The Tao of Freak

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Nothing emphasizes egocentricity better than a gun in your psyche. Like luck, guns are a zero sum game. Dick had not seen the guns, but the nice man at his door told him about them and asked him to leave town. Dick acquiesced. Two days later, Dick was in Bangkok and the world was his oyster. It was August: no ‘r’ in the month.

Dick had never been to Bangkok before. It was an obvious stop off between Almaty and Ho Chi Minh City. Soros and his Open Societies Institute had paid him in cash, USD cash. Dick had a lot of that cash in his pocket: $1870. More money than Dick had seen since yesterday when it was two grand. He had booked into a four star hotel for just for one night, to find his bearings. In the taxi he thought about his wad of cash and where to stash it. Careering around the biggest population of whores and pimps in the world with his life’s savings in pocket did not strike Dick the best of possible plans. In an anomalous moment of sanity, he elected to hire a safe deposit box in the hotel. Dick now had a key. The key, and its potential to be lost, did not seem substantially more safe than the actual cash. Dick removed a drawer from the dressing table and secreted the key in the cavity. Then he got hammered. Next day he checked out, heading for Koh Samet.

About half way there, on an express bus, he remembered the key. At Ban Pae he caught the ferry rather than make boring phone calls. On Koh Samet, it only required four or five hours to establish that the internet was ‘broken’. When in doubt, get more drunk, and anyway, it was late. Dick drank, fucked and swam, but failed to find any weed.

Three days later, back in Bangkok, Dick demanded the same room, though he had forgotten the number. No key, if it was even the same room. Hours of painful negotiation later, the cash was also gone. Dick's rage illuminated the foyer like a phosphorus grenade. The next day, his rage illuminated the police station like three glow worms under a bushel.

He was a penniless laughingstock.

Alone that night in the pool on the roof of the hotel, he turned on the Jacuzzi and the cacophony of sucking, grinding, bubbling and throbs reminded him of a waste disposal. He switched it off. Lurking in the shallows, he stretched his arms out till one hand flopped into a plant pot. Hidden in the pot was a baggie of top quality weed: a miracle. He dried off, rolled up and re-immersed himself.

The Freak Brothers were right.

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