Shattered dreams (part 1)

Orng's house, plus the drinking table out front

Dream and I finally buried the hatched on his birthday in April 2016, a mere two years and four months since we argued. I was sitting at their drinking table outside his mother's house, having renewed my friendship with this crowd after a distant patch.

The drinkers at the table helped us break the ice with a few words along the lines of: "Dream, the farang would like a few words."

The young man, grasping how much it meant to me to make a new start, took my hand as I - ahem - shed a tear of relief.

I wish I could remember what I said now, but it must have made sense. Or perhaps the adults stepped in to explain.

I had told his mother Orng and her friends how much I regretted the episode. I had felt guilty about it for ages, but I could never bring myself to speak to Dream, and vice versa.

When the moment finally came, I wept out of relief that I could finally put this awful business behind me. Dream, seeing my anxiety, offered his hand in comfort. 

For months after we argued, we would compete for attention among the drinkers at his mother's place, just like teens vying for a peer group following. Dream would interrupt as I was talking, or I would do the same to him. However, we would never speak to each other, and if adults at the table tried to get us to reconcile we would pretend not to hear.

Once I grabbed him by the arm (the one he broke in his motorcycle accident months before we met, unfortunately) demanding to know why he wouldn't talk. I went for a toilet break and when I re-emerged into the main room, just metres from the front door, he was standing there alone. 

He and I circled each other around the room as I kept asking, almost taunting: 'Why won't you talk? What's the problem?'

The adults including Orng were sitting just outside and were within earshot.

After I grabbed his arm, which has a steel plate inserted there after his accident, he gave me wounded look as if I had just trespassed into a forbidden zone, and should have known better.

Dream fled outside to his mother, shouting angrily, and warning that he would refuse to let me back if I bothered him again. 

The adults, as shocked as I was by his teenage tantrum, sent him upstairs to cool off. While he was banished upstairs, they invited me back to the table and offered words of comfort.

"He's like that," his mother said. "There's no point trying to make amends. If you upset him you will just have to wait until he comes around."

Ah, but the weeks were to stretch into months, and finally years!

At first I would unload about Dream to anyone who listened, convinced I had not wronged him so badly as to justify his stand-offish behaviour. Later, I kept my peace, but the hurt feelings festered. 

After Dream started giving me the big feeze, I befriended his cousin Dear, who was living in Dream's place to escape a fractious relationship with his own mother. 

Dear, aged in his mid 20s, worked as a messenger (I think), and was a great talker. He had a businessman's eye for the main chance, and could hold forth seemingly on any subject.

now, see part 2