy. Caroline is flying now. She takes a second to lift a hand my way, then looks ahead. I lose sight of her for a moment as she passes through a grove of trees but I have confidence that she will reappear and she does, much farther down the mountain, a blue and yellow blur, her sled in perfect balance between gravity and speed, her spirit in perfect balance between control and joy.
Knowing that she’s not looking, I lift a hand and wave.
And wave again.
DYING IN BANGKOK
I fly back to Asia in the late spring of 1992, leaving one City of Angels which had just exorcised its evil spirits in an orgy of looting and flame and arriving in another where the blood demons are gathering on the horizon like blackened monsoon clouds. My home city of Los Angeles had gone up in flames and insane looting the month before; Bangkok—known locally as Krung Thep, “the City of Angels”—is preparing to slaughter its own children on the streets near the Democracy Monument.
All of this is irrelevant to me. I have my own blood score to settle.
The minute I step outside the air-conditioned vaults of Bangkok’s Don Muang International Airport terminal, it all comes back to me: the heat, over a hundred and five Fahrenheit, the humidity as close to liquid air as atmosphere can get, the stink of carbon monoxide and industrial pollution, and the open sewage of ten million people turning the air into a cocktail thick enough to drink. The smell and the heat and the humidity and the intense tropical sunlight combine to make breathing a physical effort, like trying to inhale oxygen through a thick blanket moistened with kerosene. And the airport is twenty-five klicks from the center of town.
I feel myself stir and harden just to be there.
“Dr. Merrick?”
I nod. A yellow Mercedes from the Oriental Hotel is waiting for me. The liveried driver tries to make small talk during the ninety-minute ride until he notices that I am not responding. Then he settles into a sullen silence while I listen to the hum of the air conditioner and concentrate on watching Bangkok unfold like the petals of some cement-and-steel flower.
There is no scenic way into Bangkok today unless one were to ride a sampan upriver into the heart of the city. The commute into the old section of Bangkok now is pure capitalist madness: traffic jams, Asian palaces that are really new shopping malls, industrial clutter, new elevated expressways being built, ferro-concrete apartment towers, billboards hawking Japanese electronics, the roar of motorcycles, and the constant arc-flash and jackhammer-thud of new construction. As is the case with all of Asia’s new megalopolises, Bangkok is tearing itself down and rebuilding itself daily in a frenzy that makes Western cities such as New York look as permanent as the pyramids.
David, my driver, makes a last bid for tourist advice and to sell his own services as a driver during my stay at the Oriental, and then we are in the heart of the city, cruising down the tree-lined lanes of Silom Road amidst the two-stroke roar of tuk-tuks and the more aggressive scream of Suzuki motorcycles.
Silom Road is jammed with people but looks empty and lethargic compared to its usual crush of manic crowds. I glance at my watch. It is 8 P.M. on a Friday night Los Angeles time: eleven o’clock Saturday morning here in Bangkok. Silom Road is resting, waiting for the evening excitement which emanates from Patpong like the scent of a bitch in heat. One final turn down a nondescript soi, or sidestreet, and we are slowing in the main drive of the Oriental Hotel and more uniformed men are rushing to open the door of the Mercedes.
In crossing the ten yards or so from the driveway to the air-conditioned interior of the Oriental, I can smell it. Through the pollution and the stink of the river just out of sight beyond the hotel, through the heavy miasmal mix of human sewage and hibiscus bordering the hotel drive, and the carbon monoxide swirling like an invisible fog, I can smell it: an urgent scent like a subtle blend of exotic perfume, the Clorox tang of semen, and the coppery taste of blood.
I hurry through the courteous greetings and the bowed wais and the gracious registerings of the world’s finest hotel, wanting only to get to my room and shower and feign sleep, to lie there and stare at the teak and plaster ceiling until the sunlight fades and the night begins. Darkness will bring this particular City of the Angels alive—or at least stir the corpse of it into slow, erotic motion.
When it is well and truly dark, I rise, dress in my Bangkok street clothes, and go out into the night.
The first time I saw Bangkok had been almost exactly twenty-two years earlier, in May of 1970. Tres and I had chosen Bangkok as our destination for the seven days of out-country R&R we had coming to us. Actually, I don’t know many grunts who called it R&R back then: many called it I&I…intercourse and intoxication. Married officers used their leave to meet wives in Hawaii, but for the rest of us grunts the Army offered a smorgasbord of destinations ranging from Tokyo to Sydney. A lot of us chose Bangkok for four reasons: 1) it was easy to get to and didn’t use up a lot of our time in travel 2) the cheap sex 3) the cheap sex and 4) the cheap sex.
To tell the truth, Tres had chosen Bangkok for other reasons and I followed along trusting in his judgment, much the way I did when we were out on a LURP: a long-range reconnaissance patrol. Tres—Robert William Tindale III—was only about a year older than I was, but he was taller, stronger, smarter, and infinitely better educated. I’d dropped out of my Midwestern college in my junior year and just rattled around until the draft sucked me in. He had graduated from Kenyon College with honors and then enlisted in the infantry rather than go on to graduate school.
Tres’ nickname came from the Spanish word for “three” and was pronounced tray. Most of us had nicknames in the platoon—mine was Prick because of the heavy PRC-25 radio I’d carried around during my short stint as RTO—but Tres came to us with his nickname in place. Someone had got a peek at his papers and before his first week was out, we were all shaking our heads at the fact that—with all of his education and typing skills, attributes that generally allowed even a draftee to be a happy REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fucker)—Tres had enlisted in the infantry as a line grunt.
Tres had a deep interest in Asian cultures and was good at languages. He was the only grunt in the company who could speak any real Vietnamese. Most of us thought that beaucoup was Vietnamese and felt clever to know didi-mau and half-a-dozen other corrupted local phrases. Tres spoke Vietnamese, although he kept that fact from reaching any officer other than our own L-T. “I wouldn’t let them make me a typist or officer,” he used to say to me. “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let them turn me into some pissant interrogator.”
Tres had never studied the Thai language, but he learned quickly.
“Just tell me what the Thai word is for ‘blow-job,’ ” I’d said to him during the MAC flight from Saigon to Bangkok.
“I don’t know,” said Tres. “But the phrase for hand-job is shak wao.”
“No shit,” I’d said.
“No shit,” said Tres. He was reading a book and didn’t look up. “It means ‘pulling on the kite string.’ ”
I thought about that image for a minute. The transport was losing altitude, jouncing through clouds toward Bangkok. “I think I’ll hold out for a blow-job,” I said. I was not quite twenty years old and had only experienced oral sex once, with a college girlfriend of mine who had obviously never tried it before either. But I was full of hormone
s and macho posturing I’d picked up from the platoon, not to mention the sheer adrenaline rush of being alive after six months in the boonies. “Definitely a blow-job,” I said.
Tres had grunted something and kept reading. It was some dusty book about Thai customs or mythology or religion or something.
I realize now that if I’d known what he was reading about and why he had chosen Bangkok, I probably wouldn’t have stepped off the plane.
The floor valet, elevator doorman, concierge, and main doormen of the Oriental do not raise eyebrows at my wrinkled chinos and stained photographer’s vest. At 350 American dollars a night their guests can wear whatever they want when they venture out into the city. The concierge does, however, step out to talk to me before I leave the air-conditioned sanity of the hotel.
“Dr. Merrick,” he says, “you are aware of the…ah…tensions that exist in Bangkok at the current time?”
I nod. “The student riots? The military crackdown?”
The concierge smiles and bows slightly, obviously grateful at not having to educate the farang in what seems an embarrassing topic to him. “Yes, sir,” he says. “I mention it only because while the problems have been concentrated near the University and the Grand Palace, there have been…ah…disturbances on Silom Road.”
I nod again. “But there’s no curfew yet,” I said. “Patpong is still open.”
The concierge smiles with no hint of a leer. “Oh, yes, sir. Patpong and the nightclubs are open for business. The city is very much open.”
I thank him and go out, ignoring the huckstering for boat tours, taxi rides, and “good night fun” from the gaggle of small businessmen just beyond the hotel driveway. It is dark but the heat has not diminished and the traffic noise from the soi is louder than ever. I turn left on Silom Road and head for Patpong through jostling throngs of people.
It is not hard to recognize when I get there: the narrow streets connecting Silom and Suriwong roads are awash with cheap neon signs: MARVELUS MASSAGE, PUSSY GALORE, BABY A-GO-GO, SUPERGIRL LIVE SEX SHOWS, PUSSY ALIVE!, and a score of others. The lanes of Patpong are narrow enough to be pedestrian only, but the roar and pop of the three-wheeled tuk-tuks in the boulevards beyond provide a constant background to the rock-and-roll music blaring from speakers and open doors.
Young men or women—sometimes it is hard to tell in androgynous Thailand—begin plucking at my sleeve and gesturing toward doorways the moment I turn into the lane called Patpong One.
“Mister, best live sex shows, best pussy shows…”
“Hey, Mister, this way prettiest girls, best prices…”
“Want to see nicest shave pussy? Meet nice girl?”
“You want girls? No? You want boys?”
I stroll on, ignoring the gentle tugs at my sleeve. The last query had come as I entered the lane called Patpong Two. The night zone is divided into three areas: Patpong One serves straights, Patpong Two offers delights to both straights and gays, and Patpong Three is all gay. The majority of the action here on Patpong Two is still for heterosexuals, although most of the bars have smiling boys as well as girls.
I pause in front of a bar labeled PUSSY DELITE. A little man with one arm and a face turned blue by the flickering neon steps forward and hands me a long plastic card. “Pussy menu?” he says, his voice the epitome of an upscale maître d’s.
I take the grubby plastic card and study it:
PUSSY BANANAS
PUSSY COCA-COLA
PUSSY CHOPSTICKS
PUSSY RAZORBLADES
PUSSY SMOKING
Nodding, I start into the busy nightclub. The one-armed maître d’ hurries forward and retrieves his card.
The club is small and smoky with four bars set in a square around a crude stage. The girl on the stage—she looks to be no more than sixteen or seventeen—is arched completely backward, so that the top of her head almost touches the rough wood of the stage, her legs and arms supporting her in a crablike backbend. She is naked; her crotch has been shaved. Colored lights shaft down through the smoke and fall on her like soft lasers. The center of the stage is a turntable and the girl holds the arched position while her body rotates so that everyone can see her exposed genitals. There is a lighted cigarette set between her labia. As the stage revolves toward each section of the bar, smoke puffs from her vulva as if she is exhaling. Occasionally one of the drunker patrons applauds.
Most of the men in the bar are Thai, but there are plenty of farang scattered around: arrogant German-types in khaki with their hair slicked back, beaky Brits paying more attention to their drinks than to the girl on the stage, an occasional frowning Chinese from Hong Kong squinting through glasses, and a few fat Americans with untouched drinks and protruding eyes. There are no Japanese here; there is an exclusive area to the east of Patpong that the Japanese maintain for their businessmen on sex vacations. I’ve never seen the street, but I have heard that it is Ginza-clean, kept off-limits to others by security guards, and that the girls who serve the Japanese businessmen are required to take weekly HIV tests. At any rate, there are no Japanese here tonight.
I move up to the central bar and take an empty stool. The girl’s upside-down face revolves three feet from me. Her eyes are open but unfocused. Her small breasts seem little more than swellings. I can count her ribs.
A bartender slides forward in the narrow space between the stage and bar and I ask for a cold Singha: the local beer costs fifty baht more here than in a regular bar, but it is still the cheapest thing I can order. The glass and can are no sooner set in front of me than a young Thai woman slides close, her left breast touching my bare forearm through her thin cotton tank top. Although she is no older than the girl whose genitals even now rotate our way again, she looks older because of the heavy makeup that now glows a necrous color in the shifting blue light.
She says something but the blare of rock and roll is so loud that I have to lean closer so she can repeat it. Her breast presses harder against my arm.
“My name Nok,” she says again, almost shouting this time. “What your name?”
She is so close that I can smell the sweet talcum-and-perspiration scent of her through the cigarette smoke. Thais are among the cleanest people in the world, bathing several times a day. Ignoring her question, I say, “Nok…means bird. Are you a bird, Nok?”
Her eyes widen. “Do you speak Thai?” she asks in Thai.
I show no comprehension. “Are you a bird, Nok?” I ask again.
She sighs and says in English, “Yes, I a thirsty bird. Buy me drink?”
I nod and the bartender is there a fraction of a second later, pouring her the most expensive “whiskey” in the place. It is 98 percent tea, of course.
“You from States?” she asks, a bit of animation coming into her dark eyes. “I like States very much.”
I brush her long hair out of her eyes and sip my beer. “If you’re a bird,” I say, “are you a khai long?” The phrase means “little lost chicken” but is often applied to street girls in Bangkok.
Nok pulls her head back and folds her arms as if I have slapped her. She starts to turn away but I grip her thin arm and pull her back against me. “Finish your whiskey,” I say.
Nok pouts but sips the tea. We watch her friend on the stage as the girl’s hairless vulva rotates our way again. The cigarette has burned down to the exposed labia. Sipping my beer, I marvel—not for the first time—at how human beings can turn the most intimate sights into the most grotesque. At the last second before the cigarette would burn her, the girl reaches down, retrieves it, takes a drag on it with the appropriate lips, tosses it between the stage and the bar, and wriggles out of her yoga backbend. Only one or two of the men along the bar applaud. The girl bounces offstage and an older Thai woman, also naked, steps onto the revolving platform, squats, and fans four double edged razorblades in the light.
I turn back to Nok. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,” I say. “You are a very pretty bird. Would you like to help me have fun tonight?
”
Nok forces a smile. “I love to make you fun tonight.” She pretends to frown as if she has just thought of something. “But Mr. Diang…” she nods toward a thin Thai man with dyed red hair who stands in the shadows, “he be very mad at Nok if Nok not work all shift. Him I must pay if I go make fun.”
I nod and take out the thick roll of baht I had changed dollars for at the airport. “I understand,” I say, peeling off 4 five-hundred baht bills…almost eighty dollars. Even the highest-class bar-whores in Bangkok used to charge only two or three hundred baht, but the government ruined that a few years ago by bringing out a five hundred baht note. It seems cheap to ask for change, so now most girls charge five hundred for the act with another five hundred to pay their “Mr. Diangs.”
She glances toward the old man with red hair and he nods ever so slightly. Nok smiles at me. “Yes, I have place for much fun.”
I pull the money back. “I thought we might try to find someone to have fun with,” I shout over the blasting rock and roll. In the corner of my vision I can see the woman on stage inserting the blades.
Nok makes a face; sharing the evening with other girls will cut down on her profit. “Sakha hue din,” she says softly.
I smile quizzically. “What does that mean?”
“It means you have enough fun just with Nok, who love you very much,” she says, smiling again.
Actually, the phrase is shorthand for a northern village saying that goes “Your cock is on the ground, I tread it like a snake.” I smile my appreciation at her kindness.
“This money would be just for you, of course,” I say, setting the two thousand baht closer to her hand. “There would be more if we find exactly the right girl.”
Smiling more broadly now, Nok squints at me. “You have girl in mind? Someone you know or someone I find. Good friend who also love you much?”
“Someone I know of,” I say and take a breath. “Have you heard of a woman named Mara? Or perhaps her daughter, Tanha?”