Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

6.

It's Been a Hard Day's Night,

I Should Be Sleeping on Kellogg's

(from 'A Hard Day's Night' (LENNON/MCCARTNEY)

There's something you need to know about the monsoons. They come. And they blow. And they go. It's not like a Robert Louis Stevenson story, where the biting wind blows blood-numbing sleet off the ocean for three months at a time. The southern monsoon season is more like a security guard at a gold necklace shop. Day after day nothing happens. Then suddenly two masked robbers burst in, firing guns and banging the guard over the head. They scoop up the necklaces and they're gone. Then it all goes back to nothing again. I got that one from Mair, but it's one of my favorites.

When I got to bed that night, there was no wind at all and the surf was soothingly soft. The first monsoon had passed and we were back to nothing. That was too bad because I needed a distraction. I needed crashing waves to drown out my thoughts. My brain was trying to convince the rest of me that I was over the hill. That I would never again feel the strong arms of a lover around me. Never again have a man snore in my ear. That, like the salt virgins of Xanadu, my vagina would seal itself up and I would become a fossil. The antidepressants weren't working. Or perhaps they weren't strong enough to counter my mega-midlife crisis. I took another two, washed down with Chilean red, and lay my head on the pillow. I couldn't be bothered to clean my teeth again, so I knew they'd be mauve in the morning. I needed a man, desperately. I needed to be admired, wanted, complimented, desired…loved. How difficult could that be? Village head Bigman Beung desired me, as did Major Mana. So there were precedents. I wasn't totally repulsive. All I needed to do was transfer that desire to a man with skin rather than scales.

Since I am a Thai woman, my culture discourages me from making the first move. But my culture is eroding as fast as the Gulf coastline. And I am a Thai woman raised by a liberated, free-thinking hippy mother. Unlike most Thais, I never fit in with groups. Relationships with my friends, whom I always felt were wary of my un-Thainess, evaporated on the last day of high school and then again the day after my university graduation. I had been encouraged to embrace the modern world and follow my instincts. Mair wouldn't have thought twice about being the aggressor when she was my age. Enough of being the tick on a blade of grass, hoping some hairy creature might brush past me. No, sir. Tomorrow I would go after my prey. It was a good plan and I felt confident. I might have even found sleep about then if it hadn't been for the headboard of my mother's bed banging against the wooden wall of her cabin.

I was in the new, barely used meeting room at the Pak Nam police station. They still hadn't removed the plastic wrapping from the chairs. It had taken me a while to get up to the second floor. I had been passed from man to man like a baton on my way up. Loitering was the activity of choice there. Officers old and new were leaning and sitting and standing at every corner, like statues in an ancient mansion. Nobody seemed to have a job. Those I knew, like Desk Sergeant Phoom, quickly introduced me to those I didn't, summarizing my entire life in twenty seconds and ending with the ubiquitous 'She's single.' But as they knew I was a reporter and therefore educated, 'She's single' here was not intended as an invitation to date me, more a sorrowful postscript much in the vein of 'She only has two months to live.'

I was discreetly removing chair plastic with my nail scissors when Chompu threw open the door of the meeting room. He entered diva-like with the back of his hand on his forehead, slamming the door behind him. In order to get into the police force, Chompu had pretended to be straight at the interview, just as many other successful gay policemen had done before him. Some even married and produced children to compound the effect. But my Chompu had wanted to make a stand for camp. He believed that openly effeminate men had a role in the modern Thai police force and should not have to disguise what nature had given them. Consequently, he'd been transferred thirty-eight times in his career, and here he was at rock bottom. There was nowhere else to be transferred to. So Chompu could be himself and nobody really cared.

'Bad day at the office?' I asked. It was only nine A.M.

'They treat me like a dishrag,' he said. 'Honestly. I'm the only one actually working here, and nobody appreciates me. They've got their catfish ponds and their Five Star fried chicken concessions and their Amway-and who in their right mind would buy foundation cream from a man who plucks his nose hair in public, I ask you?-and actual policing is a troublesome diversion for most of them.'

He plonked down in a padded chair I'd already liberated from plastic.

'Why didn't you want to meet in your office?' I asked.

'I don't have an office anymore. Not to myself, anyway. They put him in there-Egg, the fat man with the cat carcass on his head.'

'What's he doing here?'

'Requested a transfer, they say. But pray tell me why anyone would ask to move here. He was in Pattani before.'

'Well, excuse me, but that might just explain why he'd want to move here. Are you joking? Pattani? Muslims on motorcycles shooting harmless Buddhists. Buddhists on motorcycles shooting harmless Muslims. Pick off five of ours, and we'll pick off six of yours. Schools torched. Primary school teachers assassinated. It's the world center of cowards with weapons. Kill anyone as long as there's no danger of getting hurt yourself. It's the symbolism. They no longer value human life down there.'

'Have you entirely finished?'

'Yes.'

I hadn't really. There was so much I had to say about the deep south.

'Well, Senora Evita, if you'd been paying attention, you'd have noticed I didn't question his reason for leaving Pattani. I asked why he'd want to come here to Thailand's own Pyong Yang when there are so many better moves he could have made. I sneaked a look at his transfer papers. He specifically requested Pak Nam, but he has no family connections here.'

'Has he got a girlfriend?'

'Do you have no shame?'

'I'm not applying. I was just…'

'I know. I'm just being catty. Sorry.'

'You don't like him, do you?'

'Well, apart from the fact that his short-wave radio is on ALL the time, you know what he did? You remember those darling little button ferns I had on the desk? He emptied them out the second-floor window, dirt and all.'

'No!'

'Can you believe it? He said if he wanted to be in the jungle, he'd take a job with the border patrol. I'd nurtured those ferns. They were like children to me. Of course, they died immediately. They weren't used to the harsh world outside.'

I took a tissue from my bag and handed it to him. I was just in time.

'He's a bully,' I said.

Chompu nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes.

'I'm afraid of him,' he said. 'He talks so rudely to me. I daren't go in the office now.'

'You've got a gun.'

'You think I should?'

'Can't hurt. Most bullies are just friendless cowards. Nobody would miss him.'

'Oh, but he has friends.'

'How would you know?'

'Because according to the statement, he was having lunch with his buddies at eleven thirty yesterday.'

'Were you doing surveillance on h- Wait! What statement?'

'The statement that was included in the investigation of your bombing. It was a hand grenade, by the way.'

'Why would…? Don't tell me he provided an alibi for the rat brothers?'