Who Am I – Part 2

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HIS CURIOSITY WHETTED, the next evening Monty walked a short distance from his hotel to the Babylon, a legendary bathhouse. Located in a quiet leafy neighborhood of large embassy mansions, the Babylon had been completely retrofitted inside with saunas, steam rooms, dark labyrinths and small rooms, plus a modern well-outfitted gym and a restaurant. The interior throughout was elegantly decorated in traditional Thai style, with beige and dark green walls and dimly lit alcoves holding stone Buddha heads. Altogether different from the grotty, unfriendly gay saunas of the West, the Babylon provided a handsome and serene environment, a civilized environment, where one could comfortably meet and chat with other men, with young men, and do more.

Monty checked in at the entry and in return for his wallet and passport received sandals, a towel and a smiling boy, smiling like the boy from the night before. The boy guided him up and down stairways and along dark passages to a locker room, where he waited while the older man disrobed and tied the customary towel around his waist. The boy then gestured to himself with both hands as if to offer himself – or, more likely, ask for a tip. When Monty didn’t respond, the smile turned into a frown and the boy turned and left.

Trying to retrace his steps and explore the facilities, Monty arrived at a partly covered outdoor bar that extended along the entire length of the top floor. A balmy breeze cooled off the otherwise hot and sultry night air. He ordered a tall iced tea from a waiter and sat down at the far end of the bar. Soon after the drink arrived, two young Thai men casually strolled his way and sat down, separated from each other but discretely opposite Monty. He’d heard that this signaled a willingness to meet. After building up his courage, he crossed to the one most directly in front of him, said hello and introduced himself.

“Hello,” replied the man who appeared to be in his late-twenties, well built and tall for a Thai, with a narrow angular face. “My name is Kasim.”

He nodded to the chair next to him when Monty asked if he could sit down. “Do you come here often?” he asked.

“No,” replied Kasim sharply. “I don’t like the environment. Thai people are rude. They’ve lost their traditions. No values. Thailand is totally corrupt.”

“Really?” said Monty. “But I find people here so polite and friendly.”

“They’re fakes. All they care about is your money.”

Not taking this as an insult, or a hint, Monty asked, “So what kind of work do you do?”

“I’m at university,” Kasim answered. “Business school. I plan to export fine Thai crafts, like handwoven fabrics and porcelain, much better than the junk you usually see. I have all kinds of connections. And I’ve been with many foreigners, Europeans, Americans, Japanese. I had a long relationship with a famous French designer. Now I have an English lover. He’s an aristocrat. He lives in Singapore and comes here a few times a year. He will help me set up the business. We share an apartment. He doesn’t mind if I meet other men when he’s away.”

Although from peasant stock – his father had a tiny farm up north, he said – Kasim seemed well educated and spoke English well. “Where are you staying?” he asked, looking directly into the older man’s eyes.

When Monty told him the name of his hotel, Kasim shook his head and said gravely, “Not good. You should move immediately to the Sukhothai. It’s the best. Very new and very handsome. I like it best.”

Could this suggest a willingness to spend time with Monty if he moved there? It was worth a try. “You could show me the hotel, if you like,” he said. “That is, unless you want to stay here.”

“No, let’s leave now,” said Kasim. “We can eat dinner there. They have the best Thai food in the city and a very good Italian restaurant. It’s up to you. But I suggest the Thai restaurant.”

Though the hotel was only ten minutes away by foot, the young man insisted they take a taxi. Waved in by a guard, the cab driver drove down a long driveway through an expansive walled compound. At the far end sat a series of handsome low-slung white pavilions. Named for the Sukhothai kingdom, a center of power in early Thailand until defeated in the 14th century by the more southern, Ayutthaya kingdom, the hotel was designed in classic Sukhothai style. Sensual thin-waisted Buddhas characteristic of the period gazed serenely from the corners of the large lobby. The walls were papered in a distinct shade of green silk, similar to the color in the Babylon, and were lit by long downward-pointing funnel-shaped brass sconces. On the outside grounds, long narrow pools reflected rows of similarly funnel-shaped (but upward-pointing) warmly illuminated Buddhist stupas.

As Kasim had suggested, they went to the Thai restaurant. When they were seated at a table by a window looking onto a small courtyard, with its own pool and stupa, Monty asked, “What shall we eat?”

“It’s up to you,” Kasim answered, pausing briefly before calling over a waiter and proceeding to order from the menu in a rather perfunctory manner, as if he knew the menu by heart. The meal included duck in a sharp curry sauce with a citrus undertone; a flat fish in a tangy tamarind sauce, deep-fried so crisp it could be eaten bones and all; and a sour shrimp and coconut milk soup, which at the bottom of the bowl was so spicy Monty nearly choked. Each course was served in simple elegant green celadon bowls that matched the dishes. “I’d love to have a set just like these,” Monty remarked. “I can get for you, easy,” said Kasim.

For dessert they had sticky rice with mango served in the bamboo in which it had been grilled. “There’s a touch of passion fruit,” the younger man said, extracting the sweet rice and fruit from inside the bamboo and spooning it onto Monty’s plate.

After dinner he asked a clerk at the front desk if they could see a standard room. Without showing any sign of surprise or dismay that a foreigner would want to look at a room in company with a young attractive Thai man, the clerk called over a porter. Leading them down a long hall, the porter opened the door into a large and luxurious suite. What must non-standard be like? wondered Monty. The main room was designed like the rest of the hotel, with dark green walls, long sconces and planks of aged teak carved with scenes of Hindu and Buddhist gods fighting and cavorting with one another. A sliding glass door led onto a private garden. The bathroom, covered with mirrors, seemed nearly as large as the living space. The suite even had a smaller guest bathroom, a feature Monty thought quaint, as if a guest, someone like Kasim, were an expected hotel amenity. Back at the front desk, Monty booked a room for three nights, beginning the next day. Kasim said he would meet him there in the afternoon.

Arriving as promised, the young man ended up staying with him there for a week and a half, Monty extending his stay in Bangkok to the entire twelve days of his planned time in Thailand. Although he’d expected to travel to various outlying destinations, he was entranced with the city, with its dark crowded pungent streets, jeweled temples, lively outdoor night markets, sensational food – and with Kasim.

Bangkok seemed just the place to find one’s self, every moment filled with unfamiliar experiences and sensations, visual, aural, tactile; with smells and tastes and sights that were all new to his eyes. Stripped of his customary environment, thrown into an intoxicating alien world, every sense was alertly focused on the here and now, a state of exhilaration and apparent grace achieved without intention or laborious effort. Filled with the now, he mused, he could discover a new self, a self free and unencumbered with the past, with the self he’d accustomed himself to and taken for granted.

Kasim proved to be an excellent guide, sophisticated, knowledgeable, opinionated about everything. One day, after having exhausted Bangkok’s major attractions, Monty suggested they go to the famous floating market. “A tourist trap,” the young man declared, proceeding to arrange for a taxi to drive them to a more authentic floating market 90 kilometers north of the city. When they arrived at the destination, a bend in a narrow river packed with small boats, Kasim negotiated with a thickset, tough looking lady in calf-length trousers, and the two men jumped into her small wooden skiff. After navigating through the crowded main channel, she steered the boat into and through a long side channel, on both sides of which sat shack-like houses that extended out over the water, supported by decaying posts. As if her arms knew on their own where to go, she busied herself by gossiping with other oarsman and occasionally barking out orders to passing boats carrying fruit, vegetables, school supplies, appliances and everything else needed by the riverside inhabitants. “Plop!” A large plastic package of fresh noodles suddenly landed on the boat’s deck, the lady evidently doing her own shopping for the day while giving the two visitors a tour. “Sanuk,” the young man cried out. Fun. Everything in Thailand was sanuk.

Everything except sex with Kasim. Although he had the prettiest cock Monty had ever seen – demanding attention, it would slide out from its foreskin, almost like a dog’s cock, bright and pink – each night, after quickly taking his own pleasure, without bothering to reciprocate, the young man would immediately fall fast asleep, like clockwork.

The day before Monty was to depart for Bali on the last leg of his Asian trip, Kasim suggested that, instead of flying home to Canada from Indonesia, he return to Thailand and meet him in the north, in Chiang Rai, the principal city of his home region. “My cousin has a car,” he said looking at the older man with a faint smile, the kind of smile that with a only slight curl at one side of the lips seems more like a smirk. “He’s a policeman there. He can drive us around the countryside. We can see ancient Sukhothai. We can go to Chiang Mai, and you can buy the celadon there. You can go for an elephant ride and visit the hill tribes. We’ll start at the Golden Triangle. It’s up to you.”

There it was again: “Up to you.” But it was never up to him; he went along with whatever the younger man suggested. An invitation to do what he wanted really meant this is what you should do, especially if you want my company. But the suggestion to return to Thailand was beguiling; a trip in the north, off the beaten track, traveling with local people, would be an adventure, a chance of a lifetime. Dutifully, Monty called his travel agency in Vancouver, changed his reservations and postponed his return. The next morning he flew to Denpasar, Bali’s capital.

Toward the end of his ten-day stay on Bali – which had its own charms, erotic as well as cultural and artistic – he began to have second thoughts about returning to Thailand to travel with Kasim in the far north. What, after all, did he really know about the guy? And why was he taking him to the Golden Triangle of all places, to that notorious hub of heroin production and trafficking? Maybe Kasim was a drug dealer himself, his supposed student status merely a front. And what about this cousin, the policeman with the car, who would drive them around? The police in Thailand were famously corrupt. And then there was that long scar on the back of Kasim’s neck. He’d claimed that someone from his hometown, a poor distant relative who was staying with him in Bangkok and whom he was helping get settled, had knifed him one night and run away with his money. How could Monty be sure of this or anything else Kasim had told him? Suddenly the upcoming adventure lost its allure.



KASIM, HIS COUSIN and her husband – it was he who was the policeman – stood at the exit gate at Chiang Rai’s airplane field, the young couple considerably shorter than Kasim. The three waved to Monty as he walked down the plane’s exit ramp. Kasim was dressed in his customary dark pants and white shirt, but the young couple, who’d never met let alone socialized with any foreigner, wore what we’d call their Sunday best, he in a rumpled tan suit, she in a pink pinafore. They looked like high school sweethearts from a small farming town in the late 1950s who’d accidentally found themselves on the stage of Dick Clark’s hit TV show American Bandstand: three innocent Thai youths smiling and waving to Monty. No drug dealers. No murderers.

After a spicy succulent lunch at a secluded riverside restaurant known only to locals, the group checked into a recently completed four-star French hotel. The young couple gawked at everything in sight, having never before stayed in any hotel. After a brief rest they drove a short distance to the promised Golden Triangle, the point where Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. Monty hired a speed boat to take them across the water for a peak at Myanmar, where landing was forbidden. Fishermen wading in the river ignored the foreigners. A water buffalo briefly raised its head above the water, looked around and then sunk down again. When the boat ride was over, the young couple beamed with pleasure. “Sanuk,” they declared, more at ease now in the foreigner’s presence.

In the following days they visited the site of ancient Sukhothai, the old capital, which now lay in total ruins; the town of Phrae, known for producing soft French-style blue denim; a national park with a complex of large caves; and virtually every temple they passed, Kasim insisting on stopping and praying at each one. Monty would join his friend, the two dropping to their hands and knees and bowing three times to the Buddha. At the last temple they visited, when they rose from their bows the two noticed that the offering box near the main sculpture of Buddha had the words, “Up to You” written on it, and both laughed.

Foregoing a visit to the mountain tribes or a ride on an elephant, neither of which interested the younger people, they spent extra time instead in Chiang Mai, the principal city in the north. One day, after Monty treated them all to massages, given by fat giggling women who gossiped with one another non-stop while administering the strenuous twists and turns of Thai massage, the group went in search of a perfect specimen of durian, as it would be Monty’s first taste of the infamously smelly fruit that Westerners supposedly can’t abide. Tapping, smelling and rejecting those on sale at several shops, Kasim and his cousin’s husband finally found an acceptable sample. Kasim cut it open and they and the girl watched nervously as the foreigner took his first bite. “Wow,” he proclaimed, thinking it tasted like a cross between papaya and a stringy version of Camembert cheese. The others laughed in relief and shared pleasure.

The next morning, they stopped at an outdoor village market to buy some food to take with them to Kasim’s father. But when they bought several boxes of vegetables and fruits and three cases of beer, Monty wondered what was up. Only then did his young friend explain to him that that night a special Buddhist rite would be held at his father’s farm to exorcise the bad spirits lingering from the incident in Bangkok when his distant relative had knifed him and run away with his money.

Kasim’s father’s house was a small traditional Thai hut on stilts, with chickens and a few piglets running loose underneath. Over the next couple of hours, the large extended family gradually converged on the property, upwards to fifteen adults and twenty or so children. A wiry, shorter version of Kasim, the father lived alone, his wife having died shortly after their son’s birth. While the women busied themselves elaborately decorating chickens which had been slaughtered and plucked moments before to serve as offerings for the rite, the men gossiped outside and played cards. One of Kasim’s uncles shimmied up a tree, cut off a coconut and, beaming with a mouth nearly devoid of teeth, offered it to the foreigner.

When all was ready, the whole family crowded into the tiny two-room house, and the local village priest, more of a shaman , began the ceremony by brushing Kasim’s hands with leaves dipped in water, symbolically cleansing away the bad spirits. This went on for nearly half an hour, after which each adult family member, in turn, wrapped a short length of white string around each of Kasim’s wrists. The young man explained to the foreigner that the strings constituted a blessing, and that they were not to be removed until they wore away and fell apart on their own. As a special guest, Monty also had string tied around his wrists, a touching gesture that left him teary-eyed.

After the rite was completed and the bad spirits presumably expunged, the chickens reappeared, now stripped of their ceremonial decoration and cut into rough chunks. Along with other foods, they were spread out in platters on a mat set in the center of the main room. Everyone gathered around, squatting together in a tight circle, eating with their hands, Monty joining in, putting aside worries over sanitary conditions and threats of exotic tropical disease. The men grew happily intoxicated on the beer, each contributing a lively drinking song. When Monty’s turn came, he belted out a song he’d learned as a child at summer camp: “A hundred bottles of beer on the wall, a hundred bottles of beer. When one of those bottles should happen to fall, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall . . .” Though none of Kasim’s family understood the words, they all tried to join in, mimicking the lyrics as best they could.

Around nine o’clock, this being the countryside, the cousins and aunts and uncles and children all headed home, and shortly afterwards Kasim’s father retired to his small bedroom. Monty helped his friend pack the empty beer bottles into their cases and put away serving platters, knives and various utensils. Everything was securely locked in rustic glass-fronted cabinets, this being essential, Kasim explained, otherwise mice would crawl around all night long scrounging for anything and stealing everything, even crockery.

“Now we can go to sleep,” said the young man, leading Monty to a bed that occupied a small alcove on one side of the room. “But no playing around. My father might hear.”

Despite the admonition, Kasim immediately initiated sex, or at least his one-way version of sex, and when it was done, as always, fell immediately asleep. Monty meanwhile lay still on his back, sweating in the heavy sweltering night air, thinking about the day’s surprising events, and listening to the oxen shifting and grunting somewhere in a neighboring farm. The minutes seemed to stretch out. A half hour passed, an hour.

Suddenly, without warning, a huge and ominous round face with fierce eyes appeared directly in front of Monty’s own face. It nearly touched him, nose to nose. Whether through fear or actuality, it paralyzed him and he was unable to move or say a word.

“WHO ARE YOU?” the face bellowed out at Monty, punctuating each word. “WHO ARE YOU? BE CAREFUL.”

And then, as suddenly as it had materialized, it disappeared.

Monty lay there shaken, shaking, mouth agape, trying to grasp what had happened. He was certain it hadn’t been a dream; he wasn’t asleep, he was sure. Terrified still, he listened to the night sounds, the animals stirring nervously, a farmer calling out to them. He wondered if he should close the window above the bed. It was still muggy and hot. But what if someone else should sneak into the house? Eventually, after an hour or so, he dozed off into fits of uneasy sleep.

In the morning Kasim awoke energetic and self-assured as always. “How did you sleep?” he asked his guest.

When Monty told him what had happened during the night, Kasim slapped himself and apologized. “Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. I forgot to tell my father to tell the house ghost that we had a visitor staying overnight. Every night, the ghost goes all around the house to make sure that only the people who are supposed to be here are here.”

The explanation made immediate sense. That’s exactly what had happened, thought Monty: he didn’t belong here, so the ghost questioned who he was and warned him. Of course, he didn’t believe in ghosts. Once, years before, he awoke in the middle of the night and saw a filmy apparition of a fellow tai chi student with whom he had often practiced, a girl about his age with red hair. “Goodbye,” she said to him, her hand raised in salutation. The next day he learned that the girl had died during the night after a protracted battle with melanoma. Had someone mentioned that she was gravely ill? He couldn’t remember. Was it a ghost or just a phantom of his imagination, arising from unease that he hadnt' called her, though she had been absent from class for several months?

But the ghost or whatever it was in Kasim’s father’s farmhouse was different. Monty had no reason to fabricate this particular appearance, no reference. Later, after his return to Canada, he read an article about the shamanistic beliefs still prevalent in Thailand and much of rural Asia, even in Communist China. People in the countryside customarily believed each house was guarded by an ancestor ghost who protected the family.

The skeptic will ask, “So how could this Thai ghost speak English?” But, of course, that’s only what Monty heard; what the ghost actually voiced was beyond voice – a spectral language that living beings would hear in their own inner ear and interrupt in their own language.

Nearly a year after his trip to Thailand, in the midst of a powerful all-night peyote ceremony held in a Native Indian pueblo in New Mexico on a snowy New Year’s Eve, Monty would realize that, whether or not he had actually seen a ghost in Kasim’s father’s farmhouse was inconsequential. The experience, real or imagined, had taken shape within himself, within his own being, his own mind, just as all experiences occur within ourselves, within our own perception, as if the whole world is contained within each of us.

If he had gone to Asia to “find himself” amidst the exotic surroundings and pliant young men, what he had found instead was not an answer but a more profound questioning. The ghost’s demanding Who Are You? was Monty, unsated, asking himself this very question.

© G S Sirotnik 2010. All rights reserved.