Bank Kapi (2) (Mr. E.) (A year in shorts --- teaser)

Mr, E., yes, Mr. E., the mysterious blogger behind the brilliant blog 50ShadyGays has finished his book, and here's another teaser, the second part of the first chapter, titled "Bang Kapi." It's out, the book, it's on Amazon, scroll down for the link. (Artwork by Bob Bienpensant).

He is distracted and his eyes are searching for some stimulation and they come to rest upon the slender hips of our geeky-looking waiter. James’s eyelids squint a gluttonous moment of gratification, and in a hideously Freudian moment, his conversation ambles towards obscenity as he recounts the tales of his new lover’s sexual exploits.

“I love to feel his rock-hard cock inside me...”

I try very hard not to care, or even to let his words take effect, but there is something primal in imagining true horror. Already my overactive imagination has concocted a revolting picture of smooth, tanned skin greedily exploring the folds of James’s over-indulged rump. I bulk at the thought of his muscle-weak corpulence receiving the attention and the care of anyone, but why should I care? My prissy judgment says more about me than it does about him.

It strikes me that I am being hypocritical about this. In asking myself the question, “why would anyone share such intimate information with virtual strangers?” The irony is not lost on me. I have looked back at my own blogs, postings and articles, and I cannot fully understand my motivations for discussing my sexuality. Is it pure narcissism? Is it indulgence? I’ve not ruled these explanations out; however, I maintain that human sexuality is a natural aspect of our lives that frequently gets distorted. I feel to some degree that my sexuality has been hijacked. I’m not sure of the exact moment it happened, but all of a sudden, I felt the language of gay discourse no longer included me. It began to serve a privileged elite who publicly proclaimed their love and sought to marginalize the cruising that has, at its heart, an authentic engagement with the sexuality of men.

Bang Kapi (Mr. E.)

Mr, E., yes, Mr. E., the mysterious blogger behind the brilliant blog 50ShadyGays has finished his book, and here's a teaser, the first part of the first chapter, titled "Bang Kapi." It's out, the book, it's on Amazon, scroll down for the link. (Artwork by Bob Bienpensant).

I had descended with some trepidation. It felt like I was looking for justice, but here in Bangkok there is no justice, only karma. The motorbike taxi driver who had greeted me at the entrance to my condo was particularly feral, he had skin tight jeans and oil stained hands. He reeked of Thai Whiskey, cheap cigarettes and fingering. A heavy night weighed down on his eyelids, and I could see the morning sun was not his friend. He drove like a lunatic and decided to have an argument with a girl on his phone while we were speeding on the burning overpass. Now I am sitting in a soulless shopping mall, listening to a fat, old drunk who is dressed like a clown. He is talking and all I can hope is that this grotesque scene is merely a shadow dancing on the wall of my imagination.

“...You see it was the seventies and it was a whole different time back then...”

I’m not exactly sure why I had arranged this meeting with James, it is the third time that I have met him. I suppose I had become fascinated by the twisted turns of our conversations, I don’t know, I have always been drawn to the macabre. As he pours Whiskey from his silver flask into his paper Starbucks cup, I am still trying to figure this all out.

He’s talking again but I’m not really listening. I acknowledge the clangs of the dropping names which animate his anecdotes, but these people are meaningless to me. Who are they? It’s a list of notorious drunks who were all celebrated at some point for being, “such fun.”

James Farnham is now both spiritually and physically redundant, he does little more than consume in order to maintain a veneer of usefulness. He looks like something that might have knocked up Ronald McDonald’s mother at a traveling fair back in the 1960’s. Beneath his rubber mask and bright orange wig, his thinning hair is dyed sandy brown. As he removes the mask and the wig to drink his coffee, I cannot help wondering where the wig ends and his hair begins. He likes people looking at him. He absorbs attention along with everything else.

Fucking three-ways --- reblogged

The mysterious Mr. E. (the ex-pat in Thailand with this impossible secretary) writes on his blog 50 Shady Gays:

One of my favourite restaurants back in east London was “Les trois Garcons.” I was lucky enough to eat there several times, and I often wonder what it was that made me love it so much. Was it the richness of the food, the opulence of the design (I’ve always had a soft spot for stuffed animals wearing tiaras) or the slightly too cool for school staff? No. it was the fact that you sit in the uber-camp lounge of a big gay 3 way. You’re basically the filling in the physical manifestation of their spit roast.

It isn’t the fantasy of a perpetual daisy chain that enthralls me; I betray my working class roots here, but it’s the peculiarities of the day to day life that I find fascinating. How does it work? Do they nag in stereo? Will their collective mid life crisis result in an ever expanding wardrobe of inappropriately tight disco wear? Perhaps a 3 way would be more stable than a less conventional twosome, who knows? Perhaps I was looking for answers to my own inability to connect in a relationship?

Miguel Angel Reyes

I recently met 3 men in Bangkok who had been in a relationship for over a year.

They were from Moscow and they were painfully trendy and undeniably cute. They wore skimpy white shorts and tight T shirts. For some reason they had all decided to wear matching Mr Spock/elf ears – which contrived to make them appear all the more fabulous. They swaggered through the club, seemingly oblivious to all the attention, in a way that only beautiful men in their twenties can; consumed with the solemnities of their love. I got talking to Alex (the one with the glasses) who spoke English, he told me the history of their relationship and I was – how can I say – both fascinated and horrified. It was just so full on, heightened no doubt by the fact that they were all high. DJ station had closed, and while Alex recounted their passionately mental love story, the cleaning lady waddled past, moping up stale homo-piss from the toilet floor beneath our feet: “Sawadeeeee KaaaaAAAAAAAAAaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Fucking noodle soup --- reblogged

Mr. E. (yes, the mysterious Mr. E.) writes (from Thailand) on his blog 50 Shady Gays:

The problem with moving to Thailand is that now we have to endure hearing what Thai people think. The majority of which is not worth listening to; it’s generally something about “Som tam,” “sleeping,”or “playing facebook.”

Take my secretary for instance (please, just take him!). He doesn’t stop talking. He talks so much it has become the background cacophony of my daily life. A piercingly staccato, camp monologue about his family, boyfriends (Giks), food, and Lady-FUCKING-Gaga! He doesn’t even pause for breath, it’s incredible:

“He – say – he – my – boyfriend – why – I – not – go – to – Silom – wit – heem – I – say – cannot – he say – I – have – many – many – Giks – not – good -not – good – I say – he – not – love – me – he – look – at – other – boys – he – butterfly – he – say – he – not – butterfly – I – butterfly…”

 “He – say – he – my – boyfriend – why – I – not – go – to – Silom – wit – heem" 

At first, out of politeness, I would occasionally feign concern or even comprehension: “I think you should talk to him about it, let him know how you feel.”

Prometheus --- film review (spoiler alerrrt)

This multiplex in Pathong's biggest mall is real nice, the shiniest black marble greets the lone visitor, and it's being polished a-more as we a-wait the beginning of the movie. We did MIB 3, and may elaborate on it later. Now we are doing Prometheus, the latest film by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator...). The movie program of this multiplex is somewhat meager, three or four movies are running now, and the humongous auditorium n° 5 is empty. We brought warm clothes to weather the air conditioning. An utterly empty auditorium, it's always impressive, especially to retired university professors, as it brings their worst nightmares to life.

OK, Prometheus. We vaguely recall having read a review in the NYT, not a bad review, right? SciFi, somebody's having visited Planet Earth 35,000 years ago, left some traces, and modern science has discovered where they came from. We're on our way. A motley crew. They've been hired on the fly by Charlize Theron, whose nose is so straight she must have had a facial. Also aboard is David, the humanoid (robot). He's so much smarter than than the rest that one wonders why anybody bothered to send authentic humans at all---except that the uppity assistant who pointed this out at the script conference got fired on the spot, perhaps because David looks too much like Lawrence of Arabia, or, more precisely, like Peter O'Toole, and he also speaks like a British actor from fifty years ago.

Sushi Express

So Chang discovers this outlet, right in the heart of JongCeylon, Patong's largest mall. And it's a buffet, which means you can eat as much as you like. For 300 bath (10 US$). Or perhaps, more precisely: eat as much as you can, because that's the idea of buffets, isn't it. And if we can mangle our philosophical thoughts at this point, if maximizing quantity and utility converge buffet-wise, we are dealing with a case resistant to Hegel's conversion law ("Quantität schlägt in Qualität um"), which, by implication, also weakens Karl Marx's case (if only Alexis Tsipras, the new, young, handsome, charismatic, Greek leader would know, it might save the Euro).



You have 1 hour 15 minutes for eating more than you like; a wall clock watches with red digital display over the proceedings, an ambulance is waiting outside.

I'll come with you (breaking news alert)

Not the girl

It's a shower first, lightning strikes, the power is cut. Rain continues, and Michael refuses to go out, instead he ponders whether he will be able to read his Kindle in the light of a single kandle. Chang, hungry, is finally forced by his appetites to leave the premises in search for take-out food. And he comes back and tells the following story:

I walk past this girl, perhaps for the third time now, and she is selling something, and always waving and smiling. I reply in some way. She asks "you are staying nearby?"

-"Yes."

-"How long are you staying?"

-"One month."

The girl grabs my arm and says: "I am coming with you."

We are not making this up. 

Tunk-Ka Café

Our longest-lasting controversy is about the river-side café, and while I sing about its charms, such as the chilled, oaky, buttery chardonnay served with chicken breast and sauce hollandaise, or the light wood paneling, or the shady riverside terrace with its muted, yet clipped conversations about Muffy who failed to make partner with Allen & Overy, or the color coding of the awnings, always dark green, preferably in the hex value #00693E (Dartmouth Green), brèf, while I am singing about the river-side café, Chang is dreaming of food markets, this Asian contraption that encumbers the innocent hungry-man between various food stalls where everything is cheap, and abundant, and smelly, and sticky, and eaten with chop sticks.

We are on our first excursion across Phuket now, and the understanding has been that we would end up in a food market, but the first food market didn't pass Chang's muster even though it was located in the Korean neighborhood of Phuket Town, because the Thai girl behind the Korean garlands didn't speak a word of Korean, and so we are driving on, and it is already past 12am, the time when Chang is overwhelmed by hunger and everything stops until he finds a place to restore himself. He suggests we turn right, but I continue straight, and we are mysteriously led up a hill when signs appear which speak of the Tunk-ka Café. The road ends in a parking lot, and everything is coded in dark-green, including the lush, tropical forest, and Chang wants to flee, but is overwhelmed by hunger now, and we, who haven't been to a riverside café in eons, we end up in the first HILL-TOP café of our life, by sheer serendipity.



The Tunk-ka Café. We have to descend a long staircase. Chang is scared. Have a look at the menu first, he cries, but the prices are reasonable, to his disappointment.

Touring Phuket

So we finally rent a car, and the next morning it is cloudy, rainy, but we don't care, and travel south.  A view from the first viewpoint informs about the western coast of Phuket south of Patong, the hedonistic center of the island:

The bay of Patong is to the north (next to the high-rise), south of it the bay of Kolon, and finally Kata. As we continue south, we reach a small, nameless beach almost on the tip of the island (Chang in the lower right corner)...

Neckermann Bumms Bomber (Learning Thai (2))

Let's get this out of the way first. Remember the 2 k-sounds from our last post? Here are a few more:

Got it?

Well,  back in the late seventies, my then-colleague Han felt the urge to take the Neckermann Bumms Bomber (his words, you'll figure this out yourself) to Bangkok (กรุงเทพมหานคร). Han had been a seminarist (studying for priest) until the Marxist wave struck the Netherlands and he took up residence in Amsterdam's red light district, where he would spend the evening checking whether he still had the 25 guilders in his pockets to pay one of the neighboring ladies of the night for the standard job (he told me). Arriving in Thailand, he met a girl, fell in love, bought a home, and learned Thai, while keeping a part time appointment at the University of Amsterdam. Thai learning is difficult, he explained with starry eyes, citing the fact that the language has innumerable consonants, among which 5 different k-sounds (there you have it; the table mentions six, but two are obsolete).

And when back in Amsterdam, Han became a pillar of the relationship community, with which I mean to say that he was hired to save gay couples, in particular those comprising a Dutch person and an imported Thai boy. Relationships, Han explained, depend on communication (this was before everybody subscribed to the Harvard Business Review), and the non-existing Thai of the Dutch and the poor English of the Thai boy would inevitably lead to a downward relationship spiral that only Han could stop by intervening as a Thai/Dutch interpreter and helping the couple to regain a new level of understanding. I don't know whether Han kept any statistics. Rumor has it he's now divorced.

Learning Thai

We've arrived safely in Thailand, but are now holed up in the bedroom, since Chang (ช้าง) ("elephant") canceled the a/c in the living room. So, we have no choice but to learn Thai (ภาษาไทย). It will be quite a slog. But the beginning is easy, as it thematizes the chicken-egg problem.


ก ไก  ko (as in) kai" (chicken) and we are pronouncing the  ก  as "k," whereas
ข ไข "kho  (as in) khai" (egg) and we are pronouncing the  ข breezely as "kh."

Cheers:

Hold your bladder, hold your bladder, there is a small problem. Our "ko" (ก), it's some sort of "g" on another web site dedicated to Thai learning.

Stay tuned.