Alone!

Yes, it's been weeks since this stuff happened. But I can't write a conclusion until I catch up to the end first. Besides, this one's short.


A vacation on holiday

Mike and Jeremy abandoned me on Jan. 9. My American friend returned stateside, a homecoming I was already dreaming about at night, and Jeremy went to Cambodia. I stayed one more day in Bangkok, then took a bus to Bang Saen.

Bang Saen is a popular beach getaway for Bangkok Thais. The sand is moist and clumpy, the surf pushes up litter, and artificial light hangs over the ocean like smoke.

As I paced the beach one night, I was ensnared by a group of dark-skinned sirens huddled on a mat. A less lonesome traveler would have jeered at their crude seduction tactics, but they winnowed one hundred baht in beer money from me. I remember being kissed in the dirty sea, flailing my arms about indignantly.


Pattaya, a family kind of place

It's possible that life on Earth -- that is, across most of the globe -- is inherently good. In this scenario, one can imagine that there are certain epicenters from which spread all the madness, pestilence, and perversion in the world. Cities like Las Vegas, Rio, and Pattaya, Thailand.

I arrived in Pattaya in the middle of the afternoon, and nearly everyone was asleep. I approached the first inn that showed signs of life. An older Thai woman and a pale Swedish man were chatting across the Thai woman's desk in a junky garage below the rooms. I asked them if they had any vacancy.

"How long you stay here?" the Swede asked.

"Maybe a day or two," I said. "I just arrived. I was going to sort of feel it out."

"How many time you come here before?" asked the Thai woman.

"None. This is my first time in Pattaya."

At this they began to laugh, and they went on long past what seemed normal. I chuckled, bit my fingernail, craned my neck around in surveyance of the garage. They were still laughing when I told them I was going to look at another guesthouse.

The ground floor of the next place was white and flaky, but tidier. I asked the young man behind the counter about a room. He just shuffled toward the staircase, sniffing and rubbing his nostrils. I thought back to this when I learned about yaa-baa, the drug that etches Pattaya's neural framework. Its name means "crazy medicine," and it's ingested by snorting.

I followed the man into the building. Dark, withered women hunched behind crumbling doorways, watching me with nervous eyes. One of them crept toward me reptile-like. "Would you like to see my room?" she said vacantly. Some sort of cream-colored ooze showed between the scattered follicles on her scalp.

After missing the doorknob a few times, the young man inserted his key and opened the door to a vacant room. Facing me was the open bathroom. I determined this after my eyes identified a cracked toilet amid all the rubble. I looked to the rest of the room. There were no windows, even though we were at the building's edge. Insects moved on the unmade bed.

I told the man thank you, I was going to look around some more, maybe I would come back later. It was the first time I'd turned down a room that was cheap enough for me. I descended the stairs and emerged onto the bright street. The next room I checked out became my home for what turned out to be a long and strange six days.

[omitted]