Corpus of a Siam Mosquito | Page 3

be one major discomfort she would not tolerate. He began to miss his wife: she didn't need anything--not even sex with him. She was free to love other things than him--higher things and he was free to love higher things than her as well as the lower things like Porn. It was for this reason that he loved her but he didn't desire her so much except as an intellectual companion. This one he desired and that love certainly had more thrust than the former one. At least it appeared to be stronger. The sky had tubes of light paint oozing out into the darkness and the sky could not ascertain if it wanted a moon or a sun in its presence. The ride was just beginning and yet it was monotonous in the darkness and the light of the street lamps that refracted glaringly. The three of them still remained as little conscious of the moon or, dependent on the limitation of their eyes, the corona of the moon, that they happened to glimpse as accompanying them on their early morning departure as they were of the monarch, Ramkamhang, that was the source of the road's name. The taxi driver was near-sighted so to him, as most things at a distance, the reality of it all was begotten as a blur.
The back-seated Nawin with the cigarette fuming and the legs sprawled out and thumping to his portable CD player and his model or whore with her hand again on one of his legs had their thoughts parted once more in the kinetic movements of linguistic moans.
"What airline will you be flying out of?" asked the taxi driver. Following patriarchal social etiquette he was addressing the man instead of the girlfriend despite not liking the smoke. The man was more than a customer but a member of the more affluent class and this by Thai, although not Buddhist standards, was well revered. How swift one's encroaching aloneness was purged and thwarted in the retreat engineered by the batons and water cannons of one's linguistic moans. The whore, whose self-image had been disparaged by the unconventional positive endorsement of her activities by the wife, was grateful to gain the parting of her thoughts from the driver's voice. She was pleased to be once again hearing anything--even the least little unenlightening fact-about their trip. She smiled. After all, it was the land of smiles.
"Thai" mumbled Nawin's voice from the back seat.
"Domestic or international?" asked the taxi driver as if amnesia had wiped away a whole section of memory. Porn released an alien chortle that made Nawin think that he was sitting on the back seat with some type of mythological, hybrid animal he was in the process of taking on an overseas journey. How quickly she had gone from seductress to a callow calf and kid. He smiled at the man's ignorance without laughing. He felt that his girlfriend was ugly and noticed how mutable the sight of anyone was: at one-time ugly and at another time beautiful, at one-time virtuous and another point wicked, and at one point victim and another time slut. It was not only the physical dimensions that could vary from moment to moment. The perception of a whole being could change. He moved himself to the window to get away from her hand and feigned a curiosity with the world outside. He rolled down the window. At that moment they both had a similar jejune feeling of the repetition of old things and new things not fully connecting. It was indescribable to them both. Porn kept asking herself if she was doing the right thing in forsaking her responsibilities with her clients for the unknown of traveling with him.
"You look like you are car sick," said the driver. "My son always got that way even a kilometer down the road when he was a boy. Matter of fact that happens to him now--not quite as bad, though. I can't think how he survived the flight to Changmai. That I'll never know." Nawin, to show proper deference to an older man and to prove to himself that he wasn't churlish, looked toward the mirror and front windshield and gave the whole frontal world a nod. The boy born of the name Jatupon, was bleeding inside him. His brain waves wiggled around like noodles. He was no better than this man. They both had been born poor with limited opportunities. He couldn't laugh at him for any reason.
"Are you going international or domestic," asked the driver to the twenty-five year old. Again there was a chortle. "Why does that question seem to make her laugh," asked the taxi driver. "That is very strange. That is a strange young lady."
"Krap," said Nawin gruffly, "I don't know why she is laughing."