Unwilling suitor, reluctant bride (1)

'If you can find a job for Ball at your company, I will be happy. Perhaps a salary of B40,000?'

That was idle taxi driver Lort, partner to Ball's Mum.

Ball is my new friend from the slums.

‘And I’ll be even happier if you invest in a Thai home-made liquor (ya dong) stall,’ Lort said cheerily.

Lort, a taxi-driver who spends more time at home than he does on the road, is a man with his eye out for the main chance.

He sees me as a suitor for Ball's affections. In return for entering his family, I must pay a bridal price.

I was trying to explain why, a few nights ago, Ball had turned up at home drunk.

He had spent the night imbibing ya dong with carer R and me.

He arrived home about 3am, which was too late for his mother's liking.

Lort didn't care. 

‘What you and Ball do when you’re together doesn’t interest me,' he said. ‘I know what he’s like. When he drinks, he abandons self-control.’

'But I didn't do anything!' I felt like saying.

‘Just B3,000 is all you need to set up a whisky stand,' he said, pressing ahead.

'I know the police and local body inspectors, so even though we are not paying tax on the produce, you won’t get into any trouble.

‘How about it?’ he asked, extending his hand.

He wanted me to shake on it, to acknowledge that we had a deal.

I was sitting in their slum home, squeezed into a small living space with seven or eight family members, including Ball.

Ball looked worried.

'I don't want that. I just want to be your friend!' Ball told me quietly.

Just as I didn’t view him as a potential bride, nor did he want our relationship to go any further for the time being, despite what Lort might have in mind.

This was our first time together since we had met at carer R's medicinal booze stand, two nights before.

R had packed up his stand and headed for bed about 2am, which left me to cope alone with young Ball, by then too inebriated to walk straight, but unwilling to go home alone.

A couple of hours before, Ball’s Mum had dropped in to see us.

‘I will send Ball home promptly,’ I promised Mum.

That wasn't to be.

Ball and I tried to drag each other back home across the vacant lot, without success. I refused to go until I had seen him safely home, and vice versa. We were part-playing, part-serious.

A heavy downpour broke the spell.

Ball danced in the rain, and suddenly felt the cold. He agreed to take himself home.

As we sat in his home two days later, I asked about that night.

'Mum gave me a telling off,' he said quietly.

'I'm sorry Ball came home so late. He was in my care, but neither of us wanted to stop,' I told Ball's Mum, who looked understanding.

Lort piped up: ‘Ball’s mother was unable to sleep until he finally came home, soaked to the skin.’

I have spent several hours over the past couple of days getting to know extrovert Lort.

Lort says he has three young adult sons by an earlier relationship. They now live in the US.

‘Both families know about each other, but have never met, as I don’t want them getting involved,’ he told me one day recently.

I was wandering across a vacant section at the rear of my condo, which leads to the local 7-11, when Lort spotted me.

He waved me over, and invited me to join three friends and himself in a chicken shed, for a few shots of Thai white liquor.

This is the heady stuff which forms the main component of ya dong, an alcohol/herbal mix popular with Thais as a cheap alternative to the branded whisky on sale in stores.

Carer R sells ya dong at his stall. His mother-in-law makes it, and he sells it in an alleyway close to her home. The alleyway lies on the same route that I take to get to the 7-11, which is how carer R and I met.

Around here, these brews are popular; I know of at least two other ya dong stands within 100m of my place.

As we sat in the ramshackle shed on the vacant lot, chickens bred to fight with each other scratched in the dust around us. Hanging in cages above, petite breeder and competition birds (nok khao, nok hua kwan) cooed.

More than 20 many bird cages, I noticed, were hanging from the tin roof.

Now, see part 2