A brief return to Bangkok

Back in Bangkok. Jon knows the good place to stay. We locate it, check in, eat, drink orange juice. We go out, walk streets, see Israeli's, use absurdly cheap internet. We contemplate boat rides, temple visits, tuk-tuk's around the city. We nap, get up, go book shopping and talk to Thai people. At night, we get a cab, go to Pat Pong knowing the reputation. It is a place, as fully as is possible, of the sin that you only dream about. We walk the streets, feel uncomfortable, have a drink, have two more, jangled nerves settle...a little. Men harangue us to buy pirated DVD's which all begin with messages about not-pirating DVD's, offer us wicked sharp knives, ninja stars, cheap silk and absurdly out of place dolls. Walk past women, but more significantly, walk past lady-boys, the bizarre third gender endemic to Thailand, neither fully men nor women, yet look like the most petite of females from anywhere else on Earth. Another drink to settle this disparity in gender understanding. Small greasy men hold laminated cards, menus of the hedonistic depravity that awaits those with money inside the poorly illuminated halls, up the stairs, long, low-lit stages, fully dressed women appearing anything but, drinks cost three times what they're advertised, run for the door, a glass bounces off my head, ice clinking on the floor, screamed Thai in my direction, run run run run out the door and down the street, still getting hassled, more violently now. Women tug sleeves as you pass, open doorways reveal assembly lines of for-purchase pleasure, dominant clientele being overweight and white and balding and Hawaiian shirted and sweating and drunk, groping desperately into the night and white bikini nothings and the bile rises in my throat and another drink keeps it down, only just. And clinically you just stop and wonder and think and can't make it all make sense but this world, this bazaar isn't sensical and the street rushes up and spins but you don't notice and the people swarm around you with a purpose so definite and strange and mad that you are lost lost lost and a great booming voice is echoing from a loudspeaker and you are condemned, condemned! for your geography and your weakness and it's all too much so then there you have, well you find and go to a McDonalds a bastion of refuge, cheeseburgers and the price, who knows, and then more and back to the street and the lights are overwhelming but it doesn't matter and the loud voices and women and men and..others still plying the flesh that by rights shouldn't be theirs to sell yet push push push and inevitably the wolves come, the old wolves with pockets stuffed full, yeah full! of the money that drives the street onwards. If you squint and look hard the money lines the pavement and the sky and the lights are made of coins that reflect the moon...but no moon no moon, a moon is pure and glows and the coins are dull and reflect nothing nothing nothing except other coins and the coins in the lights mirror the coins in the eyes and bills on the backs are the clothes that slacken as she twists and promises and yeah that hard money piles up and the street grows taller and taller until we fall off the end of it, a long lethal lonely fall that ends in our room and sleep, sweet sleep, and maybe tomorrow the lights won't shine so painfully.

And in the cool light of day the wolves slink slowly towards cool caves and look in the mirror and don't reflect because memory is too hard, too hard and the shadows pass away through the low doorways and mirrored ceilings and there they wait, they wait for that long fall of night and sun and now they can't touch the bright places, which are being washed now (washed I say!) with the grey rag that wipes the greasy man's brow when he gets up tonight with his card and promises and can't remember how it was that the street has gotten so tall.