Time to get honest

Idle taxi-driver Lort escorted me back to my condo the other night, as Ball himself wasn’t up to the job.

Ball had been drinking at the ya dong stand since 7pm. By the time I arrived, after 11pm, he needed rest.

My young friend invited me back to his place in the slums nearby, where I met his mother, Lort, and Mum’s elder sister.

Ball's aunt pumped me with the usual questions – where do you come from, where do you work – which became more specific after Ball’s Mum whispered something in her ear, presumably to explain why Ball and I had arrived together.

Ball was playful, and fun. I massaged his back and shoulders. He asked for a leg massage. I told him to lie on the floor with his legs facing me.

When he sat up again, I hugged him from behind. It felt so good, I wanted to hold him like that some more, but pesky questions from Ball’s aunt were dragging me back...

‘Do you have a lover?’ she asked.

‘I live with someone, yes,’ I said.

She asked how we met. I told her.

‘Where is your lover?’ she asked.

‘Waiting at home,’ I said.

I felt I had better explain my interest in Ball, whom I had barely stopped touching since I walked in the place.

‘I want someone to care for. My lover isn’t interested in physical contact,’ I said.

Thai language allows us to speak in gender-neutral terms, so I was still not sure if this woman understood that I live with a man. Or maybe she just chose not to acknowledge it.

‘Why have you never had kids?’ she asked.

‘Ball is like a son to me,’ I said.

Actually, Ball is more than that, as regular reader Tao has pointed out.

If I wasn’t also attracted to him in other ways, I wouldn’t be sitting in his home.

Ball’s Mum nodded. I expect she doesn't care; if her son is happy - even with some middle-aged farang guy - that’s great.

I noticed skin flakes falling from Ball’s scalp, and spent the next half hour brushing them out of his hair.

‘I have an allergy,’ said Ball. ‘Is it ugly?’

‘It’s not ugly, it’s natural,’ I told him.

Ball asked if he could take me home. He wanted to talk to me in privacy about his girlfriend Jay.

He also wanted to meet my boyfriend, as he was worried Maiyuu might be deceiving me and taking my money.

Ball was unhappy to hear that I was living with someone. ‘You have some kid in your condo?’ he asked.

‘He’s not a kid – he’s 31,’ I said, holding Ball's chin in the cup of my hand, as he bobbed his head up and down drunkenly.

Ball, who was tired and emotional, did not look capable of taking me home, but he insisted he should do it for my own protection. I said my goodbyes to his Mum and the prying aunt.

As we staggered across the vacant lot between his place and mine, I realised we would never get there. Ball could barely walk, and stray dogs were barking at us.

I spun Ball around and took him back to his place.

He wanted to carry on drinking, but Mum, standing at the narrow entrance of their place in the slum alleyway, told him to stop.

'It's time for bed,' she said.

‘Let’s carry on somewhere else,’ he slurred.

‘You have work tomorrow...you must sleep,' I told him.

Ball still refused to enter.

He could not stand. I held up his body in my arms, leaning against the wall of the alleyway for support.

‘The farang won’t let me go,’ he joked with Mum.

Mum and I pulled his body through the narrow doorway, while Ball struggled.

His pants came adrift. I pulled them up, and told him I would buy him a belt.

I said goodbye.

The next day, I bought a bottle of lotion for tackling scalp ailments. I dropped it in to his place while Ball was at work.

‘If that fails to do the trick, I know of another brand, as I have had the same problem myself,’ I told Mum.

She was sitting in the main room with Ball’s elder brother Boy, and his girlfriend.

Lort turned up, and thanked me.

The night before, after I had dragged Ball back home, Lort had swapped duties with his son.

‘I will take the farang home,' he said.

Lort and I walked back across the vacant lot, hand-in-hand.

'You are such a caring person,' he said, referring to the hair episode with Ball.

When we arrived by the side of the condo, he insisted on taking me further – right up to the front door, in fact.

Why did he want to see where I lived?

Ball insists he is not jealous of Maiyuu, but I doubt that's true, as he enjoys the attention I show him.

As a headstrong young man not yet into his 20s, I doubt he would want anyone else laying claim to it.

That said, Ball’s needy side only appears to come out when he has had too much to drink.

Normally, he tells himself he is straight, and carries on life with his girlfriend, who lives at his place, as if nothing has happened on those nights when he forgets himself, and decides he likes male company more.

PS: I wrote the other day that Maiyuu does not know about Ball.

He hasn’t met Ball or anyone else from the ya dong stand -  but he has noticed changes in my behaviour.

‘You have someone over there. You can’t see the change, but I can,’ he said.

Rose in a lapel: Tribute to a music master

Mr C, from a newspaper profile I wrote of him

As a youngster, I liked to sing.

In the early 1980s, my family and I moved from Sydney, Australia to Christchurch, New Zealand, and my brother and I joined a private boys school.  

My younger sisters enrolled at a private girls' school not far away.

The private school I left behind was a good 40 minutes away by car; for my two sisters, likewise.

When we moved to New Zealand, I was 16, in the last two years of my school life. Living as far away from school as we were in Sydney, my brother, sisters and I had little in the way of a social life. Weekends were spent playing sport or doing homework rather than spending time with friends.

In Christchurch, by contrast, our family home was just across the road from the school my brother and I attended - my social prospects were looking up!

One of the first teachers I met was the music master, a bachelor in his late 50s, who was renowned for his ability to train young voices.

When I met Mr C, a small, dapper man fond of double breasted suits, also worn with a pocket watch and rose lapel from his sister's renowned rose garden, he’d been running school choirs more than 30 years, including at another well-known boys school in the city.

He also directed an elite group for the best singers, the school chorale, and had trained young men who had gone on to be opera singers of international renown. One student was a friend of mine, "K", who went on to sing opera overseas and now lives in the US.

The school chapel, as it was in Mr C's day

Anyway, I would often meet Mr C by the school chapel, which ran by a little stream across the road from my home.

The bridge across the stream was usually iced over in winter and treacherous to attempt.  I would cross that bridge on my travels to school and back every day, and could often hear Mr C playing the organ in the chapel.

One day, shortly after starting at the school, I passed him outside the chapel as I was heading home. ‘Can you sing for me, boy?’ he asked, staring at my face with his odd, crossed eyes.

Mr C routinely referred to boys that way, as a sergeant major would his young troops on the parade ground. No doubt he could not remember our names, but he was known nonetheless for his warm heart and eccentric personality.

He wanted to see if the new boy sounded any good. But right then and there?

Our only audience was the ducks who swam nearby. But no one had taught me to project or handle notes in the confident way my friend K could do; I could not see myself bellowing out a song for Mr C's amusement as I stood by the babbling stream.

As boys we made fun of Mr C, but we also knew that he was a unique identity on staff, and among choirmasters, one of the best. If memory serves, he drove a burgundy Daimler; lucky students might be offered a ride home.

‘Can I sing for you in the chapel some time?’ I asked.

He agreed.

I never did have to sing one-on-one for Mr C.

However, I did join the choir. He never threw me out, so I must have had a passable voice.

I remember the song sheets with musical notation which he handed out every Monday (a new song every week), which I could not read.

The chapel undergoing repairs after Christchurch's earthquake

I recall also the rehearsals, in his acoustically designed music rooms; and the concerts, once we were good enough for an audience, at the city’s town hall.

Occasionally we would also get to train with choristers from my sisters' school.

Mr C played the organ for school chapel services. He also liked to invite members of the choir back to his place for an occasional evening supper.

He put on a grand affair, helped by his sister, a wonderful cook. They lived next to each other, close to the playing fields of the other boys school where Mr C had taught music for many years.

We suspected Mr C, a lifelong bachelor, was gay.

A much younger Mr C, left, with choristers rehearsing for a December, 1969 event.

He knew my parents. He would drop in to see us in our crumbling character home, which like the bridge across the road from school froze up bitterly in winter. 

He brought goodies from the local bakery, or cooking treats which his sister had made.

Once, I filed a story about him for my local newspaper. He brought out huge files of news clippings which he had kept over the years to help my research. It did not surprise me that Mr C would keep such extensive records of himself; he knew he was good, and didn't mind mind telling everyone.

We drew closer to each other, I thought, as he talked about his life.

I left school in the mid-1980s, went to university.

Years later, my parents told me that Mr C had entered an old person’s home. Former students, his favourite pupils, would visit him.

Soon afterwards, in June 1999, at the age of 78, he was dead.

They held a funeral service for him at the school, and named Mr C after that little bridge which I crossed every day. The bridge still bears his name, even if today’s students will barely know him.

PS: Forgive me if I do not identify the school, or Mr C by name.

Sweet nothings in a vacant lot, out-of-season harvest

‘Do you love me?’ asked Mr Ball as he walked me home from carer R’s ya dong stand the other night.

We were on the vacant lot, a tumbling mess of weeds, broken ground, delapidated housing, and wild dogs.

It was hardly the most romantic place in which to be speaking the sweet language of love, but there you are.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Mr Ball had imbibed to excess, shall we say.

‘I have no one to talk to...I can’t rely on my friends,’ he said.

The next night, when we walked home across the lot, hand in hand, he was more subdued.

‘You can be my elder brother,’ he said.

I was relieved to hear that, as I am not interested in romance with a 19-year-old. I can love him as a father figure or elder brother does, but nothing else.

He likes our walks across the vacant lot, because we are alone. He sits next to me at carer R’s stall, because we are close, and he likes to drink my ya dong.

When he is not there, regulars tease me about him. 'Where's Ball?' they ask, as if I have misplaced my boyfrend somewhere.

I don’t know what Ball really wants, but nor do I worry about it any more.

Last night, my friend farang C, who lives in the same condo complex as me, joined us at the ya dong stand.

As I massaged Ball's back for him, farang C told us stories about women of the night he has known in Bangkok.

Ball has never been to a tourist nightspot in Bangkok other than Suan Lum Night Bazaar. He was intrigued.

The three guys also talked about English football, which they follow.

It was good to see Ball interacting with another farang. I watched his reactions closely.

'Yes, he's straight. That's so straight!' I told myself, as I studied his body and facial movements.

I was convincing myself that Ball is what he says he is: a young men who prefers women, but who is perhaps just lonely, and in need of strong men in his life.

Farang C, who is dyed-in-the-wool straight, reckons Ball is gay, but I am not so sure.

'He's such a girl!' said farang C, when Ball was out of earshot.

When Ball’s had a few, he veers off the straight track, it's true, and the more he imbibes, the more he appears to desire male affection.

When he wakes the next day, he can’t remember anything from the night before. Perhaps that is just as well, but none of this makes him gay.

Carer R says I should just 'harvest' him. But I can't see it happening, as everything between us would change.
-
Carer R would like an invitation to my place for a meal. First, I’ll have to pack off boyfriend Maiyuu.

Maiyuu is not a sociable type, and would rather do without the bother of having to entertain one of my friends at home.

Carer R, who is 22, and married, has also invited me to his visit his father-in-law's home in Yasothon in April, so we can take part in the next bun bang fai rocket festival.

The trip probably won't happen, but at least these things are possible to contemplate, for carer R is an adult.

With someone as young as Mr Ball, on the other hand, where do you even begin?

Farang cheek rewarded in noise battle

Construction men have been swarming over an empty building opposite for days.

We close the sliding door on the veranda, fasten the windows, but still the sound of men drilling gets in.

Work started in earnest on Wednesday, when a worker started attacking the concrete floor with a pneumatic drill.

By the next morning, I was going spare. I decided it was time to visit the owner.

The building is in a closed street, which makes access difficult for outsiders.

However, I had visited a building in this street before, so knew how to get in.

Two months ago, workers started drilling work at another building, even closer to our condo than the one where work started the other day.

The rear end of this residence backs onto my condo. It fact, they share a gate.

People regularly enter the building from my side, so I did the same.

I found the gate leading to the back of the building, and let myself in.

On my way through to the street I passed two security guards, and dogs. No one said a word.

I walked down the street until I found the entrance of the place where work started the other day, and let myself in.

Inside, I saw two sweaty workmen, standing amid concrete rubble. On a flight of stairs, I spotted a tallish man with Chinese features.

He must be the owner, I thought. I beckoned him outside. ‘I want to talk to you,’ I said bluntly.

The man, aged in his 50s, followed me obediently out on to the street.

Even from that distance we could barely hear each other for the sound of workmen drilling.

‘The noise is unbearable. It starts at 8.45, and carries on all day. When will it end?’ I asked.

Mr Thai-Chinese apologised. ‘This building is owned by my son, but I am here supervising. It will be over by Tuesday next week at the latest. Please apologise to your neighbours,’ he said.

He asked where I lived, and added: ‘I live in the condo just behind you. This is a residential area. Did you not think of informing the neighbours that you were about to undertake noisy demolition work, or how long it might last?’

He apologised again. No, he hadn’t thought of that.

‘I was worried about the noise. The workers wanted to start drilling each day as early as 8am, but I put them off to 8.45,’ he said.

The owner looked nervous, but did not appear to resent my anger.

He was polite and courteous. In fact, he was so pleasant in that endearing, charming way that Thais have, that I softened immediately.

‘Never mind. I will tell the neighbours what is going on. Thank you,’ I told him.

Back at home, I told boyfriend Maiyuu about my encounter with the owner.

Predictably, he was unhappy that I spoke my mind.

Maiyuu prefers to put up the noise. Complaining would be un-Thai.

‘Now he will resent us,’ he said.

I am used to such responses from Maiyuu, who does not like to assert himself.

‘You have your duty, and I have mine. Don’t interfere,’ I told him.

The next morning, I was rewarded for my brash, outspoken farang behaviour when the workers delayed work.

They put off a start to their drilling labours until the more considerate hour of 9am.

By 8.45am, I was sitting on my veranda overlooking their place. Workers were pacing about on the roof, looking at their watches.

They were waiting to start drilling. The owner had evidently told them to cool their heels until his antsy farang neighbour had risen for the day.

Boyfriend reads minds, the Ball 'harvest' proposal

Readers have asked how boyfriend Maiyuu feels about Ball, my young friend from the slums. The short answer is, he doesn’t know.

Maiyuu knows where I drink. In fact, I invited him there on New Year’s Eve.

He cycled across the vacant lot between our condo and carer R’s shop, and took a quick look from about 10m away, but decided not to go any closer.

I have invited him back since, but he is not interested.

However, he has a good idea of what is happening. After nine years together, he knows me that well.

‘You have found a young man over there, and you’re pretending to be his Dad.

‘He needs a father figure, and you suit each other so well, because you need someone to love,’ said Maiyuu one day.

His description of what had transpired between me and Ball was so accurate that I assumed he must have paid a furtive visit to R’s shop, and asked him for the details.

In fact, he knew nothing. He was just speculating, based on similar relationships I have struck up with youngsters in the past.

Maiyuu hasn’t met Ball or carer R, yet has figured out what is going on.

When I visit carer R’s ya dong stand, I come home late, though rarely beyond 2am, as Maiyuu does like to see me occasionally, even at that ungodly hour of the morning.

Mainly, I visit carer R’s stand on my nights off from work, though I have also been known to visit during the week.

I visited last night, for example, after a 12-hour day at the office.

Two days ago, I swapped phone numbers with carer R. On the first night, he called about 10pm to say he was packing up shop.

I needn’t bother calling in after I finished work later that night, as by then his place would be closed, he said.

Last night, carer R and young Ball called me several times while I was at work, urging me to pay a visit.

They were drunk, having fun, and wanted me to join in.

I turned up as soon as I could. We drank for an hour, before Ball invited us back to his place for something to eat.

Mum, who is celebrating her birthday, was making suki (beef, seafood and vegetables cooked on a portable hotplate, with charcoal underneath), and we were invited.

Ball’s elder brother, a soldier, was visiting home for Mum's birthday.

When we turned up at Ball’s place, the elder brother had just showered. He spent the next half hour drying himself and applying powder to his body. He looked extremely strong, and fit.

‘He’s big,’ said Lort, shooting me a cheeky grin.

Lort sat next to me as we formed a circle around the suki hotplate.

A taxi driver by trade, Lort is the most senior in the household, and keeps careful measure of the younger males' progress beneath the waist.

Ball is so-so big, followed by his elder brother Beer, who is bigger still, and then the soldier, who is biggest of all.

I chatted to Ball’s girlfriend, Jay, who was doing most of the cooking.

She had only recently come back from work, but had changed into casual clothes: shorts, and a T-shirt.

I noticed that one of her legs was bruised, and asked about her injuries. ‘It was a work accident. I had to pay for medical treatment myself, as my employer refused to help, and I hadn’t been there long enough to get cover from the company insurance scheme,’ she said.

Jay has since left that company, and joined another. Now, she works for the same supermarket as boyfriend Ball.

Like me, Ball was dressed in work gear. He had not changed since finishing his shift, but had gone straight to carer R’s ya dong stand.

His white shirt was stained and ragged, his black trousers torn on one knee. I fingered the hole in his trousers, and asked how it happened.

‘Why don’t you buy him a new pair?’ Lort jumped in, before Ball had a chance to answer.

Why not indeed?

An hour earlier, at the ya dong stand, carer R suggested I do away with my farang pretense, and just take the lad.

‘I heard about you, the other night at Ball’s place. You were in his bedroom, and his girlfriend was downstairs,’ he slurred.

‘Yes, but nothing happened. Ball is straight, and apart from that, he’s too young,’ I told R.

‘He’s straight, you’re straight...so what? Just ‘take’ him, as we say in the provinces,’ he said.

Care R used an unusual word, kep (เก๊บ), which can mean arrange, collect, kill, keep - but which in a provincial context sounded oddly like harvesting rice.

‘I know what you’re thinking, and what you want to do,’ he said.

So why don’t I?

Lort is all for it too, as long as I contribute to his keep.

I haven’t asked his Mum about our friendship, though I suspect her answer might be just as non-committal, perhaps even encouraging, because she can see that I care for him.

Ball was sitting next to me, as he should, because he is uppermost in my affections in this family.

I ran my hand through his hair briefly, though had second thoughts when I heard Lort say: ‘I don’t mind you doing that.’

They can see that I care for Ball. However, I don’t want to ‘harvest’ him. To do that would be to declare that he is my own, even if I do have to share him with his teenage girlfriend.

About 1am, Carer R excused himself and went home to bed.

‘I know my limits,’ he said.

Half an hour later, Ball asked if he could take me home. He lives just metres away from carer R’s ya dong stand. I live just metres beyond that.

We played our old game: Ball escorts me across the vacant lot. We stop just short of my place. I turn to watch him walk back across the lot.

Dogs are barking, and the ground underfoot stony and uneven, which makes the path treacherous.

He stops short of his place, turns around and looks at me.

I walk back to him. I hug him, we say our goodbyes, and we try again.

We played this game for 15 minutes, which was mercifully brief compared to the last time we tried to walk each other home.

This time, when I turned to look a second time, he had disappeared.

Ball needs older men in his life, it’s true. He misses his father dearly, and finds it hard to talk to Lort.

But what do I have in common with a youngster just hitting his 20s?

Let’s say I buy him a new pair of trousers. Next week, he’ll tear them again.

Ball has to learn for himself the importance of looking after clothes.

That only comes with time, and a little fatherly advice.

I am up for that, much more than I am a 10-minute conquest in the greasy love pit which Ball shares with his girlfriend.

As I have said before, I am on his mother's side. Mum, girlfriend Jay and I will make a decent man out of young Ball yet.

We want Ball to be pleasant, functional, successful.

I’ll shower you with love, young man, if that’s what you want. I might even buy you clothes occasionally, as hanger-on Lort desires.

But if I do, it’s not because I have harvested you, and declared you as my own, like some marital asset. It’s because I want you to venture into the world as a better man.