Corpus of a Siam Mosquito | Page 3

themselves so that
they were free of all discomfort. A woman was more that way than
even a man based on his judgments and to be left alone in an apartment
in a foreign country would 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