Just give me more of that gay comfort thing

Takraw Ball loves a drink as much as anyone.

‘If you invite me for a drink, I can hardly say no,’ he said last time I called.

We drink at a sidewalk shop – ‘the one with the Coke machine’, as it is known to regulars – close to my office.

The last time we drank together, he asked me to take him to his workplace, so he could carry on tossing back the tipple. We headed off on foot.

When we arrived 10 minutes later, we found a man in his 40s arguing with his Thai wife, who had managed to track down his whereabouts after he gave her the slip at home.

The man was known to Ball. I suspect they are colleagues at work.

The man did not appreciate her direct manner, so started struggling with her. He had landed a few light thumps on her body before I stepped between them and appealed to reason.

The couple, who come from the Northeast, had only recently moved to Bangkok.

‘This area has a reputation for drug dealing. We have an infant at home, and I am worried sick whenever my husband takes off with his friends,’ she said.

‘We have no money, but my husband insists on sneaking out at night to drink,’ she added in tears.

Her partner, who works nearby, said his wife worries about nothing. ‘I have stopped taking alcohol, as it causes me problems. Now, it’s soft drink, or nothing,’ he said.

Takraw Ball, who was wobbly on his feet, made a feeble attempt at persuading the woman to go home. He put on a strange Esan accent, as if it would help make him sound more convincing. But really, he was just drunk.

Ten minutes later, the woman persuaded her husband to take her back home on their motorbike, and a measure of calm returned.

Ball could no longer talk sense, and had started vomiting.

Ball’s friend Sorn, who met us at the office, sleeps on the premises, and quickly grew impatient with Ball’s behaviour.

‘It’s late, and we have to work tomorrow. Please take him home,’ he said, ushering me out the door.

Ball was not yet in a fit state to travel by taxi, so I sat with him on the sidewalk until he started to recover. I piled him into a taxi, and took him home.

The taxi driver, a biggish man who quickly offered to match me up with a single girl he knows, was curious.

‘Is he your brother? Friend? Son?’ he said, referring to Ball.

Ball would never refer to me as a friend, as that is too presumptuous. I am older, so I am his run pee (older acquaintance).

My other Ball, the one from the slums, has the same trouble coming to grips with our relationship status. I am more than twice his age, so he can’t call me his mere friend.

‘If you are talking to your slum friends, say I am your uncle, or a friend of your mother, as we are the same age,’ I would tell him, back in the days when appearances were still an issue.

Takraw Ball tells me often that he regards me as an elder brother. I know that gives him comfort, as he is an only child.

His attention-seeking behaviour is designed to help find older people who can give him comfort. He lives with a Lao girl five years his junior, and has recently started seeing another younger woman on the side. Each has just found out about the other, which is causing him problems.

Nan, his girlfriend, says Ball is her first love, and she won’t leave him just yet, despite the fact that he is seeing someone else.

However, if he is not willing to quit with the girl – a student who lives at home with her parents - she will simply give him to her.

‘I am trying to distance myself from the student, as I do not want to hurt her. Nor do I want to lose Nan,’ Ball told me.

I doubt he is ready to give up his sideline girl. Whenever we are together, he spends a good chunk of each night talking to his student admirer on the phone.

‘I have one sim card for Nan, and another one for the student. Nan found out about the other girl when I came home drunk one night. I forgot to switch sim cards, and the student called me early next morning,’ he said.

But if Ball fancies younger women as girlfriends, he appears to desire the company of older men to meet his other needs.

Ball has the most stunning head of hair: lustrous and smooth, like silk. It is one of his best features, apart from his beautiful almond eyes, sculptured lips, and...shall I go on?

I like to stroke his head, once we have had a few drinks and are relaxed.

He does not mind, and in fact appears to enjoy it, as he bows his head to give me easier access.

The night I took him home in the taxi, I kissed Ball’s head as I said goodbye.

The taxi driver, who was watching, thought the head kiss nothing special. ‘Does he live around here?’ he asked.

No. We stopped here for fun.

We watched as Ball staggered across a mercifully empty road, and disappear down a narrow alleyway heading for his apartment.

A week ago, Ball and I met again at our regular haunt. By the end of the night, Ball was again under the influence.

A friend from the slum opposite had invited him to open a new bottle of whisky, even though the hour was late.

I declared I was ready for home, paid the bill, and prepared to leave. Ball insisted on escorting me part of the journey home.

I head back on foot, cutting through a slum alleyway.

Ball took me down about 10m down the alleyway, which serves as a shortcut back to the main road.

Inside the alley, where no one could see us, he stopped, and hugged me.

‘You are so good to me, Mali,’ he said.

I said goodbye, but I could tell Mr Ball was hanging out for a more affectionate farewell.

I kissed his head, just as I had the last time we met. He beamed, and walked away.

Maiyuu's snow egg surprise: Bock, bock!

The original...

Strange things excite us in this house. Boyfriend Maiyuu and I have just discovered a recipe for chef Peter Gilmour's snow egg dessert, made famous on Masterchef Australia.

The final episode of its second season, where we saw the dessert for the first time, aired here last week.

Gilmour, from Sydney's Quay restaurant, appeared on the show's final to introduce his dessert (see above) to the finalists, Adam Liaw and Callum Hann.

Maiyuu's version

Chef Maiyuu, inspired by the dish he saw created on the show, has now tried his hand at creating the beautiful snow egg - with mixed results (see image).

It is not as beautiful to look at...we know that. But at least the poached meringue gave off that satisfying 'bock, bock' sound when it was tapped with a spoon.

The meringue egg breaks to reveal a 'yolk' of custard apple inside; the egg sits on a bed of crushed ice guava. A 'shell' made of light biscuit, almost like toffee, is melted on top.

Maiyuu had no trouble making the thin shell of praline biscuit, nor melting it so it folded over the egg. He encountered more problems creating the egg itself, though after a few attempts to manage to knock one out.

Maiyuu created the dish from memory; now that he has found the recipe on the internet, he can have another go. The real thing is cooked in eight stages, and takes three hours to make. Peter Gilmour talks about his creation at YouTube, here.
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Maiyuu has been busy with a few other creations. The queeny looking dessert made of ice-cream and a cupcake has an elborate crown of burnt sugar on top.

The cherry-looking creations are khanom look chub, a traditional Thai dessert made from mung bean flour.

He has also tried his hand at a thin-crusted key lime pie, with delicious results...

Domestic adventure

'Ball has taken my telephone. Now, how can I take gambling bets?' his mother grumbled when I dropped in.

Two nights before, Ball's girlfriend Jay took off with the couple's infant daughter in a fit of anger. She took a taxi to stay with an aunt in Samut Sakhon.

She did not tell anyone, just disappeared. Ball's mother had bought a bottle of whisky that morning to help a friend celebrate his birthday.

Ball joined in, and by early evening was drunk. The two argued, and she took off.

The next day, Ball furtively took his mother's cellphone, and left home to search for his girlfriend. He did not tell his mother he was going.

Ball called Jay in tears, saying he wanted to hold his child. She felt sorry for him, and gave him directions. I had given him B200 earlier, as it happens, which he used as his taxi fare.

They spent the night at the aunt's place, and returned the next morning, a few hours after I was to speak to Ball's mother about her missing cellphone.

Ball's mother sounded pleased that Jay had left home with the little girl, though I am not sure if she meant it.

'All that child does is feed. I can't afford to keep her,' she said.

I called in to the house again, a few hours after my conversation with Ball's Mum. By that time they had returned. 

It was a relief to have Ball, his girlfriend and Baby Min back.

Their little adventure had plenty of funny moments, as these family dramas always do. Jay's aunt asked if he was a drinker. 'Only on social occasions,' he said, without adding that those social occasions can fall every day.

Ball is not happy that Jay took away their only child.

'It's hard to talk about it,' he said.

'When we spoke on the phone, I could hear Min crying in the background,' Ball said.

'Jay left without much milk formula, or nappies. I took the swinging bed we have bought for Min, because I knew it would help her sleep,' he said.

Jay tells me that if misbehaves again, she will take away the child and not come back. She has asked me for financial help as she looks for a job. She left a poor-paying job at a bank calling centre last week.

'I spent what was left of my pay on the taxi trip to see my aunt,' she said.

On the night the domestic drama unfolded, I was busy seeing a friend, and could not get back in time. Ball called me half a dozen times, wanting to unload.

About 11pm, Ball's mother and a couple of her adult friends took Ball out to a karaoke bar, to help him forget his sorrows.

When I visited the next morning, they were still drinking, though thankfully the pace of alcohol consumption had eased by the time Ball left to see his girlfriend.

Sampling balcony delights

One side of our condo looks on to an private road with its own security guards. Rents go for three times as much as our own. 

A six- or seven-storey place, which appears to be a large private home, is opposite us. Among the occupants are a young couple. They live two storeys below us, and we can peer down on their balcony from our own.

I like sitting on the balcony to watch the sun come up. The youngsters below appear to rise at the same time.

The boyfriend saunters out on to his balcony in a state of near undress.

He wanders about, bleery-eyed, gathering his towel for a shower.

Sometimes he will also water the plants, or smoke a cigarette in a small glass-walled sitting area they have built there.

Maiyuu and I enjoy watching his movements, though he doesn't appear to realise that he has an audience.

Or maybe he does, and is just pretending.

The young man looks like a businessman. He wears a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and his hair is closely cropped. He would not look out of place tapping away on a laptop.

Our young friend wears a white collared T-shirt, and soft white cotton boxers to bed. He is a great sight to behold.

But within seconds of his arrival on the balcony today, I found I had competition.

Maiyuu noticed movement below and joined me furtively behind the towels to watch the young man watering his plants.

‘Stop staring...he’ll take fright and head back inside,’ whispered Maiyuu fiercely.

Our balcony is a small, narrow affair. Two people can stand on it, but not comfortably.

I left Maiyuu there alone to watch the youngster, as I knew that his need to sample sensual sights of handsome young Thais was greater than my own.

Not!

My little ball of worry

The gloss of first parenthood is wearing off. Ball and his teenage girlfriend Jay, parents to a fitful and demanding one-month-old child, look more like front-line veterans of a long-running war.

Jay has now gone back to work, which leaves Ball at home during the day to look after their daughter Min, and the household’s two toddlers as well.

I feel sorry for him. Min sleeps during the day, and cries and demands to be fed at night.

She knows that if she cries, her parents will give her what she wants. But sometimes she appears to cry just for the sake of it.

Ball must pick her up, and walk her around the room, again and again, until she stops. When her nappies are wet or soiled, she cries. When she wants the bottle, which is almost constantly, she cries.

The girl has a huge appetite. Two weeks ago, Ball bought her a pacifier, in the hope it might help keep her quiet in those moments when she is not taking milk or water.

After a couple of weeks in which she was content just to suck on the thing, now she notices it does not deliver anything of substance, so she rejects it.

'The other day she spat it out forcefully, and I knew she was angry,' laughed Ball.

They have tried her on solids - small amounts of banana – but her parents don’t want to give her too much of that, in case she has trouble digesting it.

Looking after her appears to be a process of non-stop worry.

Ball and Jay ransack the internet for cures to a newborn’s bloated stomach, or advice on how to make the child expel air; how to hold her properly, feed her, and most importantly, how to shut her up.

‘I was holding her the wrong way,’ Ball told me the other night, when I dropped in to see them.

I appear to be their only visitor who enjoys hearing about their travails, so they tell me in great detail about their experiments about what works, and what doesn’t.

‘One internet sit told me how to hold the child under her bottom with one hand, and stroke her back with the other, while at the same time as positioning her over my shoulder in the right way so she is able to burp,’ he said.

Burping emerges as a big issue, as does encouraging the baby to take her bottle of water or milk when she is crying.

‘One internet site told me it is better just to keep feeding her, rather than take the bottle away.

‘We used to worry that she was drinking too much milk, and would end up with a sore stomach. We took her bottle away as soon as she looked content. But this site told me to give the child her fill, and hope she drinks herself to sleep,’ he said.

Ball, whose dark looks intensify when he lacks rest, had barely slept the previous two nights; he manages to get some rest between 6am and noon, when the baby is mainly in sleep mode again, but she can grizzle and wake at any time.

During the small hours of the night, when the baby’s crying is at its most persistent, he is the only member of the household awake.

He is afraid to ask his mother to get up, as he doesn’t want to impose. Nor will he wake Jay, who has to work the next day, unless the child soils herself and he is no longer able to cope with washing her and changing her alone.

Min does not seem a very content baby, though she did manage to lie quietly in Ball's lap for about 20min during my visit - one of the few times when she was not demanding attention.

I feel sorry for the parents, as they are at the child's mercy whenever she cries, and worry about how the other occupants of the household are coping with the noise.

When the baby starts crying, the parents have to console themselves with the thought that, sooner or later, she is bound to stop.

Eventually, of course, she does. But it is a nerve-wracking business.

Am I holding her the right way? Is it milk she wants? Are her nappies dry? Why does she cry, when I have done everything I can to make her happy?

Hardly any members of the family, including Ball's mother, bother to help. It is lonely, tiring, and thankless work.