An Apostate: Nawin of Thais

by Steven David Justin Sills

"An older man?" Nawin mocked. "Not me then—impossible," he said facetiously with a contrived chuckle to disguise a sigh.

"Is that so?" asked the Laotian. "Maybe you just look like a well preserved older type. Anyhow, you were gone much of the morning. It hasn't given us much of a chance to talk."

Was the obscene truly so, he posited to himself, or was it just oversensitivity about doing something, or being associated with others who were doing something not considered the norm? If it were the latter then so much oversensitivity over something so insignificant as the kissing of a toe or the feeding of another water seemed crazy, but if it were the former why did he not just excuse himself to the toilet and remain absent until the train stopped or from some tenuous excuse withdraw to one of the many newly vacant seats?

Nawin nodded and smiled. Then he stared out of the window so as to have a pretense to turn to a woman's gentility. He glanced at her directly with a shy smile. She was no longer eating but wiping her mouth with a napkin and stuffing her Styrofoam container between the metallic cup holder and the window.

"Would you like some gum?" he asked the woman as he pulled out a stick from the pack in his pocket.

The woman smiled with closed lips and a childish, exaggerated shaking of her head.

"She's not supposed to talk to strange men let alone take things from them," said the Laotian with a grin. "However, you can send it this way."

"Sure," said Nawin. He gave the stick of gum to him.

"Thank you, kind sir," he said with a brief gesture of the wai and a quick denuding of his stick of gum.

With a more solidified judgment that their actions were obscene Nawin began a slow unwrapping of his own gum; and yet not wanting to judge precipitously on nominal matters where he could be mistaken egregiously, he decided that he would remain seated where he was and not leave them. And if obscene, why would he want to leave them when the obscene seemed so comfortable to him despite his moral objections of himself for it being such.