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Well, My Dears, October has come sneaking onto Soi Bangla like an unmarried Victorian elder sister, trying to attract as little attention as possible knowing that everybody on the street is counting the days until beautiful, marketable November makes her entrance. Even though October offers Columbus Day to the Americans, Thanksgiving Day to the Canadians, Chulalongkorn Day to the Thais, Sukhot to the Jews and Jamada to the Muslims, the denizens of the Street of Shame, who all sold their souls for a purple bank note long go, will only observe the macabre delights of Halloween at month’s end.

On that night the ghouls and goblins of Beelzebub Beach will show their true colors (black of night and red of blood) in an orgy of necromancy, and the poor guys who have to schlep those poles strung with rubber masks up and down the street will do their only decent day’s business in the whole year. Men’s fires will burn and women’s cauldrons will bubble with a witches’ brew made up of two parts eye of newt and three parts tequila, and the un-dead will parade in their ghastly raiment in front of Soi Crocodile, promising to raise an old man’s tired flesh from its eternal sleep with a kiss that hides the fangs of a wolf.

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October is the tenth month, and the meaning of ten is perfection through completion: ten fingers, ten toes, ten commandments and ten little Indians. The number is written as a one and a zero side-by-side, one representing being and zero representing non-being. If a computer needed a dictionary, it would have only these two symbols in it.

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If you are on Soi Bangla between September 23 and October 23, you are a Libra. This is the sign of law, justice, balance and wisdom. Now you understand why Libra is a sign rarely seen on Soi Bangla.

Libras are very sympathetic people, anxious to learn the views of others. But they assume that those views are given with the same sincerity in which they are accepted; thus Libras, like the scales that represent them, are very easily swayed. If they could trust their own judgment, they wouldn’t need the scales. If you are a Libra, don’t buy a condominium on Phuket in October.

If you are on Soi Bangla between October 24 and November 21, you are a Scorpio. This is a dual sign, representing both death and regeneration, and often signifies the creative energy of sex being sublimated to new ideals and new beginnings. Many of the older Soi Bangla Debutantes will decide in October, when faced with the prospect of another high season pinned under Europe’s rejects, to cash in and buy that beauty parlor they’ve always dreamed of.

If you find yourself surrounded by women who sheathe their psyches in hard armor, whose hands are grasping claws and who all carry a poisoned sting in their tail, you’ll know that you’re on Patong Beach and it’s October. Since Scorpio is a water sign, this is the month when the monsoons sputter to a halt and it becomes safe to swim in the ocean again.

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The cryptic sign for Venus, which rules the first part of October, is the cross below the circle, said to represent Venus’ hand-mirror but in fact showing the material world submissive to the spiritual. The cryptic sign for Mars, ruling the last week in October, is an arrow over a circle, said to represent Mars’ spear and shield but in fact showing the material world superimposed on the spiritual. These two signs are often used to denote “female” and “male” as well, which would seem to indicate that the first part of the month, when Soi Bangla will be almost empty of tourists, will be dominated by women, and the last part, as the high season begins to assert itself, by men.

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The Orionids meteor shower will make an appearance between the fifteenth and twenty-ninth of this month, with their peak coming in the early morning hours of the twenty-first. Orion was slain by Artemis while attempting to rape that formidable patroness of chastity. Artemis is always associated with the moon, and that may be why the full moon on the twenty-sixth, along with all the fluorescent lights on the Street of Shame, will render invisible the millions of shooting stars which bear her would-be attacker’s name.

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The month’s preoccupation with matters of mortality has led to a theme of danger in the jokes told and retold up and down the street, like this one:

Two Single Male Travelers were sitting in a Soi Bangla beer bar, when they happened to see a mangy street dog licking himself in a most private place.

“Gee,” said one of the men, “I wish I could do that.”

“I’d try petting him first,” answered his friend, “He looks pretty mean.”

It’s going to be a long, hot month, My Dears.

 

 

 

© Iris Criswell. All rights reserved by the author.