barbituventure

this one time i was in Thailand i had the unfortunate or awesome occurrence of finding out that every pharmacy has every imaginable prescription drug out in the market. i was out in chiang mai with nick after a few days carousing out in Bangkok and things had been going pretty well and it was pretty much a night to night alcohol diet. we met up with an ex-pat, tommy, i knew back from in the states who decided to move to thailand to learn some kickboxing the hard way.

he brought this chick named ally from australia out with him and she had a cute accent and ended hooking up with me for the rest of my vacation which was nice, but back to the barbituates.

our little party of four had just finished up a nice thai lunch fueled with lots of beer in the humid heat of the winter sun and tommy dropped casually that "all pharmacies are stocked with anything you want man, no prescriptions needed, just cash" and that was that. i was on soma break for the rest of the trip. anxiety? pill. stress? pill. ennui? pill. anxiety, is that you again? pill. it was an unending cycle which didn't quit til i had to leave the country and boy can i tell you the nightmares i had during withdrawals alone aren't worth me ever going on a binge again, at least not for awhile.

it was during one of these euphoric wavy daze that me and nick decided it was a good idea to rent scooters to travel around town. we rode up and down zipping through the busy streets, faster than everyone. it was like bombing a hill during 2pm traffic in the tahoe mountains, gunning the throttles, always faster in and out of the lead until i low sided at an intersection and thank god i didn't get run over and i was wearing that bike helmet they gave us at the scooter place.

I remember rolling twice with my backpack on and that probably saved a lot of skin off my back and i left the accident with little incident besides some scraped up elbows and knees and even the camera i just bought had survived the accident without incident. after the wreck i stood up and checked the joints and made my side to the side of the road where there happened to be a bar with a bunch of middle aged ex pats and a horde of concerned looking thai ladies who happened all to be working at the same bar.

i checked myself again and i couldn't believe that i was okay and by then nick had hauled and parked the scooter next to me and i ran to a local pharmacy to pick up some bandages and antiseptic since the last thing i wanted was gangrene on vacation.

we rode around some more after that, but i had had enough and the pills in the supply sack were running low so i wanted to get back to the hotel as soon as possible. i knocked on my hotel room after parking the scooter and went up to the room where ally from australia answered the door and asked me what had happened and i told her and then she laughed in my face and i always thought that was kind of a dick thing to do.

it happened to be a pretty okay night though because we kept buying beers from the liqour store next door and ally from australia kept going on food runs so that night didn't turn out to bad. and it didn't hurt either that i got woken up with the next morning either but i am sure it was more sympathy than anything but it kind of absolved the whole laughing in my face thing.

the barbituventure was fun, but once again those nightmares were bad and i couldn't sleep for like 3 nights straight without waking to some terrible trepidation swearing that all the fears, anxieties, and ghosts hadn't caught up back to me after all this time.

my father's chauffeur

my father used to have a chauffeur, years back. i don't really know why, because he could have driven himself and does so perfectly well now. i think part of the reason was because his driver was a college buddy. the driver's name was "ah-long" or as a literal translation uncle dragon and he was just this cool, chain-smoking, whiskey drinking, golf hustler who'd hit a few bad streaks.

ah-long was the type of uncle to give you cigarettes and sneak you drinks when you're 16 and stuck at a lame adult party. he gave me pointers on my golf game and once even gave me a few cubans he had somehow procured. since him and my dad were friends, they went everywhere together. during long rides i heard them debate life, politics, and everything in between except women, at least never in front of me.

my parents always spoke highly of him. he had been popular back and college and been lucky with a few small businesses but things changed and he had to start driving for my dad. he was always smiling his nicotine stained yellows and was always with a quick "good morning" or "how are you today". i would probably only see him once a year, just the number of times i went back to taiwan to see the family. every year, i would go back and my dad would tell me that he would have to let ah-long go. but he never did. at least not until a few years ago.

"dad, where's ah long?"

"he stopped working for me a few months ago."

"how come?"

"just because, that's how things work out."

"how is he?"

"who?"

"ah-long"

he paused for a while. sometimes i can still never tell if my father is in deep contemplation or an unengaged stupor.

"he's not doing so well. his son recently had an accident. he was on his scooter and was hit by a utility truck, they had to amputate both his legs after unsuccessfully trying to save them. his girlfriend at the time was also on the scooter, but luckily she survived the ordeal with little injury."

"is his son okay now?"

"he's recovering."

"what about ah-long?"

"he's dealing with it."

i haven't seen ah-long since he stopped driving for my dad but every once in awhile i'll ask about him and how he's doing. he's one of those people that kind of just fade out of your life, yet leaving a tremendour impression. my dad recently told me that ah-long has just found a new job. he's managing a manufacturing plant in the steel industry. his son isn't doing too bad either, he recently got into law school and is engaged. sometimes, things work out okay.

Art showz

Howdee kids, it's time for some art showz!

First up is February 6th 2010, which is this Saturday. The art is by sculptor Evi Ellias, you can check out her cool shit here ---> http://www.evitaz.com/ She has made a giant Guess Who? board game and I am one of the artists painting three identical portraits for the piece. Exciting. Come out for a night of drinks, hot chicks, and a giant board game. It's a win-win, seriously.

GUESS WHO?

Second up is "Fatal Attraction" at Clubsix Gallery on February 13 2010. So if you don't have a date for valentine's but have been trying to find a cool event to take that lady friend you've been in love with, stop by. There will be cool music, cool art, and probably weird people.

FATAL ATTRACTION

Look at all those damn communists.

I can see your nipples through your shirt whore.

Part 2

So we walk in through the double doors and it's a sea of women. Most of the guys in the club look like they're from out of town, but what is shocking is that for the most part, the girls are foxy. All decked out in ho gear and all of them checking us out. Weird.

We head straight to the bar and load up with a few rounds. We take a tour of the place, nothing special, a nice deck patio, and a center stage with polls being molested by girls. It was a little bit like being at a Vegas strip club, just without the tits. We take a seat overlooking the stage and watch while a girl does the splits onstage while being facefucked by another girl straddling her head. We head back to the bar after a few more minutes and strike up a conversation with two girls by the bar. Nick starts in on the first one and I talk to her friend and she is about as stunning a girl as I have ever seen.

She was thin with big doey eyes, her hair pulled back into a bun. She was wearing a red evening gown, stilettos, clutching a Louis bag, and a Chanel watch. High maintenance popped into mind.

"Where are you from?"

"San Francisco."

"You?"

"(some shitty little village). How long are you and your friend staying for?"

"Two weeks, we leave New Years Day."

"What are you guys planning on doing?"

"No plans, we're just kind of going with the flow."

We chat some more, but it's a little hard since of the whole language thing and I look over at Nick and I can tell that his conversation is not going anywhere also. We say bye to the girls and watching her leave was just about as nice as talking to her.

After the girls take off we head back for some more stage watching. I happen to strike up a conversation with an ex-pat named Rick who sits down next to us with his entourage which is basically all chicks. I didn't think he would mind sharing that much. Turns out he moved out to Bangkok from Seattle years back and never had the mind to move back. He is somewhat of a local celebrity and plays lead guitar for a band at some big hotel downtown. Now it's understandable why he's got some many ladies.

"Who's that girl in the white?"

"Who her?" Rick turns and points to the girl in a white tubetop which is spilling at the brim. She had beautiful shoulder length hair and batted eyes at me. "She's a model, she's 30 though."

"So what would you say the percentage of working class girls are in here?"

"What right now?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno, probably 80%"

"So how can you tell?"

"Well, mostly by what they ask you. Usually it's where you're from and how long you're staying. Some guys, they're pretty fucking stupid, they meet these girls and they fall in love. Sometimes they'll even ship money in from overseas. And for the most part, these girls don't care, they're just trying to have fun, make a few dollars, it's just a game to them."

I introduce Rick to Nick and they strike it up too and start talking to some of the girls. They're fun and drunk and flirty, but once again the whole language thing is odd. One of the girls "accidently" spills her drink on my lap and she immediately apologizes and the chick in the white tubetop also comes over and they start patting my crotch with fistfuls of napkins. Okay then, so I just roll with it.

"You gotta help me fuck these girls man" Nick whispers in my ear. He grabs the girl closest to him and basically flings her on me. She grabs me from behind, starts massaging my shoulders and makes her way down my stomach and grabs my cock. So much for introductions. Rick's friend Mikey shows up and we keep drinking and Mikey tells me "I'm just like Tiger Woods man, half black, half thai, and I fuck a lot of chicks.

We keep steadily drinking, but we pretty much hit the limit and tell Rick that we'll meet him up tomorrow night. I like hooking up just as much as the next man, but I don't like having the idea of my penis falling off.

We head back outside and Nick reminds me to grab my knife and we decide to walk back home, even though we basically have no idea where we're going.

We stop by a food stall selling grilled meats and sticky rice. We get some. At some point Nick stops to pee on the street, I spot half a watermelon on the ground (uneaten) and I throw it at him. I laugh. We keep walking and walking but get so lost and that we have to hop a tuk tuk. We get dropped off at a street market that has just opened up for the days work and we walk through aisles of meat, produce, and seafood, most of the stuff still alive. Nick gets hungry again so he goes to bye a sausage with sticky rice before we walk home.About half way through the sausage he turns and looks at me.

"Dude, I think this shit is still raw." He hands the sausage over to me. It is charred on the outside but the inside is still pink with large hunks of uncooked garlic.

"Fuck."

We keep walking back to his aunt's house and on the way we stop by another food stall. This time, chicken liver kabob's. I feel like Nick still hasn't really learned his lesson yet, so I don't say nothing. We walk back home exhausted as the sun starts to come up.