TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE LOVESICK FOOL
October 1995, Bangkok, Thailand -- January - April 1995, Ko Samui, Thailand
It didn't start with the eclipse, but that's a good place to begin.
I don't know, historically speaking, if eclipses were an omen of chaos and pain to come, but if they weren't, they ought to have been.
The eclipse of the sun was supposed to be 98 percent full, and would occur at 10:30am. There were a number of Thai superstitions regarding eclipses, one being that it was very bad luck to watch one, but we decided the astronomical significance was such that we should take our classes out and watch it anyway.
It was the middle of October. A holiday month, so we had intensive kids' classes. At 10:00 we herded out classes of fat little eight- and nine-year olds out onto the front steps of the shopping mall we worked at. Most of us had little polarized filter-things to watch it with; we had some shoeboxes with holes cut in them too, and some stuff like that. There were loads of people outside watching.
Hey, what's a little bad luck?
The kids were all pretty excited about it. All around the area we could hear fireworks going off and bells ringing. Another Thai superstition was that when an eclipse happened, some mythological dragon or the other was devouring the sun, and people needed to make as much noise as possible to scare it away.
It came. The light grew. . . not dim exactly. . . but. . . dank. Funny. Not dark but. . .
"It's kind of like having sunglasses on," I suggested.
"I was thinking it's kind of like when you take LSD during the day," suggested English Teacher M.
"Hmm, yeah, like taking acid during the day while you've got sunglasses on," we agreed.
We watched the sun slowly get eaten, though our polarized filters and shoeboxes. The kids all oohed and ahhed. Fireworks kept going off in the alley nearby, and I guess it worked. The sun eventually reappeared.
Back inside, they had the TV on showing close-up satellite and telescope camera images of the eclipse. Scary looking, a black disk surrounded by raging whirling columns of nuclear flame.
We all went back to class.
And of course, after class at 8:00pm, we all went down to the bar in the alley for a post-Eclipse party.
At about 1:00am or so I was bopping back to my guest-house, pleasantly drunk and full of grilled pork and sticky rice. As I went inside, the girl who worked in the lobby got up from the TV and handed me a note someone had left for me. "For me?" I was surprised. I didn't have any friends in the area, really.
I read it.
"Hello X. It is the little mean French girl who is arrive in Bangkok! See you!"
"OH SHIT!" I yelled.
She expressed her concern.
"Nothing."
The mean little French girl.
Before coming to Bangkok in April, I had spent three months on the island of Ko Samui living in a $2 a day hut on Lamai Beach.
At that time Lamai beach was still mostly beach shacks and coconut plantations, rather than tourist resorts. The beach was gorgeous -- there was an excellent coral reef -- and there were a lot of food stands where you could eat for no more than $1 a plate. There were some other cafes and restaurants that played bootlegs of current videos, to satisfy my pop culture cravings. There was a decent bar and a small disco that was usually okay.
A great place to chill out.
Except that I met the little French girl.
She was living in the hut next to mine at the far northern end of Lamai beach.
I tried to stay away from her. I really did. But she just kept smiling and greeting me.
Patiently. Knowing I'd break down.
I knew I was in a bad state -- a year of backpacking had left me broke and 10 kilograms underweight from giardia. I'd had a bad reaction to the medicine I'd taken, and my usual depressions seemed even worse than usual. I was going to start English teaching, I knew, but had no idea if I'd like it or what it would be like.
I can't say the world had disappointed me exactly, but I'd disappointed myself in how little I'd seem to get out of it. So you go to India and stay in a cheap hotel, see a sight or two, eat some local food, talk to some locals, but not many because they're trying to rip you off. Is this enlightenment? Because it feels like more of the same ol shit
I was a mess. I couldn't sleep. I was still racked with guilt over my last two failed relationships in America. (Of course, I'd been having two at the same time, that was the problem.) Here I'd run all the way around the world to get away from my problems, and instead found I was still me.
So of course, my natural reaction, pretty much, was to fall hopelessly in love with the first girl I could find.
Naturally she was only there to get stoned and fuck Thai guys that beat her.
We were Ko Samui's favorite couple.
There was a small crowd of people staying on that beach long term, and a lot of them were staying on my end of the beach. Many of them were snotty English chicks who would go to Japan for 3 months of so to work as hostesses -- that is, getting paid to get drunk with Japanese businessmen in clubs -- and then spend 6 months or so debauching on the islands. They all had Thai barmen for boyfriends -- a smarmy, long-haired bunch. There were a few people working in restaurants and such, a few hippie types. I tried to stay out of their convoluted and shallow little "scene" but didn't really manage it.
I was still too young to fully understand the dynamic that draws people with all the same worse qualities together then. But that's what happened to the French girl and me, definitely.
We'd both had to go on a Visa Run in February at the same time. So we'd gone together down to Georgetown in Malaysia. I guess that's when it happened. I fell. And hard.
She was cute. Not beautiful, by any stretch. Short. Decently built. Really long hair, hippie style. But with a French dress sense, mais oui. She was 22. I call her "little" merely because she was short. (I was 25 at the time.)
I was at a disadvantage, as I said. My usual flippant arrogance and self-absorption were gone. I was a raw seeping wound. To say my heart was on my sleeve was an understatement. My heart, my bowels, my spleen, all of it. I was a relentless pain. I tried to involve casual vacationers into deep philosophical conversations about human nature. I poured my most personal secrets out to anyone who'd listen. I complained and ranted endlessly about everything -- the environmental degradation of the island, the backpackers, the hypocrisy of Thai culture.
I could say something like "she toyed with me" or "she led me on" but I to this day am not sure how much was in my slightly delusional mind. I tend to think the fact that she spoke with me AT ALL indicates she was there to torment me. Most rational people avoided me at that time. I certainly wasn't good company.
She had sex with five other people that I know of during that three-month period. One guy from New Zealand, four Thai guys. They all had long hair. Me, she never even kissed.
(That was another thing that chafed me. I'd cut my long hair off a couple years before but was too impatient to let it grow back. It'd get more than a few inches long and I'd lose my temper and hack it all of with scissors. Well, it was the nineties. You had to be there.)
Ah but me, with me she walked along the beach with at sunset. With me she talked about life while we smoked pot and looked at the stars. With me she shared oranges at breakfast. With me she would sometime begin quietly crying but refuse to tell me why while I held her hand.
With her I would rant and rave and tell all my problems. She listened. I'd walk back into the jungle paths behind the bungalows and find colorful flowers for her. We'd go out and dance and get drunk.
Then she'd go fuck some Thai guy.
She was what I believe is known as a "pathological alcoholic." She didn't drink that much, but whenever she did, she completely forgot everything she did. So she claimed, anyway.
Everybody thought we were . . . I don't know, in a relationship. Whatever. When the Thai people running the bungalow complex had mail or a message for her, they'd deliver it to me.
A middle-aged Greek hippie guy at the complex asked once asked me how she was in bed.
"How the fuck should I know?" I snarled.
"But you two spend so much time together. . . I assumed. . ." he trailed off and lit up another joint.
Sometimes I'd tell her she was a mean little bitch, hiding her hatred for men behind her smile. She'd just smile.
And the thing was; the Thai guys all hated her too, eventually. She would befriend one, sleep with another, refuse to see him again, and go with another, etc. The Thai boys on the beach had a sort of "chick mafia" there, and it was bad news indeed to play with them. I tried to keep my nose out of it, but I got wind of it occasionally.
One night a Thai guy came to my cabin and started banging on the door yelling her name. "Jesus Christ she's not here!" I screamed. Finally it stopped. My heart was pounding. I clutched the brick I kept in the cabin for self-defense
I tried to get it together to leave many times, but the pot and the beach and the pain -- like chewing on a sore inside your lip compulsively -- kept me there. I was sleeping maybe five hours a night, a nervous wreck. It was the middle of Thai summer, excruciatingly hot, and our bungalows had no fans.
Fucking idiot. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and kick myself in the ass.
No I wouldn't, I'd go ruffle my scrubby head affectionately and say, "C'mon kid, let me buy you a drink. It gets better."
Of course I could have slept with any number of Thai girls who hung out in the disco there, for probably only a modest fee. I met a cute Swiss girl who I hung out with for three days and had sex with twice. That was great fun, but. . .
But unrequited love is the purest. I couldn't stop thinking of her.
How disgusted I was when I read Alex Garland's novel THE BEACH in 1997. Also a tale of a young American losing it on an island in Thailand, near the one I was on, falling in unrequited love with a French chick.
Although he bangs her in the movie.
At the time you could still buy hallucinogenic mushroom omelets at a few different beach cafes. One day I ate an entire one by myself, when they were normally meant to be divided between four people.
I spent the day wandering in a world that looked as brilliant as stained glass with the sun behind it. I flopped in the water hallucinating and talking to myself, then back to my hut, watching the walls breathe and patterns of light twist. She tried to speak to me once while I was watching some ants climb up my balcony, but I just mumbled something.
I emerged in the evening from my bungalow feeling like a empty teapot.
"Are you okay?" she asked cautiously.
"Yeah. Too many mushrooms."
She hit me with her towel. "Damn it! I zought you had gone crazee!"
I giggled.
Ah, poor love sick fool, moping and scourging himself with briars. Everyone else around knew about it. I never was so bold as to mention it to her directly, but I think she knew what was up.
I wish I could say there was a climax of some sort. A violent argument, a fight with a load of Thai boys, hot sex. Anything. In fact, I tried to make a violent argument over something -- I can't remember what -- but she would have none of it. I kept trying to ignore her and she'd just smile and say, "Hi, X" like nothing had happened. After a few days she wore me down and I wearily began talking to her again.
So finally I just left.
Might have been cool if I'd left without saying goodbye, I suppose, but I didn't. She hugged me, promised to keep in touch. "Take care of you," she said.
I made it to Bangkok. I remember for the first three days in Bangkok I slept almost constantly. Then I hesitantly opened the Bangkok Post to the Employment section and called the first number I saw.
And thus in April, English Teacher X was born.
Okay, not much of an identity, I admit. But I'd damn sure rather be English Teacher X than Nervous Wreck Broke Lovesick Backpacking Fool X.
So on my next visa run to Georgetown, Malaysia in May, I saw her. Getting drunk at the Reggae Bar with a Dutch guy. She was happy to see me. She hugged me hard. I told her about Bangkok, she told me about the beach.
But I was English Teacher X now, a lot more confident. I could look her in the eye like a tiger, not like a sheep. Still my heart lurched occasionally. She slept in the same room with the Dutch guy. I slept alone and got bed bugs.
Time went on. English Teacher X grew. Stronger mentally and physically.
In August, she wrote me a letter saying she was coming to Bangkok.
But she didn't. I wrote her a letter asking what happened, no reply.
(This of course in those quaint long ago days before email. Oh the innocence!)
I didn't see her on my next visa run, in September. I assumed she'd disappeared.
Then the eclipse.
And now here she was. Again. Sort of.
So, but, now. I was ready. Or moreso, anyway. I was English Teacher X. I had money. I had a job. I'd gained weight, been exercising, had friends I could talk to. I'd learned to like Thai hookers, too.
And, what's more, Q was coming. The very next day, in fact.
My oldest and dearest friend, the pill-popping, alcoholic, obsessive-compulsive Soon-to-be Teacher Q was coming to Bangkok to work, fresh off his recent suicide attempt in San Francisco.
It was shaping up to be an interesting next couple of months.
God help me.
NEXT: A HAIRY COUPLE OF MONTHS IN BANGKOK