Along The Watchtower

It seems to me that life isn't very significant, at least to most people who aren't living a given one, especially if they are not familiar with another entity; say the collateral damage kid whacked by the Predator while we're nicking his dad for being a "terrorist." Who’s the terrorist to that kid?

A few years ago a train being driven by remote control took out the truck I was in. The offenders handed me a few bucks, essentially telling me to get lost. For whatever reason, I've always wanted to visit Thailand and took the opportunity to spend some time there. Why I've been attracted to Thailand is a mystery, but drugs and the drug called sex have been influences in this life.

In the end, people are people, although I watched a woman who appeared to be middle-class get hit by a slow moving truck, stand up, shake herself off, then wai (bow) to the driver with a smile before going along her way. I guess that's a bit different than the West.

The people I recognized, and liked, were the Hill Kids in the North. You head out of the small town toward a park that sports a waterfall about seven kilometers outside of town. As you're headed there on one of the ubiquitous small motorcycles, the folk marketing drugs will check you out, then whistle, or somehow attract your attention.

I was a bit spooked as the young guy led me off into the jungle where we soon entered a clearing where three other young men sat on the grass in the center. We all knew each other. Thirty years had passed since I was one of those kids in America's Pacific Northwest. The kids instinct was to fuck the tourist, but I knew the game, walking away with a lot of marijuana, heroin and opium for about sixty dollars - still too much, but cheap by Western standards. I no longer smoked marijuana, but the amount I bought paid for more than everything else. The heroin I used judiciously through my nostrils, as I'd long ago tired of injections that can be dangerous. But that's another story. I thoroughly enjoyed smoking the opium.

Heading southwest I landed in a town that's too fucked up. The town borders Burma and the place I stayed had a nice view of the refugee cages. It took a while to find it, but there's a dark corner of town where few streetlights exist and the Dance of Decadence is performed nightly. There I met a very young woman - maybe nineteen-years-old. She was Burmese, but you could see the classic Indian beauty. Someone made a movie about Siddhartha that one of the most extraordinarily beautiful women of all time played in. This young woman looked like that actress.

It's an old guy's erection to think about nights like that. Going home with her we settled in, making ourselves comfortable. That's when it hit me - before we'd done anything physical - I was living vicariously through this young woman like an ancient vampire (I was 50) sucking the balance of her childlike innocence in my demonic lair. The reality had a lot to do with the economics of poverty that she was dealing with. While younger days might have found my penis guiding me through such an encounter, I just started softly crying, handing her more money than she wanted. She asked me why, but at that moment I wasn't sure either. She left happy with about six months’ salary in her small purse (sixty dollars). After she left I snorted some heroin with the insincere hope that it might kill me.

I came back to America only to be murdered by the greed of the medical profession and American realities. The heroin is readily accessible in Portland, but I prefer not to end life under threat of addiction. California and Thailand were recreational interludes I survived, but addiction can be damnation that steals everything, up to and including souls. I have to hang onto the remnants of my soul, like it made a difference to begin with.