A bit of a blip, part 1
I was half addicted to heroin after a week. I was feeling sick and paranoid; though all the alcohol I was consuming made it hard to tell where the sickness was coming from. We got to Bangkok, had a miserable argument at the airport when it turned out my money wasn't through, then got a bus to the Koh San Road. I despised Kay at this point, she was telling me what a cunt I was, not listening to anything I had to say. The evil monkey in my head was saying; 'Somehow ditch her.'
I'd bought her ticket, taken her away from her squalid little life in London; in London I'd been paying for everything as well, and now she was acting as if my money not arriving was part of some master plan to rip her off. The idea of sorting out my money then taking off was attractive; though my irritating conscience was telling me that deserting a fucked up girl thousands of miles from home was Not On.
Anyway, I stared her down, booked us into a fetid scum hole guesthouse I'd stayed in a few years before, and got a few beers in. The next day, sick as I was, I decided to try and stop drinking and found that I absolutely couldn't. An overwhelming sense of dread was the problem - I could have coped with the shakes and sickness on their own. I was finding the smallest things frightening. With a few drinks inside me I tried to sort out my money. I called the Incapacity department to find out why my benefit hadn't gone in - they said it should have done and would now make sure of it; unfortunately it would take three days to clear - do I want to go to the Jobcentre today and pick up an instantly cashable cheque? No(because I'm swanning around in exotic climes you sorry fucks).
By now Kay was in the middle of a bender herself and it was awful. There are some people who should never drink, not for their own sake but for others. After a certain number of drinks Kay would become vicious and paranoid: convinced people were getting at her she'd insult them. I kept finding excuses to walk off on my own - this way I could drink lots of water and gradually cut down the booze intake. Kay thought I didn't want to be with her. This was true. She was in no state to go walking in the Bangkok heat. Whenever I got back she was so hectic and rude that people were looking at us. At this point I'd crack and have a beer or two to try and kill the paranoia. On about the third day things came to a head. I came back from yet another walk, feeling that I was knocking the old drinking on the head quite well, and Kay wasn't there. This aged junkie fellow said she'd gone off in a state to find me. I eventually found her in a bar. She was telling an appalling football shirted whore tourist what a cunt the guy she was traveling with was. I caught her eye and grinned. The dickhead she was with, obviously thinking he was on to a free fuck, told me that he thought me behaviour was awful and that Kay was going to come and stay with him. Kay then told him to fuck off. I smiled, the bloke got a bit angry and I laughed at his confusion. I dodged his punch, helped him fall over a table and invited Kay to have a discussion with me in the street.
'Kay, I've got to stop drinking which means you've got to stop drinking - you're fucking up my head.'
Kay can insist, screaming, that drinking doesn't make her paranoid or scream, and totally believe it. She screamed that I was a posh twat, I pointed out that she'd lived her whole life in the better part of Notting Hill and was schooled at an exclusive school for young ladies just off Sloane Square, so drop your fucking fake cockney accent. She called me everything she could think of, ladyboy, faggot, cunt. She told me I could fuck off and stop using her for money, I said 'fine', and started walking off. She started bawling like a purple slimy new born baby and I laughed in her face. We had become the type of can't-cope-with-being-on-holiday losers that I always smugly shook my head about. All work had stopped in the vicinity. Ladyboys and workmen and tourists were giggling and gesturing at us, wanting more. Kay was hysterical, great rasping sobs as she tried to scratch my eyes out. I grabbed her hands and held them to her sides. I said, shaking with rage, 'Believe me I'm on the verge of killing you. Don't fucking follow me.'
And so to the bars of Koh San Road. I remembered I had no money. I remembered I had about three thousand Rupees on me - you aren't officially allowed to take Indian money out of India and so it's illegal to change it, but I found a bent bureau de change and got a fairly good deal. I ordered a succession of Beer Changs. These are seven point seven percent jobs, recommended by the Australian beer drinkers' association, according to the bottle. Good for getting drunk and half the price of other Thai beers. Not much happened in those few hours. I drank and read a book I bought from a second hand shop, waved away the smiling little prostitutes. I was deliriously happy that I'd determined not to hang out with Kay any more. All I had to do was get my bags from the guesthouse. The money was arriving the next day and Kay had more than enough for herself. I hoped that she'd sober up and head home, but she wasn't my problem any more. Eventually I decided to go and get my stuff. I could hardly walk. I stumbled into the guesthouse and there was chaos. People looking shocked and screaming coming from upstairs. I moved towards the noise and of course there was Kay. She was being held down by someone as she thrashed about. A girl recognized me and said, 'What's wrong with her? What can we do?' I said, ‘She's very drunk and wants attention and this is her insane way of getting it. She's not my problem any more. Maybe slap her a bit.' But the conscience fucker wouldn't let me just walk off so I sat down and held her to me and almost wept with pity at how messed up this poor child was. Then she started screaming and yelling about what cunts all these people were and my pity turned to hate again.
Two police men walked in. I tried to tell them that Kay was ok, but she launched herself at them, fell over and then kicked one of them in the head from the floor. They took her away and I was told to leave the guesthouse. I walked off feeling disgusted and guilty but free. The phrase 'Not my problem.' was running through my brain as a mantra.
I woke up on the street; I'd used my bag as a pillow. I realised with a jolt the events of last night. There was some strange memory trying to surface in my brain, something about meeting Kay again in the night, but I knew she'd been arrested so I dismissed it as a dream. I went round to the guesthouse to make sure they hadn't thrown Kay's bags away; they told me she'd been in and collected them. No message for me. I didn't believe them at first but one of the guests confirmed it and I walked off. Kay was out, presumably not facing charges - I was pretty sure that in Thailand they don't let you out on bail. I realized that maybe I had seen her in the night, I sat down and thought. I remembered suddenly - she'd had a black eye which one of the policemen had given her, she said she'd had a knife held to her throat. She'd been hysterically angry with me for not protecting her, screaming at my prone body on the Koh San Road at three in the morning. I'd said to her 'Don't attack Thai policemen.’ She'd told me to fuck off and die and stormed off.
God knew where she was now. I walked around for a bit, trying to get my bearings, checked my bank - still no money. I had about fifteen hundred Baht on me, enough to keep me going for a day or two. A bit later I was sitting in a bar with a large Beer Chang. All around me there were people eating breakfast. Everyone looked fucked up and seedy. Middle aged men were listlessly working out how many more whores they could afford to fuck, avoiding eye contact with one another. A guy about my age came in. he looked cool - spiky black hair and milky white sweating skin. We somehow got talking and the day turned into a bender. He had a Thai wife up in Chang Mai. He always stopped off in Bangkok for a few days off debauchery on his way to stay with her. I know that we went out drinking for hours and that we got on like old long lost friends, but that’s all I know. Total memory failure. I woke up in a park the next morning with most of my money gone. My jacket, with useful things like my passport and tickets, gone. No idea where my bag was. I had a couple of beers and went round guesthouse and bars trying to track them down - I thought that maybe I'd checked in somewhere and forgotten about it. That would make sense. I was trying to quash the rising panic I was feeling - about being stuck in Bangkok with no way out - by drinking. That wouldn't work for much longer. I was down to my last couple of hundred Baht - about three or four quid. At the end of another fruitless trawl around guesthouse and bars I bumped into Kay. I was done in and poisoned. She'd booked into a hotel. I went back there and collapsed.
A bit of a blip, part 3
