BANGKOK REDUX
I've always felt that my fate is to end up getting killed for something I didn't do.
For example.
So in 1999 I went back to Bangkok. There I was. It was the future. Like in "Space:1999." One of my favorite science fiction movies, "Escape from New York" is set in 1997.
There I was in the future.
The theft of $500 and all my identification proved something of a pain, of course, but I still had a good chunk of money saved from Korea so it was no emergency or anything. Plus I got a tax refund from my year of gainful employment in New York that more or less covered the loss.
Khao San road had changed, like everything. Guest houses were sprucing up their facilities and raising prices. A well decorated pub called the Susie Pub had opened up in one alley that not only had a neon sign but AIR CONDITIONING! Some areas nearby had sprouted trendy Thai bars and discos, where rich kids compared mobile phones. Old areas of wooden buildings were disappearing. Backpackers were a much more mainstream lot now. The city was a lot cleaner, due to some strict anti-litter ordinances.
Ah, but the women were still beautiful and the sun still set like a tropical explosion of red and pink and the old women still smiled with all their souls while they dished you up a plate of fried rice.
It was great to be back.
And this time I was ready for war. My first time in Bangkok I'd been way underweight, broke, badly dressed, my confidence at an all time low. Now I had a decent pot of money, was in good shape from exercise and plenty of food in New York, and was positively manic with confidence.
I started back to work with my old employers, in the shopping mall in a suburb. Classes were smaller and now there were luxuries such as a cassette player in every room and a small library of books about teaching. Some of the boys had moved on, but quite a few had stayed. They didn't whoremonger so much, as the currency had collapsed, making whoring expensive. They were probably equally as drunk, however.
The salary had gone way south, of course -- there was nothing but part-time work now, at about the equivalent of $6 an hour. I moved into the Peachy Guest House on Prha Athit road, near the Pinklao bridge and behind a Buddhist temple. Roomy and atmospheric, albeit loud.
I don't remember exactly when I met her, but it was shortly after I arrived.
English Groupie P.
She was tall and decently built. Her nose was funny looking, though, and she was goofy. Frankly she wasn't much by Thai standards. But she dressed more sexily than most Thai girls and flirted and batted her eyes outrageously with all the teachers.
Oh shit, I thought, here's trouble.
She was ostensibly dating one of the other teachers, English Teacher F, whose nickname was Ratso. He was a filthy little British gypsy. He was typical of the "new breed" or English teacher -- hated everything about it, but could live a lot better and get laid a lot more abroad, so he wasn't going home anytime soon.
English Groupie P was like 25, but about as mature as the average American 13 year old. She was rich. She drove one of her father's BMW's She had a Thai boyfriend, of course, a rich kid, but she told English Teacher F that she didn't love the guy or sleep with him anymore. Though she still took his gifts, of course. She wanted to run away from home and live with English Teacher F, but she was afraid of what her parents might do.
English Teacher F wanted to marry English Groupie P.
Dumbass.
She was making eyes at me big time every time I saw her at the school.
I'd had enough trouble dating students in New York, and craved a life free of romantic stress. I'd had a couple of lucky nights with backpackers and Thai chicks who lived around Khao-San Road, anyway. To that end I decided to avoid her, especially when English Teacher F was around.
This of course made little Ratso very suspicious.
It of course probably wasn't helped by the gossiping Thai secretaries at the school or indeed by English Groupie P herself, who I'm sure did everything she could to inflame poor little Ratso.
Okay, then again, I didn't ALWAYS avoid her.
On one of my days off I found myself running into her outside my guest house. She said she was just in the neighborhood to buy some books in English, but only later did I realize she was probably tracking me like a wolf tracks a wounded lamb.
I accepted her invitation to have lunch at an Indian restaurant nearby.
Stupid, I suppose.
I recall a film called THE HOT SPOT from the early nineties in which the lead character, played by Don Johnson, says, after sleeping with the town femme fatale, "Do you know what my batting average is for staying out of trouble when the trap is baited with this much tramp?"
She told me during the meal that I looked like Kevin Costner. Great, I looked like a famous actor, who was about 15 years older than me.
Anyway, I guessed that was better than the Japanese girl in New York who told me I looked like James Woods.
So English Groupie P and I ate Indian food. I didn't play footsy with her under the table. I didn't get her drunk and fuck her. We just talked about life.
Promise!
Anyway, I had other things to think about. English Teacher T, the manager of the school I worked at, mentioned that a former manager from our chain was working at another big chain in Bangkok. This chain was looking for someone to work in a small school on one of the big tropical tourist resort islands down south.
Now didn't that sound like a swell idea!!
I contacted the former manager by email. He remembered me and said he'd be delighted to give me an interview for the position.
Now as I have said in another article, 1999 was the first time in my three-plus years of teaching that I ever even MET anyone with qualifications of any sort. The Internet was reaching the monolithic cultural proportions it now has, and the EFL industry was rapidly attaining a sort of pseudo-professional gloss bolstered by the various "EFL teaching certificate" rackets, a shiny facade that was drawing eager kids off the Internet in droves. In fact it seemed to be replacing backpacking as the most popular "year after college" option.
Hey, bitch, I can fake professionalism as well as the next guy. In fact in the three months I was in Bangkok my teaching improved dramatically. This was thanks in part to cumulative experience, in part to the books on teaching that I had been reading. As I said, a small library of books had accumulated at the school, and I was reading them eagerly during the dead hours at work. (For a look at some of my favorites, check out my RECOMMENDED READING LIST) Things were clicking into place, suddenly; activities that had been stressful and boring to me suddenly became easy and successful. For the first time the job didn't seem like nerve torture. I could kill time and entertain with ease now.
The morning of the job interview I had been out drinking late, though I can't recall what I did. I had to get up at about 6:00am to get to the 9:00am interview, which was in the center of Bangkok and necessitated a considerable battle with traffic.
English Manager C was a true professional. He had an MA in Linguistics and something like twenty years' experience, at real schools and universities in England, Africa, and the Middle East.
Which makes one wonder how he ended up in Bangkok, working for two of the cruddiest of the chain schools. A mutual acquaintance speculated that he had molested a choir boy back in England, or something of that nature. I wouldn't want to speculate.
English Manager C had a hail-fellow-well-met, power-of-positive-thinking type personality that was balanced by a decent sense of humor. (Well, you'd have to have one.) We went through all the motions of pretending we were trained and positive professionals at the interview, both knowing full well I would be hired because a) he knew I wasn't likely to run out suddenly or cause the school any grief and b) I had blonde hair.
He offered me the job. Starting in three weeks, after I finished up my classes at my current school.
It was a refreshing change from my previous job interviews, where nobody had even bothered to adopt a shadow of professionalism. It rubbed off on me and I started acting more professional at work, using jargon like "TPR" and "teacher- centered learning." I'd noticed a few of the guys at work had started doing it, too -- they'd been to some seminars sponsored by English Manager C's school. Hell, I even inquired into the cost of some different CELTA courses. Maybe I had a future after all!
English Groupie P approached me at work one day, however, a week before I left, to tell me she had a problem and needed to talk to me. She said she'd meet me at the same Indian restaurant.
I knew it was going to be bullshit. I was considering shagging her, I admit. I didn't like English Teacher Ratso. He was rude, stupid, had no sense of humor and had apparently been unfaithful to English Groupie P with another student. Plus she had another boyfriend anyway. Not like I was the only guilty party around here.
She didn't come to our meeting.
I waited a bit, and then went for a walk through the temple down to Khao San road, where all the backpackers lounged in cafes watching bootlegged videos and bought t-shirts, jewelry and fake crap of all descriptions.
Eventually I saw English Groupie P walking down Khao San. She suggested we have a drink. She said she'd been delayed unavoidably.
She obviously wanted to tell me something stupid like she'd fallen in love with me, but kept avoiding it by saying things like "I have something I want to say, but I can't really say it" and talking about how she wasn't sure about her relationship with English Teacher Ratso.
I got bored and irritated with the whole affair and just started to get drunk. I very much got the impression that I could at any point have just stroked her hand and she would have fallen into my arms and happily been led back to my room for as much hot sex as I could stand. But she'd started to bug me. I told her I was leaving Bangkok soon, and asked her to keep in touch and gave her my email address, written on the back of a gum wrapper.
The next day at work, I was warned by English Teachers T and K that English Teacher Ratso had discovered her meeting with me and thrown a tremendous tantrum. He'd waited by her car (which was parked by the school we worked at) and screamed at her, and kicked a dent in the door. English Teacher K had had to physically hold him at bay at one point.
How had he discovered our meeting? Well, of course she'd pretty much just told him she "had an appointment she couldn't tell him about" and then called someone on her mobile phone and said my name twice while speaking in Thai.
He wasn't at work that day, fortunately. We all went down to the dirty Isaan garage-bar in the alley next to the school and got drunk. English Groupie P came down to the bar and cried and wailed dramatically. English Teacher Ratso had threatened her, called her a whore. Oh woe. He'd somehow managed to discover my email address in her purse. Written on a gum wrapper. Gosh how inconvenient.
"Well, hell, we may as well fuck now," I said. She didn't quite get the joke, but the others did. I was pretty disgusted with the whole scene, and English Teacher K and I decided to just go get drunk down at a go-go bar at Nana Plaza. I'd be gone soon anyway, I could forget this nonsense.
The next day at work I had a bad hangover and decided to cancel my private lesson, after I finished my first class. English Teacher Ratso still hadn't shown up for work. English Groupie P had said Ratso was still enraged, and said he had vowed to give me a going over.
I wasn't particularly worried, he was short and I could probably outrun him anyway.
Walking out through the parking lot and across the soi and to the bus stop, I kept a careful watch for dirty little English gypsies steaming towards me. Nothing, no one. Just the usual heat and filth and motor bikes and immaculately clean Thai people.
At the bus stop I was waiting for the number 44 air-con. I was polishing a fingerprint off my glasses when I felt a hand shove me roughly from behind. My heart leaped into my throat, as I turned to face little Ratso.
If he'd shoved me harder I would have gone in front of the bus that was pulling in. And I doubt I'd ever have seen it coming.
"All right, let's talk," I said. Four years of English teaching does not leave one very flappable.
So I took little Ratso to a bar and told him how stupid he was being, how he was a fool to love one of these women, that they loved us for our image, our passports, the life in the West they imagined that doesn't remotely exist.
I didn't convince him (or myself, unfortunately) but I left him mollified.
The day I was leaving for my new job down south, English Groupie P came to see me in my room. I asked her why she was being so stupid, why didn't she just break up with Ratso, if she didn't love him. She said she felt sorry for him. I chastised her for causing such a ridiculous drama. She sighed.
I still wanted to shag her, but I didn't.
I hugged her, and walked her out to her BMW. As I was walking away, she whistled. I turned around and she smiled ear to ear and extended her middle finger at me.
I think I kind of regret not shagging her now.
Oh well.