Unwanted bike, Ball plays host, rhapsody to youth

The bicycle which I helped Mum buy for Ball’s girlfriend Jay sits unloved in the living room, which is already cramped for space.

Jay has taken it to work just once in the two weeks since we bought it. Mum and I put B300 each towards the purchase.

At the time it seemed a good idea. If Jay took a bike to the supermarket where she works as a cashier, Mum could save on the money she gives the girl for her expenses each day.

Some days, Mum gives Jay B100, which includes B30 for a motorcycle taxi. The rest goes on food.

If Jay was to take a bicycle, Mum could spend that B30 on something else.

Jay, however, is reluctant to take the bike – an old second-hand thing with a basket in front, similar to the type which tradespeople use.

‘She claims that the supermarket won’t give their staff any parking spaces, so she has nowhere to put it,’ says Mum.

Now, Mum has cut the B100 she gives to Jay to take to work down to B60-70.

If she wants to take a motorcycle taxi to work, she can pay for it, but she will have virtually nothing left over to buy herself food.

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Several nights ago, red shirt protesters clashed in Silom with the so-called multi-coloured group, which supports the government and opposes the red shirts’ demand that it dissolve the House.

I called Ball and suggested he might like to stay at home the next day rather than going to work in Silom, where he is only a short distance from where the deadly clash took place.

‘Mum, Mali says I should stay at home!’ said Ball excitedly.

I suggested to Mum that he might like to check with his employer whether he should go into work, as it may not be necessary.

In the end, he went anyway, as his boss still wanted him there as a security guard, in case someone tried to sneak into the building.

Ball’s younger brother picked him up that evening. The next day he walked home, once again without trouble.

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Ball, friends and family were sitting crammed around the TV, watching a football game.

It was my first glimpse of Ball in three days. ‘Come in!’ said Ball, who appeared to be host for the evening.

He looked sporty in a white collared T-shirt and shorts.

Carer R, wearing a sulky look, was also among the crowd.

He and I don’t get along at the moment, as I resent the way he keeps Mr Ball out drinking late, even on nights when he has to go to work the next day.

I decided not to accept Ball's invitation.

Carer R had called me the night before, shortly after midnight. He and Mr Ball were having a beer outside the local 7-11, he said. Would I like to drop in?

‘I am leaving for the provinces on Tuesday,’ he said, as if that was supposed to make the prospect of his company sound more inviting.

I declined.

Carer R is leaving Bangkok to start a new life in the Northeast, where he will live with his girlfriend’s father. We part on bad terms, which is a shame.

When Ball stays up late at R's invitation, Mum calls me, worried; so does his girlfriend Jay, sometimes in tears.

I don’t need the grief. Carer R should find someone his own age, and with no responsibilities, to imbibe with instead.

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In the lively comments section of the previous post, Anon says:

''Do you stalwarts suppose that BKK would be a reliable contributing fixture in this slum family's daily life if Ball didn't posses 'delicate beauty ?' Remove BKK's lust for Ball from this story and none of it would have happened.''

I like those words 'delicate beauty'. I can't remember where I wrote them, but they sounded good at the time.

Old men have rhapsodised about teenagers before:

'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate...'

...And the world survived the shock and trauma of it all.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

–William Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is often thought to have been written about a teenage male.

Some academics group it among the so-called Procreation sonnets, which argue that the young man, to whom they are addressed, should marry and have children.

His child will resemble the young man, so his beauty will live on.

Former Pink Floyd lead singer/guitarist David Gilmour has put the sonnet to a song.

Watch him perform it here.