Illegible scribbles

Thursday, June 30
11:00 a.m.

Wake up a wall of bricks in a sticky room with an open window, ash stains on thick white sheets, body sprawled to lengths father never intended.

Housekeeping has to let me back in without my key when I return from the pharmacy. The Buddhist behind the counter finishes morning prayers before greeting me. I take a script and try to exit without the change.

Two notes are written:

1. Where are you? This feels scarily like a scene from Hangover 2. At the pool. Find us. –Tay

2. Taylor and Glav? Gone for a walk. The Beautiful and Damned. xx R

Down a bottle of water on stairway and walk towards the notion of breakfast.

Bye-bye, Bangkok

Wednesday, June 29
3:00 AM

Wake up with two hours of sleep and splash face with water. Sleepy bang, ask corner store clerk to ring a cab to the bus terminal. Two guards let me in, lights off all through the station. Buy the second ticket to the airport and read Sedaris until the overheads dim.

The rain is as bad as the typhoon the week earlier. Check in, boarding call, back to sleep. Wake up over Shanghai, back to the Chinese authorities. Passport, alien card, staple, stamp, transfer sticker.

Muggy out the airport, bullet to the tarmac. Six hours to the rooftop pool at the hotel, $18 a night. Find friends in the lobby, wet from fresh rain and heavy backpack sweat. Pull out a deck of cards and play Get Drunk.

Order buckets of booze and apple hookah, sit on plastic stools on the street. Talk about Skins and Misfits with Brits, argue with street scammers hawking dying roses and elephant sequined hats.

Head into a tattoo shop at 3:00 am to get feet and armpits inked. Back down to the street for more buckets. Stumble past lady boys, all rouge and slim waists. Turn down happy endings and pull a left onto our street.

Room 304 B, sleep.

Getting all my ducks in order. Thailand, brb.
-Side of the Han Tan River. Watching bungee jumpers, June twenty-eleven

Missing months

Some ten months have passed, I told her when we met. Four since winter, when she took off for camel rides and warmer desert nights. Six before we spent together, the occasional crash-in in a south or northern city. An extra six calendar flip and we were both in the same Canadian place.

Where had the months gone? Down throats and through tunnel train rides, last dollars spent. It had evaporated, clouds and outer ocean, back to the ones we used to love. Back here from the Han River and trickling into an Itaewon diner. So goes the cycle.

Six hours then we had together, for the birthday of twenty-four. Ordered buckets, hookah, vodka bottles, said hello to old new friends. Brought it back to Hongdae, the first place in this city us two got trouble started long ago.

A live rock band and dated songs to dance to, spun wet hair sprinkler to the crowd. Out to another bar and onto stage, work muscles never used. Back out to the full early morning streets lit by bar signs and kebob vendors, feeling this will never end.