by Ken Austin
After a few times he had learned to enjoy the feeling more thoroughly and look for a situation that would give him the most righteous sense of being alive. It was almost like learning how to ride a bike; no, that wasn’t quite right because riding a bike was a solitary activity. This involved much more, especially learning to read others, dispense the fear in the most devious and deviant ways possible.
How people could not sense that something was going on in his head that was out of the ordinary, he could never quite figure out. He was raging and blazing but after the first few times able to control it to a degree. Perhaps they just felt he was an excitable person with overt mannerisms.
He always chose a place as far away from the neighbourhood where he lived and worked.
“Beer,” he blurted out, the first words he had spoken in hours. His voice came out sounding higher than usual and odd to his own ears. He laughed out loud, a short bark. He felt strange speaking an English word in his own country. But at the same time, he liked the strangeness. It emboldened him for what he intended to do.
The bartender turned to reach a bottle out of the cooler.
He swiveled with the cold bottle now in his hand. He leaned back against the bar with both his elbows in an exaggerated and affected way, an imitation of something he had seen in a movie once.
There are so many things I have wanted to do before, but have always been conscious of others, so much energy spent on avoiding looks, he thought to himself. Simple things, stand up and survey the room with a sneer on my face, leer at the most beautiful woman here, not a trace of care as to what results my actions are going to bring. Now sitting back down to enjoy the energy. Swallowing the beer, able to knock back countless bottles when I’m like this.
“Even if an ass is clean per se, it’s still got that distinctive smell of ass. You know I’m talkin’ strictly female ass here? Now lay a good lathering of soap on and that is one of the most pleasant and…”
That flat dull sound pulled a string taut in his mind. He sat listening for a few moments, his addled brain recalling why that voice made him feel a pure anger that he knew he would respond to.
He jolted up and strode to the toilets. Pushing the door open he moved to the nearest stall, slipped inside and closed the door behind him. Now he pulled out a small bag, took out two white pills and swallowed both of them. This would make the uncoiling a more enjoyable experience.
“I sit next to you, OK?” he said, playing up the stilted accent.
The two men sitting at the table looked at each other.
“Why not?” said the man who had been doing most of the talking all night. “It’s always nice to talk to some of the locals, makes our experience here seem more authentic!” he said, stopping to emphasize the final word. The comment made him laugh out loud. The other man joined in, simply because he always laughed when the first man did.
“Sit yerself right down, please do and let me get you a drink. What’re you drinkin’ there son?”
He looked blankly at them and waited for the loud one to imitate the motion of raising a glass to his mouth before he indicated he understood.
“Beer OK,” he answered but the loud one was guffawing loudly again and his reply was barely heard.
“He hardly understands a goddamned word we’re sayin’. We can have a few laughs here Bert!”
He looked around again at the bar they were in, shutting out the sound of the two animals in front of him. A few loners nursing beers with the thousand-yard, slack-eyed look, some couples and these two out-of-place fools. What nationality were they? Must be Americans; the loud grating, supremely confident attitude. And that comment, “more authentic.”
“Soooo, ya come here often? Bwaaahahahaha!!” Again the loud one performing for his flunky.
Yes, I’ll play whatever game you want, he thought to himself, enjoying the pure feeling of anticipation.
It was light when he had come in but now the night was on the streets, making the cover of this place, far away from his normal haunts, feel safe, like a lonely outpost in a different galaxy, where all fear of consequences was gone.
He remembered why that voice had jarred his brain into formulating a basic, but somehow doable plan for the night.
How old was the loud one? It was hard to tell with these types—large through the middle, sun-reddened faces, surely not attractive, even to their own people. Alone he could take the obnoxious one with little effort. The other man, the quiet one who just laughed and agreed with the oaf would frighten easy. With the added strength and recklessness from the pills he would do all right. The loud one shoved some peanuts past his stained teeth into his gob.
A foreigner had once raped his sister. The rapist had left the small village in the north before anything could be done.
“Dale, I don’t think everything’s OK with this chap here,” the other one, the one named Bert said, speaking for the first time.
He had become lost for a few minutes, thinking back.
“It’s fine Bert, these sinewy bastards have an amazing threshold for everything. He doesn’t know or even give a shit what you’re talkin’ about. We just bought him a beer fer Christ’s sake. A beer that probably represents a few days wages to him. He’s thankful that he got that damn bottle from us. Now he owes a bit of entertainment. Doncha son?”
Now they were in the night—heavy air but with a light breeze, a different world than Bangkok of the day. The two Americans, as he had confirmed that they were, were now walking, well, more like staggering down the road with him. They had bought him some more drinks and continued to become more inebriated themselves. He didn’t feel the effects as the pills offset the potency of the alcohol.
Now walking together with them, he was jacked up and feeling anxious. He wanted to move the situation now.
“We go somewhere different now. Place no foreigners ever go,” he said. He knew these two wanted something authentic.
Secrecy and Shame
Secrecy has always been a big part of my life. Never more so than when I returned to Canada after six years in Thailand. I was on a mission: to put my head down, complete a one-year post graduate certificate program, get a job, and bring my Thai girlfriend/soon-to-be wife to Canada. I had left her in Thailand for what I thought would be the duration of my studies and the brief time I hoped it would take me to find a job.
I settled in a dreary bachelor apartment and went to work.
It wasn’t something that I set out to do, but I found myself not sharing my story with anyone. Sure, I let them know that I had been in Thailand. But I didn’t disclose any details about my girlfriend. I didn’t want any sympathy from my classmates, and I didn’t want the storyline of me being away from her to result in constant questions. And I didn’t want to be reminded of something that was causing me a great deal of pain and guilt.
Not only that, but any mention of my girlfriend waiting in Thailand could elicit a lot of emotion. I didn’t want to lose it in front of relative strangers.
Of course, I have always held back information from people I meet. What is the benefit of sharing intimate details of your life? It can be used to form sneering, judgments on your character, your background, and your intentions. More enjoyable to let the false impressions form and keep the truth to yourself. Watch the smug looks on people’s faces, see them put forward what they think is an appropriate role for you to fill, and then give them exactly what they want.
During the certificate course at a local college, I caught a cringe-worthy glimpse of how I might have come across to others if I had opened up about my personal life. A decent individual with whom I worked on a number of projects shared with the class the fact that his girlfriend was studying at a university that was a few hours away by train. I thought about my girlfriend who was a 20 hour plane ride away and who I might not see for more than a year. I resisted the urge to trump his tale of woe.
As is the case when you start to reveal details of your life to others, the whole storyline sta
rts to dribble out, including how you see yourself in your own little melodrama. And, the particular way your image to others may take shape will have nuances that don’t come out in other situations. The unique collection of people, the stresses of the situation in which you find yourself, and even the physical location, all conspire to present you in a light never before seen by others.
And so my classmate increasingly let it be known that he was suffering for the time he had to be away from his soul-mate. Of course, I could really feel what he was going through, but I dared not let him know about my life.
He worked fairly closely with another classmate who was a broken, bitter individual who had been through a tough divorce. Older than the rest of us, the bitter classmate was a tall loose-limbed, individual who suffered from numerous ailments. He was a veritable basket case who seemingly enrolled in the course because it was something to do and he could receive funding to pay for the tuition.
The classmate who missed his girlfriend—I’ll call him Lonely Heart—quickly developed an acute sense of loathing for the bitter classmate—Basket Case—and never missed an opportunity to rip into him when he wasn’t around. Going against one of my cardinal rules, one day I engaged Lonely Heart when he started ripping Basket Case and even threw in a few jabs as well. Later, it became clear that Lonely Heart played both sides and got some enjoyment out of drawing me in. When Basket Case repeated a distinctive phrase I had used when talking to Lonely Heart, I knew Lonely Heart was a weasely little bastard.
After the course finished, all of the students had the chance to spend two months at a work experience placement. As soon as I started, there was no question that I would once again keep most of my personal details secret. A chubby, alternately smug and unassuming young woman was already working there. She had finished the same program as me the year previous, and was firmly entrenched in the subculture of the workplace.
She was close friends with a colleague: a short, pot-bellied, pony-tailed little oaf who was convinced he was one of the most clever individuals around. When they got together in the staff room, or at staff meetings, they started riffing off each other, validating each other’s witty little asides, and generally combining to be two of the smuggest, most annoying fucks on the face of the earth.
One day as we sat in the open area we shared, our desks a few feet apart, she started asking questions about my time in Thailand. She mentioned a handful of the most common generalizations about Thailand: prostitutes, strange expats, the EFL teaching racket. All of which had some truth to them. But she was clearly trying to get a rise out of me. Further confirmation that I didn’t want to share anything with people who I would “know” for a grand total of two months.
It started dawning on me at this point that the workplace in Canada had changed since I had been away. Or more accurately, it had been moving toward this point for a long time and I really hadn’t had an accurate glimpse of things before. Most of my jobs before I left Canada had been of the menial sort and didn’t reflect the office environment stocked with full-on manipulators, politics and all the other interpersonal nastiness you could think of.
The fact was that women were becoming the majority in many workplaces. This presented some realities that anyone would be wise to reflect on if they want to stay sane and not run afoul of a litany of written and unwritten rules.
The first reality is that if you mention something casually to someone with whom you work, others will know about it. If you want control over your workplace image, you simply don’t share many details with people.
Second, while men have ruled most aspects of western societies for many decades, and have come in for plenty of well-deserved criticism, the unpleasant situations that arise in any workplace are due to power relationships. Hence, with the increase of women in the workplace, transgressions that were traditionally committed by men are now being committed by women as well. Perhaps not to the same degree and not by as many women, but unpleasant behaviour is becoming more common from females on the job.
Something about sex—perhaps too it is the inherent power aspect—makes it an unavoidable topic for many people in the workplace who feel they are somehow above the rules by which everyone else has to play. The number of sex-related comments from women in the workplace stunned me on my return to Canada. As the men sat by with a look on their faces that said, “no way am I getting into this,” I repeatedly heard comments from women related to penis size, the appearance of men, and other tittering little innuendoes. These comments were all made during meetings or in the lunch room.
I once walked into the lunch room where a meeting of only women was taking place. The talk was of women who worked in the organization who didn’t wear bras. The chortles and guffaws rang out as I silently went about making a cup of tea.
One woman who was my direct superior openly mocked me for apparently not having a girlfriend. Of course, I could have set her right and informed her about the reality of my situation. But why bother? She thought she had me figured out and I was willing to play along. I laughed along at her little sneering jokes.
You may well be thinking, “Oh, poor you. Insulted by a group of women making some questionable comments.”
I found it interesting more than anything, and it really highlights the issue as one of power. I enjoy observing people and their hypocrisies. And besides, there was nothing I could do in the situation. Not even make a comment against the snide suggestions that I wasn’t worthy of finding a female companion. I was on a short contract and was hoping for a renewal. My manager had loads of capital with the organization: she was heavily qualified, had done years of good work, and her husband had terminal cancer. Not much a person in my position could have done to stand up to her.
Return to Thailand
After I returned to Thailand, I found no reason to open up to relative strangers about the details of my life. I seem to be the anomaly. Most people have a compulsion to share cringe-worthy personal information with people they have just met. The Facebook phenomenon is further proof of this.
In various staff rooms, you can hear fools bragging about their drug and alcohol use as if it is some kind of badge of honour. Why would they do this? If and when someone decides to use it against them, they will have to cast their minds back and remember who they have shared the information with. And then they have to determine, probably incorrectly, who it was who used their own idiotic admissions against them.
In another example that validates the practice of keeping those around you in the dark about your personal life, one monumentally ignorant fool started ripping another member of the office when he wasn’t around. He started making weird comments about the individual’s wife and child. If people don’t know anything about you, you don’t have to wonder what they are saying behind your back.
Going after someone’s wife or family is the lowest of the low. But amongst the foreign scum that surfaces in Thailand, the standards are lower than almost anywhere else.
In the small community of expats who live in Thailand, there is a shameless rankism that exists. Humans crave the opportunity to rank themselves against others.
This is nowhere more apparent than when you are living in a foreign country. Because expats have fewer chances to compare themselves to other expats, when the chance does arise, they make the best of it.
This is compounded by the fact that Thailand is a bitterly classist society. This habit of looking for any and all means to raise themselves above others must rub off on the expat detritus. Not to suggest that this sentiment doesn’t exist in other countries. But it is much more crass and brazen in Thailand.
Black skin equals poverty, equals a lower class of human being, equals the kind of people who deserve derision and abuse. And an entire region of Thailand is full of poor, dark skinned people who serve the middle and upper classes not just as slave labour, but as a never-ending source to stoke their sense of superiority.
The feeling you get from others constantly sneering at y
ou and your choice of mate is not always shame. It is a weary, fed-up anger that makes you want to shatter skulls. But because you can’t do that, you engage in other types of behaviour that make you feel better and convince you that you are protecting the honour of your wife who happens to be from the region that is culturally acceptable to mock. Secrecy is one way.
And you wonder about those expats who have taken on the habit and enjoy the sneering good times of ranking themselves against others based on their choice of spouse. Because for those expats who have spouses from the upper classes, the sneering rankism falls somewhere else. On them.
For wealthy Thai families whose daughters choose a foreigner as a husband, there is no small amount of finger-pointing, mockery, and yes, shame, that they must endure. Racism is rife in Thailand and while white skinned foreigners don’t suffer the worst of it by any means, there is still plenty of cultural ammunition to train on a young woman who has chosen a foreigner as a husband.
And while the foreigner who has married the daughter of wealthy Thais may not feel the slings as directly as does a foreigner who has married a Thai woman from a poor family, only the dullest-witted of them will not sense that things are not quite right all the time. Only the most devoid of any observation skills will not feel the stares of other well-off families, the smug looks that inform the family weighted down with an embarrassing white-skinned ape that they would never allow such a thing to happen in their precious clan.
But then, those same individuals who couldn’t read such situations would probably also not have any qualms about being supported by their wealthy in-laws. It would not even dawn on them that they are beholden to their wives’ families. Only if the befuddled foreigner decided to move his family back to his home country (with children by then of course) would he possibly find out that dear wife may choose her extended family over him.