Chapter 3: Wat Kanidoo

18 March 2016

I arrived in Bangkok in time for lunch. Seven-hour flight, but five hours by the clock. I was exhausted because I’d stayed up all night writing. My entire time in Odawara had been spent without even looking at my computer. I was thankful it had enough charge to boot. Fortunately, Japan uses the same power connections as Europe and I had the right adapter, so the computer was charged, even if I wasn’t. I wrote all about Ani Mai and what I felt, then realized I was probably reading much more into our relationship than actually existed. I’d never expected my trip around the world to start with ... a trip around the world.

BKK, the Bangkok International Airport, was teeming with activity. There were four floors that included arrival, departure, food and shopping, ground transportation, and if you got down far enough, the train downtown. I didn’t get that far. My first stop was at one of the dozen phone shops that lined the area outside baggage claim. I had exchanged $100 U.S. for Thai baht at the Narita Airport. I felt rich with 3,500 baht. I always try to arrive in a country with some local currency. A phone SIM with 30 minutes of text and voice plus 500 megs of data cost me 500 baht. Then I looked around for the shuttle to my hotel, which arrived about ten minutes later.

The ‘resort’ was about five miles from the airport down a dirt road. A chicken ran across the road in front of the van and the driver laid on the horn. And out there in the middle of nowhere was a small paradise.

Vismaya Luxury Resort, where I paid a whopping $35 a night, had a nice restaurant and a beautiful pool where table service was available. My room was a marble shrine with a glass-walled bath and a soaking tub that was nearly three feet deep. In spite of the fact that the temperature outside was in the nineties, the air conditioned room was almost too cold. I looked at the king-size bed and thought wistfully of my little tatami mat in Japan. It would be lovely to have Ani Mai to share this room with me. I could just imagine her in the bath, visible through the floor to ceiling windows as she bathed.

I stripped and put on my swimming trunks. That was pretty much what I wore for the next three days as I just lazed around the pool, diddled with a new story, and recovered from my jetlag. I didn’t try to accomplish anything, go anywhere, or even think. I just lay by the pool and slept.

I ate most of my meals in the hotel restaurant. My first night I ordered soup and a salad. Each was about 250 baht. When the food arrived, it turned out to be two full meals. Even with the glass of wine I drank, the total only translated to about $15. I learned my lesson, though, and only ordered one dish from the menu at each meal after that.

By the weekend, I was ready for the next adventure and headed for the airport to fly south to the beaches. I headed for Krabi, and after a night in a cheap motel, caught a boat for Koh Po Po, an island in the Andaman Sea between Krabi and Phuket. I’d found a nice little bungalow there with really cheap rent. Paid in advance, it was about $15 a night. I followed a strong guy in just a pair of fisherman pants who carried my backpack over his head for me to the long tail boat anchored on the sand. I got my jeans soaked getting out to the boat, but it was a hundred degrees out and the jeans were dry before we reached the island forty minutes later. Of course, I got them soaked again getting up to the beach, but they’d dry.

My bungalow was simple. The room was about eight feet square. It had a single bed that was wide enough and comfortable enough that I could stretch out and get a good night’s sleep. There was enough space to walk through between the bed and a table with one chair. In the corner was an electric fan. Behind the room was what passed for a kitchen. It had a sink, mini-fridge, hotplate, and microwave. It also had an electric tea kettle so I could boil water and get my coffee made in the morning. Off the kitchen was a toilet and tub in an alley-like bathroom. It was wonderful.

I was surrounded by a well-landscaped jungle, blocking the other bungalows from direct view. We were assembled loosely around a full-size swimming pool. The fountain at the end was low enough that we could see the Andaman Sea as we lazed about in the pool or cabanas.

“We” consisted of fifteen other vacationers or vacationing couples. I would soon find that we came from all over the world and our lives intersected for a day, a week, or more in the Enchanted Jungle.

When I waded out to the long tail boat, I discovered something important. The Andaman Sea is warm. I’d started this trip in Hawaii and dangled my feet in the Pacific until they were ice cubes. That’s an ocean. When they say the South Pacific is warm, they mean in comparison to the North Pacific, up around Seattle. They don’t mean in comparison to your morning bathwater. The Andaman Sea around this tiny Thai island is warm like bathwater. Salty bathwater. But with the temperature of the air at a hundred degrees, ninety-degree water is quite refreshing.

The real pleasure of the seashore, though, is not the water, but the mostly-there bikinis. I found these come in two varieties. The first is the fashion bikini. I have nothing at all against these tiny patches of fabric tied together with dental floss. But these bikinis are usually brand new and displayed on the very expensive bodies of rich European tourists who are “doing Asia.” I say European because during my entire stay in Thailand, the only Americans I met were staff. Over half of the citizens of the U.S., after all, don’t even have a passport. In Europe, you don’t survive without a passport. Even in Asia, it seemed that everyone had a passport and had been in at least two other ‘foreign’ countries.

But that has nothing to do with the bikinis. The British, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and Greek vacationers who came to see the temple and complain about the heat were, nonetheless, beautiful. And having considerably less body-shame than Americans, they did not hesitate to strut through the jungles or along the beaches in nothing but their bikinis and a pair of flip-flops. In some cases, there were bodies that could have used a little more fabric in their coverings. Like a tent. There was one guy who had to weigh 250, most of it in his gut, and had so much hair covering his back that I was looking for his trainer. His Speedo was so small and tight that it disappeared in the folds of fat and all you could really see that he was wearing were gold chains.

Back to bikinis. Have you ever noticed that breasts come in a great number of sizes and shapes? I know some guys who like tiny titties, some who like big boobs, and those like Chuck who just love huge funbags. I know women who complain about the size of their breasts, the size of their nipples, the directions they point, their aching backs, and STOP STARING! The thing is that guys will watch breasts all day long, able to see the full curvature above and below, but all they want is to get a glimpse of the nipple. A little wardrobe malfunction, please.

But let me submit to you that the true pleasure of watching bikinis is the rear view. I could follow the subtle movements of a woman’s ass, even when fully clothed, for hours and never tire of it. But when said ass is covered only by a string at the waist and one that runs down the crack—I guess that means it’s actually not covered—well, that’s a sight that will fill my mind for hours. I’m not interested in seeing more, but in filling my hands with those soft treasures.

This was supposed to be about bikinis. Type two. There are a lot of people out there in the world who are traveling like me. They have a backpack with the essentials they will need for months of wandering from place to place around the globe. Every item in that pack is carefully considered, not just for how much space it takes up, but how much wear you can get out of it. I had planned for my excursion with four pair of undershorts, eight pair of socks, the lightweight drawstring trousers that I wore on planes, and a pair of jeans. I had a pair of shorts, a swimming suit I could wear as shorts if need be, two t-shirts and a lightweight cotton short sleeved shirt. I knew I’d add a few items to my wardrobe as I traveled because I wanted some local things, but mostly people who pack for a trip like this don’t add to their suitcases. They replace. Buy that cute t-shirt you saw in Bali and you have to throw away the one you bought in New Zealand. So you just don’t buy extra stuff unless you really want to add to the weight of your pack.

Which brings me to bikinis. I mentioned that, didn’t I? Staying in a cheap beach bungalow like I was, I met a large number of young women who were backpacking around Asia. They were strong, fit, incredibly confident, adventurous women. Most were multi-lingual and several of those I met on the island were just taking a break on the beach before they headed to an eco-farm, a nanny job, a monastery, or wherever they could get a job to earn food and lodging and a little money to continue their journey. These young women didn’t buy impractical bikinis. They needed something that would endure a game of beach volleyball, a swim in salt water, a three-mile hike to an incredible waterfall they heard about, and, in a pinch, could substitute for underwear for two days. This swimwear was a little more substantial than the butt floss worn by the elite. It wasn’t designed to expose so much flesh to the rays of the sun and eyes of the men.

But ... Clothes that are worn a lot tend to lose their shape a little. Fabric stretches. Bodies shrink—or expand. Elastic starts to give way. And the result includes a lot more of those longed-for wardrobe malfunctions.

Char had a suit like that.

Char was ethnically Persian, but second generation English living in London. She was well-educated and I could listen to her talk all day long. I know different accents ‘do it’ for different guys. I knew a guy from Indiana years ago who married his Georgia-born wife because he couldn’t get enough of her gentle southern accent. Different things for different people. For me it’s a cultured British accent that does it.

A dark and mysterious beauty, you could imagine Char walking into your tent in the desert covered in translucent veils, shimmying to the music of her finger-cymbals while the layers dropped away one at a time. Just watching her butt sway as she walked to or from the pool was fuel for fantasies from the first day that I met her.

Char had backpacker’s butt. That’s not a bad thing. I learned back in high school, when I was camping and climbing in the Rockies, that if you carry a heavy pack, you either spend all your time bent forward looking at the ground in front of you, or you learn to rest your pack on your hips so you can stand upright. Resting your pack that way tends to make you thrust your butt out in one direction and your chest in the other. It gives you a little ledge back there to rest the pack on. Nowadays, the packs have wide belts to actually help distribute the weight around your waist without having it all on your shoulders. When I started packing, it was all up to how you carried the weight and positioned your body.

Well, Char had been packing for five months already and planned to continue for another seven before she returned to London. Even when she wasn’t carrying her pack, her butt was thrust out slightly behind her and she walked erect as though straps were pulling her shoulders back, delicious full breasts on prominent display in front.

Char’s swimsuit was not particularly sexy. I don’t know if it was inspired by modesty, durability, or utility, but she wore a one-piece that had a little ruffle at the waist. It tied behind her neck with two panels that draped over her breasts and left a long line of cleavage exposed in front. In back, from the tie at her neck to the low waist of the bottom, she was bare. But what intrigued me most was that the suit was well-worn.

It wasn’t ratty or worn thin like that, but it had lost a lot of its elasticity. As a result, the fabric over her breasts tended to shift around a lot.

I’d gone out to the pool for a dip and decided to have a drink and a smoke in the cabana. It was mid-afternoon and the other residents would be stirring from their naps or returning from their hikes before long. After my dip, I left my towel and hat in the cabana and went to my bungalow to retrieve a few necessities: laptop, bag of peanuts, bottle of Hong Thong, case of cigars, glass of ice.

When I returned to the cabana I saw another towel and hat beside mine. Glancing at the pool, I saw Char floating on her back, breasts emerging from the water as if to point the way to heaven.

“God! The water feels good this afternoon!” she said. Apparently she’d noticed me staring at her.

“I was in a few minutes ago,” I acknowledged.

“And that was enough? Steve said it was 110 today.”

I set my things down on the table in the cabana and dove into the pool, surfacing not far from her.

“I love the fact that they use saline treatment for the pool here instead of chlorine. It doesn’t stink like pools back in the U.S.,” I said.

“It’s like that all over Asia,” Char answered. “And the water in the pool is cooler than the water in the ocean.” Evidence of that was poking at the cups of her suit. I wondered if it was lined at all.

“The problem is that with my pale skin, I’ll be burnt to a crisp if I stay out in the sun too long. And I hate sunblock. I always feel like I’m leaving an oil slick behind me when I swim,” I laughed.

“Yeah. I suppose I should get into the shade, too.” We swam to the edge of the pool and as she twisted around to hoist herself out, the left panel of her suit shifted enough to fully expose her breast. Her areola was close to two inches across and a thick erect nipple jutted out from the center, both a darker brown than her skin. She didn’t seem to notice and when she stood, the fabric slid back to cover her again. “Hong Thong? Can I have a hit?”

“Sure. Let me go get another glass and ice.”

“Mine’s closer. I’ll be right back.” I watched her walk away, her round buns jiggling under the loose fabric of her suit. Damn! I poured myself a hefty shot of the Thai bourbon and extracted a cigar from my case. Char sniffed the air as she returned with her glass of ice. “Mmm. Nice cigar. Not to beg a drink and a smoke, but would you share?” Instead of pulling out another cigar, I simply handed her my lit one. She took a long drag and handed it back to me. We shared our drinks and the cigar in companionable quiet.

“How long are you here on Koh Po Po?” I asked. I’d seen her when she arrived the day after I did.

“Five more days.”

“I like staying put for a few days or even weeks between moves,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s like a vacation.”

“Where to next?”

“I met some packers who told me about a monastery in Laos. I checked it out online and they invited me to come and cook for them for a couple weeks. It’s a nice gig. The monks are quiet and the work isn’t that difficult. I’ll get to do a little exploring and mostly just soak up the countryside between meals. Guests are housed in a dormitory. They give you a few bucks when you leave after two weeks.”

“I was thinking I’d go to Viet Nam, but I don’t want to walk across Cambodia to get there,” I said.

“You’ve got that right. Thieves. I felt sorry for them until they took the last of my money. I couldn’t report them to the police because I didn’t have any money to pay off the police. I got a ride from a guy on a motorcycle who got me into Ho Chi Minh City. I worked in a restaurant for a few weeks before I could catch a boat across the Gulf to here.”

“I think I’d feel too vulnerable without my credit card and a cash card. I carry all the work I want to do with me,” I said, tapping the computer.

“A real digital nomad,” she laughed. “I have a credit card and can get cash if I need it, but the idea is not to if you can help it, you know. The people on the beach who are staying up at the resort—they live on their credit cards. They never get to know anyone.” We shared another puff of the cigar and I tossed the stub into the ashtray.

When we met at the pool the second day, I considered it a regular event. We swam, smoked, drank, and talked. She wanted to know what I was writing and I told her that I had a couple stories I was working on. One was a mystery and I’d decided to set part of it in Thailand. The other was a do-over that would feature a woman instead of a man. She was very interested in that and in all my erotic writings. She swung one foot up on the seat between us so she could turn to face me. In so doing, the crotch of her suit pulled aside and I could see a very full bush surrounding pink lips. She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was exposing herself.

Her immediate response to the situation in my story was “abort it.” But then we talked about the influence of the former life on the present one. We also talked about the exploration of being bi, the difference between love and lust, and developing a polyamorous relationship—with all of which she seemed to have a lot of experience. While we were talking, some of the others started showing up for a dip in the pool and joined us in the cabana out of the sun. Food started showing up. One of the guys—who was a photographer and said he was doing a documentary on Thailand’s endeavor to get away from sex tourism to more legitimate tourist activities—collected money from all of us and went out to get food. I wanted more than Khao Soi, but was happy to have that when he got back as well as the various noodle dishes and fried vegetables.

I was surprised when Char brought up my writing.

“Ari is here doing primary research for an erotic novel,” she announced. I’d only said I was writing a novel. “Anyone who would like her crotch sniffed to help with his research should line up.”

“I love erotic,” Gretchen said. I couldn’t pronounce the name of the town she was from, but it was someplace south of Berlin. “Lots of sex!”

“I write mysteries and thrillers, too,” I said.

“I want to be in your novel!” Elsa chimed in. What a Swedish beauty. Thin, stacked, and nearly six feet tall, her blonde hair was almost white.

“Mmm, who would you like to be?” I asked. I was pretty used to this. It’s the next narcissistic thing to taking selfies on your cell phone. Meet an author and get him to put you in his novel. I’d been doing this for so long that I knew that even though I would follow through and write a character for her, she’d never read the book. People forget. You meet them and promise to write the character, but the book doesn’t come out for three years. By that time, they don’t even remember meeting you.

“I want to be the dead body!” she exclaimed.

“Well, that would be interesting. I’ll have to come up with some way of killing you now. Not exactly what I contemplated doing to you,” I said. She blushed and the others at the table laughed. Suggestions started immediately. “Knife.” “Poison.” “Drowning.” “Throw her off a cliff.”

“You guys are terrible!” Elsa laughed. “I had no idea how many of you wanted to kill me.”

“Only because you are beautiful,” Char said. “No one wants to kill the homely ones.” She pointed at herself and I shushed her. She smiled at me and glanced down. Her suit was gapping open enough for me to see her right breast. She straightened and the gap closed.

“I know,” I said, trying not to be distracted from the conversation. After all, they were talking about my novel. “I could use your picture on the cover. The beautiful naked body floating in the pool.”

“As if I would get naked for you to take my picture,” she sniffed.

“What are the odds?” Nils asked. Nils and Helene were an odd couple from The Netherlands. He was in his mid to late forties, pale white with sandy hair. She was in her mid-twenties, dark as night, and still spoke with a Jamaican accent, even when she was speaking Dutch. I’d been introduced to the game of ‘odds’ the day before. If something comes up, and you say you’d never do it or there wasn’t a chance, you’d be challenged to give the odds against you doing it. “What are the odds that you’d strip right here and now and dive in the pool so Ari can take your picture for the cover of his book?” Nils persisted.

“One in twenty,” Elsa responded. “If I had enough to drink.” That was pretty long odds. The objective now was that someone would count to three and on three Elsa and I both had to shout out a number between one and twenty. If we matched, she had to take the dare.

“One. Two. Three,” Helene called out.

“Six!” I said. Everyone started laughing and Elsa blushed. I hadn’t even heard her shout out the same thing. She held out her glass for another shot of Hong Thong and downed it in one swallow. Then she stood and started stripping. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures while I was still in motion and heading for the pool. The shape of that ass as she bent forward to dive into the pool was digitally recorded. Everyone was applauding. She stood in the water, tits like beacons in the dusk as I snapped photos. Then she slowly stretched out on the water, face down and ass up, and floated as I took more photos. She stood again and glared at everyone in our little cabana as she stepped up out of the pool dripping water from her hair, the tips of her breasts, and her clean-shaved pussy. I’m sure there was water elsewhere, too, but who noticed? I tossed her my towel. She dried and pulled her shorts and t-shirt back on, leaving her bra and panties on her chair. She wrapped my towel around her hair and in stretching we all saw she hadn’t done that great a job drying her breasts before she put the t-shirt on. I climbed back into my seat and Char nudged me, giggling.

“Primary research,” she whispered.

“So you write this sex stuff,” Helene said, turning to me. “You said she—your character in this do-over—has two lovers, a man and a woman. How does that work? Not speculation. From your experience.”

“I take it you’ve never experienced it,” Char laughed.

“No! Well, once,” Helene answered. “I was like sitting there on the edge of the bed surfing the web on my phone while I was waiting for my turn. Somebody is always left out.”

“It doesn’t work like that!” I said. “I mean, sure you can just take turns fucking him, but then you aren’t really a threesome. You are two couples. It only really works if the two women—or I suppose two men, if you were into that—are as into each other as they are to the guy.”

“You mean the women make love, too?”

“Yeah,” Char said. “For example, I might be on my knees with Ari fucking me from behind while I ate out Elsa.” Helene’s mouth dropped open.

“You’d do that?”

“You saw Elsa’s hairless little pussy,” Char laughed. “Wouldn’t you dive face first into that?”

“I might test that theory,” Elsa said. “Put your money where your mouth is. Or in this case, put my pussy there.”

“What are the odds?” Dave, the photographer, demanded of Char.

“One in two,” Char responded quickly. A fifty-fifty chance? Wow! She was serious.

“I don’t know why I keep getting in the challenge,” Elsa said.

“You taught us all the game,” Nils answered.

“Fine!”

“One. Two. Three.”

“One!” both girls yelled. Char jumped up, using me for leverage. She gave me a little squeeze. Elsa stood and held out her hand for Char.

“I didn’t agree to do it in public. We’ll tell you about it tomorrow.” She glanced at me. “And I didn’t agree to have Ari join us. This time.” The two girls disappeared back toward Char’s bungalow.

The party broke up and I swallowed the last of my Hong Thong. I’d had too much to drink. My nose was numb.

A Long Time Ago: Numb Nose

Lee Ferin was a grad student that seemed to always be in one of the places where I was. She was a sleek, elegant costumer whose favorite saying was ‘You can never be too rich or too thin.’ She’d done a pretty good job on the second one and was working on the first. She was also on Paula’s ‘loaner list.’ That was a list of the three or four girls Paula considered such good friends that she’d loan me out to them.

We were at a cast party one night—God knows what show. Half the time in grad school it didn’t even take a show to have a cast party. I floated from group to group as I was completing my MA in theater, but had already been accepted on my PhD program for playwriting. I can tell you a couple things about theater people that might surprise you.

All of us are more demonstrative than what might be considered ‘normal’. My mother warned me about that. She knew how demonstrative and affectionate I’d been with my girlfriends in high school. PDA didn’t nearly cover it. She was worried for my soul when I started associating with theater people. If she’d only known!

You can’t have a conversation with actors without having lines quoted from plays or sudden bursts of song from musicals. On the other hand, when a bunch of actors get together, there is always music. Apparently, learning to play the guitar was one of the classes that I missed as an undergrad. Memorizing the lyrics of every popular song and show tune of the past fifty years was another.

The directors and stage managers were deep into irrelevant discussions about the meaning of life as revealed in absurdist theater. It wasn’t unusual to hear someone in that corner of the room suddenly bellow out “Rhinoceros!” You’d think playwrights would collect around the directors who were usually responsible for picking the shows they wanted to direct. Not so. There’s something disconcerting about always feeling you are being compared to Ionesco.

Playwrights were more often found around the tech people. Tech people are funny. Tech people are intelligent. Tech people usually have the best dope. Without techs, actors are naked people standing in the dark on an empty stage trying to emote. Without actors, techs are in a bar. Yeah. I hung out with the techs. I don’t remember the exact conversation we were having that night. It had something to do with the politics of protest and whether anyone was joining the march on Washington this summer. That’s when Lee walked into the room. She walked straight up to me and laid a kiss on me that curled my toes. The other techs applauded.

“Paula said to go shut you up,” Lee said. She pressed against my solid protuberance with a rub and then turned around and left.

“That girl really knows how to make an entrance,” Jim sighed.

But this was a story about beer. I went out with Lee one night in the middle of the week for no other reason than that she had me on loan. We ordered a pitcher of beer at Shenanigan’s and sat to talk about the upcoming completion of our grad work. We were having a good time, but I suddenly wrinkled my nose. I was twenty-three, but even at parties, I didn’t drink all that much. Lee looked at me and asked what was wrong.

“My nose just went numb,” I said. “What’s in this beer?” We laughed and she made a number of comments about me not being able to hold my liquor. I walked her to her apartment in the brisk night air, thinking that would certainly reawaken my senses. Lee kept joking about me going numb in her presence. She dragged me inside her apartment when I was going to give her a light little kiss and leave. She made sure that kiss was not light. Then I felt her hands unfastening my belt.

“I want to find out if anything else went numb as a result of the beer,” she said. She pushed me back against the door and pulled my cock out of my pants. “God! Maybe it has!” My cock was not at full mast. It didn’t take long to get there, though, when she inhaled it. I sagged against the door as she fellated me within an inch of my life. And as the pitch rose, I filled her mouth with my spend.

“Lee! What got into you?”

“Well, I’d say about two tablespoons of your come,” she answered. She stood and shoved my cock back into my pants. Her arms came up and wrapped around my neck as she pressed her lips against mine. I was reluctant. I’d just come in her mouth. She was insistent. I relented.

Once I let her into my mouth and discovered that the slight aftertaste of my own come in a girl’s mouth wasn’t that disgusting, she rewarded me further by shoving my hand up under her sweater. Lee had firm mounds with hard nipples and was known to never wear a bra because they mess up the line of the clothing. Her bare breast in my hand and the aftereffects of having an earthshaking orgasm were messing with my head.

“Don’t ever resist a girl’s kiss after you’ve come in her mouth,” Lee whispered. “She got it in her mouth, you can take it in yours. And there are rewards at hand, so to speak.”

“You blow me away, Lee.”

“Tonight I just blew you. How’s your nose?”

Back to Char

I borrowed one of the bikes at the resort the next day and rode out to the historic wat, or temple, about three miles away. It was mostly uphill and I was glad I made the ride early enough in the day that the temperature wasn’t too extreme. At least when I went back I could coast most of the way. It was a beautiful view from up there. You could see the sea and other islands in the hazy distance. The temple was still functioning and there were bald guys in orange robes around. There was an area set aside near the entrance of the temple where three of them were sitting with a sign that read, “Got a question? Ask a monk.” I assume the other five or six languages on the sign said the same thing. I’m usually pretty good at identifying what Asian language is written by the character set and spotted Thai, Korean, Chinese, and Kanji. One of the other languages was French, I’m sure.