Nawin

“ For a few seconds Nawin was able to stare at his curious rival with a resolute confidence and a lambent smile but it did not last, and so he stared out of the window and withdrew back into himself. He once again began to romanticize those cars of laborers with their families. It would be there, to them, from which wafting scents of dirt, rice, and wildly lush and weedy greenery, lost molecules from the whole, would pour into open windows. ”

“ With conversation continuing to seem cogent, moving on stretched, unraveled ends, Boi was on the verge of accepting Nawin as a womanizer and might have possibly done so were it not for the artist's cowardly withdrawal into himself which befuddled the befuddlement. Nawin had turned away and was staring at the fan clipping speedily at the air. ”

“ Even a woman would not dare to pee or stay in front of a mirror that long."
Nawin laughed. Like his expressions of love in his juggling of women that was and was not the love he claimed it as being, he had moments of a predilection for mendacity like a boy wanting to hide himself within the shadows of a field and to remain there indefinitely, never to be discovered. He spoke mendaciously and yet to him it was not really a lie. "I wasn't there all that long. Afterwards, I just waited outside the toilet for the seats to be readjusted. ”

“ There could be no other interpretation other than that this Nawin (on the birth certificate, Jatupon, a word that still thrust a cold chill down his spine as cold slackened his pace, freezing him to danger) , feeling uncomfortably seated on exaggerated truth, was becoming fixated on these rotating blades dicing the air the way the second hand of a clock seemed to suggest the dicing of a man's life incrementally. Due to the extent of his boredom, to Boi he was a suspicious character, an ambiguous puzzle needing to be solved and a landscape of contrasts to set his claim upon. ”

“ Nawin looked down and smiled widely. He was before the Laotian in an unzipped state after having masturbated to an image of him in his head (the same type of illusion that a man had in copulating with his wife to keep illusory human existence on the planet at all) and yet he felt no particular compunction for what he had done or what a man tended to do with his own body in the privacy of his mind, or in the intimacy of a real embrace. In all cases it was the massage of his own body to ease himself from the stress of thinking, knowing, and having to live in a world of illusions. ”

“ As he bent down toward the creature he noticed its loss of fur, that its skin, seen through the multiple spots of barrenness, was flaking, and that its eyes were still and sunken.
"Sawadee and bonjour to you, Indonchinese pooch," said Nawin with a laugh and a quick nodding bow with his head which was then replaced with a stiffness in both movement and expression. He could not be amused by another's suffering. He could not be happy when cognizant of so much suffering in the world. ”

“ He, "Naughty Nawin," was a luminosity in artistic circles who was more desirable for having been desired by others; and yet in all this time he sensed it for the inferior illusion that it was. In a world of complete illusions, a plausible reality was really the thing that was most desired and clung to and so he had clung to Noppawan, a girl who hated family as much as he did, and yet by clinging he had made a family with her. ”

“ The Laotian grinned. "Really? Are you wanting to buy?" He was. Ashamed of himself, Nawin looked down at the green sheen of water that now surrounded the monument. Its reflection seemed to sway and careen in the harmonious bombardment of the pellets of rain. More fluid than reality itself, the reflection would for a time seem permanently unsteady before evaporating entirely. ”

“ The grave expression of gagging on his saliva as if were as gaggable as ox tongue, roasted duck gizzards, and fried cockroach in burnt rouge cream at a Laotian restaurant attempting to emulate French cuisine, only lasted a moment and then he smiled, putting at ease disconcerted Nawin who was now rising from his seat as if being called on to perform the Heimlich maneuver. "That's good. More people should do that—not be so serious all the time... just realize that you are fucking around with your time, keeping your life from being entirely meaningless with a personal..." ”

“ Nawin laughed and gesticulated an artist drawing something.
"From a background of rich businessmen. Noodle workers. Dirt poverty. But if you work hard, have talents, use them commercially and invest wisely Bangok or any other large city can liberate a man." He resented even having to divulge this and kept asking himself why the man did not leave and why when the communication of bodies, the illusion of intimacy, had passed, he and this man or any two people were compelled to forage for scraps of words to assemble a bridge of ideas that would link them, two distant and alien islands. ”

“ As Nawin watched these automatons and their redundant strokes he remembered one time when he went into the stadium to jog and dabble in studies toward a Ph.D. which he had no real interest to complete. There he saw a group of workers cutting down a small tree, sawing large portions into more manageable pieces, and carrying those pieces to a pile. The workers looked like an entire family with the variety of their ages and sexes. ”

“ At last a man as fat as a tub and as sequacious as a child wobbled toward this woman, 'Four'; but, according to the feelings of the god, Nawin, that drenched the ground that they stood upon lugubriously, the two were not meant to stand together. ”

“ He slapped some water onto his face. "Time to go," he told himself; but even with this assertion he was in a fusion of daydreams and faded memories that added color and exact details to his thoughts—a more poignant fusion than that experienced in trying to recall the facts of a given situation as they really were. He thought:
"She's beautiful isn't she?" asked the Laotian.
"Yes, I would say so," said Nawin. "You don't have to persuade me on that point. It is just the time required to do a painting —a real one with a theme, a mood, symmetry, perspective, things like this and I am on vacation. ”

“ She saw her in that empty black hole of the self fluttering loose, tattered, and free like a banner on the fade of the university building they were in. "Oh no, Kimberly. Come down from the window. Please." "I want to die," "No, you don't. There are so many people who care about you. You don't want that!" "No one cares. Not really." "Oh, you know that is not true. Unlike me, you have a ton of friends and close friends in me—Nawin too. He would be here in an instant if he knew that you were so unhappy. We didn't know it was so bad, Kimberly. ”

“ Maybe when a man was not given an opportunity to learn from books, his scholarly pursuits were merely to gain the skill to accurately judge the essence of a man for his own use. Nawin on impulse, wanting to do rather than think, and yearning for a contract with another being rather than the circumspect reticence and insular freedom of being alone was willing to risk opprobrium rather than having to play more of this game of the straight and narrow, opened and tilted his umbrella over the Laotian and kissed him fervently. ”

“ Nawin's eyes hardened against all screams of dogs and men, hustlers who sold their youth for as long as it lasted no different than any other marketable product, and against all life forms floundering helplessly like fish in nets. ”

“ Nawin laughed out a spray of saliva but immediately regained self-control the best he could when upside down and having drizzled in public. "Oh my, so sorry, forgive me." For a moment he deliberately sobered his rolling caprice of laughter with the thought of the bleak scenario beyond the bold and refreshing honesty of the Laotian's words. "You've lost your jobs?"
"We have. Business slowed and our use is over. We will drift elsewhere in other temporary experiences. Don't worry about us. Don't worry about me. Why are you going to Laos?" ”

“ What you see is the entire country—nothing."
Nawin smiled painfully. Space and nature and Jatupon whose only essence could be found here and, in part, within this impecunious stranger, were the only allure. .
As the two men admitted by action that they were no different than beasts of early man urinating freely without repressions, restraints, and repercussions, neither of them feeling that they had been a detriment to environment and morality, each regained manhood. It was restored unto them in the flooding of their small respective areas to the demise of a few insects and vegetation. ”

“ They all have the damnedest hands."
"What? Do you study the hands of government officials too?"
"A brief survey, I guess. I wouldn't think of it as a study."
It seemed to Nawin that the two of them were merely crows cawing at the night to give texture to the air and all vacuous substance in order to make themselves and their world seem real. It seemed to him that small talk and bantering were, as the Laotian said, titillations to make something personal in the void of time and space. "How do you know that I'm a loafer?" asked Nawin with a laugh. ”

“ I guess when I was younger I wanted to be a pilot for what it's worth now."
"A pilot?"
"Once upon a time."
"Once upon a time," repeated Nawin thinking of a time when family was an eternal concept in a young boy's mind and one's life was rife in possibilities. He felt sadness, the eternal sadness, reflected in this one who called himself Boi and he knew that he loved him. He tried to kiss him but the Laotian feigned a laugh and pulled away.
"Quit that, you joker. Save your kisses for beautiful Laotian women. I know what you want. You wouldn't be much of a man if you didn't. ”

“ Thus with obdurate will a man's evaporating substance was patted as firm and solid as possible. For Nawin, however, the most plausible of the ethereal which he had taken bit by bit and pressed into this substance of "reality" was like a glacier that was fast breaking apart to the point of being sheathes of floating ice, and he was witnessing its enormous shards from afar. These enormous fragments were in a prodigious fog ”

“ Nawin mocked with good humored bantering. "I'm not seventy you know."
"You are such a touchy person. Now 'sir' bothers you. Clearly you aren't twenty anymore," said the Laotian. "There is nothing wrong in admitting that. It is an exit we walk through briefly to join the majority who are thought old by somebody or another. My sister is twenty-one but that too will pass."
"Yes, age is a state of mind," said Nawin rather unprofoundly, smiling widely and readjusting his opinion of the Laotian who seconds ago he had pegged as a pachydermatous brute although perceived more erotically for it. ”

“ But as time went by the inert human creature became so wholly opprobrious to the gecko, who valued a good hunt, that at last, as the small ceiling fan continued to turn arthritically, churning an unnoticeable, fetid draft of warm air in the direction of the man and the beast with a wobbling, scraping sound like cooks in sidewalk restaurants mixing fried rice but instead mixing these myriad, noxious odors of the train, it informed Nawin of his freakish obscenities with its tacit baleful eyes and scrolled tongue. ”

“ Sit down. Neither of us will be going anywhere in the rain." Nawin sat down on the wet bench next to the Laotian who wrote his telephone number out for him once again. Around them both was the mesmerizing sound of rain, now a more steady, less vehement pounding in the muddied inundation that surrounded Patuxay. With each new minute it was more like a lake instead of the elongated puddles he had seen minutes earlier. ”

“ He stuffed the five baht coin into his pocket. No, if he had loved Kimberly and Noppawan at certain times this was enough love for him in a lifetime. If he had experienced one malevolent family early in his life, this should have been enough of an augury for him that long ago he, Nawin Biadklang, should have forsworn a second round of it and vowed to maintain a single and original life thereafter. He was an artist: compassion, ideas, exposure to new people, licentious impulses, and the inspiration of dead geniuses on canvass must override this anti-Heraclital wish to cling to stable objects. ”

“ Nawin smirked and then grimaced. "I'm not sure what you mean by that," he said but he knew, or at least sensed, an attempt to deface his masculinity with homosexual innuendos and thus he manipulated his words and actions accordingly. "Anyhow, most men would consider them quite beautiful, think what you want." Having said this, and glad that he had, he still was not content for the Laotian to think what he wanted and so he pulled out a wallet that contained some slides of his favorite paintings that were there with some of his favorite condoms. ”

“ Well, married men have to get it too."
"I suppose so." Nawin sniggered mutedly while feeling both amusement and aversion at being in this guest house and in this company, this effeminate role to which he found himself in, and of becoming so old despite feeling youthful physically even with all this distorted emotional stretching over the past month. He sensed that the stranger knew that he was trying to sabotage the possibility of their intimacy becoming a relationship and he felt compunction over it. ”