The Ganesh Stories

Down in the Ecstasy Cafe they're well into a Grateful Dead marathon. The trippers and tokers are in a head-rocking, eyes-closed trance.

Back down the row to Blue Door and there's Ohe awaiting, a-smile. Even her smile is wan, beat, far from the normal Siamese flashbulb grin. Dress her in a black turtleneck, chop the hair just a little more Euro and she could be a denizen of some Left Bank existentialist salon, a half-Tonkinese Sorbonne tristesse, circa 1965. Irresistible.

Never have I seen such passion. In her rage and her sorrow she is wildly beautiful, beating the air like a puerto-rican, and sparks fly off her aura as she stands there shouting and weeping, dressed in tiny tank top and hot pants and four inch whore boots.

In the sheen of post-monsoon streetlights she waits, all demure and luscious in tight jeans, half-Chinese timeless watching the sidewalk traffic in a state of mild panic, only 101 Baht ($2.50) to her name, rent due in three days

It is the South East Asian peasant girls' equivalent of going away to college. The freedom from small town restraints, from dire drag of rice farmer poverty, from hick Buddhist chastity…captivating! And now they bring a fresh verve to the harsh whoredoms of this city of liberty.

I sit in red silk shorts dreaming of another land, kingdom of the bums and rogues who ride the filthy sea dropping dynamite bombs on luckless fishes, riding the national highway in perverted US Army jeeps, killing and consuming shitty dogs.

Blow, ye winds. Pound down around the town, you cool waters. Rickshaw men pedal on through the deluge, upright, stoic. I wait patiently so I can get my Monday cherry popped. Oh, yes, indeed, yes.