Bangkok Filth

by Ken Austin

  Pimlock had some leeway in any situation. It was true what many suspected: the embassy could either do very little or it could pull strings and go as far as necessary to get something done. Different people would get different treatment. Who you knew, how much noise you were willing to make. Would she push it? Probably depended on how much money was at stake.

  “How much money is at stake…what I mean is, how much did you transfer to your son?”

  “Is that really important?”

  “It will help us to make enquiries at various banks. If it comes to that,” Pimlock said.

  “It’s enough to make it worthwhile for us to find out. My biggest concern is getting my son’s body out of here. But the money is somewhat important. In the process we may also find out what happened to my son.”

  “It’s hard to say Ms. Shelton. But police tell us that they think…was your son depressed?”

  Her faced looked weary at the question. She folded her hands in her lap and looked down. Was she thinking of long gone years when her son’s personality came into focus? Those early years when events can shape someone for the rest of his life? Some perspiration rose on her forehead.

  “He didn’t feel like he belonged back home. He liked it here. Felt like people couldn’t read him so easy. That’s what he told me. He liked the feeling of anonymity. I don’t feel he was depressed. Just an introvert. Someone who liked to be alone a lot of the time. And he felt like he had found his place here.”

  She pulled at the fabric of her dress.

  She started out of her seat. Her grey pallor was in contrast to the bright look on her face when she walked in room 30 minutes ago, Pimlock thought.

  “I will be in touch about any progress you may have made on the whereabouts of the money,” she said.

  “But what about the remains of your son?” Pimlock asked.

  She started to sit down again. Straightened up instead. “I don’t think I will need your help with that after all.”

  “But we can help you arrange the transportation. Last thing you need now is to worry about misunderstandings because of language.”

  “I think I have that sorted out.”

  She walked out of Pimlock’s office.

  Aria Shelton walked out of the waiting room and into the corridor that led to the front door of the embassy. She heard the click of her heels on the slabs of aged flooring, worn down over the years by countless people like herself. All of them looking for help while overseas in a strange country.

  She felt nauseous. She pushed open the door of the ladies’ room and stumbled toward a stall. Crashed in and slammed the door behind her. She felt a surge of panic and held herself still. Silence. She put her hand on the cool porcelain of the toilet she was sitting on. She fumbled in her purse for the little glascine bag full of white powder and the syringe.

  Pimlock had watched her leave the office on the closed circuit monitor in the small adjoining room that was connected to his office. Various cameras throughout the building gave him the ability to watch just about anyone who entered the building. She had looked in pretty bad shape as she stumbled into the women’s toilets on the ground floor. Probably the heat, jet lag and the pressure of the whole situation. But there was something he couldn’t quite place. Something off about her.

  Pimlock locked his office door and headed out of the main office where emergency cases waited to plead for assistance. He glanced at a bloated, pasty white hog covered in chav tattoos and with a young, waifish young Thai woman seated next to him. He hoped to hell he wouldn’t have to interact with that piece of filth.

  Pimlock went to the security office on the third floor of the embassy. He motioned one of the Thai security guards who worked there. “Come with me please,” he said. The guard snapped to his feet and followed behind Pimlock. Pimlock walked down the stairs to the ground floor, made his way to the women’s toilet and stopped in front of the door. That must be enough time for her to have cleared out. He knocked on the door, waited a few seconds and knocked again. He opened the door. “Is anyone in here? I am an official with the British Embassy and we need to come in for security purposes.” Again, no answer.

  “Stand guard here,” Pimlock said to the guard. “Don’t let anyone enter.”

  Pimlock walked in and surveyed the antiseptic room that was kept to standards that were befitting the Embassy’s reputation. Pimlock inhaled that strange mixture of scents: various women’s perfumes, cleaning liquids, and some faint, pungent earthy smell. It reminded him of the times he would wander into the women’s toilets after closing hours when he had worked part-time in a pub while attending university.

  Pimlock opened the doors of the toilet stalls. Nothing. He did a double take at the last stall in the row as the door was swinging shut. He opened it again and looked closer. Next to the toilet. A syringe. He had been right. It must have been the Shelton woman. How on earth had she scored so soon after arriving in Bangkok? But yes, of course. The functional variety of addict are sometimes even more resourceful than the lowlife, street level junky.

  Pimlock inhaled a deep breath and slipped into a reverie in the cool, sterile serenity of the women’s toilets located on the ground floor of the British Embassy in Bangkok. One dead son, one junky mother, some missing money. Oh yes, he was going to have some fun with this one.

  The Voyeur

  I met the Voyeur when I was 15 or 16 years old. We worked part-time at the same restaurant and went to the same university. As we got to know each other, we drank together and played tennis together. We remained relatively close friends for a number of years.

  Although we had fun and wreaked havoc on many occasions, I cramped the Voyeur’s style somewhat. Most of his friends were high-school classmates he had grown up with. The Voyeur made an attempt to introduce me to this group of friends, but the unease from them was palpable. We talked openly about the fact that I didn’t really fit in with his other mates.

  Still, the Voyeur didn’t let this affect our friendship. He and I were on the same wavelength and saw the world in much the same way. We would do things together on a regular basis for six or seven month stretches at a time. Then, for whatever reason, we would go for many months without meeting each other. I always assumed that during those periods of time when I didn’t see him, that he was engaged in activities with his private school friends.

  During the time I knew the Voyeur, he demonstrated certain tendencies that led to his nickname. Life always seemed like a grand social experiment to him. He would wire himself up with a small tape recorder for kicks and record the most innocuous and inane conversations with other people and then play them back to me for entertainment. I never asked if he did the same with our conversations, but I assumed that he probably did. At times, I got the sense that he saw me as an interesting specimen and that I provided voyeuristic fodder.

  I mentioned these observations to him, an indication of the fact that there was little that we wouldn’t discuss. It became a running joke with us. “Hey,” he would say, “why not treat your life as a fun experiment. Just try different things. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

  And that’s what it must have seemed like to many people when they looked at my life. After I left university, I traveled and worked in half a dozen places around the world before returning to Australia. I did things and took chances that most people didn’t. They went to university, graduated, got jobs, got married, and got on with the process of accumulating things.

  A few years after I returned to Australia, I hit the road again, this time ending up in Thailand. I had little contact with the Voyeur during the time I was abroad and for those few years when I was back in Australia. But as I got settled in Thailand, the Voyeur and I reconnected, the likely result of the explosion of the internet and the ease of communicating over long distances. He had done well for himself and was reaping the rewards of long years of working in low-level jobs. He had kept his eyes open for the right chance and when it came, he made his move.

&nbs
p; Over the course of the next five years, the Voyeur would visit me three or four times in Thailand. He would spend a few days with me in Bangkok and then head off on various sojourns around the country. Sometimes up north and sometimes to the islands. During his time in Bangkok, he always wanted to visit the seedy go-go bars on various side streets off Sukhumvit Road. Those places turned my guts, but to him it was a novelty.

  As we sat in one of the go-go bars that was part of a large complex with numerous similar establishments on a lazy afternoon of his final visit to Thailand, the Voyeur started to regale me with tales of how he had made it big. I was happy for him. He had reached a stage where money was no longer a concern. As the alcohol flowed, the Voyeur became extremely smug about the things he had accomplished. This had been one of the great features of our friendship over the years: we could tell each other almost anything, regardless of how crass or self-serving it might sound.

  The bar we were in had filled up as the afternoon turned into early evening. The Voyeur looked around at the human detritus that had collected as we had engaged in a wide-ranging conversation over the period of a few hours. “I’m the most successful person in here,” said the Voyeur.

  “What? How the hell can you tell?”

  “I can just tell,” he said.

  Though the Voyeur had always been a confident person, he had always counterbalanced it with self-mockery and a nihilistic view of the world. It was a bit strange to hear him come across as so full of himself. But with the booze flowing and in the presence of a friend, it was one of those asinine things that don’t get filtered out. But over the course of the next week or so, he would make almost the identical statement two or three times when we were in various bars or restaurants.

  “I suppose you well could be the most financially successful person in here, but how do you really know?”

  “I just do,” the Voyeur said with a smug smile.

  The Voyeur spent the next 10 days or so traveling around Thailand. When he returned to Bangkok, he had a few days before his flight back to Australia . He once again wanted to while away a few afternoons at the go-go bars near Sukhumvit Road. As we were sitting and downing a few cold beers on a sweltering afternoon at one dingy little place, a young Thai woman sidled up to us and started talking.

  I instantly knew what her game was, but either the Voyeur didn’t know or just saw it as a last opportunity for some conversation with a Thai woman before he went back to his regular life. It was a dreary and predictable conversation. She eventually steered the discussion to her personal life and started hinting that she would like to get to know one or both of us better. The Voyeur started urging me to follow it up. “After all, what have you got to lose?” he said.

  The old bullshit that we had always joked about was somehow no longer so amusing to me. The Voyeur knew that I had a long-term girlfriend and that we eventually planned to marry. She was staying with her family outside of Bangkok for a few weeks, but I had never had the desire to be anything other than faithful to her. But the Voyeur kept up with his steady drum-beat of telling me that I should “go for it.”

  Perhaps it thrilled him to think that he could convince me to do something that would have long-lasting consequences in my life. Maybe it was a variant of that age-old psychological game that so many play, called “let’s you and him fight,” in which the instigator engages in the equivalent of throwing two somewhat hesitant combatants into an enclosed area and then stands back and enjoys the inevitable fireworks.

  The Voyeur took off a few days later. It would be the last time I would see him for a long time. In the interim, I returned to Australia once again, but did not live in the same region as the Voyeur.

  Finally, a few years later I was back in Thailand. I hadn’t seen the Voyeur for almost seven years. It wasn’t a planned break in our friendship, but it was clear that we had moved on and didn’t really have the same connection that we once did. The fact that we lived thousands of miles apart was, of course, a big factor. But the emails didn’t come as frequently, and the responses, when they did arrive, felt superficial and forced.

  The more I thought about it, the more I believed it was down to the relative success we had achieved in our lives: at least in monetary terms. Clearly, the Voyeur was far more successful in life, at least in the usual ways that people measured such things.

  Greater financial success by one person in a friendship often drives a wedge between people. The person with the money seems to acquire an arrogant edge, and sees any criticism of him as “jealousy,” or perhaps even develops the nagging feeling that his sad-sack friend will hit him up for money—something I have never done, and will never do.

  It’s almost an impossible accusation to refute, even if the accusation has never been stated outright. It is such an all-encompassing fact of life: the need for money, the act of chasing it, the melodramas that are centred around financial considerations.

  For the friend who has accumulated the wealth, he can’t help but feel awkward when sharing his happiness at having made it. It’s only natural that he develop an aversion to the friend who is still struggling to get ahead. In all likelihood, it is not even a conscious decision. You feel more comfortable with those who are at the same stage in life and the same relative social class.

  Of course, all of this avoids a couple of important factors. First, as I looked back and pondered the changes over the past few years and how the Voyeur had been affected by his success, I wondered how he saw me. What interactions and events shaped the image the Voyeur had of me?

  Years ago we would have been forthright about how we perceived each other. I felt that blunt honesty was a thing of the past. The emails, when they did get exchanged, now only focused on the banal.

  No doubt he viewed me with a bit of caution as well. For years I had an explosive temper. If one thing is difficult to deal with, it’s a person who is unpredictable. This trait had cost me in many tangible ways, and I had taken steps to change. But I believe the image of me as a slightly unhinged individual was firmly implanted in the Voyeur’s mind.

  As I considered all these things on occasion over a period of years, a few important changes took place in my life. Life altering things that were stressful but also positive in the long run. I passed on this information to some family members who then shared the news with others in the family.

  At about that time, I received an email from the Voyeur, the first in a long time. I got the immediate sense that he had been in touch with someone in my family but wanted to appear as if his email was just a random checking-in. He asked if there was anything new in my life and I quickly responded with a brief email that included the news. His response seemed disingenuous with an emphasis on the fact that he really had no idea before contacting me.

  He closed out with an appeal to reach out to him if I ever really needed someone to talk to. It felt duplicitous and somewhat odd. Did he think I was at a weak point in life and would perhaps offer up some deeply personal and perhaps entertaining fodder? Some would say that such a reaction is nothing but paranoid. After all, what are friends for if not to help in tough situations and offer advice?

  I sent back another longer email with more details about what I was up to and my plans for myself and my family in the coming months. In many ways, I felt more hopeful and positive about life than I had in many, many years.

  I never received a response from the Voyeur. Would he have pounced on any information that hinted I was spiralling toward some kind of catastrophe? Again, the optimists would say, “of course, for it would have been more urgent and required immediate support from friends.”

  I suppose our earlier straightforward interactions and the occasional incident that suggested my trials and tribulations were entertaining pablum for the Voyeur shaped my reaction.

  The Voyeur was one of the best friends I ever had, and I remained friends with him longer than any other person in my life. While the name “the Voyeur” may have a negative connotation, in fact, i
t really only highlights something that is appealing in all friendships. We are all fascinated by other people’s lives. Despite the rankist claim by some that “smart people talk about ideas, and stupid people talk about other people,” we all are fascinated by the dramas that are part of the lives of others. What is at the heart of the obsession humans have with stories of all kinds as presented in books and movies? It is the thrill of escape through immersing ourselves in the plight of other human beings in the hope of getting at some bigger truths that govern human existence.

  So too this is one appealing aspect of interacting with other people in all manner of personal relationships.

  All relationships between people come to an end or change to a degree that they are not as close as they once were. In rare instances, death is the only thing that finally signals the end.

  Ken Austin is a writer and language teacher based in Bangkok. In the past, he has lived and worked in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and South Africa. In his free time he studies foreign languages and posts semi-regularly on his blog, teflspin.com. He lives with his wife and daughter.