Seeing The Light

It was a few days later when I went back to Soi Nana in search of the lovely Om. I wasn’t looking for a deep and meaningful relationship. I just wanted to shag her again. I had almost reached the Plaza and was dodging between the various street vendors and Katoeys somewhere between Morning 2 Night and Big Dogs when I suddenly heard the voice… ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.’ I stopped dead in my tracks. Above the muffled ‘thump thump’ of the go-go music, the drone of the Bangkok traffic and the laughter and chattering that is the nightlife on Soi 4, I could have sworn I had just heard the voice of the Lord. The noise of the street faded into the background and I heard it again. I was rooted to the spot.

“….I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’

I’m not usually prone to profanity but I must admit a few expletives passed my lips at that moment. The Lord had just reached out to save wretched, little me. Is this how it happened to The Allman Brothers and Johnny Mathis and Cliff Richard and Alvin Stardust when religion got to them, I wondered? Were they, like me, planning to break eight and a half of the Ten Commandments in the next twenty minutes when the Lord intervened and saved their miserable souls? I looked up to the heavens expecting to see….well I don’t know what I was expecting to see really…a band of angels (running after me) or a stairway to heaven maybe? No. The inky Bangkok sky looked pretty much like it always did but I could still hear it. His voice, cutting through the sinful Bangkok night like a sabre of light, a scythe of hope. Oh God, I was sorry. I was sorry for leading this life of drunken debauchery. I felt the need to repent and seek forgiveness for all the times I’d been drunk and for all the times I had banged a go-go dancer and not paid and never again would I set foot in Rainbow 4 or the Rajah Hotel. The Devil would not have my soul. From that moment on, I would be a better man.

Then I felt drawn, involuntarily pulled towards the sound of my salvation. I moved forward along the cluttered pavement and then I saw him. The scruffy little bastard was standing there at the entrance to NEP waving a Bible in the air and shouting at the top of his lungs about the wrongs of the demon drink and how worshipping the pleasures of the flesh will lead you straight to Hell and I realized, it wasn’t God I had heard after all. It wasn’t even his son. It was this greasy haired oik with halitosis who needed a shave almost as badly as he needed a new pair of shoes. A shower and a square meal probably wouldn’t hurt him either. Jeez, what a relief! I wasn’t being Divinely interfered with after all. I felt like giving this Zealot a piece of my mind. Going ‘round scaring people like that with his ravings about eternal damnation and the fires of Hell. There should be a law against it. Mind, my Christian upbringing did teach me tolerance and patience.

I decided to turn the other cheek and dived into Big Dogs for a quick one. Om could wait for a few minutes and I’d start being a better man tomorrow.

Union Hill

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