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

Country cousins (part 3, final)

Jap in Sept 2017, about to start work

We spoke that night from the outskirts of Bangkok where his bus stopped. They weren't coming any further into town and his parents and I would not get to see him. "Sorry I won't get to meet you this time either," he said. 

When he returned to Nong Kai the next day he had to face the wrath of his aunt. His mother heard about his unauthorised trip to Bangkok and called to pass on her concern. 

I dropped in to Sin's place that night after work at Oiy's invitation, so I could be there as she and his father called to reprimand him. 

As Sin and Oiy spoke to him over the phone, I recall Oiy pleading with Jap: "You don't have long to go now. Just a little more patience and school will be over." 

The product of a broken home, Jap's birth mother turned her back on him when he was still a baby. She now has a new family and has shown no interest in forging a motherhood bond.  When he tried to make contact some years ago, she made him feel so awkward he has not been back. 

While Sin predicts cynically that she might come calling one day whenever Jap starts earning a decent wage, so far he has heard nothing. In the meantime, he calls Oiy his Mum - though confusingly can also refer to his aunt who raised him in Nong Kai as his mother too.

As for Sin himself, he has not raised Jap by his own hand in years. "I asked my sister to take on the job, after helping her raise her own children when they were in a tough financial position years ago," he told me once.

Back to Jap and his life since school. He had spoken of pursuing studies after his secondary education ended, but it was not to be. After leaving school he moved to outer Bangkok. His first job was working as a security guard, in Ratachada, I think...I never went to see him there. 

He abandoned that job, left the lease on his apartment, forfeiting the bond and losing his unpaid wages. That was the last teenage-style drama of Jap's that I was involved in. I had stopped sending him money before then as he had entered the workforce and as far as I was concerned could look after himself. 

He turned up at his father's condo for a brief visit some time later, which is when I finally met him, our first face-to-face encounter since those May holidays three years before. I had told my parents about Jap, and had this to say on the day we reunited:

"Jap, who is now 19 and a big lad, sent me a text last week to say he was at Dad's. Last night we had a beer together at the condo. We just picked up where we left off; it has been so easy getting to know him again. He looked nervous for perhaps the first five seconds, then we just relaxed." (email, Sept 18, 2017)

Later he took a job at a Korean-owned company in outlying Bangkok making home appliances. It was hard, gruelling work on a production line and eventually he quit. In June last year he joined the staff of a Bangkok supermarket popular with foreigners, which his mother helped arrange through a relative who works there.

Jap floats a krathong in Bangkok, Nov 2017

He seldom leaves his rented place in the suburbs to visit his parents' condo. In August last year he visited briefly to give his Mum a wai on Mother's Day. However, I no longer visit when he turns up as I do not want to have to part with money.

I tell him that I can't give him money any more as I am now connected to internet banking. My partner checks the balance, I say, and if he saw any funds missing would object. 

I am sure that in Jap's eyes I am still his "uncle"...but since I passed on that grim news we don't see the need to talk much.

Country cousins (part 2)

Jap the schoolboy

Oiy and Sin met as youngsters in the provinces, drifted away, then reunited many years later after Sin ended a lengthy spell in the monkhood. Oiy has a layabout son by another relationship, Benz, who has been to jail once and appears to have no steady work but, like Jap's Dad himself, enters the monkhood every so often when he is sick of bumming around at home. 

At the outset of our friendship in June 2014, Jap told me he visited his father's place in Bangkok just twice a year, which I thought was unfortunate, but better than the prospect of not seeing him at all. Yet after our first meeting in those May school holidays it would be more than three years before we saw each other again.

When Jap turned up at his Dad's place again in September 2017 he had finished school and started work as a security guard in outer Bangkok. I had missed the school boy phase of his life, but for our regular conversations over the phone. 

That was one of a series of disappointments where Jap was concerned. His father told me Jap was studying at a private fee-paying school in Esan which, as a bonus, sent kids to Chon Buri at the end of their Matthayom 6 year to gain work experience at a factory - one of those Japanese-owned mega-plants which employ thousands and provide an entry into the full-time workforce for many.

I would tell myself that investing in his well-being was a good thing, as he was bound to get a good education at a private school; I was helping mold a star. 

In fact, Jap's grades were average, as was the school;. It was indeed privately owned, but brand new; its executives embarked on recruiting drive among local parents as it had no academic reputation to call on or help the kids secure jobs when they left school.  And while the other kids in Jap's year did get to spend part of their last term in Chon Buri, Jap himself missed out as his grades weren't good enough.

I started to grow suspicious that his school was less than claimed when he sent me a photograph of his schoolbooks; they were the same scrappy soft-cover, mass produced textbooks which students can buy from local malls all over the country.

But our relationship, conducted almost entirely by telephone, persisted until he left school and returned to Bangkok. Jap spoke little, and showed little feeling. I recall him getting emotional only once when he pleaded with me to fund his entry to a direct sales company selling collagen. 

While he had many friends, I doubt teens were the ideal market for skin whitening products such as collagen, especially in a place like Esan where folk farm the land and are naturally tanned.

While hanging with that crowd, he wagged school to attend their seminars, and even took a furtive overnight trip to Bangkok without telling his aunt. I figured out what he was doing, thanks to a cryptic Facebook message posted from a bus stop, but I was the only one in his family who knew.

now, see part 3

Country cousins (part 1)

Jap, Mum on Mother's Day in 2019

"If you want to send money to other people's kids, why not support my son?"

That was my partner's elder sister, caustically remarking on my relationship with a young man whose father lives in the same condo complex as me.

My partner heard it, but didn’t add much. He knew this young man, Jap, had stolen my heart, though hoped it would not last long. 

Unlike Jap, who had no compunction about trying to part me from my money, Maiyuu knew the money was mine and he had no right to demand it, even though by rights he should enjoy a bigger claim on my earnings than a young man whose family is not my own.

I have known the father, Sin, for years as a drinking friend. About six years ago I met his son, Jap, when the lad visited his Dad during the school holidays. Jap was 15 at the time and seemed close to his Dad. I recall one touching scene when he lent into his father's lap while his father squeezed a spot on his face. Well, perhaps not touching...but it showed a bond of sorts.

I was missing my own family and offered to help him financially. Jap was living in Nong Kai in the Northeast with his aunt on his father's side of the family, who gave him just 40 baht to spend at school. He was expected to help on the rice farm at weekends during cropping season but did not get wages or an allowance, he said.

Sin's wife, Oiy, who works as a cleaner in Bangkok, transferred a few hundred baht every week to help with his upkeep but the money went directly to the aunt; he saw none of it himself.

I offered to send a modest amount of 200 baht a month or thereabouts, but before the day was done Jap, out of his father's hearing, had persuaded me to send money every week, and increase the total amount. In return I would get to enter his life as a surrogate dad or uncle, which was rewarding enough though expensive.

Jap was never happy with the money I sent, and bargained with me constantly to transfer more. His father knew I was helping, and urged me to send less, as he was worried my partner would find out. 

At one point I was sending 400 baht a week, which is way more than most school kids in Esan would get from their families, as most are poor and live with their lot. 

I found out later from Oiy, who did not know I was sending Jap money until many months after I started, that he liked boasting to his school friends that he had a farang "uncle" who supported him.

In addition to the regular cash transfers I bought him an acoustic guitar, casual clothes, school books, a phone...I even paid several thousand baht to help him join a direct sales scheme.  

Jap's needs were many and varied. On one occasion, he called desperately needing cash to cut a new key for his friend's motorbike. They were out together and found themselves stranded, having lost the original and unable to get home. He called his mother, but she was too busy to send money, while his father, who had no full-time job and subsisted on a meagre daily allowance from his partner for cigarettes, couldn't help.

When I think back on the 18 months or so that I supported him regularly, I am mystified as to why I bothered. The family was not short of money: They owned a pickup and at least one motorbike. She also had plenty of cash salted away, according to Sin.

Sin assured me he had told his partner, Oiy, that I was supporting the lad, but this turned out not to be true. Nor did Jap's aunt in Nong Kai know. In her case, I was less concerned, as she had two children of her own to bring up so it was inevitable that occasionally Jap would miss out when money ran short - hence my willingness to help.

now, see part 2

From pillar to post (part 3, final)

Wat Dan, where Dew served as a novice

If they wanted to call home, the novices would have to ask the monks, so many decided to go without. When I turned up towards the end, only half a dozen of the original 70 to 80 boys were left. Several rushed to borrow my phone so they could call home. 

One child called his mother, who was clearly taken aback from her holiday reverie to be asked by her neglected son when she intended visiting him at the temple again. The kids cannot leave unless they get the consent of parents or the monks, and there are no outings once the programme ends.

Grandma Eed, a religious figure who wore black for months after the death of King Rama IX, often praises the monks as sources of wisdom and virtue. 

When I saw how quick she was to use the monks as surrogate child minders when it suited, I was struck by how hypocritical her remarks sounded. 

One day, after repeatedly asking Eed when she intended letting Dew come home, I declared I would pick him up myself if she did not act, which prompted her surly response above. 

Of course I couldn't look after Dew at home any more than she wanted him back, but I was missing him and felt sorry for the kids dumped there in such a heartless fashion. She finally brought him home one day before the new term began; his hopes of enjoying his holidays with friends now in tatters.

I emailed my parents in June, 2016, after our first swimming trip together since Dew's return from the temple. I wrote: "The past two months in which I have been battling this woman Eed have felt like a divorce-style tug of wills. I do not like adults holding kids hostage to their own interests; even now I can barely bring myself to talk to her. However, I told Dew I would make an effort to get along, and he wasn't to worry. 

"His behaviour appears to have slipped a bit...he seems naughtier now that he was the last time I saw him regularly."  

My relationship with Eed never really recovered. I took Dew to the local army pool a few more times, but when Grandma Eed's neighbour - Dew's former childhood carer - got out of jail I handed him back and left his life. My days off from work had also changed and I was no longer prepared to give up six hours on my Saturdays taking him swimming.

His carer and her family, who also took over responsibility for looking after Dew from the old women, gave me the icy treatment for weeks afterwards, as they thought I had abandoned the child. I have explained to Dew many times since why I withdrew from his life, and that I wasn't just some other adult shoving him from pillar to post. 

I enjoyed our time together as we visited local swimming pools, eateries, and temples. Thais we met on our travels often mistook me for his real father, as we both have Caucasian blood (his birth father has no knowledge of the lad, and was visiting as a tourist when he happened to meet Noi, Dew's Mum). 

Dew, now 13, and a keen football player, later returned to his mother's care when Noi herself was freed from jail. She still rents a place in the soi. 

She told me soon after her release that she is working in "jewellery" in Silom, though that sounds unlikely, given her prison record.

From pillar to post (part 2)

Dew washed Granny Eed's feet at the temple

"If you come into our lives you have to change your ways - we don't like slum habits over here," I told Dew. He made an effort to fit in and was considerate when the mood suited. At other moments he could cry and make life awkward when he refused to get his way.

Dew would stay at Grandma Eed's place, or down the lane with the family of his former carer, the one who was now in jail.

I gave Granny Eed and her sister a couple of hundred baht a week to help with Dew's school expenses, and bought items such as clothes and shoes if he was in need.

One of our first tasks was to go and see Dew's form teacher at school, as exams were approaching and the school had threatened to make him repeat the year, he had been absent from class so often. 

His mother's nocturnal habits (druggies turn up at all hours of the night for their fix) and irregular finances played havoc with his schooling. Rather than let him go to school every day as the law demanded, she would often have him call in sick. She would put Dew to work as an errand boy, delivering drugs to customers in the soi. 

His grades slipped horribly as a result. Eed and I, on our visit to his school nearby, persuaded his teacher to give him another chance. Eed and her sister injected some discipline in his life, ensured he went to school daily, and helped with his studies.

As a result of their help, he passed the exams which enabled him to graduate to his next year at school.

However, my relationship with the old women suffered after they decided to have Dew join a school holiday programme in which youngsters serve the local temple as novices. Temples all over the country host the kids every May in a scheme which usually lasts a couple of weeks. 

Eed and I took him to the local temple, Wat Dan, to be ordained along with 70-80 other children, including some of his friends from the soi. About 40 invited guests, including teachers from the school, moved from child to child as they sat in a row in the temple yard, cutting a lock of hair from the head of each, in one of the first charming rituals to open the event.

In another ceremony the kids wash the feet of their parents and custodians. Granny Eed wept (see picture above), as she recalled her own son, many years before, performing the ritual for her when he too entered the temple as a novice.

The first couple of days were full of moving occasions, in fact, including another where the kids have the rest of their hair shaved off by the monks, and yet another where their carers sit in front of them and spoon-feed them as if they were still little. They also get a back rub at night before bed.

After learning about life in the temple, most kids go back home to enjoy the rest of their holidays. However, Eed and a handful of parents who decided they didn't want their children back during the rest of the break decided to leave the kids in the care of the monks, even after the programme had ended. The temple performs the service without charge, though help from donors is appreciated. 

Dew and half a dozen other kids ended up spending six weeks at the temple, missing out on the Songkran water throwing festival and the chance to join their friends. I took the bus out to see him several times. By the end of the period the novelty of temple life had started to wane and the kids just wanted to go home.

now, see part 3

Wan's clan clears out

The view of the slum lane down from Wan's place

Wan, the grandmother who looked after three children under her roof with virtually no income, moved out of the slum to a new home in Chon Buri a couple of years ago. Wan never returned the sizeable loan I gave her for a noodle venture; as I handed over the cash that fateful day, she gave me a blessing, wishing me the best of health and good fortune, and promptly pocketed the lot. 

She had no intention of repaying me, no doubt figuring I could afford to part with money so was in no need of repayment. The loan might have helped get them on their feet temporarily, but her financial problems were to carry on. I would often find her perched on her doorstep after the power company man had paid his monthly visit to cut off her supply. 

She was invariably in tears, and wondering aloud whether she would find the money to get it reconnected. She asked me once to help, which I did; the next time I saw her sitting there, some months later, tears again streaming down her face and wringing her hands over the bill, I declined to help and kept walking. 

I wish I had taken the same hard-nosed stance towards her and many others in the slum over the years, as I will never see that money again. Once I stopped giving, so did the friendships which my generosity helped forge. 

Shortly after her grand-daughter Jean gave birth, the child's teenage father left. He was a temporary fixture in their slum home (she met the lad outside the slum, and he moved in while she was pregnant) and never seemed to do much work. 

Jean found a new man a short time later, a former temple boy called Ton. A down-to-earth young man, Ton, 19, wasn't scared of hard work. He took a series of jobs at the local supermarket and the like and eventually managed to save enough to buy a motorbike. 

One day I walked into the soi to find him polishing his wheels, a time-honoured ritual for young Thais. "It's the first asset I have ever owned," he said proudly. 

I struck up a friendship with Ton. One day I rescued him from the slum home after an argument with Wan (whom he called 'Mum'). I took him back to my place and we played guitar for a few hours until tempers at home had settled down. 

He asked to borrow the guitar but I later gave it to him as he loved playing it so much; it was a huge hit among Ton and his mates. I imagine that much-loved guitar made the trip with them to Chon Buri. I haven't contacted them since.

Ball: Family man makes good

Ball, now grown up, with the kids

Ball and his girlfriend Jay, now parents to two daughters, moved out of the slum in 2019 to their own rental place nearby. 

I haven't been to see them at their new place as I can't be bothered travelling, even a short distance.

I no longer drink, so the bond on which our friendship was forged has weakened. I still see him occasionally if I am passing his mother's place and he has dropped in for a visit; I stop for a quick chat. However, months go past without contact.

When we meet, he is inevitably distracted looking after his kids or talking about the minutiae of life as a messenger for a business in town. 

Once, I would have taken an interest, but now he is grown into a young adult I no longer feel the need to get involved. 

His mother is out of jail and still rattles about the slum, though all but one of her children have now moved out. Idle taxi driver Lord is still there, though I seldom see him in the slum - perhaps he has finally motivated himself to go and out and work.

Two of the most recent posts before I went on hiatus are here, and here.

From pillar to post (part 1)

The local army pool, where I took Dew swimming

"If you go and fetch him, you must take responsibility for him too."

That was the brusque retort of a traditionalist type in her 70s, Eed, when I challenged her decision to dump at a local temple a 10 year-old boy I was helping look after.

That conversation was the start of a difficult few months with Grandma Eed, as she was known. 

I was helping Eed and her elder sister look after the boy, Dew, after his mother was jailed for drugs in late 2015. Dew was having to start life again in the care of the elderly pair, who had known him since he was a baby. I offered to help as I knew his mother and her partner.

I had never looked after one so young, and envious of my sisters overseas, both of whom have families of their own, I decided to give it a go.

Dew, visiting a temple fair

Dew's mother, Noi, sold drugs in the soi along with her partner, Kai, with whom she had a daughter, aged three. Dew was born to another relationship, a one-night fling if I recall. He doesn't know his Dad.

Noi, a largish woman in her mid-30s who liked dyeing her hair blonde and wearing garish makeup, has five children, including Dew and the little one, Guest. She was known to local police, who would launch occasional raids in the slum looking for drug dealers including her. 

When locals saw the cops arrive, they would shout, "your father's come to see you!" (พ่อมึงมาหา) as code; the warning would set off a a mad scramble among the druggies and peddlers in the soi as they stashed their evidence and fled for cover. 

I was sitting in Ball's place drinking one day when a grizzled, middle-aged man who no one knew jumped over the dog barrier where the house joins the slum alleyway and hid behind the front door. The cops had arrived, he said breathlessly. Moments later, he left just as quickly as he come.

Noi's favourite means of escape was to dash into the local market. Locals had seen Noi, her large breasts heaving and gaudy makeup streaking, as she puffed her way into Klong Toey to evade police. 

She was wanted for dealing, and police caught up with her in late 2015. She was sentenced to three and a half years, or thereabouts. Some months earlier, her partner Kai was himself nabbed for dealing; and a friend of the mother's and part-time carer to young Dew was jailed before him, once again on drugs charges. 

I used to stand around with Kai and Noi for a chat as they reckoned up their drug earnings for the day and checked stock. While Kai counted the cash, Noi would pull out her stock (ketamine, a white powder which she sold in small white plastic bags) secreted in her bra. They performed these actions openly and without embarrassment, as we are all family in the slum.

When Noi was nabbed, Kai's mother took over care of Guest, the youngest child. The boy, Dew, the only other one of her kids to be living with her, passed to the care of elderly neighbours who used to take in their washing, including Grandma Eed. 

I met Noi one day some months before while playing with her young daughter, Guest, aged three, who took a shine to me.  Young Guest was known in the soi for her foul mouth. She would listen to her mother swear and repeat the words in adult company.  If she saw me approach in the soi, she would run into my arms for a hug. In later years, she hardened in her ways, chasing me down the soi to ask for cash handouts.

I grew to like her and her partner Kai, and of course the kids. 

I had seen her son, Dew, playing in the soi outside Ball's place since he was a toddler. By the time of Noi's arrest I was buying toys for both, and taking Dew to the local army pool on Saturdays to join his friends swimming. We also visited local temple fairs.

I enjoyed looking after Dew, as it was like having my own son or nephew close at hand. I took him home to see my partner occasionally, though those visits did not always go well, as Dew was ill-mannered and Maiyuu tends to be strict with poorly behaved kids. 

now, see part 2

Signs of thawing

Dream is thawing out slowly, but still hasn’t brought himself to speak.

Instead, he comes out for a look at me, every night when I turn up after work.

He will appear at his mother’s drinking table outside their place, and sit for a few minutes. If I take a toilet break inside his house, he has gone to bed by the time I return.

It’s like this every night. The moment I turn away, he has vanished.

This farang still enjoys springing the occasional surprise, even though I am supposed to be on best behaviour.

I gave everyone a small start the other night when I invited my best friend and erstwhile 'son', Mr Ball, to join the table.

Ball lives in a slum next to my condo. Dream and his family live five minutes away, in a different slum setting on the other side of a railway line.

I had told Ball the story of my new family, and how Mr Dream, since our argument a couple of months ago, refuses to talk to me.

Ball never turns down an opportunity for a drink, so arrived promptly on his motorcycle on the night I called.

My young friend is working as a motorcycle hire guy at the local market, though presented himself without his regulation orange vest on, I was pleased to see.

‘I went home to see Nong Min first,’ he said, referring to his daughter.

Ball parked his motorcycle in front of Dream’s place. I poured him a drink, and introduced him to Laem, a messenger in the area.

Ball, who has worked as a messenger previously, asked Laem about his job.

As he spoke, I applied mosquito repellent to Ball’s bare legs. Ball, aware adults at the table were watching, politely brushed my hand away.

Half an hour later, Dream turned up after his football game. He noticed I had brought along a guest, and, when he wasn’t strutting bare-chested around our little group, gave Ball sidelong stares.

Ball was just as curious, as he wanted to know about this young man who has entered his farang friend’s life.

‘You have helped me with many things since we met more than three years ago,’ Ball said.

‘Dream doesn’t want financial help, but does appear to want me in his life,’ I replied.

I told Ball about the day I had sent Dream a text message asking for a new start – and Dream promptly shut the door in my face.

‘He has no right to do that to you,’ Ball said. ‘His reaction is extreme.’

Neither Ball nor Dream spoke to the other, and 90 minutes later, Ball excused himself and went home.

Ball, who is a responsible dad, returned to help his girlfriend Jay look after their daughter and the other three kids of the household.

I doubt he was interested in staying anyway. The adult conversation was dull, as it usually is. When a young girl ran past us, Ball said she reminded him of Min.

Dream himself stayed with us about half an hour, then went up to his bedroom.

He can spend hours up there, where he is often joined by his friend Ott, a polite lad with a happy smile who lives down the alleyway.

Ott sees much more of Dream than I do, though there are no surprises there…we don’t talk.

His girlfriend, who I have yet to meet, pays an occasional visit. Otherwise his life appears to consist of little other than work, football, and sleep.

Dream confides regularly in Aunty Lek, his mother’s best friend. She in turn tells me what the boy is saying. 

Thanks to Lek and Dream’s mother, Orng, I am getting to know my young friend...and all without speaking a word.

When Ball showed up at the table, Aunty Lek, who sits next to me, gave me a pained look, as if to say, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Dream has been playing with my head for weeks, refusing to talk and playing hard to get. I brought Ball along to show him that I do have other people in my life, and I am not solely dependent on him for company,’ I said.

‘I want to show him that two can play his game. If he serves a ball at me, occasionally I will return it.’

Lek smiled and said he understood. ‘I don’t know what Dream will think about it, though,’ she said.

‘Don’t worry about him. If he’s old enough to play games with me, he’s old enough to get it,’ I said.

A night earlier, as he mulled ending the big freeze he has imposed on our relationship, Dream told Lek he was worried about rejection should he take up with me again.

‘Farang Mali must meet many people in his life. One day he will find someone new and forget about me,’ he said.

Lek assured him that I stand by the ones I love.

‘He wants to love you as a dad, not a boyfriend,’ she said.

Dream barely knows his real father, who left the family shortly after Dream was born. They do not keep in touch.

Lek and Orng have shared details of young Dream’s family history. Orng has showed me her wedding pictures, and images of Dream as a child.

For my part, I opened up about young Ball, and the journey we have passed over the past three years since we met at a rundown ya dong stand close to my home.

Just as I am busy harvesting information, so is Dream keen to know how I feel about him.

A day after I invited Ball to join us, Dream asked Lek who my friend was – couched in unflatteringly direct teen speak.

‘Are they seeing each other?’ he asked.

Lek assured him this was not the case.

‘Farang Mali once looked after Ball as a son. Now Ball has grown up, and has his own girlfriend, job and family. He no longer needs Mali as a dad. They have entered a new phase of their relationship, and are best friends,’ Lek said.

‘I don’t care who he brings,’ Dream sniffed, clearly put out, as I knew he would be, that I had invited someone he regards as a rival for my affections. 

And so the game plays on.

Dream likes having me around. The first inkling I had of a change in my young man’s attitude was the week before.

‘Has anyone invited Mali to the wedding?’ he asked Lek one night. A neighbour, Sun, has invited us to her daughter’s wedding next month.

‘They have, and he’s coming,’ Lek replied.

‘Is he coming tonight?’ he asked.

‘He comes every night,’ Lek said.

Don’t think, however, that Dream is an innocent in this relationship stage play of ours. He is just as skillful at playing games as I am.

‘Is Mali deceiving you, drawing close so he can get access to me, or is he here as a genuine friend?’ he asked his mother.

While Dream has been in no talkies mode, I have struck up friendships with many of the others in his family’s circle.

Unlike most of the locals who gather there every night – many of whom talk a lot, but do not really enjoy a close relationship with Orng or Lek, the emotional mainstays of the gathering – I am now regarded as an insider.

Dream, wearing his cynical young person’s head, wanted to know if I had merely ingratiated myself with his family and friends simply to claim him as my boyfriend.

‘I take people as I find them, and Mali seems fine to me,’ Orng replied calmly.

Thank you. While Dream might be attractive, and my desire to enter his life strong, I have no longing in that direction.

‘I imagine I will know Dream for years,’ I told Aunty Lek. 

‘Our relationship will pass through many phases, just as Ball and I have done," I told her. 

If I get to know this young man better, it will only be because Lek and his mother approve. It will be a friendship conducted in public, or at least under the gaze of those who matter most in his life.

This is why my efforts to redeem myself during this early phase are so important. I have to show Orng, Lek and Dream that I am still a worthy candidate. If I pass their character test, they can clear me for the next stage in our adventure.

‘Mali has made efforts to correct his behaviour,’ Orng's elder brother, a senior policeman, told Dream one night.

‘Everyone at the table is rooting for you and Dream to get together again,’ Lek told me later. We seldom talk about it at the table, but everyone knows we are estranged.

‘Does he know how I feel about him?’ I asked Lek, in what is perhaps my most important question since this saga began.

‘He knows you love him, but is still trying to get over his anger,’ she said. ‘You swore at him, and it hurt him deeply.’

So, bring it on, I say. If you want me to be daddy, step up; or if it's an older friend you want, I can do that too. 

I have rehearsed conversations in my head with Dream, ready for the day he wants to speak again.

Given the many head dramas and sleepless nights this family has put me through in recent times, it will have to do for now. I hardly have energy for anything else.

Castles in the air

Dream and a friend turned up at home after their weekly football game.

I might be imagining these things, but I thought I detected a wave of hostility when he spotted me next to his mother.

We were seated at a wooden table which also serves as a local gathering point outside her home.

His teen anger rises before my eyes like a vapour cloud, but disappears just as rapidly, or so I like to think.

All teens like an audience, and we hadn’t seen each other a couple of days. I follow him around with my eyes. While he is careful to avoid my gaze, he knows I like to watch, and appears to get used to my presence.

Dream’s mother Orng, and her best friend, Aunty Lek, are attentive hosts. They ask me to sit next to them, as they know I have nothing in common with the rougher men folk.

I rarely talk to the others, unless they throw a comment in my direction. Lately I take a book or magazine with me to kill time.

I prefer the company of the women folk, and the younger ones – Dream, his cousin Dear, messenger Laem.

The others are middle-aged, and talk about typical male stuff…gambling, football, encounters with a mutual friend at the local 7-11.

The women folk joke about a lot. Disappointingly, they rarely talk about the things I normally associate with the fairer sex, such as family. or feelings. Money is prominent in most conversations, probably because no one seems to have any.

When I turned up the other night, Uncle Mee, a driver, was building a wooden stall for Orng.

As I watched the box-shaped structure taking shape – complete with its own recess on the top in which a cooking wok will sit – I marvelled at how easily men can make things out of nothing.

The waist-high structure looked simple enough, but I know I could never put a hammer, nail and wood together to create anything with such apparent ease. I admire them for it.

Uncle Mee is unusual in that he can combine practical skills such as carpentry with creative skills such as cooking. He is the resident cook every night, churning out one Thai dish after another.

One woman who I don’t recognise took over cooking duties last night, transforming a fresh fish and Thai herbs which Mee bought at the local market into a delicious dish of tom yum pla (fish soup) in less than half an hour.

Dream’s mother is just as clever at whipping up great Thai food. Again, how do they do it?

But men will be men. They might be good with their hands, but when it comes to the finer art of conversation…

I have tried listening, I really have. It seldom works. The result of the latest Man U clash is about as interesting to me as a cup of sick. Yet it is the abiding passion of most men folk at the table.

Dream disappeared inside to take off his football shirt. He took a seat at the table a moment later to commence the earnest business of laying a football bet. He consults his cellphone and a list of the big games of the day.

He and the other guys have entered a gambling pool. They predict the scores of various games, shell out their money, and send off one of the youngsters on a motorcycle to place their bets.

I am often asked if I follow English football. ‘I played team sports when I was young; now I just jog and swim,’ I tell them. 

Most appear happy with that answer. They can see I have grey hair, so can hardly be expected to run around a playing field.

I withdraw from the male-driven activity at the table to indulge my own fantasies, such as when angry Dream might finally agree to be civil.

The men have an annoying habit of shouting when they could speak in moderate tones and still be understood. What is it, the excitement of the moment?

Their conversation is so dull that it leaves the field wide open for the women of the household to indulge their feminine side, or so you would think.

They could take advantage of a small pause in a conversation about the closing moments of last week’s riveting Man U game to talk about their latest makeup purchase from the supermarket, or some cooking discovery they have made.

But no. No one bothers with the make-up here, still less the scent. Often I wonder if the women are trying to compete with the men for the mantle of rugged Thai.

Perhaps they are too busy trying to keep their families together. While men indulge their interest in booze, gambling and women, their other halves are left carrying the baby, so to speak.

‘I give P' Noi B200 a day,’ Orng told me, referring to her husband, who runs an ice factory and delivers bags of ice for a living.

‘If he gets carried away at the table, he will spend the lot on gambling or booze. The next day, all his money has gone, and he has to go without meals,’ she said.

‘Men are like that,’ I said, trying to console her.

‘Dream isn’t!’ she retorted, as quick as a flash. Dream has a reputation for salting money away. He might put out B20 baht on a bet, but he knows he still has B80 left in his pocket to put away for a rainy day.

I feel sorry for Dream, having to grow up in such rough surroundings. But I know he doesn’t need my pity, still less my conversation.

Today, Orng heads off by bus to a city market to buy cooking supplies.

She wants to sell khao kaa moo (pork shank with rice) as a sideline to her regular kuay thieo (thai noodles) offering.

Uncle Mee built the stall for her so she could start her new venture. ‘No one on our side of the market sells it,’ she said.

‘I like salted fish,’ I said, apropos of nothing.

Orng offered to buy me some at the market, and told me to come and get it later today.

That might give me another chance to see my young man before I go to work tonight. On the other hand, why obsess? These are just regular, everyday encounters.

Orng appears happy to have me around, declaring before the table last night that we were ‘close’.

The matronly women at the table know I would like to do some clucking myself, over young Dream. It doesn’t appear to bother them, as they have decided I pose no threat.

As for the wild young man himself, I might be able to get through to him one day. 

His birthday is coming up, and before that, we have a family wedding to which I have been invited. For now, I just keep my distance, and watch.