khunsanuk Posted June 16, 2002 Report Share Posted June 16, 2002 Hi, All fans of Alexander Turner's writing (and I know there are plenty) will be happy to know that he has started a new story, a rather long story I think. I have just put up the first chapter on the memberarea, and will give you a little taster here. Sanuk! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Prologue to Dara Recently my marriage of seven years ended. I emerged a bit battle scarred but I emerged. Our son lives with me. The fact that my ex-wife was Thai may have been a factor in the marriage not lasting. It?s easy to sink into racism when the shit hits the fan. It?s easy to quote the old adage about taking girls out of bars. I?m not a particularly reasonable man. When my house of cards collapsed I looked for virtually any reason for it collapsing other than that I was a pretty bad husband. I suppose it was obvious from the start that I just wasn?t cut out for marriage to her. Everyone who knew me well knew that the main cause for my involvement with Duan was that I had loved her sister. This is a bad foundation for any relationship but... Hell... Human beings are nothing if not stupid. The story that follows which is the first part of a larger story takes place in early 1992 and many of the events overlap with events of other stories I have written and which appear on this website. I?ve tried to be truthful but I hope that if any of my details are wrong or have been distorted by memory you?ll bear with me. Chapter 1 Where any story begins is a matter of choice. The story of my first meeting with Dara has its roots in other stories but I?ll just try and tell it as simply and as honestly as I can. New Year had come and gone. All the 1992/2535 signs had come down... Well... Most of them. Some were just peeling off the walls like the paint in poor neighbourhoods. I?d been in Bangkok some weeks. It sounds stupid but in ten or eleven weeks I?d almost forgotten that there was anything but Bangkok. I?d forgotten how cold and simple life can be. In Bangkok it was always hot, friendly and complicated. That?s why nobody wants you to think too much. If you start thinking about why things are the way they are in Bangkok you can end up with the mother of all headaches. I?d never been to Bangkok before this but I already felt stained by it?s colours. There was an open-ended ticket with my name on it and the return date just kept on being pushed further and further away. People asked me what I was doing in Bangkok and I?d say I was a tourist. ?Why you stay so long Bangkok. Why you not go Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Phuket ?? I?d say I didn?t know but I did know. It?s just that saying it sounded stupid. Bangkok had my name on it. I?d come to Bangkok as a traveller or a tourist depending on how you look at it. I?d thought of staying. I?d thought of not going back. How do you ever leave a place like Bangkok when it seems to want you to stay ? Somehow, I know how but I don?t want to get too much into it here, I?d found myself in a dark place. I was twenty nine years old but I felt like a child living in a dream that occasionally toppled into nightmare. I suppose in some sense I was a child. Bangkok makes children of most men. Nothing really prepares you for it and you have to kind of start learning about life all over again. I?d done childish things. I?d been married and deserted in days. I?d been as honest and candid about my life with strangers as I ever had with friends I?d known for years. For five minutes I?d believed in Suzie Wong fairy tales and after ten minutes I?d seen right through them. And somehow in all the mess and confusion I?d been embraced by people whose lives were so different from mine that I might as well have come, as some said, from the sky. When I?d met Ae and Da and all the other women I only saw what they?d wanted me to see. The playfulness, the beauty, the sexually intoxicating invitations of their supple golden flesh. All the women whose charm took me in ended up escaping Bangkok. They went on to live blissfully dull lives in the West. Of course I was too poor and stupid at the time to offer this to anybody. Mind you... That?s probably a good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 17, 2002 Report Share Posted June 17, 2002 Clever marketing Khunsanuk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted June 17, 2002 Report Share Posted June 17, 2002 It's OK, but its not a patch on Bangkok Phil. We want PHIL ! We want PHIL ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarisin Posted June 18, 2002 Report Share Posted June 18, 2002 artiew, I enjoy BP's writings too, but to be fair, this is just an extract from one of AT's stories. If you haven't already done so, I seriously recommend you check out some of AT's writings on the paysite. Just some of the best writing on Thailand I have ever seen. I am happy to see Phil writing again here. Great stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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