- You're still here? It's been months. Where are you spending the night? Here?
- Here. A crazy fast food restaurant. Cold night outside, air conditioning on inside here who knows why.
- You still have no place to go?
- No.
- I'm at my girlfriend's place. Clearing out the stuff put there by a crystal meth guy, a hoarder. Do you know what that is, a hoarder?
- You're a crystal meth guy. Are you the hoarder?
- Am I the hoarder?
- I know what a hoarder is. I've written about it.* Tell me, how'd the hoarder get his stuff there?
- He lives there. My girlfriend won't throw him out. I've got to get out of there.
- Why?
- All I do is take drugs all day. It's not good for me.
- You live there and take crystal meth. The hoarder lives there and takes crystal meth. Does your girlfriend hoard guys who who take chystal meth?
- What?
- What about the seventy-five day rehab you got out of a week ago? Your girlfriend made you go. When did you start taking drugs again? The very day you got out?
- The afternoon.
- It didn't do much good then.
- It was good. I saved a lot of money while I was there.
- Saved the allowance from your family which you spent on drugs the minute you got out.
- Yes. What's been happening with you?
- Well, I did get away while you were in rehab. To Thailand.
- That's getting away.
- Yes. But no, as you see I'm back. And what a place to come back to. On the way walking here one of the tens of thousands of this city's unhoused, sitting on the sidewalk back against a building wall, shoes off and placed neatly in the middle of the sidewalk, asks me as I pass if I have a light. I shake my head. Do I have any money? I shake my head, keep moving. "No? No money? Do you know what I have?" she asks. "I have a knife. I'm going to knife you. I'm going to stab you to death." Note the attention to words. Death threat with a literary quality. Before you came in I was sitting by the window when another crazy woman came in, sat down at the next table and started talking to herself, or rather talking to people who were in her life, just not here in her life right now, people who she wanted to know she was going to get, get back at, did they think she wouldn't? Then she turned her attention to me, spoke about this old man (that's me) with the computer, who did he think he was? Somebody was going to kill him, yeah, kill him.
- Here? Tonight? She's gone?
- Yes. And yes.
- You have to get out of this place.
- I keep trying. I went all the way to Thailand.
- For how long?
- A month.
- Why'd you come back?
- The afternoon.
- It didn't do much good then.
- It was good. I saved a lot of money while I was there.
- Saved the allowance from your family which you spent on drugs the minute you got out.
- Yes. What's been happening with you?
- Well, I did get away while you were in rehab. To Thailand.
- That's getting away.
- Yes. But no, as you see I'm back. And what a place to come back to. On the way walking here one of the tens of thousands of this city's unhoused, sitting on the sidewalk back against a building wall, shoes off and placed neatly in the middle of the sidewalk, asks me as I pass if I have a light. I shake my head. Do I have any money? I shake my head, keep moving. "No? No money? Do you know what I have?" she asks. "I have a knife. I'm going to knife you. I'm going to stab you to death." Note the attention to words. Death threat with a literary quality. Before you came in I was sitting by the window when another crazy woman came in, sat down at the next table and started talking to herself, or rather talking to people who were in her life, just not here in her life right now, people who she wanted to know she was going to get, get back at, did they think she wouldn't? Then she turned her attention to me, spoke about this old man (that's me) with the computer, who did he think he was? Somebody was going to kill him, yeah, kill him.
- Here? Tonight? She's gone?
- Yes. And yes.
- You have to get out of this place.
- I keep trying. I went all the way to Thailand.
- For how long?
- A month.
- Why'd you come back?
- Yes, why? Because the world I live in works that way. My world doesn't seem to work like other people's.
- How's it different?
- You be the judge. Going to Thailand was a story of close relatives reunited after a long absence, should've been a nice heartwarming tale, right? I hadn't had a conversation with Brother Jerry for more than twenty years. I was sitting at this very restaurant table, on a whim opened up Facebook which I check no more than once a month just in case some absconder out of my past had chosen to reappear, and saw there a message from him. He said how're you doing and invited me to come visit him. Good timing if there ever was any. I got together all my English tutoring money, sold my bike, added what one kind student prepaid me for future editing work and bought a cheap ticket. Flight to Bangkok via Taipai. From Bangkok, a four dollar bus ride to Pattaya. Called from a phone loaned me by a taxi driver who'd asked if I needed a ride, Jerry answers, comes to get me on his motor bike. So far so good.
- How's it different?
- You be the judge. Going to Thailand was a story of close relatives reunited after a long absence, should've been a nice heartwarming tale, right? I hadn't had a conversation with Brother Jerry for more than twenty years. I was sitting at this very restaurant table, on a whim opened up Facebook which I check no more than once a month just in case some absconder out of my past had chosen to reappear, and saw there a message from him. He said how're you doing and invited me to come visit him. Good timing if there ever was any. I got together all my English tutoring money, sold my bike, added what one kind student prepaid me for future editing work and bought a cheap ticket. Flight to Bangkok via Taipai. From Bangkok, a four dollar bus ride to Pattaya. Called from a phone loaned me by a taxi driver who'd asked if I needed a ride, Jerry answers, comes to get me on his motor bike. So far so good.
- What did you do there?
- Same as I do here. Read and write. I adapted a little of course. Mornings went like this: get up from my bed made on the floor where from the selection of three stretched out warm human bodies the big old dog has chosen mine to lie down against. This dog, a maximum sized pit bull, is a presence, a character. He'd rapidly shake his head trying to clear fluid from his ears, jowls flapping against his cheeks with a rapid snapping, drool thrown about everywhere. The Falcon is on its perch, occasionally making noise flapping its wings, otherwise silent and immobile. Air conditioning is on. Girl roomate - her name is Jue - pronounced amusingly enough "Jew", has left for her job at the outlet shopping center selling clothes. Bother still sleeps. He's a big sleeper. His family, his side of the family, call him the animal, or sometimes street dog. Middle son, like me, black sheep like me, but not like me lucky enough to be blessed with, protected by a determination to understand, family has come down much harder on him. He lives at the most remote station of family acceptance, repeatedly thrown out and repeatedly allowed temporarily back in but kept at a distance, presented with a job in the family business or a small gift for holidays or birthday, then thrown out again. The family doesn't understand his lack of ambition: he likes to take care of dogs, breeds and trains them for others. Or at least he used to. A few years ago his young wife he worked together with in a small veterinary clinic became sick and died. Now he gets high. This provokes his mother to a rage that ends in his expulsion. Presently he is in exile, forbidden even to approach the house or business of any family member, under threat of the authorities being called in to deal with him. He has several times in the past ignored the warning and suffered the consequences, terrible consequences. The girl roommate told my brother that I should visit his mother, present myself to her in a courtesy call. Jerry thinks it is a bad idea. He is worried because his older brother, learning I was coming, told him to tell me not to come. This older brother lost his high paying job in the capital a couple months ago and will be moving back in with his mother here in Pattaya with his wife and small boy. He doesn't want more trouble and I am more trouble. Black sheep middle brother Jerry has explained to me that the reason when I was here in Thailand five or six years ago (he was incommunicado, a monk living in a Buddhist monastery) his mother was kind and polite with me: it was precaution taking guilt over the way she had treated her husband our father, stripping him of all family wealth, and a Buddhist resolution to make amends in her behavior with me his visiting American son. I worked with his mother many years in the family business in L.A., and we got along fine, friction-less actually, fine personally but that didn't stop the progress of a continuous war on her part against my life of doing nothing and reading. Money and status were and apparently still are the important things in life for her. A life of reading and doing nothing merits me Buddhist respect from his mother (this according to Jerry) but unfortunately my black sheep brother Jerry's animal life living with animals gets no such respect from her. Brother Jerry takes with him every times he leaves the apartment a bag he says contains hard drives, important information, everything he needs in case he gets thrown out, which can happen: the apartment is in his roommate's name. He has lived on the street with his dogs, large pit bulls, many times in his life and for months at a time. His mother, who this year bought a hundred and fifty thousand dollar car, apparently didn't mind driving through the underpass in Bangkok where her son was camped with his dogs.
- Is she human?
- Scientists are studying the question. Brother Kim, according to Jerry, was calling him every day until a few weeks ago. He stopped, under orders from his mother: Jerry was a bad influence. His mother cut off contact, financial and otherwise, with Jerry too. This was what led him to writing to me on Facebook and asking me to come. Last year older brother Kim voluntarily checked into a clinic to be cured of drinking, four separate times checked himself in. Last year Jerry's girl roommate, under instructions from his mother, drugged his drink and he was taken, not to a hundred thousand dollar a month clinic, but the VIP section of the public clinic, a paltry thousand dollars a month, where he was surrounded by and shared a room with raving lunatics. Jerry doesn't drink now. Jerry is the discount brother because unlike Kim he never made a good living. Kim is an internet publicist when not drunk.
- Is she human?
- Scientists are studying the question. Brother Kim, according to Jerry, was calling him every day until a few weeks ago. He stopped, under orders from his mother: Jerry was a bad influence. His mother cut off contact, financial and otherwise, with Jerry too. This was what led him to writing to me on Facebook and asking me to come. Last year older brother Kim voluntarily checked into a clinic to be cured of drinking, four separate times checked himself in. Last year Jerry's girl roommate, under instructions from his mother, drugged his drink and he was taken, not to a hundred thousand dollar a month clinic, but the VIP section of the public clinic, a paltry thousand dollars a month, where he was surrounded by and shared a room with raving lunatics. Jerry doesn't drink now. Jerry is the discount brother because unlike Kim he never made a good living. Kim is an internet publicist when not drunk.
- My family is crazy too. I could tell you stories. So it wasn't bad there. Or was it?
- First few days it was Ok. Brother Jerry had duly warned me about his life living up in the hillside slum of Pattaya with the pitbull, girl roomate, falcon and cat in one room. It was Ok. I felt safe. I was with family. I caught up on my sleep. But Jerry began economizing, wouldn't turn the air conditioning on; he refused to open a window, as that would let out the smoke from whatever substance he was smoking at every moment not spent preparing food for himself or pets; even the gaps under the doors were blocked by towels. The air was foul from the human beings and dog and cat and falcon. I began coughing, wondered if I would develop one of those menacing breathing diseases one hears of, bronchitis, asthma. Brother Jerry was inflexible. No air in or out. That's how it was. I'd have to take it. The big pit bull continued to do me the honor of choosing between the three human beings spread out on the floor my length to lay body against and sleep. A few days pass, and brother Jerry announces he was out of smokes and had no money to buy more. I better be on my best behavior because he was going to get irritable. He wasn't kidding. The smallest thing would set him off. Within a day he was warning me if I didn't watch out I was going to get thrown out. He already was irritable from his starvation diet of brown rice and cup of noodles which kept him pale and emaciated. Girl roommate before I arrived had prepared for me a huge pot of brown rice and individual plastic sandwich bags filled with sauce tied at the top with a many times doubled over rubber band, one for each day. He was starving, but I felt good on this diet, really good. Then disaster struck. Girl roommate comes home around eleven pm as usual from her sales job in outlet mall and an argument over something or other in Thai ensues. It gets louder and louder. Girl roommate storms out screaming and doesn't return. Next day, when brother Jerry finally gets up from bed in the afternoon and I return from my morning at the corner store where I have internet he announces the landlord has thrown us all out, effective immediately.
- Immediately as in this minute? This hour? Today?
- Today. Tonight.
- Have you tried to negotiate with him?
- Not possible. His brother is a policeman. He'll set us up and we'll all go to jail.
- Ask your girlfriend to talk to her.
- You don't understand. This is Thailand. You have a few hours to find a place.
- What about you? The animals?
- I'll see.
I go to the internet cafe, sign in to my inactive Couchsurfing account, send messages. When I return to the cafe the miracle has happened, someone in a town up the coast about a half hour is willing to have me come. Brother Jerry drives me there before sundown, and everything is fine. The host, the place he lives, the neighborhood is like a little paradise, the people charming and polite, at once formal and friendly.
- So the story has a happy ending.
- Yes, if you don't count that no one left the slum apartment but me: girl roommate stayed, brother stayed, dog, cat, falcon (animals were explicitly not allowed under the least) stayed; if you don't count my ending up back here again, and finding out from subsequent Facebook messages from Jerry that he'd lied or stretched the truth about almost everything: he wasn't out of touch with either older brother Kim or his mother, who hadn't cut him off but was giving him a few hundred dollars a month to pay his rent.
- Why did he lie? Throw you out?
- If I have to have a theory it would be he lied to make himself seem to himself more like me, and to do to me what his mother and brothers did to him.
- And so what's next? What are you going to do?
- See what happens.
- Will something happen?
- How can I know?
- What if nothing happens? Has anything happened since you've been back?
- You mean aside from crazy women telling me they'd like to kill me? Yes in fact things are happening. I'm not sure they mean anything. Again, you decide. The first was at the dining area of the Whole Foods market in Beverly Hills. A guy there was giving away pizza, first to the desperate unhoused who wandered in, and then later to anyone, rather than throw them away. A tower of pizza boxes remained on his table. I got from him his story. He used to be a professional athlete. Baseball, then football, then retired. H went to school in England, got two PhD's in industrial chemistry. Now he was wandering. Didn't, I asked him, he have a family? He did. Where were they? In the valley up north. Wife and a couple kids. Will he go back? Yes, in time. Where was he living now? Nowhere. Nowhere where? In the bushes behind the Beverly Hills Civic Center. How much did he spend on the pizza? Four hundred dollars. And he sleeps in the bushes of Beverly Hills? Yes. For how long? One month: not just there, other places too.
- Other bushes?
- Yes.
- He's still there?
- So the story has a happy ending.
- Yes, if you don't count that no one left the slum apartment but me: girl roommate stayed, brother stayed, dog, cat, falcon (animals were explicitly not allowed under the least) stayed; if you don't count my ending up back here again, and finding out from subsequent Facebook messages from Jerry that he'd lied or stretched the truth about almost everything: he wasn't out of touch with either older brother Kim or his mother, who hadn't cut him off but was giving him a few hundred dollars a month to pay his rent.
- Why did he lie? Throw you out?
- If I have to have a theory it would be he lied to make himself seem to himself more like me, and to do to me what his mother and brothers did to him.
- And so what's next? What are you going to do?
- See what happens.
- Will something happen?
- How can I know?
- What if nothing happens? Has anything happened since you've been back?
- You mean aside from crazy women telling me they'd like to kill me? Yes in fact things are happening. I'm not sure they mean anything. Again, you decide. The first was at the dining area of the Whole Foods market in Beverly Hills. A guy there was giving away pizza, first to the desperate unhoused who wandered in, and then later to anyone, rather than throw them away. A tower of pizza boxes remained on his table. I got from him his story. He used to be a professional athlete. Baseball, then football, then retired. H went to school in England, got two PhD's in industrial chemistry. Now he was wandering. Didn't, I asked him, he have a family? He did. Where were they? In the valley up north. Wife and a couple kids. Will he go back? Yes, in time. Where was he living now? Nowhere. Nowhere where? In the bushes behind the Beverly Hills Civic Center. How much did he spend on the pizza? Four hundred dollars. And he sleeps in the bushes of Beverly Hills? Yes. For how long? One month: not just there, other places too.
- Other bushes?
- Yes.
- He's still there?
- You want to visit him? No, probably not. I haven't seen him, I think he went home, at least I hope so. A crazy story, right? What does it mean? If you know tell me. And listen to this. I come here late night as usual, and one of the desperate unhoused comes in and walks right over to me to ask me to give him a pen. I have dozens of them I pick up off the pavement at UCLA. Next day, another of the unhoused comes in, makes his way directly to me, and asks for a pen. A brown one, he specifies.
- You gave it to him?
- Why not?
- And more of them come in for pens?
- Yes. Day after day. So tell me, what does it mean?
- Nothing. The guy in the Beverly Hills bushes gives pizzas, you give pens.
- That's it? At Rite Aid a few weeks ago, waiting in line to pay I looked over towards the windows: a tall expensively dressed man was standing immobile, staring down at the floor. I asked him what was wrong. Pain in his leg. He'd never experienced anything like it. I can't imagine. I told I think I can. I'd had the same. Sciatica? Yes, that's what the doctors call it. We got to talking. I went to sit outside with my drink, invited him to join me if he liked. He did. I asked his business. Promotion, property development. A big five year one hundred million dollar project fell through not long ago, he hasn't really recovered. Savings gone, he needed to do something immediately, otherwise he couldn't even pay the rent. He was working on something though. Sell securities in a fund of startups, one new startup added to the portfolio every week. I said I had startup ideas of my own. Tell him, he says. He likes the first one I lay out, likes it a lot. Says he wants to work on it, likes it better than the fund idea. Really? Really. I'd hear from him. And I do hear from him a couple days later. I'm invited to his house. Penthouse apartment, the rent, he tells me, four thousand a month. Decorated to give the impression of opulence, velvet upholstery, thick white carpet and deep colors everywhere, windows heavily draped against the world, air conditioning thickening the air almost with ice crystals. He tells me what everything in the apartment costs, his numerous collections. Eventually a lawyer friend of his arrives, a Harvard educated specialist in evicting tenants who can't pay their rent, and the reason for my unlikely invitation is revealed: I'm there to pitch him my idea. He's a hot prospect: having legal reasons not to keep his money in banks he keeps it readily accessible in the form of securities, actually on his person at all times. A portion of the thirty thousand dollar investment the promoter is asking him for would go to the promoter's salary and to pay his overdue rent. Then he'd set up an office, raise five hundred thousand dollars to engineer the website and we'd be off and running.
- And what happened with the business?
- Nothing.
- That businessman was just using you. He wasn't really interested. I don't see him being crazy at all.
- I didn't say he was. Crazy was what I was becoming one night talking half million dollar investments with a big time promoter in Beverly Hills, the next talking with you about hoarding meth addicts that leave their stuff in your girlfriend's apartment. I told the story because I wanted you to see I'm still trying to get out, just not succeeding.
- You gave it to him?
- Why not?
- And more of them come in for pens?
- Yes. Day after day. So tell me, what does it mean?
- Nothing. The guy in the Beverly Hills bushes gives pizzas, you give pens.
- That's it? At Rite Aid a few weeks ago, waiting in line to pay I looked over towards the windows: a tall expensively dressed man was standing immobile, staring down at the floor. I asked him what was wrong. Pain in his leg. He'd never experienced anything like it. I can't imagine. I told I think I can. I'd had the same. Sciatica? Yes, that's what the doctors call it. We got to talking. I went to sit outside with my drink, invited him to join me if he liked. He did. I asked his business. Promotion, property development. A big five year one hundred million dollar project fell through not long ago, he hasn't really recovered. Savings gone, he needed to do something immediately, otherwise he couldn't even pay the rent. He was working on something though. Sell securities in a fund of startups, one new startup added to the portfolio every week. I said I had startup ideas of my own. Tell him, he says. He likes the first one I lay out, likes it a lot. Says he wants to work on it, likes it better than the fund idea. Really? Really. I'd hear from him. And I do hear from him a couple days later. I'm invited to his house. Penthouse apartment, the rent, he tells me, four thousand a month. Decorated to give the impression of opulence, velvet upholstery, thick white carpet and deep colors everywhere, windows heavily draped against the world, air conditioning thickening the air almost with ice crystals. He tells me what everything in the apartment costs, his numerous collections. Eventually a lawyer friend of his arrives, a Harvard educated specialist in evicting tenants who can't pay their rent, and the reason for my unlikely invitation is revealed: I'm there to pitch him my idea. He's a hot prospect: having legal reasons not to keep his money in banks he keeps it readily accessible in the form of securities, actually on his person at all times. A portion of the thirty thousand dollar investment the promoter is asking him for would go to the promoter's salary and to pay his overdue rent. Then he'd set up an office, raise five hundred thousand dollars to engineer the website and we'd be off and running.
- And what happened with the business?
- Nothing.
- That businessman was just using you. He wasn't really interested. I don't see him being crazy at all.
- I didn't say he was. Crazy was what I was becoming one night talking half million dollar investments with a big time promoter in Beverly Hills, the next talking with you about hoarding meth addicts that leave their stuff in your girlfriend's apartment. I told the story because I wanted you to see I'm still trying to get out, just not succeeding.
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