"No?" asked Nawin as he once more inhaled the smoke of his marijuana.
The gecko shook his head plaintively. Nawin understood: he had done fellatio, he had swallowed, and had subsequently allowed himself to be sodomized so that he might feign belief that, without anything to grasp in his empty hands, there was a permanent entity in the impermanence permeating his life and yet if humans did not have the delusion of sexual intimacies there would be no contemplation at all for an understanding of true being was brought forth in copulative intermingling. Despite the revelation, he felt rather lithe in his fog until the gecko metamorphosed into a man pointing at his genitalia. "You smoke me here. Me don't want smoke. You do. Foreign smoke, Foreign pays. Foreign give more money. Me seventeen. Me tell. You go to police."
He collected his thoughts the best that he could in his state of dreaminess and brief hallucinations in the dark, blowing mustiness of the confines of the empty room. He considered how quickly odd, erratic ideas could spill out onto all regions of the brain like paint from leaking tubes, mix grotesquely, amalgamate in beings, and spread their diminutive warped presence in insurrections begetting hegemonies of the mind. With this recent association and its disconnection pressing so fully onto his mind he could not stay here, the venue and embodiment of their activity together. It made his head ache worse than his buttocks, arm, and clavicle. The fact that one's DNA, one's sacrosanct blueprint, was disseminated randomly in ejaculations seemed to him inordinately peculiar; that it was emitted from an instrument of urination which when erect was a pistol of a sadist forcing his pleasure and will onto others a sickening but laughable peculiarity; still it made him so amorous that he could not restrain himself any longer and thus he masturbated and then took a shower.
Considering that if he were to check out formally he would have to confront smirking faces and laughter at the front desk once one of the housekeeping crew reported the soiled disarray of his sheets, he decided that he would not check out at all. He had paid for three days, so it was of no consequence. Abandoning the key on the bed, he left through the fire exit to avoid speaking to night attendants and all things human, and went out into the dark streets of Nongkai. Telephone booths seemed to call her name out to him and to a limited degree he wanted to enter one to converse with her, and would have done so (momentarily if she were to hang up on him or if for longer, it would be to engage with her with, hostilely or civilly, with the neediness of love or the indifference of a stranger, he could not predict) but for the aching reminder of the multiple bone fractures she had rendered unto him. With enough vibrations the china cabinet of a woman's heart would break and its varied fragments could not be organized let alone mended into some whole, such was the integrity of a man when ripped apart beyond suture.
It was later than he thought and for a few moments the emerging bristle of morning light was fused into a dark mound of cloud before attempting to surmount it in the struggle of a morning freeing itself to be born. The view was a layered mélange of golden crème and whisked effervescent void that was as succulent as taffy. He wanted to loiter in time and stare at it without blinking in the hope that constancy would keep it there unchanged. It was the same type of thought that had prompted him to stop painting altogether a few years ago, and now he could hardly remember the feel of a paint brush in his hand.
He got into a tuk-tuk and asked the driver to take him to the Buddhist Sculpture Garden. The first movements of the three wheeled vehicle made him shudder and utter equivalent interjections.
"Yes, it's cold!" said the driver who was wearing a jacket and shorts, "That odd rain in winter! I met you before, didn't I?" yelled the mirrored mouth through wind and the roar of the motor.
"I'm from Bangkok. I wouldn't think so," yelled Nawin even louder.
"Sure I have. At the train station. The train officer had me give you a message."
"Oh that's right. The telephone number."