Ball, me, and the ghost of responsibility

‘No one ever listens to me...I was just want my Dad back!’ said Ball, sobbing in my arms as we sat outside my condo.

Dad died a few years ago. Ball, still a teenager, believes his life has not been the same since.

We had been drinking at carer R’s ya dong (Thai home-made liquor, mixed with honey and herbs) stall nearby, and ended up outside my place, a short walk away.

We were alone, carer R having packed up his stall and abandoned us an hour earlier. He had tried to take Ball home, but without success.

Two hours into the evening, Ball’s mother and her partner had dropped in to see us. They were unhappy to see Ball imbibing heavily, and told him it was time to call it a day.

Perhaps aware that Ball is facing stress at home, they did not force the issue, however.

Ball, who is just 19, and still a youngster in my eyes, was apparently responsible enough to look after himself.

Yet here he was, knocking back shot glass after shot glass of whisky, getting drunker by the minute.

He could barely stand, never mind walk. Carer R tried to guide Ball home, but Ball was having none of it.

He bear-hugged him, clung on to R’s frame, tried to lift him, pull him back to the booze stall. He wasn’t willing to go home, and that was that.

‘Mali, you try taking him home,’ R told me.

I took Ball by the hand. We made it as far as the door to Ball's place, just 50m from R’s shop.

When we arrived, Ball’s thin body stiffened – with fear, or stress, I don’t know.

Ball lives with a family of eight, including his girlfriend Jay, who he believes might be pregnant. He says he wants to do the responsible thing by helping her bring up the child rather than abandoning her.

However, they have known each other only four months, and being a teenager, he would rather have his freedom.

‘I want her to know that I will never abandon her if she is indeed pregnant.

‘But neither of us is sure, and she has yet to take a test. If she is not pregnant, and just tricking me, I never want to see her face again,’ Ball had told us earlier.

Jay comes from Chiang Mai, in the North.

She has a job at a department store, so is pulling her weight. However, Ball and his girlfriend have started borrowing from Ball’s Mum to meet expenses.

Jay is unwilling to ask her own parents for financial help, because she is estranged from them.

‘These are her problems, which she has created as a result of her own decisions. You are not responsible,’ I told Ball.

‘But I feel sorry for her,’ pleaded Ball.

‘Feeling sorry for someone is no basis for a relationship,’ I told him bluntly. ‘Do you love her, or just feel sorry for her?

He refused to answer. He spoke to her brusquely when, 10 minutes later, Jay visited us at carer R’s shop.

Ball and I are born under the same star sign (Scorpio). He feels things intensely, as do I. Like me, he also tends to feel sorry for people.

‘If you feel sorry for people in this life, you will end up in trouble, as people ultimately must be responsible for their own actions,’ I told him.

‘I am not criticising you, because I have spent a lifetime feeling sorry for people myself, and it has brought only misery,’ I said.

‘He wants to behave responsibly,’ said carer R, defending Ball’s decision to stay with the girlfriend, come what may.

We drank for several hours. By the second half of the evening, Ball had grown morose.

When I took him to the front of his place, Ball refused to enter. He insisted that I return with him to R’s shop. I didn't get a look inside, or talk to anyone.

We staggered back out the soi. Carer R, however, took advantage of our brief absence to pack up shop and walk home, leaving me to battle with Ball alone.

Ball tried to drag me across the vacant lot back to my condo, as he insisted I should go home first.

He tried pushing me from behind, then took me by the hand and tried dragging me.

‘But I want to take you home first!’ he said.

Ball, I suspected, wanted to carry on drinking.

This push-me, pull-you nonsense was to carry on for at least the next hour.

Ball refused to go home. I refused to return home myself until I had seen him safely back to his place.

Once, we ran across the vacant lot to my condo, hand in hand.

Another time, he climbed on my back. I tried lifting him, and carrying him back home, but he struggled free of my grasp.

‘I am not gay. What do you want with me?’ he asked.

Outside my condo, Ball pleaded with a security guard to take me back to my unit.

I ignored him, and asked Ball to sit with me.

He started to cry – about his Dad, who died a few years ago, and the family stress enveloping his life since. I took him in my arms, and put him on my lap.

‘No one listens to me,’ he sobbed.

‘It’s alright...never mind,’ I said, rubbing his heaving back.

When sober, Ball says little, just sits and broods.

He drinks as a form of release, just as his own father did before him. Ball’s father died of an alcohol-related illness.

I nursed him, pulled his hair out of his eyes, and held it in a small bunch behind his head.

Combing back his hair, I had noticed earlier, has a transfixing effect on Ball.

Ball wore shorts which were too big for him, but no underwear. I spent half the night pulling up his pants for him.

Ball enjoyed the attention, I suspect because he gets little of it at home.

Earlier, when his parents visited us, I massaged Ball’s arms and hands. Carer R rubbed Ball’s face with water to cool him down, sober him up.

Half an hour after the teary episode outside my place, the heavens had had enough of watching over us. They sent down heavy rain.

Ball and I agreed were standing in the vacant lot, half-way between his place and mine.

While Ball danced in the rain, I took shelter under a make-shift carpark in the middle of the lot.

'Hug time!'I said.

We hugged. I kissed his head.

'Now, Mr Ball, it is time for bed.'

Ball ran away - came back - then pretended to walk towards home a second time.

This time I did not wait to see whether he would return again, but walked towards home myself.

Ball can’t cope with these problems when sober, yet I do not want to see him only when he is drunk.

He has to find another way to deal with his demons. I am willing to help, but as yet I do not know where to look for the solution.

Ball gave me his mother’s cellphone number, but I have not called, as I don’t yet know what to say.