MY DANGEROUS VISITOR

MY DANGEROUS VISITOR
I live an idyllic life. All you older men out there will know exactly what I mean. My wife is half my age. There are three kids in our household, a sixteen-year-old boy and two younger girls. All of them wait on me hand and foot. I merely have to indicate a wish and someone rushes off to fulfill it. They treat me with great respect. They greet me with a slight bow and hands, palms together, at their chests.

The neighborhood women gather each evening on our patio to gossip. My wife is the ringleader. She is an incessant talker and, evidently, quite a comic. I have seen her keep her little audience laughing for an hour at a time.

I enjoy having the family surrounding me and the nightly social event on the patio.

Why?

Because none of them speaks English. I don’t have to interact. I can move among them all, smiling and nodding, and not say a word. What could be better than that?

Then came my visitor. This was a classmate for three years in junior high school (Portola, San Francisco). The last time we spoke he was counseling me on the error of my ways in high school. That was sixty years ago. A lifetime had intervened. We had a lot of catching up to do.

In the course of his visit, he took my entire family to a prominent Thai restaurant. As is her habit, my wife ordered dish after dish, keeping them coming. That gave my friend and me plenty of time to talk. I had seldom talked so much in my life.

I caught my family members staring at me in amazement. They had no idea that I was capable of uttering more than a few guttural sounds at a time. There I was in a lengthy, animated conversation. It didn’t matter that they could not understand a word. It was a revelation to them.

It was after he left that the horror arrived. My wife has started to intensify her effort to learn English. She wants to be able to talk to me. She wants to have a conversation with me. She wants to ruin my paradise.

All you older men out there will know exactly what I mean.

NUDE BEACH 

THE NUDE BEACH

This piece is going to be mostly about penis size so be forewarned. I’ve been wondering if I should write it. I have very poor judgment in matters of decency. I asked my recent visitor, a friend from 60 years ago, what he thought. He told me to go ahead. His judgment on these matters being far superior to mine, here it is.

I’ve always been skittish about taking communal showers, speaking now of male only. In school, after gym class there was often a few athletic type/closet homos to pass going in and out of the shower. Their purpose was to harass and ogle while pretending to be more male. We could hear them shout from the locker room as smaller boys ran their gauntlet. Looking back, I think there was a danger of rape.

I took no more than six showers in all my time at school.

In the military, I tried to use the shower when it was unoccupied. Some times I found a nearby unit that had a lesser used shower or (best of all) actually had shower stalls.

I would walk a long way to use those facilities.

The better construction camps had shower stalls but many did not. So I was thrown in with the general population.

One of my problems was penis size. Evidently, I always had the smallest in the shower room. I say “evidently” because I am not one to check out everyone’s or anyone’s dick. In this matter I have to accept the testimony of the others in the shower. They declared me the winner of the small dick contest hands down.

This would result some jokes at my expense and, occasionally, a mild contempt. I will forego comments about this being the measure of a man.

Many years later, my wife and I were walking along the top of a coastal cliff in San Diego County, California. We came to a well traveled path down to the beach, about 300 feet below. We decided to climb down to the beach.

It turned out to be a nude beach.

My wife was one of the sexiest people I have known. She had a low boiling point. She was immediately turned on. So we decided to visit again the next week and bring a picnic and blanket.

So how did the “small dick champion” fare on a nude beach?

Seeing all those great looking naked women strutting around, there was no way I could keep it small. I felt a low-level eroticism all the time and every time I was on that beach. It gave me a low-level erection. The thing hung down as if it was flaccid but, in actuality, it was semi-erect.

For once, I checked out other guys. They were small, small, small. I was King of the Beach! I swear, women followed me around!

The moral of the story is: Penis size depends a lot on who you’re with.

While I’m on this subject let me say that I have the perfect penis size. I had a friend who complained to me once that his was so large he could never get it all in. I took his word on it. I understand what he meant. Women can only take so much. If mine were an eighth of an inch longer, it would be too long. If I occasionally thrust too hard it causes pain. So for most women, mine is the perfect length.

One more thing before I leave this delicate subject let me give you men a health tip. Many years ago I got a prostate infection. The doctor told me, “Use it or die.” I am now 75. People guess me to be 20 years younger. I have at least one orgasm a day. Maybe there is a connection.

BALLET DANCER 

MY NYMPHO (Dating After 40)

I went out on a blind date with this lady and she never went home again, at least not to the home she had been living in. (No I didn’t tie her up.)

I am not a big believer in love and marriage. I am a believer in convenient living arrangements. They are far more stable.

So I went out with this very attractive brunette. She was a dancer with a major ballet company in our area. (Ladies in ballet often have trouble finding men who are interested in ladies.) She was in the process of selling off her many assets with her recently divorced husband. Her home was up for sale and she had to find a place to live.

Hey, stay with me. Why not?

She had a son in early teens, just starting high school.

That’s okay. He can come too. (My son was six at the time.)

You see how easy that is?

So we combined our immediate families.

I straight away discovered that she was a nymphomaniac. She was also a one-man woman. She wanted me to “do it” three times a day. I didn’t know that was physically possible. I discovered it was. (My testicles started aching. I went to a doctor. He just laughed at me when he discovered the reason. The ache went away when the area adjusted to the work load.)

The newly combined family got along very well. The lady was a definite keeper, we were totally compatible.

Then I was introduced to the cancer in the arrangement. She also had a daughter, who was in her late teens, a high school drop out. This blonde daughter looked very much like Paris Hilton except she had much bigger boobs. She had recently married this “wonderful” guy. They had been living on my lady’s yacht, and, I learned later, burglarizing other boats in the yacht harbor.

The young couple came over our place for dinner. He was a musician, he said. As if for proof, he pulled out a flute and played a note. He was just learning this particular instrument he explained. He was also a gardener and worked on this crew occasionally. He also laid carpets when a friend called. He had a line on this scuba diving course and could make $200 an hour diving for abalone. In the meantime, he was making roach clips that a friend of his sold.

They spent the night. When they left in the morning, they stole my newspaper out of the driveway.

After they left I told my lady, “That guy will never work a day in his life.”

I couldn’t see how he could ever support a wife.

I was wrong.

He got her pregnant. If there was one thing this guy knew, it was the welfare system. His mother had been on it for years. Somehow, they got an apartment and a monthly stipend on the basis of her pregnancy and his not being able to support her. What a guy.

You should have seen him strut around after that. He saw himself as a responsible husband, taking care of his pregnant wife. He was the breadwinner.

They had a ritual. When the welfare check arrived, they went to a fancy restaurant and had a lobster dinner.

My lady and I had a ritual. After the daughter called later in the month, broke and hungry, we brought them bags of groceries.

I could see where this was heading. There was no way in the world these two would stay together. There was no way in the world this blonde ditz would want to be saddled with a baby. My lady didn’t know it but she had a baby in her future. Not only that, I could see a whole string of babies being left at her doorstep. This was a gorgeous, fertile little baby factory.

I started looking for a way out. I admit it. The idea of helping to raise the product of those two was not attractive to me. What were the chances that would turn out well? But I couldn’t kick the lady out.

Then I got lucky. Her boy got arrested for weed. We also found weed in the house. I had made it clear, in the beginning, that was forbidden. I didn’t want that stuff around my kid.

I suggested the kid go live with his father. That seemed a perfect solution to me. He needed a father’s influence, which I couldn’t provide.

Evidently, in their family situation, that was impossible. So the lady moved out, and I dodged a bullet.

Don’t misunderstand me. She was great. I’d be with her yet, but that was too much baggage.

I saw her many years later. That couple split up not long after the baby was born. The baby boy had been left with her and hadn’t turned out great. I gathered it was not the only grandchild she had been given to raise.

ABOUT THE NOVEL

The novel is finished. The title is: General Trinh is Delivering Papers. All 90+ chapters are posted in the “Best Of” over on the left. For those of you in the Google blog, you have to go to www.letterfrombangkok.net. I cannot control the archives in the Google blog.

The story is about a guy who is sent to western Iran to rescue a supposed CIA agent.

The hero, Steve Kincaid, is an amalgamation of many people I have known, some of whom actually did have a price on their heads.

The character of Ahmed Kurtsan is based on a fascinating man I knew in northwestern Iran. He was a British educated local and spoke with an upper class English accent. He lived with us in our tent camp in the beginning, when it was the most dangerous, because it “amused” him. He thought me a pest because I stared at him a lot. I couldn’t help it.

Mohammed Parsee is also based on a real life man I knew. I won’t say more for fear of ‘spoiling’ an important plot line.

I lived among Rhade tribes in the Vietnamese highlands. These Montagnards became Steve Kincaid’s army of irregulars.

The two airstrips in western Iran near Sanandaj and Shahabad were, and perhaps still are, real. I designed and helped build them.

BANGKOK FIREWORKS 

A COUPLE OF THINGS

This has been going around the internet. I suppose everyone has seen it, but it’s so funny I couldn’t help sticking it in here. This is via the Corner.

I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why the President would be going to Iraq when so many things are wrong in this country.

"Doesn’t Mr. Bush care about us anymore?" she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the President seems to be abandoning his country. "Honey, I think his boss, Mr. Rove, sent Mr. Bush out of the country in order to keep himself out of the newspapers. You see, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be arrested today or not, and so he planned Mr. Bush’s trip ahead of time just in case...

”I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult - the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words - nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, "Honey, I just don't know - I don't know what's going on in this country anymore..."

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are the Republicans doing this to the country?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it's too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter's voice helped me to get through.

This was a comment on Daily Kos. It was posted by someone who called himself Cheche. This has to be a brilliant put-on. So far no one is taking credit. My congratulations to the author.

THRIFT TIP:

Whenever you walk on pavement with shoes on, look around for chewing gum to step on. When you have the bottom of your shoes covered with gum, you’ll be wearing out the gum instead of the soles of your shoes.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO…?

Remember when we wondered, a long time ago, what those girls getting tattoos would do when they became grandmothers?

I found the answer.

They’re doing porno on the internet.

A GRANDMA IN PORNO 

DRIVING THROUGH SANANDAJ (Novel Excerpt)

Sanandaj is a predominately Kurdish town in western Iran.

Ahmed is an oxford educated, Kurdish Khan, the leader of a Kurdish rebellion against the Iranians.

Kincaid and Ahmed have just carried out a successful predawn raid on the Sanandaj police compound, during which they stole a police Jeep. Then they discovered they had to drive back through the town in the stolen Jeep.
…

They were nearing Sanandaj.

“Is there a way around the police compound?” Kincaid asked. “Things might get hot if we go by there.”

“Many ways, old boy.” Ahmed’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “The byways of Sanandaj, although not quite endless, are at least intricate.”

Kincaid looked at him. “Are you having a good time?”

“I, sir,” Ahmed said, “am having a ball.”

Ahmed turned right on the first street in the town. It wasn’t a street really, merely a dirt road that curved around some buildings on the outskirts. The dirt road had soon curved enough that it was paralleling the main road. The buildings here were constructed of mud and straw bricks. Along the main road they were built of kiln baked clay bricks.

The buildings came in close on the dirt road. It became only wide enough for the Jeep and perhaps a horse; two horses if they were well trained.

There was smoke coming from most of the buildings. It had a pungent odor. Ahmed saw Kincaid sniffing the air.

“That’s dried buffalo chips, old boy.”

Kincaid didn’t know what he was talking about. “What are dried buffalo chips?”

“The fuel. It’s Buffalo shit. It’s what they burn. No wood don’t-you-know.”

The first man they saw was a Kurd. He was walking toward them carrying an arm load of hay. He stood in the center of the road and stared at them curiously. Ahmed drove right up to him and stopped. The Kurd’s eyes got big. He dropped the hay, turned around and raced up the road.

Kincaid got his Heckler & Koch out of the back seat.

Ahmed laid a hand lightly on the weapon. “These are my people,” he said.

Kincaid nodded but kept the assault rifle on his lap and the missile launcher alongside.

The Jeep stayed where it was, parked in the middle of the narrow street. Ahmed started whistling softly. It was a tune Kincaid didn’t recognize.

“Why aren’t we moving?” he asked Ahmed.

“Patience, old boy, patience.” Ahmed grinned at him. “You must learn the patience of the orient if you expect to survive in the orient.”

“I thought we were in Iran.”

“Of course we’re in Iran, old boy. Well known as the gateway to the orient, you see. Yes indeed, well known.”

“Why aren’t we moving?”

Ahmed put the Jeep in low. It started creeping forward. “We are moving, old boy.”

Kincaid was ill at ease. Ahmed was stalling for no apparent reason. “At this rate we’ll be in Kermanshah sometime next year.”

Ahmed laughed. “Not to worry.” He started whistling again.

Kincaid was about to insist that they go faster when Ahmed increased the speed and shifted into second. Three Kurds in a knot watched them pass. Ahmed inclined his head to them. Kincaid heard their animated conversation. The only word he could make out was “Khan,” repeated over and over.

They were coming to a section of small shops. The road was still narrow and unsurfaced. Ahead of them, people were coming out of the shops and standing against the walls, waiting for them to pass. Kincaid saw that this was the Kurdish section of the town. They had encountered nothing but Kurds. The women were dressed as Sabrina had been when they crossed the border, except for the veils. All these women wore veils. The men wore the black garb of the Kurds. Again Kincaid heard “Khan” repeated over and over as they passed.

As they approached an intersection an armed Kurd on a black horse suddenly appeared ahead of them in the road. The horse reared high in the air while the Kurd raised the rifle in one hand even higher. He turned the horse and trotted it ahead of them. Before they reached the intersection, another armed Kurd galloped out of the side street and joined the rider in front. Kincaid looked down the side street as they passed. Two more horsemen were coming their way.

Before they reached the next intersection, four more horsemen galloped out and joined the two in front. This side street was blocked in both directions by more Kurdish riders. After they passed, the mounted Kurds fell in behind the Jeep. There were soon a dozen or more following.
Ahmed made no comment. Still whistling the unrecognizable melody, he nodded right and left as they passed Kurds on the sides of the street.

The street widened at a marketplace. Both sides of the street were lined with armed horsemen. They pushed a disarmed Iranian policeman forward for Ahmed’s inspection as the Jeep passed. Ahmed smiled and waved. The Kurds fell in behind when the street narrowed again beyond the marketplace.

More and more horsemen joined ahead and behind as they drove through the narrow street. Kincaid soon lost count. At the far edge of the town, the houses fell away and the road curved back to the left. Ahmed sped up the Jeep. The riders broke into a gallop. Some rode up alongside. One shouted and fired his rifle into the air. Many others did the same. Soon they were all shooting into the air. Kincaid winced. The din could be heard for miles. So much for slipping quietly through Sanandaj.

AN AMBUSH (Novel Excerpt)

Steve Kincaid has been leading a small patrol of Kurds through western Iran. There is reason to believe there is trouble ahead. Yasin Kurtsan, brother of the Khan, has been his guide. Sabrina, a Kurdish woman who has had to pose as a boy, has been his interpreter. They have become very close, but he has reason to believe she might do something foolish.

The novel can be found at letterfrombangkok.net.

CHAPTER 73

This time there were three of them on point when they started out, Steve Kincaid, Yasin and the Kurd who had volunteered to ride the next gauntlet. The tribesman had a fresh horse with him. The rest of the patrol was as before except Kincaid had them close up the interval even more.

The light from the half moon had increased as it rose so they could make better time. Kincaid pressed forward, breaking his horse into a canter where the trail allowed it, slowing it to a walk where it didn’t. They were beginning to make good time.

After ten minutes, Yasin rode up beside him.

“Here,” he said. “The water.”

They halted. The Kurd joined them.

“Tell him,” Kincaid said. He could hear the main party coming up from behind.

Yasin pointed ahead and spoke to the Kurd.

Kincaid heard a single horse start at a gallop from the main group.

Yasin and the other Kurd looked back just as Sabrina sped by on her horse.

“Keep low!” Kincaid shouted when she was opposite him.

He saw her bend low in the saddle as she disappeared into the darkness ahead.

“Okay,” Kincaid said, “forward at a walk.” He led the way.

Ahmed was suddenly at his side. “How did you…?”

The sound of automatic weapons ahead crashed loudly in the still night air. A horse screamed. There were more bursts. Then silence.

Fear grabbed at Kincaid’s gut with a cold hand. His first instinct was to ride after the girl. But he had been a soldier too long to do anything that foolish. The soldier in him took charge.

“Take some men to the left,” Kincaid told Ahmed. “I’ll take the right.”

He went off at a gallop, hoping either he or the horse would see the creek bank in time to stop. He heard the hooves of at least one horse following him but he couldn’t look around. It didn’t matter anyway.

“Stop!” someone shouted behind him.

He yanked back on the reins. The horse stopped just in time. The bank yawned open below him.

“Close,” Yasin said at his side.

Kincaid was off the horse in a flash, loading a grenade, the first he found, into the launcher.
“Stay here,” he said. With one hand on the grip of the M-203 and the other on the top of the bank, he dropped into the darkness below. The ground jolted him. He had expected to drop farther. The dry creek bed was solid. He turned to his left and ran toward the trail.

A figure loomed up before him. Kincaid fired the M-16 from the hip without breaking stride, a long burst across the man’s gut. The guy sat down and tried to push his intestines back inside.

In a few more strides Kincaid saw some other figures up ahead. They were wearing dark coats but light colored pants. One part of his mind wondered why anyone would try to fight at night in light colored clothing. Kincaid dropped to one knee and let the grenade fly. He was mildly surprised when the phosphorus grenade exploded. The flash partially blinded him.

He hurried on anyway, now firing short bursts from the M-16 as he went. He found he could see better by not looking directly at something. Straight ahead was blacked out but he could see out of the side of his eyes.

The smell of burnt flesh assaulted his nostrils. He didn’t bother with the men he past who were screaming as they burned. After a short burst the M-16 clicked silent. He discarded it and pulled out the .357 Magnum from the holster at his hip. Figure after figure rose up in front of him. He blasted them down one after the other with the powerful slugs as he ran along the bottom of the back. Then no more figures rose up but still he ran on.

Someone had been shouting at him. He looked up.

“It’s over,” Ahmed shouted from the top of the bank. “It’s over.”

Kincaid looked around. His sight was coming back. He had crossed the trail and was well on the other side.

“It’s over,” Ahmed shouted again. “It’s over.”

Kincaid nodded. He walked back along the creek bed to the trail, reloading the revolver without thinking about it.

THAI LADY 

DRUGS AND ME

For those of you interested, my novel, General Trinh is Delivering Papers, is now posted up to chapter 70. It still has quite a way to go. You can access it in the Nov. 2004 archives or over on the left in the Best Of list. For those of you reading this in the Google blog, you must go to www.letterfrombangkok.net. I cannot control the archives in the Google blog.

My output recently has increased tremendously because of a drug. Up until now I have never used drugs if you don’t count alcohol and nicotine (which are the two most dangerous drugs in the world).

I twice tried marijuana cigarettes. They didn’t work for me. They had no effect.

Every time I’ve had a checkup, the medical people commented on my high blood pressure. I refused to use drugs to relieve it. I had always heard that if you lower your blood pressure you also lower your sexual potency.

What a choice.

It’s like a line Elaine Boosler used, “Is sex worth dying for?”

“Well, yes, sometimes,” she’d answer herself.

For me, if the choice was sex or high blood pressure, I’d take my chances on the high blood pressure.

“Screw it,” I’d say, meaning it literally.

I got the ‘blahs’ recently. Blahs for me might be the equivalent of elation for those suffering chronic depression. When the gifts for life were strewn out at birth, one of mine was a sunny disposition. Blahs for me mean that I play computer games while watching movies all day. I cannot write.

It has always interested me how a writer’s mood can be reflected in the progression of his words. When I was a kid I read most of the OZ books. The feeling of wonder and adventure was on every page and had to be felt in the writer’s heart.

I read an interview with a leading writer of romance novels. Before she wrote a love scene in one of her stories, she read pornographic literature to get in the mood. That is precious advice for a writer.

For me, the secret of writing is energy (I call it zest in other places; same thing). If the energy is not there, such as in William Faulkner’s works, reading is tedious.

In an only remotely connected subject, it has always stuck in my mind that Ernest Hemingway said he wrote his weight in words every day. His meaning was that he weighed somewhat over 200 pounds, so his goal was to write somewhat over 200 words every day. That may seem like a small goal, but at the end of a year he would have more words than any of his novels contain.

I digress.

So I got the blahs. Some weeks ago, before the blahs, I got these pills from a pharmacist here in Bangkok. They were tiny little (what were they? Tiny or little or both?) pink pills that had a perforation in the center so you could make them even smaller. That’s a red flag, I think. That might signal, “This is something strong.” The pharmacist said they were for ‘tension.’ Was I feeling tension? I didn’t think so. It was more like a lack of tension.

Anyway, I took a pill. The result was excellent (I was going to write “miraculous” but I am trying to tone down my usual overkill). I not only woke up at my usual time (3 AM, don’t ask) but with a hard on (which can’t be called unusual, it’s just not frequent on waking). On top of that I was bursting with energy, and not just in my lower regions.

So I am now a druggie. I take one of those little (what happened to tiny?) pink pills every night. My work output has grown to be immense (that’s overkill, larger would have been sufficient).

One pharmacist told me the name of the pill was Xanex. On the package it is labeled Zolam, Alprazolam, 0.5 mg.

I looked up the side effects. Constipation. That happened, it was minor and disappeared. Depression. That occurs for one hour on most days. I schedule a nap to coincide. Addiction. Wow, yeah, I’m 75, I’m scared of getting addicted to a drug that’s going to make my life better.

So, anyway, I’m a druggie now.

PRETTY LADY