Lonely, frustrated uncle

‘Can you pick up Ball at work?’ Mum asked me on the phone.

She was visiting temples, making merit.

Ball’s girlfriend Jay took one of the family motorbikes to work, but would be too busy at 7pm to pick him up from his office in Silom.

Enthusiastically, I agreed.

‘I am becoming a member of this family!’ I thought to myself.

Put aside the fact that my hands once slid creepily over Ball’s spindly legs as I offered him massages at carer R’s ya dong stall.

These days, I am a family man, and keep my hands strictly to myself.

If he wears a pair of shorts with a split in the crotch, as he did the other day, I tactfully avert my gaze. When he pulls down his clothes to examine himself down there, as he did the other day, I scratch myself, look at the ceiling, and pretend I didn’t see it.

‘Why did you leave our place so early last night?’ Mum asked, bringing me abruptly back to earth.

I had walked out half-way through a drink with Mr Ball and his girlfriend. Mum had gone out somewhere, and Ball was being moody and uncommunicative, so I did the Thai thing, and just left.

No goodbyes or other signs that I was going. I just climbed to my feet, and walked out the door.

‘Ball was moody. I can’t talk to him at the moment,’ I said.

‘It’s his girlfriend. When they are together, he’s crotchety,' she said.

After talking to Mum, I sent a message to Mr Ball, which I followed up with a phone call later in the day, to make sure he knew what was going on.

‘I am coming to pick you up at 7pm. I will call you from outside the building, so people don’t have to see us together. And don’t get irritable,’ I said in the message.

When I called, Ball sounded less than enthusiastic. ‘Why can’t Jay take me home instead?’ he asked.

‘She’s busy,’ I said.

The night before, Ball said he might play Songkran (throw water) with his friends after work.

I assumed he wanted to play in town where all the crowds are, rather than close to home, so offered to drop into his place first, get a change of clothes for him, and take it with me to Silom.

He could change at the office, and I would bring his security guard’s uniform back with me. What a good uncle I am!

‘No, I’ll come home first,’ he said.

It didn’t work out that way. I doubt anything every works out so tidily, where teens are concerned.

I took a motorcycle taxi to Silom. Instead of taking me us the back way, to avoid the Songkran water-throwers, the rider took me right to the foot of Silom Rd.

We found ourselves in the middle of a thick bank of people, chucking water and smearing powder on each other. It was like a massive street concert. I spotted a few foreigner tourists in the melee. They looked less amused than shocked.

‘Why did you bring me here? Why didn’t you take the Sathorn Rd route instead?’ I asked him en route. ‘It’s quieter down there.’

‘I didn’t know these crowds would be here,’ he said.

What, on the first day of the Songkran festival? ‘You’re a fool,’ I told him. ‘Go back the way we came.’

Instead of returning the way we came, my motorcycle driver, who thought he knew better, took me onwards to Surawong Rd.

Here we found more crowds of soaked teens on the street jostling and pushing, more eager types on trucks tipping buckets of water over each other. I asked him to drive down the middle of the road rather than down the side, to minimise our chances of getting wet.

It took us 10-15mins to get past the Songkran crowds. One Thai woman on a truck fired a solid jet of water at me. Displaying the amiable, laid-back nature for which foreigners are well-known, I gave her the finger and told her to f- off.

Finally, I made it to Ball's office building, right on the dot of 7pm. The sidewalks were crowded with more hyper-Songkran types, and the entranceways to the place had been blocked off.

I let myself in through the basement carpark, and asked a security guard to take me to the lobby. From there, I called Ball.

But Ball, the little charmer, had left work some time before. ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

‘I am playing Songkran with friends in Silom.’

‘How are you getting home?’

‘One of them has a vehicle. He’ll drop me off,’ he said.

I was furious. I doubt Ball ever intended to let me take him home. The very least he could have done was call and tell me not to come.

I wasted a trip out there, battling through crowds of Songkran fools, and was about to waste another trip back.

I found a taxi as soon as I re-emerged from Ball’s building, where I immediately pulled out my cellphone, and started punching out a stiffly-worded message to His Highness, telling him just how I felt. As kids squirted the taxi with water, I kept my head down, composing.

‘You have no responsibility. I come all the way out here, but you’re nowhere to be seen. You are a little shit,’ I said.

I asked the taxi driver to help me spell the last choice expletive in Thai. It was so nasty, I’ve never sent it in a text message to anyone before.

I handed him the phone to check the text message.

'Is this right?'

He squinted at the thing, and handed it back.

‘I can’t see anything, as I didn’t bring my glasses,’ he said.

Only in Bangkok, I thought, could I get a taxi who can’t see.

-

Almost three hours later, Mum and family returned from their merit-making trip to the temples.

I told her what happened. I went to pick up her son as requested, but he wasn’t there.

‘I even bought him a can of beer to have on the way back home in the taxi,’ I said.

‘I offered to take him a change of clothes, but he said no. He won’t have eaten, and is playing in his uniform. He’ll come back a mess. How will we wear it to work tomorrow?’ I said.

Mum understood that I was annoyed, but not why.

She had spoken to her son several times that evening. ‘At least it’s good that he gets a chance to play Songkran. He’s working, but almost everyone else has taken the week off,’ she said.

Mum bought us a bottle of brown stuff. I bought Ball a beef noodle, so he’d have something to eat before bed.

Mum, I noticed, had bought no food back with her from her travels. The only other thing at home with which Jay and Ball could hope to line their stomachs before bed was dried noodles in a cup, which are hardly appetising.

At 11pm, Jay went straight from work to pick up Ball in Silom on the family motorbike.

Earlier, I sent him message, saying I was no longer angry, and asking him to come home. I missed him.

But by 12.30am, they still weren’t back, so this lonely, frustrated uncle went home to bed.