Jump

He awakes from a restless night sleep recalling with a bitter fondness the nights when dreams were a release from anxieties, a holiday from the routine tensions of the waking hours, an escape to somewhere better, a place never defined but conceivable in a distant abstract way. Wherever he used to go in his dreams it was a better place. Now his dreams seem to tease him. They mock his vulnerabilities with a cruel told-you-so tone. These night time excursions often transport him to an old comprehensive secondary school in the South East of England. A large rectangular grey slate building strangled by creeping vines. In one reoccurring dream he arrives at school only to discover that he is late for the class register. He is no longer a pupil having left the school twenty years ago. He is twenty years late for class. Prepubescent pupils mock his stupidity. He always awakes at the precise moment that the pupils collective laughter combust into intolerable embarrassment. He awakes in cold sweats of self loathing. It happens every morning. Every day. Each week.

Other similar dreams take place in various long lost institutions; Office buildings, family homes, cars, trains to work all these past memories all these past vessels of normality haunt him daily. Cruel reminders of the bridges burnt back home. The cost of an airline ticket long since spent on women, gambling and bars. The will to return home discarded, the idea of a glorious home coming snubbed out disappointingly like last nights stale cigarettes. Home is a vague distant concept. Thailand was once his home. Thailand no longer wants him here. It is all about money, he decides cynically. Money is all it is all about. Cash. They all want his money and now he has no money and is almost homeless.

He is at that unfortunate age where one is too old to find work and too young to receive a pension. Thailand will not employ him and he has no hope of making money, unless a distant rich relative suddenly dies and thought to include him in the will. His booze soaked mind quickly brushes this thought aside as a remote contingency. He has no rich relatives. And if he did he would be an unlikely beneficiary if they were to suddenly and conveniently kick the preverbal bucket with the forethought to include him in the will.

He checks the left side of the double bed – The girl has gone, along with the contents of his wallet – Not much more than seven hundred baht. He can barely remember her name let alone the beer bar he had plucked her from. All he remembers is a facial mole and a bad boob job – was that the one?.

The spent prophylactic on the thin thread bare carpet, along with the missing money is the only evidence of the night of drunken passion. He picks up the used pink strawberry condom, stares at it for a moment and then tosses it into a blue plastic bin brimful of crushed cans of beer Chang that had been given to him on credit from the little shop at the bottom of the apartment block. He checks the fridge. There are two left. There is a God. The Angel of mercy awaits. He opens one and drinks the can in two long swigs, the alcohol headache relaxes slightly as he opens the second can and lights a cigarette. It tastes disgusting, but it will do.

He sits down on the only chair in the room and meditates on the long line of failure that have made up the last five years. Of course he did not expect the bar to be a success, just pay for itself. He ended up putting his own money heavily into the bar and he closed it after ten months, selling for a fraction of the price. The marriage to his employee Nok was a way to start all over, live on a farm in Isaan and be semi self-sufficient. And they were for some time. They had a rice harvest, a eucalyptus plantation, a duck farm, and a five bedroom house not far from Buriram town, a Toyota Pick-up and several motorbikes. He had invested heavily into a new life. The problem was it was not his life he had invested in, it was her life. Everything was in her name. The time came when he was told in no uncertain terms to leave the village. Being, as he was surplus to requirements. The village headman and the police escorted him to the bus station where he took the next bus back to where his troubles had started – Pattaya.

He found a cheap hotel room and spoke to a lawyer who smiled broadly as he told him that there was no registered marriage therefore nothing he can do to get back his assets. He had fucked up royally. He could almost punch the lawyer. But had learnt that Thais smile in just about any situation.

He finishes the second can and heads to the balcony, it’s on the seventh floor. Not too many pedestrians.

Should be all over in seconds.

He aims and then;

Jump.

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