11
There was one second of thinking that the memory of his mother had neither dissipated in part nor whole but surely remained as something inappreciably more cohesive and tangible that was either lost or banished and forlorn within the present jungle- thicket growth of neurons, and caught in the weeds and brambles of failed possibilities. He thought that with sedulous and indefatigable will, even more paths could surely be trodden within his growing array of brambly chaotic connections; and that eventually from this somewhat circuitous trudging through memory and thought and being nearly blown away in volant whims of his biochemistry and penchant for pleasure, these paths would bring him nearer to those lost bonds of the past (not to her who, of course, was deceased and when alive and enervated from perennial work and exasperating children and who had despised him placidly within the ameliorating parameters of maternal instinct, but to a recollection of her the way she really was instead of the distortions of memory that had her as a weathered and defaced countenance like a featureless rock or, at other poor attempts at recollection, merely the ersatz of that preserved female corpse seen at the anatomical museum at Siriaj Hospital; to recall something like her face from those early and less bleak childhood memories when she would begrudgingly join him and his brothers as they played netless badminton and volleyball on a dirt road near their home; to let these memories of shared smiles and laughter, mutual pleasure that registered as "love" with such beings, permeate his consciousness as pleasure in its imprint of memory was the only perception of how close a relationship it had been, and whether or not he had to some limited degree been valued as an instrument of pleasure, and so in a sense cared been about; and to reluctantly acknowledge that he was one of those beings who was susceptible to love, that mixing and receding of color, a mere human even though to him this word neither defined nor demarcated him very well). The next second he was thinking of male Silpakorn University students whom over the years he had seen at various outdoor restaurants near the campus, each eating and laughing in his group indistinct from all others, but when solitary would often be reading a comic book and riveting one of the legs under a table though not in a queer sensuality toward comic books; the phallic gestures were a satiety of virulence that was innate in a man. The throbbing of legs was a venting of superfluous flowing energy that by its sheer force could be channeled one way or another or both to the objects of one's intrigues, these friends who possessed admirable traits that he lacked. Then, more probingly, it occurred to him how unlike the womanizing playboy artist that he was, that a truly unperverted mind had no sexual orientation at all: that for such a being the pleasure of intrigues, these soft and low beds of earth that from His affable magnetism surrounded Him, were the natural course from which His, an Unperverted Bisexual's liquids, would easily flow into. But for the perverted, like him, who for the most part allowed themselves to be channeled in one particular sexual orientation, their limited intrigues were not so much an interest in these intimate associations as they were a replication of the same parental model, or a finding of the antithesis to one or both parents or the reminders of mothers and fathers interaction with each other that such a mind cared to emulate or reject. Then he pondered how common he was (not that he, the supercilious one, believed it with fears of being a commoner ravaging his psyche and compelling him to contrive the august demeanor and beliefs that he had as all beliefs were contrivances and fortifications against one's fears). He pondered how when out of academic and artistic circles, as in this train of passenger-rustics and professionals who still clung to their agrarian roots of Nongkai or Vientiene, his presence was glanced at and dismissed like anyone else; and this caused him to wonder if he would even be remembered in artistic circles five years hence (not that, he being a part-time lecturer at Silpakorn University and full-time wastrel—one who had to some extent rid himself of art, relinquished himself to the void, and remained divorced of the artistic omphalos as well as the paint brush—to be followed by, were it to happen, a physical presence which might expunge him from the planet in some accident, there would need to be five years for public memory of his work to be forgotten). Then, to avoid thinking of man's insignificance, he returned to a sexual theme, that personal sanctuary, as ineluctable appetites constituted so much of his mental faculties and preoccupations. He thought of how the women he liked most were more often than not a docile antithesis to his mother with the notable exceptions of young, recalcitrant, and sexy martinets of selfish whims imposed as laws who when with that same draping and tangled curl of hair and the same totalitarian streak to squelch all males seemed just like his mother, or what little he remembered of her beyond his castrated will under her auspices. Present relationships were for all heterosexual and homosexual perverts based on the model of the parents who had been of an adequate, deficient, or excessive nature, as caretakers causing a given person to reject, accept, or fiercely need what had or had not been given to them. He had no sooner concluded his deliberation that one's choice of intrigues was in large part due to one's interpretation of failures and successes of parental and espousal models than, before he even knew it, he was at his seat and the Laotian was saying unto him a hello, which in the Thai- Laotian that they had concocted hours earlier was still "Sawadee khrap" with the accompanied gesture of the deferential wai.
"Sawadee khrap. Sabai dee mai? "
"Sabai dee. Where have you been all this time?"
"Above you, of course, sleeping."
"I mean since 5:30 when you thudded to the floor."
"Oh, sorry, did I wake you?" Nawin's concern in this matter was only marginally genuine. For the most part it was feigned for the sake of kindness and to thwart this voice of distraction from his subject of deliberation. He was preoccupied with a bigger worry that, prior to going to the toilet, the stranger had seen his eyes grazing his body. He was wondering what gestures or facial expressions might indicate that the man had seen him ogle his body, if he indeed had, and yet the reason for caring what another individual thought of him eluded him. Had not art, this flaunting of his portraits of female whores with his own whorish self-portraits to which both parties were portrayed as locked in self-degradation, and going to these exhibitions of his work with an arm locked in that of his best friend (legally a wife), Noppawan, shown that he was free to express his desires in his own mode without having to subscribe to another's moral ordinances regarding the energies that exuded from him? With such a force there needed to be rules of restraint so that one was not sucked into the vacuous oblivion of desire and did not lose rational cognizance in the meaningless frolic of sexual quests, which were the mere insatiable manipulating urges of an animal and could so easily be the sole and altogether forgettable essence of a man. This he knew from interaction with the inordinate array of bitches who pawed him with their love (their needy and myriad convoluted yearnings for no other reason than a handsome figure to admire their flesh and thereby gain the illusion of immutable beauty - a neediness dirty as their underwear which he more often than not successfully tugged off to be intimate in their flesh and their and his own selfish caprices). He needed restraint, but to him those ordinances should come from within himself, this prowler's own creative and logical prowess.
"Yes, definitely a loud thud; but it wasn't from the noise so much as that smell that cascaded down with your body."
"Smell?"
"Yes, but I don't want to think of it, thank you. No more of that. So tell me of your adventure this morning."