Waking Up

It seems like I've been in Bangkok forever.

The government disabled me off. They pay me so I shouldn't complain. Most of the people I know here would be happy to be living out here on a pension like mine.

I don't sleep so well.

But it's okay. We don't need as much sleep as we think. If I can't sleep I get up. Go for a walk. I read a fair amount. I order books online. Some days I'll just sit all day and all night.

I have some friends. No. I have a lot of friends. One of the things I like about this town is that people don't judge you so much. A lot of my friends know what I did before I came here. Most of them know how I got my injury. I don't want to talk about that with you yet. We only just met. Better to save some things for later. It's enough for now for me to say that the injury left me without much of a love life.

Some people think it's funny that a man who can't have sex would pick Bangkok as a home.

They don't know the score.

When I came here I was mad. Not crazy mad. Just angry.

My wife was very understanding at first. Women are always very understanding at first. It wouldn't make a difference to the way she felt about me. We could work around it. That's the difference between women and men. Women need to kid themselves that they're nice. It's an illusion most men don't need. She couldn't kid herself long. Soon she was going to night classes. Finding other men who were so understanding. When she found one that liked her a lot I signed all the papers. It didn't take long before I realised she wanted money from me. I guess she got together with her friends and they all decided I owed her for all the stress. That's when I sold the house and moved out here.

And I like it here.

I like the city.

I like its noise.

I like the way it stays up all night even though it isn't supposed to.

I like the food.

And I like the fact that nobody thinks you deserve any sympathy. Nobody goes "Ahh mate. I'm sorry to hear about your accident." Here people just take you as you are.

Nobody in England knows my address here. I get stuff delivered to central post office. My pension goes into my bank.

When I was mad people gave me space like they knew I was mad and understood mad.

When I drank people let me go drink and get on with drinking. No lectures. No little disapproving looks that said "drinking all night doesn't solve anything." And when one place got closed down somewhere else opened. I would be approached by women but they never bothered me so much. I got approached by men and they never bothered me either. I got approached by those who fell between and they just made me feel sorrier for them than I felt for myself.

I tried the temples. At first the temples just seemed like churches. The rich ones with all their golden trinkets for sale outside and their gold and emerald Buddhas inside. The poor ones that smelled of dust and dirt.

It was thanks to one of those poor places that I stopped being mad.

A little place out there in Prakanong. They had plenty of commercial stuff going on. Fortune tellers, lottery tickets, animals to be set free in the khlong water. But the monks took care of the sick and the disabled and the mad. They made sure everyone had enough to eat. And as long as I stayed in the temple grounds I could feel the peace. I stopped hating my ex wife. I stopped being angry at the government for taking my life away from me. Stopped being mad about anything. Because it was all just like the floating khlong water and the dust in the wind. I sat in the bots taking communion of a sort with the monks. I donated money to the temple. Helped them fix up one of the salas. I thought of becoming a monk for a while but I knew it wasn't really for me. I'd have looked an idiot in orange robes with a shaved head. I'd have looked like some westerner pretending to be something he wasn't. More than that I would have been a westerner pretending to be something he wasn't.

But they helped me. They helped me like they helped the poor ditched unwanted people around Prakanong.

Maybe it is just about waking up to this.

Over time I've learned enough Thai to know what the monks are talking about. I spent my first year out here living like a man dead to the world. Maybe if I'd been injured in some other way I'd have been like most the western men out here going from one woman to another and never finding one that I trusted. Most men in Bangkok seem to shift from thinking they've gone to heaven to thinking they've gone from hell day to day. What is it the monks say "Existence is suffering because existence is full of desire. If you could end desire and you could stop suffering and wake up. Become a Buddha." Well. I still desire stuff. I still want a drink at the end of a day. I still want a good meal.

I found some work here. Not great work but based on my past I can still be of some use. I'm not particular who I work for. Someone hired me a few weeks ago to spy on his girlfriend. Someone who worked for the British Embassy no less. Those people make me laugh sometimes. He was one of those people who talk too much. Looked uneasy; jittery like a drug addict. The way he was talking you'd have thought he was about to ask me to assassinate someone. Truth is I don't much like following people's girlfriends. That always seems the kind of thing people should work out for themselves but I did it. Not so much for the money. I worked all my life. Sometimes I just need that feeling. The idea that maybe, just maybe, there could be some trouble. Something to give me that special buzz.

Truth is, when the government pensioned me off, given the choice, I'd have kept doing what I was doing just to keep getting the pension.

Anyway. I followed this woman. She lived in a run down neighbourhood near Khlong Toey. One of those areas where the walls of the houses look as though they might fall down if the wind changed direction. A farang in a Bangkok slum stands out like a steak in a health food shop but they leave you alone. Well. They leave you alone most of the time. Some kid whose jaw was all angles showed me some tricks with his butterfly knife. He was good. I smiled. He smiled back. He just wanted to show that he wasn't a nobody; that he could handle a knife.

The house she went into was noisy. They were having some kind of party. Old men and young kids. I kept my distance and ordered a bowl of noodles. I wasn't really hungry but eating passed the time. A kid walked past me dragging a rusty can on a lead. I guessed his parents couldn't afford to keep a dog. My eyes followed the kid and I saw another Thai man looking at me suspiciously. He wasn't the smiling type.

"Hey farang. What you do in Bangkok ?"

"Kin kaaw." I said.

"And when you not eating what you do ?"

"I drink whisky."

He sneered. "What you come here for ? This not place for farang. Go Patpong. Find a woman."

"I like it here better. It has atmosphere." He spoke English well but I doubted he understood the word "atmosphere".

"You think is funny. You think is good to see how poor Thai people ?"

"Rich or poor. All the same to me friend."

"I not your friend."

"Okay. In that case I won't offer you a drink."

He glared at me for a few moments and then swallowed deeply and looked at the same house that I was watching. I realised he'd probably been here as long as I had. I just didn't spot him before. And I'm supposed to be observant.

I ordered a small bottle of Mekong and a bucket of ice. No coke. It wasn't my favourite drink in the world but I've developed a taste for it. It's one of those drinks that creeps up on you while you aren't looking.

The Thai man wasn't going anywhere. He came and sat at a table close to mine. After about half an hour he said "You wait for somebody ?"

"Yeah... Santa Claus. Every Christmas. You ?"

"Not your business."

"Yeah... Sorry... How rude of me. You sure you don't want a drink ?"

He didn't say anything but I ordered another glass and poured him a drink anyway. He looked at it a while and then knocked it back. I guess even tough guys get thirsty once in a while. I poured him another. He knocked that back too.

"You think she like you ?"

"Who ?"

"You know who. Girl who go in that house is who. You think she like you ?"

"I don't know. Do you think she likes me ?"

He said nothing so I poured him another drink.

"Relax." I said. "She never even met me. Who are you ? Her boyfriend ?"

"No. Her boyfriend pay me for follow her."

"Snap." I said.

Turned out the guy was working for one of those "We follow your Thai girlfriend" private investigation outfits. No wonder he spoke good English. We drank for a few hours and ordered some food. Things being kind of boring here we both figured we could save ourselves a lot of time by swapping client information and went to play snooker. He was pretty good. He beat me twice. I beat him once. His name was Somchit. He was getting crap money so I said if I had something else come up where I needed an extra body I'd pay him better than they could. Everyone needs an extra hand sometime.