“So innocent and yet calculating,” said the mosquito. “It was wanting in that tub of water all along.”
“Oh, do you see them too.”
“No, not really. Anyhow, based on what you see, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Agree that he crawled away so as to cause his mother to put him in the water?” He laughed. “No, he is just a baby. I don’t think he is that developed. I don’t think he is that self serving.”
“Are these two forms you are now seeing outside of yourself too?” asked the mosquito.
“Of course,” he scoffed but he did not know.
Then he was descending or falling —falling in a diagonal descent on the mosquito’s back, falling onto its feelers, and falling from it entirely. There he was a brown boy in the pool on the roof of The Mall Ayuttaya with goggles on his face and wearing spandex swimming trunks. He looked so fashionable despite his poverty but the poor and discontent always found their stealth means to master petty thievery and a sullied self-image was easily forgotten. There were imitation mountains and waterfalls all around. He swam to the opposite side of the pool and said hello to a foreigner who sat on a rock letting the force of the fall hit his feet. The foreigner ignored him and again started swimming his laps. Then, feeling that he had been rude, he returned to the boy and asked him his name. The boy smiled and said an easy two-syllable name, Nawin. It seemed like an easy name for a foreigner to remember. After an uneventful attempt at conversations in two different languages to which neither party could understand the other one, the foreigner swam off. Still the boy was persistent, swimming over to the foreigner when he rested. This prompted the foreigner to go to the locker room to change sooner than what he would have done otherwise. The boy followed him. He accosted him while he was at the urinal and looked down onto him. He tried to come in when the foreigner was in his cubicle taking a shower. His motives for doing so were ambiguous ones: he wanted a foreigner friend even if this man was so much older than he was, he wanted to really learn the international language, and although he did not really have sexual feelings he would have done anything for a bit of money. As the man dressed on the bench Jatupon, the boy, put his hands together in a mendicant grasshopper pose with palms sandwiched together and held before his face in the “wei.” He opened his hands with the opening of the wallet.
A door of a shower booth opened. It was the mosquito drying himself with a towel.
“Nothing like a good swim followed by a warm shower. You got to meet an old friend today. That’s nice. Earlier you never mentioned this memory. I guess it wouldn’t have been a particularly flattering portrait to share with anyone. It borders on prostitution. Just when I was feeling sorry for you as the abused brother I learned of this. It adds a more complex intellectual dimension to your character, don’t you think? It makes you less moronic somehow.” Jatupon felt a metamorphosis and returned to his 14 year old body. Again he was riding on the mosquito’s back naked as a blue jay and his hair dripped water. He couldn’t confirm or negate the previous memory. It was vaguely familiar.
“Don’t you believe that was you?”