Danger on the riverbank (part 3, final)

Six months later...

One relationship I should have talked about more – rather than trying to handle such a monstrous, terrifying thing myself – was my friendship with wild boy Kew.

He became adept at demanding money from me, almost as good as I was at giving it to him.

Kew was my awful, private addiction. Kew knew there was little danger I would turn him down, so he kept asking. I would raise the occasional complaint, but my spirit was weak. Even worse, my partner also knew that I was giving Kew money, and would tell his friends, so my private addiction became my public shame. But still I kept giving.

It was a tried and trusted ritual. Kew knew my movements, and would call me in those hours when he knew I was at work, and Maiyuu was not around. He also knew my pay days, and would be sure to call me those nights, when I had ready money.

He’d ask me if I wanted to see him after work, usually for a drink, and of course the price for that was his ‘taxi fare’ home, or petrol for his motorbike.

Note, not ‘do you want a drink’, which is neutral on who will pay, and is what most friends would ask, but ‘do you want to see me’ – which implies I will have to pay if I want to put him to so much trouble.

When we were together, I would look at this benighted creature, and feel sorry for him. I would listen to his news, give him advice, pepper with questions, looking for new ways in which I could make a difference.

Spellbreaker

Helping this young man felt good, up until the point where I parted with my cash.
No sooner would he hop on his bike and speed away than the spell would be broken, and I would start cursing him for taking advantage of me.

Regardless of how he used the money, he had no right to ask for it – a true friend would not, even if he needed it (he’d just wait until it was offered).

But ask he did, and for that, of course, I have only myself to blame.

‘If you refuse to give Kew money, he will lose interest in you,’ Maiyuu said.

One night he turned up at my place in tears, and in a fit of rage started tearing up my condo. I just stood their meekly, wanting to console him.

What was wrong with me? This kid was destroying my life, but I just stood there. At the very least I should have thought of Maiyuu, who shares my place and whose possessions I also placed at risk.

Nightclub blues

For weeks, Kew’s behaviour had been growing more erratic. One night he took me dancing, only to abandon me outside the nightclub when it closed at 1am. He sped off on his motorbike, he told me later, because he reckoned I had spotted someone else in the crowd. In truth, I had just lost my sandal and stepped off his bike for a moment to retrieve it.

A week or so later he asked me out dancing again, but in the end went on to the Or Tor Gor nightstrip ahead of me. About 1am he called to say he was coming to my place, but police at a checkpoint outside my condo stopped him before we could meet.

Police spotted him weaving drunkenly in and out of traffic and flagged him over. They wanted him to pay B200, which he didn’t have, so I paid instead. Police also wanted to confiscate his bike.

During this time Kew and his friends were selling pirated music CDs at Pantip Plaza. Hardly a day passed when one tetsakit (local body inspector) or other did not demand a bribe, wristwatch, cellphone or some other valuable, in return for turning a blind eye to their illegal activity.

That experience had not made Kew wary of the law – bolder and more rash, if anything. I watched horrified as Kew challenged one officer after another, demanding to know why they had stopped him, why they wanted his bike, why they were causing him bother.

A night in jail

One officer took him by the shoulder and asked him why he was speaking in such an unpleasant manner. Kew’s voice started to tremble, and his eyes misted over, but he grew more belligerent and desperate by turns, until police announced they were taking him to the cells for the night. As a tearful Kew hopped on a police bike, he shot me a bitter glance, and told me to follow. I declined.

The police seemed surprised that I would mix with such a wild young man. They asked me where he lived, and how we met. Before Kew took off, he called his uncle on my cellphone, no doubt hoping his uncle would get him out of jail.

They spoke for more than 30 minutes, during which Kew apologised profusely for his past misdeeds, while his uncle, on the other end of the line, only seemed to grow angrier.

While the police drama played out, my friends from the condo were drifting home, dressed in their nightclub best. Kew, by contrast, smudged and black, sat in the dust, squeezed between cars, his pants adrift, his T-shirt wet and sticky. He smelt, looked bad, and should have been in bed.

How can you shape or hope to influence such a wayward child? How could I ever make this boy listen to me?

A few weeks before, Maiyuu met Kew for the first time.

Kew was selling bootleg music CDs at Pantip. Previously Kew had avoided meeting him, to the extent of running away as he approached.

But since going into the CD trade, Kew had financial reasons for putting aside his qualms. The night Kew decided he wanted to meet Maiyuu, I called Maiyuu on his behalf and suggested he join us at home.

‘Kew is here at home, and wants to meet you,’ I said.

‘Hang on,’ said Maiyuu, and the phone went dead.

Maiyuu dropped what he was doing and sped back, the fastest I have seen him move. He wanted a look at this young man who had caused him so much bother since I met him on the river all those months ago.

When Maiyuu arrived, Kew was playing my guitar, and singing. He has an impressive singing voice, which surprised me…a hidden talent. He asked Maiyuu if he wanted to buy any CDs, then suggested they go into business together. Nothing came of this of course, because Maiyuu (unlike his farang partner) knows better than to mix with such bad boys.

Normally when I meet Kew he is uptight and tense, and I have to spend the first couple of hours calming him down. On this night, however, he seemed to enjoy himself, knocking back beers and chain-smoking for three hours.

A quick ‘fix’

Taking Kew down to find a taxi, I decided I needed a ‘fix’ – so I gave him B200 for his fare, actually I emptied my wallet, in the mistaken belief it would make me feel good.

This was on top of B500 that Maiyuu and I spent ordering CDs that neither of us wanted.

For the next few weeks, I saw Kew maybe once a week, mostly at a little shop close to my home, where the staff keep and feed a stray cat.

One night Kew decided he liked the cat, and asked the owner if he could take it home. Two days later he returned it, as he is not at home enough to look after the animal, and could not be bothered cleaning up after his new friend.

A few weeks later, Kew called again while Maiyuu was away in the provinces, and I was alone.

Kew called at 10pm, sounded happy, and said he was coming around. He eventually turned up at 2am, just as I was going to bed, but everything was far from happy now.

Row with girlfriend

I took the lift down to meet him. He was staring at the ground, and the moment he was inside the lift, away from public view, he started to cry. His face crumpled, his shoulders folded in, and he sobbed violently.

He had just fought with his girlfriend (gone was any pretense that he is gay), and she had cheated him of B1000. I am not sure which hurt most – losing the love of his life, or B1000, but he didn't want to talk about it, so I did not press the matter. I kissed his head, and cut his toenails for him instead.

Kew ordered me to go downstairs and buy not one or two, but six bottles of beer. By the time I returned he had pulled out the guitar, and was busy talking to a girl on the phone, by turns pleading, cajoling, and abusing. He cried, he shouted, tossed my guitar on the bed. He hung up, and kicked the phone and a bottle of beer across the room.

The phone broke, which alarmed me. I made him something to eat, but his angry mood refused to subside. In the end he told me he had another worry, bigger than the girlfriend problem, which refused to go away.

His mother, he said, had bone cancer, and would have to go into hospital for checks, before ultimately undergoing surgery. He needed $4000 to pay for her hospital stay, and wanted me to give it to him.

After witnessing his angry outburst, saying no should have been easy. In fact, it made it harder.

‘I cant give you that much money unless I meet your mother,’ I said.

‘She’s sick, and our home is almost empty,’ he said, looking ashamed. ‘Don’t expect much.’

He called his sister at home. Kew swore, shouted, demanded she wake up his mother.

Stand-over tactics

As we left, Kew insisted he take my guitar as well. I refused, and he unleashed another torrent of abuse. As he stood up to me in my own condo, unsteady on his feet, I worried he would throw something else across the room, or maybe even take a poke at me. If he hit me, I could retaliate and feel no guilt or shame. I could toss him out and forget him, I told myself.

But he did not hit me, so I stayed locked in his spell. Eventually I gave in and handed over my guitar, which I knew he coveted and which I suspected I would not see again.

Ten minutes later, we were outside Kew’s condo. He warned me again not to expect much: his mother, he said, was ill and thin. All the furniture had gone, sold to meet her medical expenses.

Meeting Ma

I talked to his mother, who was perched up on a mattress on the floor. She did look sick, and the condo did look bare. She confirmed she was going into hospital. It was a public hospital, she said, not private, but she was not eligible for treatment under the 30-baht health care scheme.

I was not sure how much of this was true, and really it didn’t matter, because I felt horrible being there, like a nosy policeman. Anyway, I knew that really I had no choice – my fate was already sealed.

Normally, Kew is a hard man to track down. He owns no cellphone, and on the nights he calls, hops from one phone booth to another. In the space of one night Kew might call five, seven times. If I owned a map showing the phone boxes in this city, I could track his movements, as if I had planted a satellite tracking device on his back.

On this night, however, I did not need to track his movements. I could not get rid of him. In an attempt to get away, I told Kew that I wanted time to sleep on it. He refused, saying his mother was due in hospital in a few hours (it was now 6am). He claimed he would have to carry her to the taxi himself.

I told him that I left my ATM card at home. In that case, he said, he would have to follow me back to the condo to get it.

My attempts at evasive action having failed, I took him to an ATM machine and withdrew B3000 (thankfully, all I had left in my account). I gave it to him. He stormed off - no thank you, no backward glance.

Pantip mafia

The next day, a Spanish friend called, and coincidentally invited me to Pantip. When we arrived, I looked for Kew, but he was not at work. Plenty of wayward youth were there, dressed in black, blocking my path, pulling me over, insisting I look at their CDs – but not the boy I wanted.

Mr Spain, who has lived in Thailand a long time and is seasoned in the ways of grasping young men, was appalled that I handed over money, and even more surprised I gave him my guitar.

I swore I would never go out with Kew again, and vowed to get back my guitar.

‘I bet you B100 that you do seem him again, but you’ll never get back the guitar,’ he says.

I called Kew’s mother that afternoon. She had been to see the doctor but did not have to stay overnight. She thanked me for the money, and I asked about my guitar. She said Kew took it away the night before. She had not seen him since.

She asked me if I lent it to him, or was pressured to give it. I admitted that I gave it to him under duress. I took this opportunity to ask her about her son.

Kew, she said, left school at fifth form level with no qualifications, then played truant from the army. His father had left home, and rarely sent home money, and she herself was too sick to work.

She said Kew needed an older brother figure in his life to care for him. She regarded me as part of her family and any time Kew gave me problems, I should call.

Mental illness

I asked her about Kew’s moods, which fluctuate wildly: one moment on a terrific high, the next stuck in a brooding, obsessive low. Kew, his mother said, had a depressive disorder, but refused to take his pills.

A child who is this sick can barely function, of course. Forget all the talk about graduating in marketing, or a career in the army (just some of the early stories he told me about his life). This young man lives on the edge, filling his nights with boozing, smoking, dancing.

He does all this in the company of friends, so his day-to-day life looks normal, like that of so many young Thais. Yet it is not. In a crowd, he’s hard to pick apart from the others. He can hide his problem, and put off the day when he seeks help.

Actually, I doubt Kew realises that he is unwell, and that most of us do not live our lives in such a random, chaotic and self-destructive manner.

Just deserts

Hours after I handed over the money and my guitar, I felt wretchedly guilty, as if I had set out to harm myself and tear apart my own life. I felt as if Kew had set out to exploit me, and suspected that everything he told me was lies. The only ally I had left (apart from Maiyuu), was Kew’s mother…I thought if anyone could get through to Kew, it would be her.

I kept up a battery of calls to her place, at one point telling her I knew a police friend who would intervene if Kew did not bring back my guitar. I was determined to get it back. Every morning I would woke to see the empty space on the wall where the guitar once rested, and felt it was mocking me.

I also pummeled Kew’s friends with phone calls. Occasionally he would call back angrily and promise to return the guitar - but always in another few days. One night he said if I wanted it I would have to pay a B500 taxi fare. I told him that no taxi fare was that much, and that as the party who borrowed it, he would have to meet the travel expenses himself.

Three weeks after that dreadful night in my condo, our stand-off ended in a way that now makes me laugh.

Kew called to say he was staying at his mother’s place, and had brought the guitar with him. He was slurring his words and I asked him what was wrong.

‘I have 40 stitches in my mouth,’ he said angrily.

Pistol-whipped

Kew told me his girlfriend had grown suspicious about the Westerner who kept calling after him, and did not believe his story that I was merely trying to retrieve my guitar.

She accused him of seeing me behind her back, and in a moment of anger a relative of hers whipped out a handgun and smacked Kew across the face.

He kept his teeth, though still needed stitches for his mouth wounds, which he says he suffered for ‘free’ - he was the innocent party, as my behaviour had set off the assault.

I arranged to meet him at his mother’s place, and this time played perhaps my only smart move since this saga began - I took Maiyuu along rather than going alone.

When we arrived Kew looked surprised to see us together. He was cruising around on his motorbike, cigarette jutting from his lip. He swollen mouth gave Kew a stormy and attractive look, though he was also menacing, like a buzzard eyeing his prey.

Wearing a sulk, and with barely a word, Kew left his bike and went upstairs to fetch the guitar. I am sure that if I had come alone he would have demanded I pay for the privilege. In Maiyuu's presence, however, he did not dare.

When he brought it back I gave him a fruit basket I had bought for his mother. He took it, gave me a wai, and left.

Giggler

I have not seen him since, though he still rings. He phoned me on his 21st birthday, and another couple of times while drinking with friends. When he phoned the last time, he was giggling, like the simple child at heart that he is (feeble-brained, his mother says).

When I look back on this episode now, I am amazed I managed to get back that guitar, which I have not played once since I retrieved it. Kew, for his part, was shocked that I doubted his honesty.

‘You threatened me at home that night, and I felt scared,’ I said.

‘How could you feel that way? I wouldn’t have hit you,’ he said, as if that made his stand-over tactics alright.

Affection deficit

At that troubled time in my life I needed affection. Unable to find people who would give it to me, my mind performed a strange flip and I started looking for people to whom I could give it instead.

I no longer feel such a strong desire to be a father figure, a high-stakes game even when your child is ‘normal’. My life is too valuable than to mix with someone who sows chaos everywhere he goes – even if that same wild one, underneath, is still a child in need of a parent's loving care.