“Motherfuckers,” Bill says, “they’re just a bunch of totalitarian motherfuckers. They make their money by…” This isn’t the first rant of Bill’s I’ve endured here in Malacca, Malaysia. It started with a simple question, of which I can’t remember by now. Bill is a master of going off on tangents. I’ve heard him rave about the search for the perfect beach and how it doesn’t exist nor will it ever, his views on this dystopian world we live in, and how he has to get out of this fucking country.
Clad in ratty red beach shorts and a light blue, and once white, button up, unbuttoned of course, Bill sits sprawled on one of the hostel’s three cream colored leather couches. He appears to be in his late forties, possibly early fifties. He’s unshaven but without a beard or moustache of any kind. It is as if he has permanent stubble. His feet are dirty and calloused. I wonder when the last time he wore proper shoes was.
I sit to the left of Bill, next to an opened window. No matter how hard I try I cannot escape the crippling humidity of peninsular Malaysia. It is worse here than it was in Singapore. I think about the three months ahead of me and wonder if I’ll ever get used to it. The dry Eastern Oregon heat is 8,000 miles away.
By now someone else, a Dutch girl who had intended on simply pouring a cup of tea and returning to her dorm, is locked into conversation with Bill. He’s telling her how the Cameron Highlands are the best place in Southeast Asia and recommends her some hostel, again “the best in Southeast Asia,” even though she says her and her friend are headed south to Bali.
“I stayed there for three weeks.” Bill frantically nods at times, “but now I gotta get out of this fuckin’ place. I’m looking at Taiwan. I think Taiwan is the place for me.” It only takes Bill a few hours before he’s telling me how now he wants to go to Australia. “I emailed a few friends I have down there. Hopefully one of them will let me crash at their place.” That must have been what he was doing on the computer not too long ago, chicken pecking the keyboard while flipping through business cards from his wallet. For some reason I speculate these “friends” are rather acquaintances.
“When was the last time you were in the States?” I ask Bill.
He tells me he left on January 1st without hesitation. Such a specific date, I note. My mind begins to go into its over-analyzization paranoia hyper-drive. What compels a man of Bill’s age to up and leave? It was evident from the conversations (if you want to call them that) I’ve had with him that his travels were unplanned and agenda free—much like mine.
But why did Bill leave? I’m skeptical that he’s only been out of the states for a mere seven months. I assume the absolute worst first. Maybe he killed someone and fled the country. Maybe he raped a little girl or maybe a boy—again fleeing. Maybe he came to Southeast Asia to meet a woman he met over the net and maybe things didn’t work out.
I’m thinking like Bill now, seeing only the negative.
Maybe he simply got laid off from his corporate job and took a year off to find himself. Maybe he simply wanted a lifestyle change. Those are both rational assumptions, right?
Bill leaves Malacca the day before I do. I’ll never know anymore about Bill. Unless I see him on some wanted poster in the post office when I get home, that is. But there I go again, thinking like Bill.
A week has past since I left Malacca and I now call a bunk bed in an ant infested guesthouse in Phuket, Thailand home. Being the low season here on the island resort, a Mecca for westerners, I find my guesthouse completely void of fellow travelers. The dorm, which houses five sets of bunk beds, is only occupied by me and a tanned leather hide of a man who has claimed the bunk closest to the window.
After being crammed, with absolutely no leg room, on an Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Phuket, I find not-so-blissful slumber in my bunk. I haven’t been asleep for long before I have my first interaction with the man.
“Oi, you’re makin’ too much damn noise,” he barks, obviously not pleased with my snoring.
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” I retort, still half asleep.
I can tell already there’s no hope for us being friends. He leaves carrying an umbrella and a wad of plastic 7-Eleven bags. I move my pack and all my belongings to the bunk furthest from his. Upon further examination of his bunk I discover that this man may in fact live here. Surrounding his bed are a web of clotheslines and even more plastic bags. It is borderline worrying. I find my way back to bed and to sleep.
I’m awoken, again by him, a couple hours later upon his return. At least this time he hasn’t woken me up for snoring. I close my eyes, hoping for another brief moment of sleep, but the heat and the humidity put a stop to that. I roll onto my side, peering in the old man’s direction. What I see frightens me.
The man is standing at the dorm’s only open window, bare ass naked. Not only is he standing at the open window, people below, but he’s rubbing himself—sensually.
I quickly roll back over. Then I hear him coming my direction. My new bunk is adjacent to the bathroom; I can only assume that’s where he’s headed. It’s too late to roll back over at this point, so I close my eyes, wondering if in the brief time since I saw him at the window last he has donned a pair of shorts. I hear him drop something right next to the bathroom door. My curiosity compels me to peek.
As I carefully open my eyes I see him, more specifically I see his dick and balls, dangling between his legs as he bends over to pick up his dropped item. It’s for sure now—we’ll never be friends.
I spark conversation with Steve, the guesthouse’s proprietor later that day. Steve’s just returned from England and tells me not to worry about payment now, that he’s “Not back into the swing of things yet.” I ask about the naked man in my dorm.
“Been here for ages,” Steve says.
Again I wonder why.
I’ve always had this dream, a fantasy I am quickly realizing, of spending my life abroad, traveling the world. After all, I went to school to get a degree in English with aspirations of teaching overseas. But when I think of Bill, and what traveling has transformed him into, it scares me. Whenever I catch a glance of my dorm mate’s wrinkly old ass it scares me. I don’t want to be the nihilist Bill is. I don’t want to become the burnout my dorm mate has become. I cannot honestly say that these are two things I may not be able to avoid, and again it scares me.
I think of my family and my friends back home and how bad I wish I could be with them over the summer. Instead I have elected to isolate myself, an ocean away from everyone I know.
Do I regret my decision to spend three months alone in Southeast Asia? Not in the slightest.
After all, I’m still young. I’m not like them.
After a grilled chicken heart skewer and a 75¢ can of Red Bull, I return to my room. The housekeeper, Steve’s Thai wife, has turned off all the fans in the dorm. I remove my sweat-drenched shirt, hanging it on the bunk’s ladder to dry, and turn on every fan I can find an outlet for. It is still not enough. I undo my belt and remove my shorts. They rest around my ankles as I try to cool down in front of one of the fans. It’s still not enough. I kick my pants aside and remove my underwear—kicking them aside as well. The air feels cool on my naked body.
I hear the key enter the lock of the door. I can hear the man’s voice outside the door, frustrated he had selected the key that opens the front door rather than the one for the dorm.
I don’t move.
I see your nudity, I think, and I raise you my nudity—your move, old man.
What am I becoming?
No comments:
Post a Comment