The weekend that the four-winged acapela bugs hit Chumphon was a long weekend. The 28th day of May was a highly regarded buddhist holiday known as “Viseka Day” which happened to fall on a Friday. Good news for everyone, except for the fact that this was the one true day you were not supposed to drink alcohol in Thailand. As fate would have it, this exact Friday was the day that myself and my new-found friends happened to run out of ganja stash. Big deal. I took a stroll around the lot with the Ruca dog and picked about thirty leaves from the kratom tree; a sacred, mysterious Thai herb that either puts you up in the breeze or down on your knees. It hasn't failed me yet.
I boiled some water and steeped all of em' on low heat. That was the usual procedure. But then I followed a newly suggested recipe and cooled the brew off before adding a bottle of M150, the reddest of the bulls. I mixed it with ice, poured the potent batch into a bucket and started pulling off it from a straw. The recipe was recommended just the previous night by a fellow teacher named Kentucky Jay. Still haven't figured this cat out yet, but he's good. About as American as they come, but every word he says is funny 'cause of his Kentucky accent. Jay is the head teacher at another school here in Chumphon. He has killed many people, and talks about his days as a sniper without mentioning any gory details. “It was a job, like any other.” He says. Then he changes the subject and talks about some crazy shit he saw on YouTube. Fair enough.
There is now a solid collection of characters to bring into this ongoing saga of mine. Some of these people I'm certain I was destined to meet up with. Others I know are here strictly for the sake of entertainment and good writing. All are welcome.
My closest new friends are an Australian named Dan Z., who I met on a long ass bus trip to the country of Laos. We were both travelling alone at the time, and after a bit of basic chit-chat I learned that he was inevitably bound for Chumphon, to teach at the high-school about fifteen minutes away from where I live. We met up with another Aussie, a lady named Jo at the Thai Embassy, who turned out to be a real wild card. I would have guessed she was in her 40's but it turned out she was pushing on 60. The three of us found a great hotel off the main drag of Vientian and shared an honest couple of days doing nothing but eating and drinking, while pouring out our life stories for each other. It's funny how you can open up to a complete stranger easier than you could ever say anything to your own family. We let it all hang out, and it felt great. Turns out, Dan was once a married man, living in Babylon, as he puts it. Wearing the same clothes, and living the same life as everybody else. But something wasn't right. So he and the wife called it quits and Dan fled to India, specifically to a place called Goa, where he lived in a community of music, psychedelic drugs, hugs and freedom of everything. It drew all walks of life from all corners of the world, all with one intention; re-discovery of self. After nearly a year, the money ran out and it was time to move on. Dan, the man. One hell of a neighbour, he's turning out to be. From married life to pure freedom to shooting zombies at the local arcade with yours truly.
Subsequently, after getting back from Laos, Dan and I hopped on a bus headed to an English Teachers seminar at a 5-star resort located on the River Quai (we never saw the bridge). It was there that we met a variable plethora of travelling teachers like ourselves from the farthest reaches of the globe. A lot of South Africans at this event. A lot goin' on. Just like high-school, everyone broke off into their temporary cliques. Dan n' I bounced around from group to group, taking it all in and checking it all out. The seminar would end everyday at 5:00pm, followed by an onslaught of foreigners walking off the resort to purchase cheaply priced alcohol at a store, conveniently located at the gates of the resort compound (some might call it a convenient store). It was during one of these after seminar parties that I walked into the room of Paul Zuckerman and Thomas Busk, perhaps two of the oldest dudes at the event. Originally I was drawn in by “a simple twist of fate” echoing off the acoustic guitar being played by Thomas. He had a musical background beyond anybody I had ever met in a hotel. After jamming with the Greatful Dead in the last few years of Jerry Garcia's life, Thomas went on to play with George Clinton and the P-Funk All-stars before moving to Malaysia to pursue a career in studying Taoism and eventually falling into a gig as an English teacher to stay a float. Thomas could cover damn near anything, but with his own slow spin on it that made it his. While he played, Paul n' I bonded on conversations about favorite writers, Dylan songs, movies and beliefs. It wasn't until a week later that I got back to the home base in Chumphon when I received a message from Paul saying that he was coming to town to teach at the same school as Dan. He needed a place to live. I happened to know of a vacant house on the good ol' lot that I call home. Now “the lot” is full on commune living style, with Dan Z and Paul Z, Charlie, Me and of course, a pant-load of meaningful characters that continue to come out of nowhere and make me believe that life is brilliant. We'll never be able to compete with it's divine comedy. So the best thing to do is laugh and make the best out of every card you get dealt. To find enjoyment in the 4 of spades, and all those other rags.
Anyway like I was saying, it was during this 3 day blessing of a weekend that Dan's good Finnish friend, Meeka came to town. He arrived on the Friday night and it became instantly clear that Meeka liked to party. A good crew of us put in some quality hours on the most inviting porch I've sat on in many years (maybe the greatest, but it's early still). It all started like rain....one, two, four, seven, twenty, eighty-nine, downpour! But it was bugs. The wrath. Swarming around the light above us in a building funnel cloud. Kinda gross at first, but somehow it became fucking amazing. I jumped up on the table and put my head in the vortex of acapela bugs and their accelerated wings. It was like wearing a 360 degree fan helmet. Ever seen one of those? I don't think they exist.
There was no chance of knowing it then but Meeka was a goddamn tornado himself. We use the word “crazy” in many ways these days. Meeka represented it very well. He was bad crazy in the sense that he was very socio-pathic, with no filter or respect for thai culture, or any other culture for that matter. We all liked the guy a lot, but within a few short weeks he became hard to associate with. Aside from the little things, like riding a motorbike in his bare feet and wearing not much more than tattered underwear, he would approach us at the best of times, when the Thai family was around, and he would say shit like “ Ok, I'm gonna go and smoke 'dis joint with da whores in da whore house now.”
Aw yes, and the hand. That's his own crafty work, performed with a pair of scissors after he shot a cocktail of sedatives and bad junk into his arm. As Meeka tells it, he had to do it himself or he would have lost his whole arm. I'm not makin' this up and I'm pretty sure he isn't either. Life writes it's own stories. We play the part we're given as best as we can.
The crazy part that I appreciated about Meeka was that he was one of those cats that was up for anything, and possessed a very intellectual mind hidden within his brutish exterior. He had seen his share of things and worked his share of jobs. Apparently a 7 year drug addict can land some pretty interesting gigs in Finland. The two most notables he mentioned were working for Sony and a division of the city morgue that performed full body autopsies. Meeka was the guy that opened up the body cavity and the skull. With no official experience, they supplied him with a shelf full of horrific looking tools and put him in front of a corpse. He described how exploring the inside of the human body was like being in outer space or the unknown depths of the sea. I didn't doubt that he had likely been to both. Eventually I was going to ask about all the circular scars that riddled his body, but he beat me to it. I find it hard to believe that this guy was ever what we'd call a “normal guy” but apparently there was a point in his life when he was normal enough. Engaged to be married, in love with life, writing poetry etc. Then one day, after an examination for some pain in his chest, he was told by the hospital that he had a rare and rapidly fatal form of cancer and had roughly a year to live.
Most people have some sort of half-ass answer for this scenario, and most of the time it involves travelling to somewhere they've always wanted to go. But for Meeka, the answer wasn't about going anywhere, it was about doing something he'd always wanted to try; heroin.
So with a 12 month countdown 'till the end, he did some research, made some calls to the wrong people, went out and purchased a heroin kit and got into the drug like it was a fuckin' stamp collection.
It didn't take long to wear the badge of a junky, and before he knew it, two things had happened. He had used heroin so much that he was running out of good veins to shoot into, and paradoxically, a year had come and gone since he had been diagnosed. Then another year went by. And another. The cancer was never there, it was a misdiagnosis in favour of the patient. How lucky and stupid can you be at the same time? This sets the bar pretty high. Now Meeka was going to die, but not from cancer.
It's been almost 10 years since the fluke, and having known this character for only a few weeks now, I would confidently (or unconfidently) wager that Meeka's time is almost up. There's a lot to support this theory including, riding around on the motorcycle, drunker than shit, no shirt, no shoes, of course no helmet, eventually crashing it and ripping apart half his foot, fooling around with married Thai woman, and somehow managing to break damn near everything he touched. Some people are accident prone, others make their own trouble, the rest of us just try to stay the hell out of the way. Meeka has now been missing for 2 days. Whatever happens to this cat will not surprise me at all.
It's almost July now, and if the world starts turning any faster I think I'm gonna chuck. Some questions have been answered, some decisions have been made, some money has been saved. As always, more questions have arisen, more motivation is needed, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But to contradict all that shit I just wrote, I've also realized how different my life really is now, more than it's ever been. I never thought I'd be a serious English teacher, but it really is an amazing gig. I'm exerting energy in a way I never have before with any job I've had, and when it's done right, it comes back. I dig it for the challenge of doing something that I never pictured myself doing. At the same time, the living is easy, the food is amazing and the time for writing, reading, learning guitar and building on a future is all here, if I can just stay focused. It's hard to do all these things at once, but it's a hell of a lot better than being “busy” doing redundant shit that gets you nowhere but tired. As long as the all encompassing good stuff doesn't stop, I'll be more than fine.
