Fragrant chef, abstinent home, allowance jitters

Boyfriend Maiyuu is back from a trip to the supermarket in Silom. ‘It’s time for a shower,’ he announced. ‘It’s my first one in three days.’

I’m pleased I didn’t get too close.

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‘Keep it...he has work tomorrow, so shouldn’t drink.’

That was Ball’s brother-in-law, Tum, who looked alarmed when I turned up at the door waving a B100 note.

I had offered the money to his mother.

‘You might want to keep this, in case Ball wants a few drinks tonight,’ I said.

It was an innocent enough offer, I thought. Ball had called me half an hour before, after rising from a late afternoon sleep.

I know what he is like. When he is sitting at home, with nothing else to do, he likes to play with the kids, chat with the girlfriend, perhaps watch TV, or play on the computer.

Often, his mother will buy him a few beers, but when the drink ends, he will busy himself doing something else.

Yesterday, he went out with his girlfriend, Jay, in the morning.

Later, he slept.

In the early evening, he went out for a game of football. About 11pm, when I was to make my final contact for the day, he had just turned in for bed.

When I called in, he had the whole night ahead of him. After playing ball, I thought, he might like to relax over a beer. I would rather he drink in a sensible, controlled manner than the no-holds-barred marathons of the past.

Ball is doing well. He likes his new job, and wants to make something of himself.

However, it was only a few weeks ago when Mr Ball’s life was a mess.

He spent hours at carer R’s ya dong stand every night, rising late the next day.

His family despaired as Ball turned down one job after another, fought with his girlfriend, and appeared unwilling to help himself.

Tum still remembers the old Ball, which explains his startled reaction when I made my offer.

I can understand Tum’s concern. Far too much booze flows in Ball’s home. They live in a slum, where such things flow freely.

The problem is bad enough without my adding to it. In future I will resist making such offers, as they make me look bad too.

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I have yet to decide whether to subsidise the food/travel money which Mum gives Ball to meet his expenses at work.

Ball’s Mum gives him about B60 a day, which is enough for lunch and a magazine. It is not enough to cover a motorcycle ride home, should he find himself stranded in Silom without a lift, as he was last Friday.

Mr Ball’s brother normally takes him to work, and, 12 hours later, picks him up for the journey home. However, sometimes he forgets, as he did last week.

Ball was forced to walk home, a journey which took more than an hour.

Reader Hendrik argues that a walk after work wouldn’t do Ball any harm, should his brother again forget to pick him up.

However, I don’t like the thought of Ball having to walk such a long way. He's only just started his job, and I want it to go well. I do not want him to return to the way he was before.

To safeguard against such problems, I thought I might top up the money which his mother gives Ball, at least until he saves enough for a deposit on his own motorbike.

Another B40 a day would give him enough to hire a motorcyce taxi home...though, as another reader pointed out yesterday, he could always take a bus, which is much cheaper, though is unlikely to go right to his front door.

I will talk to his Mum, and see what she says. I will also consider how guilty I am likely to feel if I embark on this venture.

Any money which I invest in Ball is money which I could spend on myself, or long-suffering boyfriend Maiyuu.

So, we will see.

Ball's long walk home

This blog's fourth anniversary is coming up. To mark BOTM's birthday last year, I named my favourite Thai-based blog with a gay theme. It was Kawadjan's blog, which you can find here.

This year I want to carry on as I started last time, and name the blog I enjoyed reading most over the last 12 months.

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I dropped in to see Ball, who is still enthusiastic about his job as a security guard in Silom.

It is a do-little job – he sits beside the lift in an inner-city building for 12 hours a day.

He might punch the lift button for visitors, and takes a note of people who come and goes, but there is not much more to it than that.

On the plus side, he can take two days off a week like any other worker – Ball claims most security guards are lucky to enjoy any time off from work at all, unless they swap shifts with colleagues – and while he is at work, can sit in air-conditioned comfort.

On the minus side, buying lunch in the Silom business district is expensive, as I discovered when I took Ball for an interview there last week.

We grabbed a quick meal on Soi Convent. The food was dull, but they charged us twice as much as we’d pay in our part of town, in a slummy/industrial district just 10 minutes away.

‘I go looking for food, and it can take me 10 minutes to find something which looks tasty and which doesn’t cost too much. I might also buy a newspaper or a magazine to read,’ he says.

Mum gives him B60-B70 a day. He will get through most of that on food alone.

Ball’s younger brother takes him to work, and picks him up again – when he remembers.

On Friday, Ball’s second day at work, his younger brother forgot to pick him up. Or maybe he was busy somewhere else. No one knows these things, because no one bothers to ask.

Ball had just B20 left in his pocket, so had to walk back, a journey which took more than one hour. At Suan Phlu market, about 10 minutes from home, he asked a motorcycle taxi how much he would charge to take him the rest of the way.

‘Forty baht,’ he said.

‘Never mind...I will walk,’ said Ball sadly.

The motorcycle taxi guy took pity on Mr Ball, looking sweaty and bedraggled in his security guard’s uniform, so took him home for B20.

Ball and I drank a few beers in his mother’s bedroom. His ailing girlfriend Jay, Ball’s elder sister, her toddler son, the family’s adopted daughter, and a visitor in her 50s were squeezed in with us.

The visitor, a friend of Mum’s, asked me irritating questions about where I worked, and how much I am paid.

‘I bet you are paid at least B100,000,’ she said in an asinine, oily voice.

‘No...he gets just B300,’ said Ball, making a joke at the nosy woman’s expense.

Ball has ostensibly quit drinking ya dong, but took a small shot-glass of the stuff when he visited carer R the other night.

‘I told him I had stopped drinking, so he wouldn’t see me much at his stand any more. He understood. Now that I have a job, I have to go to bed early,’ he said.

‘In a couple of months, Jay and I might have enough money to put a deposit down on a motorcycle.

'I can’t leave it at the building where I work, as the company provides no car-parks for security guards. But it would be better than having to rely on family for transport,’ said Ball.

I took heart from this remark, as it shows that Ball is thinking about his future, and intends staying in the job for the long-term.

Jay, who has flu, stirred from under a duvet cover he had dropped unceremoniously on her sleeping body a moment before.

For the most part, Ball fusses over her like a devoted husband. Good, I thought. Perhaps he won’t mind if I slowly withdraw from the scene.

Mr Ball has come a long way since the early days of our relationship, shortly after New Year, when he spent hours at the ya dong stand every night.

Increasingly, I feel as if I am no longer needed, except as a drinking friend who can spring for the odd bottle of beer.

The romantic part of me, which feels sorry for Ball, wants me to supplement the B70 his Mum gives him every day, at least until he gets his own motorbike. If I topped it up to, say, B120, he would have enough to get a motorcycle taxi home should his brother forget to pick him up.

The practical, self-interested part of me says such generosity is unnecessary, as he will probably spend the money on something else anyway.

I am not sure what else I can do here. Perhaps my job is done.

Quiet on Ball front, fiesty at home

Ball made it to work for a second day running, says his Mum.

‘He left before 7am...his brother took him. When he came home last night, I told him that you had dropped in during the day with a couple of beers. I bought another bottle for him myself,' she said.

'He had something to eat, drank just one bottle, and was in bed by 11pm,’ she said, sounding relieved.

Mum called a moment ago. Since I lost my phone – possibly to game-playing thieves in her own home – I have switched telecoms providers.

As it happens, Mum is with the same provider, which offers cut-price rates to its customers – as long as they spend a few minutes chatting at the start of every day at the normal rate.

For the last couple of days, Mum has called each morning, possibly to use up those first few minutes under the promotion.

She reports on Mr Ball’s progress in his new job as a security guard for a Silom company.

He spends most of the day sitting in an air-con office. ‘He’s not used to the cold – he will have to take something to keep warm,’ said Mum.

She gets regular reports on how Ball is faring from her friend Noi, who works in the same company. I took Noi and Ball for an interview with the company earlier this week.

‘I asked Noi to buy him a cup of coffee and something to eat. He has an easy job...he can spend most of his time reading magazines,’ said Mum.

I dropped in to see Mum yesterday, after she suggested I buy a couple of beers for the lad to celebrate his first day at work.

Mum called her friend Noi, who put Ball on the phone.

‘It’s so quiet here,’ he said. ‘I hardly talk to anyone.’

Ball asked to talk to his girlfriend Jay, who is sick with flu and took the day off from work. I handed over the phone.

Moments later, I excused myself.

Mr Ball leaves early in the morning, and returns early evening after I have already left for work. I will probably see him over the weekend, though for my own emotional sanity might try to limit my exposure.

I hope he keeps plugging away at his job. He needs the money, and I need time away.

I seek adventures outside home because my solitary relationship with Maiyuu, who spends most of the day in front of the TV when he is not cooking, is not enough.

Maiyuu understands that I get bored and lonely. However, he also knows that mixing with Ball and his family carries financial risks.

‘I don’t want to know anything about them or anyone else. I am happy with my own life at home, and don’t need the headache,’ says Maiyuu in a heated moment yesterday.

His hermit-like reaction was unsurprising. Maiyuu has cut himself off from most of his friends and family, because the outside world is just too much like hard work.

Sometimes, I wonder if he would bother even with me, if it were not for the home and income I provide.

‘Don’t bother telling me their stories or asking me for advice. In your eyes, they can do wrong, while I am the one who is always no good,’ he said.

How dull. Yet another dissatisfied customer.

We will keep plugging away at it, because we have no choice. Maiyuu and I have put 10 years into our relationship. Who can be bothered starting again?

Boyfriend shares wisdom, Mum opens up, Ball starts work

‘I told you all along it would end like this,’ said boyfriend Maiyuu, in his usual sympathetic mode.

‘But you wouldn’t listen.’

I had told him the story of the day before, with Ball and his family. The day had started when I took him to an interview in town.

In the middle of the day, I lost my cellphone, probably in the taxi but possibly to a bunch of thieving game players at Ball’s place.

At the end, I was called upon to take Ball and his girlfriend to hospital.

Because I happened to be there, I was asked to pay for the taxi rides and any other incidental expense we encountered. I could see that if this arrangement carried on, soon I would be left with no money.

Maiyuu doubts as if anyone set out to dig into my pockets. ‘But you are sensitive, and Thais know it as soon as they meet you.

‘Ball’s mother should have offered to repay your taxi to the interview, as Ball is her responsibility, not yours. And Ball should not have asked you to take them to hospital until he had asked his mother first.’

All true...but it’s not the end of the world. I shall have to tell his family what kinds of help I can, and cannot provide.
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Ball's Mum came from a large family and started work at the age of 12. She lifted heavy bags of cement in a factory, toiled in fields, to help her parents make ends meet. Even now, the burden has not lifted.

After her husband died, she was left with four dependent children to raise.

They have grown into young adults, only one of whom works.

However, in addition to her own children, Mum also raises two infants: Nong Fresh, 1, the child of a relative who died; and a boy, aged a little younger, who is the first child of Mum's only daughter, Kae.

The list of family dependents does not end there. The other day, a bunch of family members turned up for a short stay. They comprised Mum's own mother; a cousin aged in her early 30s, and a large tribe of nephews and nieces aged under 10.

‘I look after them during the long school break every year, as their parents are dead, ailing, in jail, or have no money,’ she said.

Ball’s family did not complain, but simply made way. Their living room is already crowded, and the combined toilet/shower is tiny. Where before their small, ramshackle home catered to the needs of eight permanent members, it is now housing twice that number.

The remote appliance for the home’s only air con unit, in Mum’s bedroom, is broken, and will cost more than B1000 to fix.

She cannot adjust the temperature, which is set too high to compete with the sweltering conditions outside. Electric fans, pressed into service instead, are now the family’s own means of keeping cool.

The family’s only means of transport, a motorbike, eats up B100 in petrol a day. Ball’s younger brother, Beer, ferries people about.

He takes Ball’s girlfriend Jay to work at a local supermarket, brings her home for meal breaks, and picks her up again at the end of her shift.

He is also the family’s chief stand-by childraiser. When a child needs changing or feeding, it is usually poor Mr B who is called upon to help.

Ball, too, pulls his weight. He knows how to make up a milk bottle, change nappies, bathe and dress the little ones. He takes them for walks, plays with them, and will even sleep with them in his arms if it keeps them happy.

Mum is one of the bravest women I have met. We are only one month apart in age, and get along well.

I spent an hour with her yesterdy as she told me about her friends, family, her own childhood.

Her own family knows how good she is with money, and ask her for it often. Her eldest son, a soldier, sends her virtually all his earnings.

Ball’s elder sister Kae, and Ball’s own girlfriend, also contribute financially. But it is not enough.

When I turned up yesterday, Mum's partner Lort was preparing to pay a power bill going back three months. ‘If we don’t pay it today, we will be cut off,’ she said.

Given these straitened circumstances, I am amazed I am not asked to help more often.

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As I write, Ball has started duties as a security guard, his first day back in the full-time workforce in two months.

The interview with the security contractor in Silom was not as futile as I thought.

Maem, a woman who knows Ball’s mother, happened to see us there. She works in the building where the interview was held.

Maem remembered Ball, and asked after his family.

Three jobs were going, including one at an office in the Silom high-rise in which the interview took place.

The security guard interviewing Ball told him he would be too small for that job.

However, after we returned home, Maem called Ball’s mother. She had obtained the number from a mutual friend.

On Mum's behalf, she spoke to the head of the company, who gave Ball the job.

Mum told me the good news when I dropped in yesterday afternoon. As we chatted, Ball and his girlfriend Jay sat in the living room, eating their first meal of the day.

An hour later, Ball and Jay went into Klong Toey to buy two black-and-white uniforms for him to wear.

They bought them at the same shop which used to supply Ball’s school uniforms. ‘I will put them on deposit. The pants will also need taking up at the leg, as none of Ball’s trousers fit him,’ said Mum.

They took the trousers to the Tesco Lotus store on Rama 4 to get them fixed.

I could not accompany them on this family outing, as I was due at the office.

However, I offered to call the family at 6am to wake Ball in time for work.

When I called, no one answered, which was a bad sign. However, Mum called me about 8am to say that Ball did in fact make it to Silom, though he was an hour late.

His brother, Mr B, took him on the family motorbike.

‘Ball’s girlfriend is unwell, and Ball asked if he could put off his start until tomorrow. However, the company has already relocated the security guard who was working there, so he had no choice but to go,’ said Mum.

‘You should have seen him in his security guard's uniform,’ she added. ‘He looked handsome.’

Slum adventure ends dismally

Boyfriend Maiyuu must be wondering when finally I will learn not to mix with dodgy Thais.

I took Ball to Silom to apply for a job as a security guard with a contract security provider.

Noi, a friend of his mother’s, accompanied us.

The building where the security firm has its poky office, in Soi Convent, is one of the biggest in town. Noi, who used to work for the place, took us in through the carpark rather than the main entrance.

We walked down to the basement, where the security guards and cleaners chck in and out of their shifts.

On street level, the smart people of Bangkok mingled. Yet here we were descending into the dusty bowels of the building where only people who leave school too early have to work.

Noi found the office of the head security guard who would interview Ball for the job.

Cleaners and security guards, who used the same poky office to take coffee and meal breaks, squeezed past.

The company had three vacancies, including one job working as a security guard for a tenant in the building.

However, the tenant wanted someone big. Ball was too short to meet the job requirements.

Ball is 163cm tall, and weighs 50kg. If he wanted a job, he would have to work off the premises, said the interviewing guard, who revealed that, like Ball, he finished his education with a modest Grade 3 leaver’s qualification.

‘Who is the farang?’ the guard asked. He was friendly, but curious.

‘Ball is his son,’ said Noi.

That was vague enough. Most answers we gave were vague, but it seemed adequate for the setting.

So what was left? The company had two other jobs going: one, as a guard at a warehouse in Kluay Nam Thai, about 10min from where Ball lives; another, as a guard at a hotel in Soi Cowboy, which again is not far from where Ball lives.

Ball, dressed in a tatty white shirt and scruffy jeans, did not look happy to be there, and showed no interest in what was offered.

Ball misplaced his Thai ID card, so couldn’t present the thing when asked for it. He had run out of passport photographs of himself, too.

In tiny hand, Ball filled out a job application form. Job done, we left.

We ascended to street level to Soi Convent. Noi said goodbye, and went back to work. I took Ball for a quick Thai meal, which cost twice as much as it would just 10min away where we live. We caught a taxi home.

I ended up paying for the transport there and back. Noi did not offer to help, and nor did Ball’s mother, who was playing a board game, Hi Lo, when I turned up at Ball's place to pick him up for the interview.

Mum had skipped sleep, and played through the night. Three or four people were playing with her. I don’t know where she finds her gambling friends, but they look a forlorn bunch.

Somewhere between Silom and home – or maybe even at Ball’s place itself – I lost my B3,500 cellphone, which I have still not recovered. I am almost sure I made it back to his place with the thing, which means someone in that Hi Lo circle slipped it into his pocket while I wasn’t watching.

We were seated in the same cramped sitting room with four of five children and Ball’s matriarchal grandmother, who turned up on one of her royal-style walkabouts.

At least two of the children belonged to a relative of the family, a plump woman in her 30s who arrived in granny's train.

She had a voice like a chainsaw which she wielded on her kids with impunity.

I complained about the noise. ‘You’re bursting my eardrums!’ I said. She ignored me.

Grandma, a toothless, swarthy thing, perched herself on the couch and swatted her grandchildren over the head whenever they said something to displease her.

That was her lot for the day, but no doubt she thought she was doing a good job.

To keep the brood quiet, they put on cartoons. The sound of Tom and Jerry was so deafening I could hardly hear myself think.

Earlier, while I waited for Ball to get ready, one of Mum’s low-so Hi Lo guests – a smallish woman with serious, butch-looking trousers and a face like a tree stump – barged into bathroom where Ball was showering.

Ball was naked.

‘Have you ever met people in this life to whom you take an instant dislike?’ I asked him later.

‘For me, that woman is one of them.’

I spent a few hours with Ball that day, including the interview.

‘If I can’t get to these places easily, it won’t be worth the wages,' Ball told me on our return taxi trip.

If Ball had taken the job, he would have earned just B350 for a 12-hour day.

He would have to find a bus serving that route, or he would end up losing a big chunk of his pay on taxis.

‘In my last job, my younger brother took me to work, and picked me up on his motorbike. He does the same now for Jay,’ said Ball, referring to his girlfriend.

Jay works at a local supermarket.

For poor people, as we know, every last baht counts.

Later that night, my services as financial underwriter were to be called upon again, when Ball decided he wanted to take his ailing girlfriend to hospital.

The taxi ride to Lerdsin hospital cost me B150.

Thankfully, I did not have to pay for her medical prescription as well, as her work insurance covered it.

‘Jay earns just B6,500. She gives my mother B2,500 every pay day, and helps her elder brother as well. After meeting expenses, we had just B500 left for ourselves,’ Ball told me miserably as we sat in the waiting room.

‘We do not have enough money left over to save,’ Jay herself was to tell me later that night.

We were back at his place. Ball had ducked out to fetch some friend whom he had invited for a drink.

I had seen this youngster just the night before, when two or three of Ball’s friends crashed his place while we were drinking.

In a moment of childish over-enthusiasm, Ball invited him around again.

His friend, who was older, asked Ball to pick him up nearby, which meant Ball had to find money for a motorcycle ride.

‘Even after quitting ya dong, Ball still doesn’t know when to stop,’ said Jay.

Today, Jay plans to take him to a local department store, so he can apply for a job at a Japanese-style restaurant. They have advertised for an assistant cook, and service staff.

I have offered to accompany these star-crossed lovers, but on second thoughts might try to avoid them. In the last two days, I have powered my way through B1400, spent mostly in their company.

Add to that the cost of my missing cellphone, and the last two days have been an expensive exercise in self-flagellation.

Ball’s job interview in Silom was a waste of time. I suspect his interview at the department store today will be the same.

I doubt his girlfriend Jay was so sick that she needed to visit a doctor straight away; however, being a doting (or is it guilty?) boyfriend, he wanted to show Jay how much he cared about her plight.

Yet how would he have found the money for the taxi, if I hadn’t been there?

‘I am sorry to bother you, Mali, but do you mind if I borrow the taxi fare?’ he asked plaintively. ‘I don’t want to ask my mother for the money.’

After finishing her Hi Lo game, Mum went on walkabout to visit her debtors.

Mum extends small, high-interest loans to needy folks in the neighbourhood. She has another group of ‘clients’ in Thong Lor district.

Mum collects interest payments most nights, from what I have observed. ‘She doesn’t make a huge amount...just enough to keep going,’ Ball explained, sounding almost apologetic. Sometimes she sends Ball or his brothers out to collect her dues on her behalf.

Ball is young, so he makes impetuous choices. Often, these are the wrong choices, I told his girlfriend.

‘I doubt you were so sick with flu that you needed to visit a doctor, but he insisted on taking you anyway,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds harsh.’

I left their place about midnight. Ball’s grandmother, the noisy relative and her swarm of kids were spread out asleep like faded plants on the living room floor.

Boyfriend Maiyuu has given me a spare cellphone he owns, and bought me a new SIM card from the 7-11. I have decided to start again with a new phone number, which I have yet to give to Ball’s mother (Ball’s own phone does not work).

I might keep it that way, as I am in no hurry to contact them again.

I feel slummed out, bummed out, and disappointed.

I might feel lonely in Maiyuu’s company, but I didn’t sign up for this.

If I see Ball and his girlfriend again, it might have to be somewhere outside home.

Reader Lance suggests we meet at a Thai eatery.

His suggestion sounds sensible, but even that holds little appeal. I need some well-earned time away.