Abroad
^ ^ ^ ^
Step outside the narrow borders of what men call reality
and you step into chaos
—Ralph Ellison—
The spell breaks. Suddenly, I am back in this solitary world. But is it so solitary? What had been, only moments before, the flashing red light above my seat transforms into the Walkman’s tiny eye. Another light draws my attention, its source the far corner of the tent. How minute the boundaries of my present world now seem. Only moments ago, I lived in the past, a world limited only by memory…and imagination. Where is Devara? It is so dark in here. I can scarcely make out any form. The light must come from him. Is it the glow of the chillum or his eyes? Has he been listening? Does he now wish to speak?
Silence!
I have begun to trip back in my mind, putting distance to this present, to Devara, how easy in the darkness, where we inhabit such disparate worlds. Even if we were equals in a common language, how many words, the spare symbols of far more complex images, could we share? How many can I share with you? What bold conjecture that two minds can share. What magic if they can.
Talking takes me back, almost as if I was in that 707 heading east for the first time; how like this trip, maybe the last such journey. In the intervening years I have made so many trips, some with the possibility of no return. This last is the only one since that first intercontinental flight where nothing has been left behind.
Again storm sounds push against the envelope. As I become more of this place and less of my memories, I begin to hear his voice.
"Much of what you saying hard for Devara, but thinking right thing you do. It bad fighting, bad killing, like crazy Mussalmen. I hear of this Vietnam. All India Radio talking, say Amrikans there like Angrezi in Raj time. Very bad go another country…ruling…taking, how others live telling. No one another freedom give. Freedom only coming from inside. Angrezi in Hindustan for peace trying, not for the peoples, but for rupees. Peace from gun, it much funny, if not so sad. When Angrezi leaving…boom. Men like Devara, hunted animals. Bhaai, you right doing, not other people troubling. The God reward you with this holy journey."
Although I see a light, hear a voice, even in this world so small, where is Devara? I am not sure if the words come from lips, or if they are directly from mind. I am so disoriented. At times, I feel as if he is here, a distinct entity; at other times he hides; still other times I think I am within him, seeing the world from his eyes. This has happened before when stressed. I feel totally alone in this Universe—everything just a projection of mind. Is this megalomania or some other aberration? In the past, I have always been able to retreat from the brink, but now…?
God, I wish the storm would end. I need to get down. My hands are as big as baseball mitts, my feet beginning to swell. I force myself to keep drinking, chai, chai, and more chai. Slow down on the dope, Guy…but what else to do? In the beginning with the dope, it was as if I had my own TV, just kick back and watch the past flash by. Everything was so flat, so two dimensional, so remote. But now these things in my head (are they just in my head?) gain other dimensions. What was fantasy becomes real. Am I here or in some lost terror of a dream gone bad? Will I wake in the familiar comfort of a bed and the arms of a woman I love? No, I am here, or at least I am not there. This is a journey where the tomorrows are completely unknown, where all that I know, all that I hold dear, is past. Yes, how similar were those two flights. Although one headed east and the other west, both were escaping worlds gone awry. There was one big difference, twenty-five years.
^ ^ ^
The trouble with escape is that it is always to somewhere, a scene that, as it grows familiar, proves as much a bitch as the one you have escaped. After all, you haven’t changed, only the somewhere. This was ever so true in London. I had neither skills nor connections, the only "work" I knew milking the great cash cow of drugs. To make matters worse, it wasn’t even about going straight. For that you needed a work permit. And of course, it was the old Catch 22, without work….
Since, as they say, misery loves company, I began to frequent a seedy pub in Earl’s Court. The area, known as Kangaroo Canyon because of the large number of Aussies, was convenient to my own equally seedy digs—little more than a closet in the downstairs of an upstairs gone to ruin. The pub was a good place for cheap diversion. After you bought one pint, you could hang-out all evening, nursing your brew or conning someone a bit flusher to spot you another. Every night there would be brawls—drunken men far from home. In the otherwise grinding boredom of poverty, their stories of daring-do in exotic places helped pass the time.
The atmosphere captivated me filled, as it was, with all sorts of expat types, including freshly arrived survivors of Schramm’s mercenary brigade in Biafra. For the price of a pint you could observe and even talk to characters that, in my naiveté, seemed right out of the pages of Conrad or Hemmingway, although on reflection, more like tawdry tales in Soldier of Fortune. Young and impressionable, I imagined this to be the last remaining den of those very pirates and freebooters who had figured so heavily in childhood’s myth. Even the name of the place was apt, the "Ruddy Rogue."
When I walked through the doors, I left the world of the "suits" with all their hypocrisy, all their backstabbing greed. Equally, I left that virtual domain of peace and love, a place in which, if the truth were known, I had never felt entirely comfortable. The denizens of the Rogues might not have been nice men, many bragged of terrible deeds. Yet somehow, I imagined that they would be straight with me, if I was straight with them. If they took me as a friend, they would walk the fire with me. To be accepted by them was proof I was a man, a proof I sorely needed. I tried hard to be one of them and even, when pissed, considered taking up the life of a mercenary. "Join us my man, if Biafra flames, there’s always Angola. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to keep the Wog in line." So much for peace, love, and understanding. It was one of those very male animal, bonding things, that on one hand I despised, yet on the other was strangely attracted to. I guess loneliness can play weird tricks .So can wishful thinking.
At the Rogue I met Ian, a strange little Anglo-Irishman. He seemed out of place in a world so overcharged with testosterone. Bellying up to the bar with great hairy men, scarred and grizzled by far-flung campaigns, little Ian, carefully attired, attentively coifed, held his own. Despite his Irish origins—or, perhaps, as he was from Belfast, because of them—he was no less in love with the fading institutions of the Empire than the most ardent Col. Blimp. He even carried a picture of the Queen Mum. To congenial catcalls from the more irreverent patrons, he proudly showed me the wallet-sized portrait on our first meeting, as one might show a picture of a wife or lover.
Ian, rather a dandy, decidedly intellectual, seemed a bit out of place in this atmosphere of large, tough men. He introduced himself as an agent for a major British news agency. That was his entrée into the scene, as he knew many of the lads from his days in distant hellholes. Now, after nearly getting whacked in the Congo, he had earned a mundane desk job. Still, he liked the company of rough and ready types. For openers I thought it was because they reminded him of his glory day—those times in harm’s way whose glory grows with distance.
But it was more, and I must have been very naive not to get it immediately. I couldn’t get past the manly atmosphere to see that these men gathered because they preferred the company, intimate company. This was certainly Ian’s purpose, which was a bit dicey because, initially, he came on to me hoping to score. There had always been something in me that attracted my own, the mixed message of appearance. Years of school sports, not to mention interminable trips around that Berkshire barn, had turned baby fat into a hard, well-shaped muscle; my hair was long and wavy; my complexion the envy of women friends. I guess it was a streak of lingering boyishness that, in its androgyny, was often mistaken for femininity. Not much to mistake now, this body battered, as it is, hair thinning, rose and cream complexion seared, scarred, lined, and bearded beyond all recall? At least I didn’t go to fat, too much time on drugs, and too much time in low-rent places, to ever get fat.
I had been in London for over a month and my funds were gone. In desperation, I almost agreed to shack-up with Ian. How I take refuge in that word "almost." I did have a certain ambivalence to sex. Though perhaps a little later in getting underway, I certainly I loved to screw the opposite sex. At the same time, I wasn’t far away from an adolescent preoccupation with my own. While I might have acquiesced in fantasy, there was something inside that wouldn’t let me go the distance with Ian, even though he could have solved my pressing financial woes.
We fenced a bit. I let him wine and dine me, even going so far as to frequent his flat, where he plied me with booze and dope. But despite my jam, I couldn’t surrender to another man. I did feel a certain fondness for Ian, who being older had an air of worldliness? Certainly, it was confusing for a young man of twenty-one, particularly as I had spent my first rush of sexuality apart from women. Oh yes, there had been the odd Master’s wife or daughter to languish over. But they were far too remote, and young boys had their own, more ready charms. Society, and the fear of its retribution, programmed me too much to feel comfortable with that feminine, dependent side which Ian brought out. I knew it was there, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow it to surface, to take life, to take over my life. I feared if I went for it this once, I would be a goner. I was desperate, but not quite desperate enough.
Growing tired of my fencing he forced my hand. There was a humongous scene, and I almost whacked him. I expected that to would put paid not only to Ian, but to the food, booze, and dope he had so copiously supplied. To the contrary, Ian, quite apart from his predilection, had grown fond of me—or at least saw my potential. If I wouldn’t play the role of paramour, then, perhaps, protégé?
"Not to worry dear thing," He said to me after a few awkward moments in the pub, the following day. "It’s just not your cuppa. No harm in trying, is there love? After all, you’ve been quite close, up to the flat and all. And I must say, it was quite a rush, you know Guy. For a moment I thought I was quite gone. Quite a tingle! Haven’t felt that in years. Really out there, eh?"
Yes, Ian took rejection well. "Perhaps, dear boy, there still may be a way you can earn your keep. Much more difficult, to my mind, but then given what you seem to be into dear chap. I mean all that delicious hostility, it should be more to your liking, at least for the time being, while you’re young. Oh, a few years ago I would’ve jumped at the chance." Then in a more serious tone, "Look Guy, how would you like to work for the agency. Not here in London, I’m afraid, but over with your fellow Yanks, over in Vietnam."
Ian’s offer might have been a form of revenge, for with no little irony it would send me as a photographer to Asia, to the very war I had tried so hard to escape. When you are hungry, and I was, even the prospect of war isn’t so bad. As an outsider in London, I could better understand the eagerness of those PR recruits back at Whitehall. Anything was better than getting it up the old ass, or at least so I thought from the distance of London. It was either continue the adventure, hoping for the best, or return to the States, tail between my legs, to an even less optimistic future. Ian pointed out that at least I wouldn’t be in the military. As a stringer, I would be my own boss—"just get the footage." I was soon to learn that the term "footage" was to have a double meaning.
At the time, I had only a self-inflicted grounding in still photography. Someone in the Alphabets traded a Nikon F for a few ounces. I shot many rolls playing Cartier-Bresson on the street of the Lower East Side—a modern-day flâneur, a man of the boulevard. Only I wasn’t content just to watch the passing scene, but driven to capture it as my own. For Ian’s purpose, this would suffice.
"Still or motion it’s pretty much the same. We don’t need anything artsy, just be sure it is action, in focus, and exposed proper."
This assignment was a natural for the young and foolish, with nothing to lose, in short, me.
Apart from the escape, there was another advantage to the posting, as Ian was all too quick to point out. We both had a liking for drugs. Ian already knew I had few scruples—evidenced by the quantity of his prize stock of Thai Stick I had consumed. He suggested we could do a "little business," boasting that he had already set up "others" in the trade—"quite profitable and safe," he promised. Then with a cryptic tone, "You’d be surprised to what levels this business goes. With all the gear, not to mention the large quantities of exposed stock being shipped back through agency channels, it’s easy to import a few goodies here and there."
I knew what Ian meant by goodies. It wasn’t Thai Stick. Ian had openly shown a liking for China White, heroin refined from Lao poppies. Not that he overindulged, nor did he try to press it on me, once I refused. He was quite a gentleman, always in control. He just liked a sniff now and then. As he said, "It makes things more rational, dear thing…a fore taste of heaven to get us through this earthly hell."
^ ^ ^
I landed in the middle of deep shit, late January 1968, just before Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year, a time later described by that arch-fuck Kissinger as the watershed—the beginning of the end. But it was an end invisible to those caught in the muck. And muck it was, for the crachin, the northeast monsoon, which grips Vietnam in the winter months, was at its height, turning the landscape into a gloomy, slime-green morass of inescapable damp. As a newcomer, I quickly found myself out in the boonies. Khe Sanh was a fortified camp in the foothills of the Highlands up near the DMZ. This tangle of razor wire, sandbags, petrol drums, and bunkers, seemed so out of place. It could have been such a bucolic setting, a place of infinite peace. Apart from our presence, the valley was certainly heavenly, well watered, rich with fertile red soil, cradled in the lush, mist-topped hills that rose menacingly to either side. There had been ferocious battles for those commanding hills the year before. And the mist covered more than hills, for it was from those unseen heights that soon the NVA would rain down so much death…again.
Over the years my memory flick of Nam—that war-derived coalescence of Grunt Vietnam experience—has been cut over and over, edited into an ever-condensed version. Details, people, places, once so vivid, leak through the subconscious and into oblivion. Inevitably, some bits stick in memory, coloring the way I now see life. But mostly, Nam has sunk into the haze of lost remembrance. All that is left is a distant bittersweet dream, a mixture of experience and fantasy. I try to recall what it was, what I know took place, but it is too distant, too abstract, too much of my own mind and too little of what really happened.
The thing I remember most from those first weeks is the mud. As a cameraman, that all-pervasive ooze was my most immediate enemy. Sure, there was beaucoup John Wayne shit going down, but only now and then, and mostly at a distance where it didn’t concern me, because I wasn’t going to think about it, because I forced myself not to think about it. Or up so close that it didn’t really matter whether I thought about it or not. What would happen, happened, and there was nothing to do. The mud, however, the wet, the damp, they were up in my face "sixty by sixty, twenty-four by seven," all the time. After a while, I learned the work arounds, little tricks to keep my gear operative. It was amazing how dirty a lens could get and still make passable pictures. In the first weeks the gear was my refuge. I was so busy trying to look like I knew what I was doing that I had little time for fear, or at least real fear. I was more afraid to appear the fool, the cherry, the novice, who didn’t know which end was up. The other fear, the real one, needed time to grow.
The level of tension was high. The V.C. had really whacked the South, infiltrating Saigon, Hue, and all. Though our sector was relatively calm, if the South had gone, we would be up a very long creek. Talk about between a rock and a hard place—VC to the South, NVA to the North. Just one big squeeze!
There weren’t only Indians to worry about, for not being a true blue member of the cavalry I had to worry about them too. Despite attempts to get in character, I was still cherry. Even worse, I wasn’t a Marine and, therefore, untested in jarhead eyes, an unknown in a world where life depended on a trusted brother beside you. Many of the grunts wondered why I was there, just another rich, college-boy fuck, and a limey to boot. "The mo-fa must be a fag…or worse…maybe just crazy. Whatever…ya know d’ mo-fa be out of his gourd. Man this ain’t his mo-fa war and the mo-fa asked to eat this shit? Too mo-fa weird!" Not a fellow grunt, or even an officer, I was fair game for their pent-up rage. It was a world where there were only combatants, where at any moment the little fellows might be over the wire and up close and personal. I had to prove I was no tourist just passing through. Khe Sanh was no place to be a loner, survival a collective enterprise. In the beginning I had been abused, threatened, maybe even close to frag-city. They had jammed on my buttons and see where I would go. Their lives depended on it.
I was in a constant struggle with myself. It was so easy to hunker down in my bunker, just suck a little "O," and all the shit would go away. Almost all, because a small voice would still be working on me.
"This is your chance asshole. Get off your butt and prove to Ian, to myself, you’ve got what it takes. Get his damned footage, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll get you out of this motherfucker."
I was afraid if I didn’t perform, Ian would bury me, forget I existed, until I was taken out, that is. Then he could ship me back the cheap way—bagged, tagged, and boxed. So it was saddle up and wangle my way onto some patrol. God I felt awkward, out of place as a nun at a stag party, with all that gear and an aging, mouse-eared Auricon so clumsy on my shoulder. I could see myself in those grunts’ eyes, how ridiculous I was, how useless, how potentially disastrous.
After some time, when I had been in action and not fucked up too bad, I began to make friends…no military acquaintances was the operative term. When that being next to you could instantly transform into nothing, you didn’t really want to get too close, too attached. "But will you love me tomorrow?"
It helped that I wasn’t just in and out like so many of the media types—in on a morning flight, out in the afternoon, clutching cans of 7242 reality. Oh, very soon I would be doing the same thing, but for the moment I was gung-ho. I had to prove to myself. Yes, I could face the same dangers as that grunt I’d refused to be—not to kill, but to take the chance of being killed. I was still uncertain why I had refused. Was it from noble purpose, or was I chickenshit? And if it was the latter, was it a fear of death, mutilation, or just winding up like my five-pack-per-day father? But all this soul searching wasn’t forever, too heavy to keep it up for long. After the initial rush that was to be cherry the drill became one of keeping your head down, staying out of the way, yet at the same time grabbing enough shots to keep Ian happy, in other words, I learned my job. I was able to fill can upon can with the "drama of battle": artillery barrages, mortar attacks, even night-time assaults—those tracer streams were far out if you pushed the stock—and, of course, bodies, lots of bodies, in bags or in the buff.
The biggest problem was getting the film back. That took a lot of cajoling. In learning my way around the supply side of the military, I got my first introduction to Nam’s underworld, a world of corrupt Supply NCO’s and their counterparts and operatives in the ARVN. Remember an army not only fights on its stomach’s requirements, but on its other visceral needs as well.
As I acclimatized, I almost became fond of the place; in the same way I had later become attached to a particular cell after an extended period of confinement. For a while there was no choice anyway, because the flights out were either nonexistent, or my juice was too low to rate a ride. Ian, however, was getting antsy for his other footage. He had sent me into Khe Sanh because that was where action was expected, and I was the only available body. By March, it was clear that this wouldn’t be another Dien Bien Phu ("Diem Blew Who?"). With mixed feelings, I boarded a Huey and left the Quan Valley forever. Or at least I thought so at the time.
I quickly regained my senses. I’d had my universal military experience, enough at least that I had proven myself no coward. Oh, I had been scared shitless many times, but somehow crazed enough not to snap. Now the pleasures of Saigon waited. It was a city and no stranger in its ways than New York or London. There were insane moments, but they were brief and, I made sure, as infrequent as possible. I thought I had paid my dues. I learned how to get by, training eager young Vietnamese to do my work, milking footage to keep London off my back, but no more. Increasingly, my time was spent in Saigon. I sought out the company of the locals, patronizing the seedier bars, avoiding my fellow journalists like the plague. This was as much for necessity as taste; my questionable nationality made hanging out with the pack unwise. They all hung in close and, by their very profession, were a curious bunch. "What about this chap Guy. I can’t quite place it but something’s queer…about his accent. I mean, where did he come from anyway?"
I wasn’t about to raise any questions—out of sight out of mind. If this had been a station in the old Raj, my colleagues would have accused me of going "jungli," which was exactly what I did. I began to see a way to make my fortune, and like the Alphabets it was as a connection between two cultures.
At first I dealt exclusively with Ian, but he pressured me for the big time, for the rough No. 3 heroin that was available all over Saigon. He had a grand scheme to ship it to Hong Kong where they would kick it up a grade. From Hong Kong this reconstituted No. 4 would then go to London—all in the film cans protected by the agency’s logo. At this I finally balked. It was more than a little recreational drugs, some weed or even opium sent for Ian’s use. This was all about money, big money. There was just too much bad energy in that stuff, too concentrated, too much bad karma…. Besides, to be honest, if I was going that far, I wanted to do it myself, to make the big bucks, not be just a mule in someone else’s op. Yes, it wasn’t that I had any…scruples about moving white powder. I just didn’t like the people who were in the scene. If I was going to do this, I would eventually lock horns with the local paceri, the gang chiefs, not to mention the Chiu chau, the big Chinese syndicate behind most of the O to horse chain. It was common knowledge that the big dealing went all the way to the top, and I don’t mean just the gangsters. In Saigon, like elsewhere in the world, gangsters and government were hand in glove—if not one in the same.
If I am to continue to be honest, it probably was the fear of mixing with those dudes, rather than something silly like scruples. When you are in Hell, you are in Hell. What difference did it make what you did in a place where death, destruction, total wipe out were the main squeeze? Anything else, pussy, drugs, booze…it was just a place to get away to…an escape…for a short time.
In a way it was self-indulgence that saved my ass, for there were many wars being fought in Nam. I made my home in Saigon’s "Chinatown," Cholon. Not satisfied with mere exotica, I sought out the most infamous corner of that quarter, a warren of whores’ cribs and cages, and, of course, drug dens. It was known locally as "Serpent Alley," because of the numerous stalls selling snake cuisine—snake soup, grilled snake, fried snake, snake balls and rice. This fare was most appropriate for that neighborhood; snake was believed to enhance sexual performance and prolong pleasure. My pad was directly above a very popular "crib." What a ball-buster climbing those stairs, but at night, high up, I could catch the breezes—or at least that was what the landlord who rented the place promised. More real was the incessant Rock ’n Roll, punctuated by the dramatic moans and groans the girls employed to excite customers, making unaided sleep hard to come by.
I made friends with some of these ladies. Not for sex, as I preferred my own private squeeze, but when the girls were off-duty, they would come by to chat. I liked having them around. If I were between girls, they would cook and do little domestic chores in exchange for English lessons—the first glimmerings of my future profession. English was a great asset, for so many of the grunts just wanted someone to talk to, even more than they wanted sex.
Cholon was a natural for me, a fascinating margin, one of those world between worlds, I had a habit of falling into. With its own cosmopolitan Chinese reality, it was in many ways distinctly different from the rest of Vietnam. How could I have helped but be sucked in? The American presence was little felt there, except in the form of dropout GIs and occasional M.P. sweeps.
The War—since it was my war, it now was the War—receded into the background, like a natural disaster, an ongoing disaster that occurs but leaves you unscathed. More immediate were the mini-battles over local trade and turf. Oh, the War was always there, hovering, but in some "out there," not in with me. The real horror was just far enough beyond so that sometimes it could be forgotten. Maybe it was just the Alphabets all over. So much shit happening just beyond your door, yet as long as it isn’t kicked in…. That was a big difference between the grunts and me. I had a hole to hide in. I was left with some control over my fate. They had none.
What that looming horror did provide was the perfect excuse for a total blowout. Indulgence numbed me to the horror, making it possible to go on. It also became addictive. Before long, I couldn’t imagine a life where the future was known, where one lived for more than the now.
December 1969, the last few days of what now seems an almost mythic decade, and miraculously I was still alive. It seemed like forever since I had made that cherry landing at Tan Son Nhut. For the first time in my life, I felt established, a man of means, with an actual address, albeit in Cholon, and a couple of women waiting for me.
Even from this vast distance, in time and space, I can see that me. What an odd-bird, running straight for hell without the slightest clue where I was going. The time was rococo psychedelic, where the wonder had begun to be lost in elaboration. Just as now, I carried with me the sum total of my world.
Bundled against the Manhattan winter, I warmed my tropics-thinned blood with a flowing, white Turkish sheepskin. I was getting into Central Asia, having just shepherded my first load overland from Kashmir. I must have been crazy, all those borders, all those horrendous possibilities…if some custom wala had just been a little extra curious…. People said I looked like a Cossack. I didn’t take affront. I reinforced that "fresh from the steppes" look with knee-high, Gokey snake-proofs, hair half-way down my back, beard half-way down the front, Afghan hat, pastel wool shalwar/kameez, not to mention my hand-made, white moosehide shoulder bag replete with gold buckle, holding samples of my wares. I was out so far I didn’t even notice the vibes when I swooped into the Plaza’s Oyster Bar. For me it was the same as sitting down for a mutton kebab in the Khyber. Merchant prince fresh from the fabled orient, cool, or at least passable, in ’69.
Then change reared its interesting head and knocked me completely off my course, a course that I see now could have led only to an early grave. It was a sea change and it required a miracle. Her name was Mei.
I first met Mei when I was picking up that white moosehide bag. The maker was an old flame from the Alphabet days. She was just becoming trendy in the high-fashion world. Mei, an inveterate shopper, had come to her loft to check out the goods. True to her Chinese name, Mei was beautiful, drop dead beautiful, the kind of beauty that draws your eye like a magnet and won’t let you go. Even when she was no longer there, her after-image burned in my brain. I started talking to her. She told me she was a model—no surprise—but being Asian jobs were few. I told her about a photographer friend who might find her some work. That was the beginning.
At the time I was blown away, so gone, that I couldn’t even begin to understand the attraction—didn’t care. All I knew was that here on this bloody earth I had finally found my guide to paradise. Looking back, however, I guess there was a more rational motivation. Mei was Asian, outwardly different from all those Anglo girls who could be my sister…or mother. She was a welcome reminder of the world beyond New York, beyond America. That was a world closer to the edge, closer to what I believed to be reality. It was a world, which in its distance became ever more dear. The thought of a mate from that other world really fit the image I was building. That is the weirdness of being outside normal life. In the real world, one constructed of ongoing social relationships, ordered rules, and set assumptions, it is society that defines, casting an increasingly inescapable mold. But in my bizarre, kaleidoscopic existence, I constructed, destroyed, reconstructed, who I wished to be…even if it was only me who could see it.
Although she reminded me of that other world, Mei was different from women in Cholon. Like many of them, she was Chinese, part of the post-Revolution boogie. But unlike them, mostly of southern, Guangzou peasant ancestry, she was a Mandarin with the all the refinement and tall, willowy figure of the aristocracy and the North The events of ’49 caught the family in Yunnan where her dad was fighting a rearguard action against the Communist. Seeing all was lost, they crossed the border and settled in Hanoi, then under the French. Of course, that was a short-lived refuge. In ’54 the family again picked up, a KMT bigwig not too welcome under Uncle Ho, this time fleeing to Hong Kong. What a trip! Bailing out of the homeland at the age of three, only to have to bail out again five years later. Now it was another exodus, this time to the Big Apple. That sort of thing could put a spin on your perspective.
And what a contrast to the women I knew in Nam, not to mention those R&R sweethearts in Thailand, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. They were, after all, working girls, transplanted from the village, shorter, darker, and coarser. Though many had adopted big city ways, the dirt of the rice paddy lay just below the surface. Mei was from another planet. Physically she was quite tall, with thick, straight black hair, long legs and slim hips—almost boyish in figure. In those days of Twiggy, it was her biggest asset. Mei’s complexion was a clear, almost translucent, pale ivory, highlighted by several well-placed beauty marks. I have often wondered whether that early attraction to members of my own sex hadn’t been echoed in the draw of her boyish figure. She formed sort of a halfway point between two desires—the best of both possible worlds.
I planned to return to Nam right after the New Year, but it was increasingly difficult to imagine life without Mei. Cholon was receding and could have disappeared from my life altogether, except that it remained so much of my life. I still made good money on my double duty for Ian, and even though branching out, was unwilling to cut my ties. For a time, however, I had enough money, and before me was Mei, the ultimate challenge. Despite the conditional quality of my life, I knew I must have her, even though, like Benjamin in the Graduate, I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I would do once I got her.
In Mei I imagined destined soul mate. Yes, I really believed in such a thing at the time. Not that I considered marriage. Such a formality wasn’t part of my worldview: the demimonde of adventure-seeking globetrotters, shuttling between heaven and hell, always heading for the former, always in the latter. But I was gripped by an overwhelming need to possess Mei, to hold on to her and not let go.
Yet it was more than ego. I had spent considerable time beyond the constraints of the rational, and like many who find themselves in an unexplainable world, I fell deeply into the occult. I saw Mei as an incredible "lucky star," essential to going on. The idea began to obsess me, growing until I came to fear going back to Nam without the belief she would somehow be watching over me.
The "luck" thing started with a rather ridiculous mishap. We had been downtown, partying at a friend’s SoHo loft on Franklin Street. It was late, maybe three in the morning when we finally left—blasted of course. I called a cab and we went up town. When we got to the Plaza, my pied à terre in New York, I reached down for my wallet. It was gone. In those days I carried my entire stash with me, about ten grand tucked away in the tops of those snake-proofs. My whole life was in that wallet. Without it, I had no capital, no way to get back "home," no way to pay my tab at the Plaza. There was nothing for it but retrace my steps. On that cab ride back downtown, I was more terrified than I had ever been in Nam, even in the most unsecured LZ deep in the boonies. What hell to be in New York without a dime! Then the miracle occurred. As I stumbled out of the cab in a haze of alcohol and pot, there in the gutter, almost under my feet, was the wallet with its contents intact. That was the driver’s lucky night. I gave him one of those pictures of Ben Franklin for the ride—those were ’69 dollars. Mei brought to my life not only beauty but good fortune. I knew at that moment there would be no way I could let this talisman escape.
Mei wasn’t about to give up easily. I was just one of the many characters who swirled through her life. Perhaps it helped my cause that she was in a rebellious phase. I certainly represented everything her tradition detested. But what kind of a jerk would leave ten grand lying in the gutter? Who, but a fool, would carry that kind of money on the streets of New York?
And like the fool she saw me, I almost did lose her. New York is expensive, even more so when your trying to win that most beautiful girl in the world. Time whirled by and so did my money. What I found in that gutter soon disappeared into the hands of waiters, store clerks, cabbies, bell hops. Again it was reality time, which meant back to Nam, back to tempt the fates for one more "last" time.
^ ^ ^ Almost a year went by. I wrote Mei a few times; but there was no answer. Not easily put off, I decided to make another trip to New York. This time there would be no more mistakes. This time I wouldn’t let her slip through my fingers—of course, after stopping to score some of Mazar-i-Sharif’s finest.
The year before, just before I had run into Mei…perhaps collided is a better word, I contacted Chad, one of the few friends I had inherited from Stephanie. He was the photographer I had sent Mei to "go see." He was also my connect, having done a good job unloading the Kashmiri the previous year. Chad made his own move in my absence, the go-see leading to much more. As I said, Mei was a beauty in anyone’s book, and I really couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t so blasé at the time, however, and if I hadn’t needed him to unload my goods, we might have gotten it on. Instead, for the moment, I swallowed the pain, silently resolving I would move on her at the first opportunity…by fair means or foul.
I must confess it was more than love lost that made me so determined. I was scared as hell. I had set Mei up as my lucky star. Now she was in the arms of another and
the luck would be his not mine. Wishfully, I sensed that all wasn’t right between those two. One day I "ran" into Mei while she was out alone. After all, within a specific circle New York can be a small town, and I did know her haunts. I guess, I was subconsciously stalking her. Over coffee we chatted. I tried to appear casual, hoping she wouldn’t guess my game. After a bit of fencing she loosened up, and I found, to my ever-lasting happiness, that her relationship with Chad was one more of convenience than eternal love.
"The deal was Guy, the business too slow, too, too slow. Not much demand for exotica like me. And my family was coming down on me, everyday a new doctor, dentist, or some other stiff suit…and Chinese of course…knocking at the door. So transparent! God, I thought I’d escaped all that ethnic stuff…my family’s so straight…so Chinese. Then, just when I thought I couldn’t stand it any more…just give up and marry one of those straights to shut up the family, Chad comes along. You know how it is all so innocent at first. Yeah, he offered me a place to crash while he was away. Then he came back…and…well things…things just fell together. You know, I guess I’m not really unhappy…but…well Chad’s been real sweet."
Those last words, and the slightest suggestion I caught in her eyes, were like a green light going off. If I had had any qualms of bird-dogging Chad before, now I had none.
I set up a meet with Chad to pitch my new load. There was a whole ritual of tasting, then barter. We were in a bar near Houston, the Buffalo Road House, drinking and rapping, you know, swapping tales of daring-do, an equally essential part of the ritual.
Purposely not rushing into the business, we talked around it. I asked him about the "away" Mei had mentioned.
"You know man, I’ve been trying to break into film. I mean, that’s what’s really happening, not this still shit. I gotta thank you man! It’s you, dude, who put the buzz about Afghanistan in my head. You gave me enough palaver to bullshit my way into the job."
"What job was that?" I replied, really wanting to tell him that he had a lot more to thank me for, but I thought better of it.
"A big fucking Hollywood film…the big leagues…big stars…good bread. Real interesting too…about this Afghan dude who plays this game like polo only with the body of a goat—yeah, sort of a horseback rugby with a corpse. No rules, lot of blood and guts…buzkashee, they call it. I was only doing the stills, but I keep thinking, if they like my work, they may give me a shot."
I was about to reply, using this as the moment to spring into my own pitch. But he beat me to it. Switching to a more conspiratorial tone, "The thing is, man, the shit’s the best ever. It’s dirt cheap, a hundred a key for primo, hand pressed, first shake pollen…besides the place is bitching…like getting in a fucking time machine and going back two mother fucking thousand years. I kept looking for old J.C. to come riding along on a donkey or camel or something. Man, those dudes are out of this world—at least out of this time. Here try some real shit!"
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the real price was one tenth of what he had paid. Besides, this made it easier for me to charge even more.
The Buffalo was cool—I mean no Heat ever went there in those days, at least on duty—and as we were alone in a corner, I felt no qualms about lighting up. How different were those times. I took a long drag on his taste, but it was machine-pressed and stale. Diplomatically as possible, I eased him into my own, freshly harvested, hand-pressed product. You had to be careful; folks got real sensitive about the quality of their stash.
He took it pretty well, maybe because he was running almost empty, and I had appeared just in time. After the smoke, we got to talking again, tripping out into this crazy idea. If we could make a film in Afghanistan, we might run an op similar to my scene in Nam. I had already told him what I was doing, about my uneasiness in continually walking the Cholon tightrope, and for someone else’s profit at that.
Such openness seems strange today. But then, perhaps because we were so naive, perhaps just stupid, there wasn’t the paranoia. For those inside the life, it was clear who was who; the lines were yet to be crossed. If you were among friends, you could be fairly open about your business. That is how thing got done and without violence. I was enthusiastic about the possibilities. This time there would be no boss, no more Ian. Just ship the dope back with the film. Chad would handle the distribution. We would split the take fifty-fifty—righteous dude! Of course, since Chad thought the price was a hundred, and I wasn’t about to make him feel the fool.
Even more than profit, I saw in this project a chance to get to Mei. She dreamed of getting into film, and jumped when I offered her a "lead": the part of a Hazara princess—although doing what, at the time, I had yet to contemplate. It was sort of plausible. The Hazaras, descendents of the Mongol horde, had Asian features like Mei. Of course Chad was most unhappy, but hip enough not to stand in her way. What guts Mei had just to pick up and go half way round the world. But that was Mei. She was no stranger to cutting roots, and it was this gypsy quality which drew me even closer.
I had gone to Kabul directly from New York. After several establishing runs, everything was ready for the "princess." Finally, Mei was in my clutches and Chad very far away. The predator turned suitor, my lust overcome by love. Her beauty caught my eye and, as I have confessed, my ego, but it was her courage that grabbed my heart. Here was a woman who was my equal, a partner to travel the world. It all came together in the deep snows of that Kabul winter. Separated from our familiar worlds, we struggled to survive in a totally strange one. We finally saw each other—she, not just the exotic, desirable trophy woman, I not the bizarre, drugged out, wannabe, but two lonely people each desperately in need of the other. It had to be fated. How else could two people, outwardly so different, born on opposite sides of the earth, find their way to each other? When the wall came down, Mei unleashed a flood of passion. For too long she had held back, suppressing those most natural desires. In a large, many windowed house that reminded me of Zhivago’s Verikynoe, we retreated to a single room, Arctic cold driven back by the cherry red glow of bukhari, a wood stove made from a tin drum, whose efficient heat is often the difference between life and death. Mei, like that bukhari, radiated life, giving things, long locked inside.
Mei was so opposite from the creature I first supposed her to be. She was an emotional river, running deep and fast. She overwhelmed me, and I was lost totally within her. She became my sixth and most important sense. Through her I learned my place in the world. I was the man Mei loved. That was my crowning achievement, more than enough for one life—at least it seemed so for a very long time.
Although I had lured Mei to Afghanistan with promises of cinematic fame, there was of course, as in the case of all my films, that other, more pragmatic purpose. Of this Mei was blithely unaware, until she arrived and found our enterprise embroiled with the Man. The DEA almost nailed me in Kabul.
Chastened, I now looked for an alternative to the chaos that was my life. We fled to India, and there outside of Delhi, in the shadow of the Qutab Minar, we married. It was a Buddhist ceremony, attended by a legion of fellow freaks. Bedecked in jasmine garlands and clad in white khadi, we mouthed, to the accompaniment of sitar, sarod, and tabla, unknown wedding vows. It didn’t matter; we were in love.
After a several months of struggle—the Kabul debacle left us broke—we returned to the States and parlayed a smuggled kilo of hash into a new stake. With it we set up a flat in San Francisco’s Marina. Despite growing financial success, our needs were modest and, for a while, life was good. We lived on the edge of society, enjoyed its fruits, yet felt free of its constraints. To the straight world around us, we seemed the typical film freaks. In another milieu, we might have stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb, but in wigged-out ’70s San Francisco, we were almost normal. The mysteries of film production provided an excellent cover for our far-flung travels and bohemian life. Whenever we felt too entangled in accumulating relationships, we would take off. The only constant in our lives was us. No desert island could have offered more seclusion. I can still recall the all-consuming passion…such passion. Even though we fought like hellcats throughout those years, we also loved with an equal fervor. We were inseparable, traveling around the world several times over. During those times when the exposure was too great for me to risk her, I lived only for the moment when I could be with her again. What more could love be than that?
And those times grew with increasing frequency. Bills to be paid! I was, after all, a combat photographer and, even more dangerous, a smuggler. Each time I set out on a journey, it was to the unknown. There was no promise of return, and it wasn’t only that I might be KIA, busted, or murdered for my bankroll. The wars I filmed were in far away places, and so were the drugs I smuggled. The people in those parts had different worldviews. How easy it would have been for me to lose myself in some distant valley, to assume new identity, new life. I often fantasized on this. But my love for Mei was still too strong. She was the lodestone drew me back and, though unable to escape this pull, the differences in those distant lands continued to affect me. They reinforced my belief in the relativity of life and excused my failure to live by the rules of any one society. How could you make war for peace? How could a plant be illegal?
Back in San Francisco, our flat began to fill with mementos and film, miles and miles of film. If circumstances had been otherwise, I would have gotten off my ass and tried to market all that film and my career along with it. But I didn’t bother. I was making more than enough from smuggling. Money allowed me the illusion of being an artist. I didn’t need to test my skill in the marketplace, submit to its judgment and bullshit. Of course, this was just a cover for my own insecurity. Maybe, now looking back, that was my biggest curse. If I had faced that judgment, I would have woken up and become a insurance salesman, settled in the burbs and had kids. Sure!
Eventually, I got damn tired, even of the "righteous" charas business. As I grew older and began to lose my nerve—maybe just about losing nerve—I realized my powers weren’t as great as once believed. To my friends, I was living an enviable life, but they didn’t understand the cost. I had two distinct worlds: one, the "good life" of film projects, photography, the arts with which I came more and more to identify; the other was a malign, "anti-life," with all sorts of creepy characters that scurried roach-like in and out, hoping to feed on my excess energy. I lost my interest in the latter and began to feel I was somehow better than the rest of the insects, even though this association was what paid my bills. I wanted out, but it wasn’t easy to leave such a world gracefully.
Paranoia was a constant. As there was always the strong possibility, that everything might quite suddenly vanish, there was no point in putting down roots. Instead, I had the feeling I was already too established, too fixed for that inevitable time when I must fold my tent and flee into the night. And I mean this quite literally; our only truly valuable possessions were things like rugs, jewelry, clothing, cameras, things that could be packed, things that could be folded. I loved the travel and other perks, but the paranoia wearied me. It wearied Mei too, but she just put it out of mind. Every time I heard a siren, a chill went through me—even though knowing that, when they came, there would be no siren.
Then I hit on the idea of trekking "expeditions." You know, so California, the natural beauties of the Himalaya, the colorful native cultures, with enlightenment optional. I saw this as a way to gradually transform my business from one of importing drugs to rich people, to exporting rich people to the drugs. What a brilliant idea! I could still travel, still return to the Himalaya and, overtime, wean myself from smuggling. To live in the demimonde you needed an extremely well honed nerve. For the first time I was acquiring things: a beautiful wife, a life, and then a fledgling business, things that were dangerous for a career where every venture was an all or nothing proposition. I was way out on a ledge, teetering over a bottomless abyss, but by then it was too late to climb back to the safety. I had to keep on in the hopes that the ledge would eventually widen, and lead to a habitable plateau.
Suddenly, I slipped. I went careening into the abyss. A three-month business trip turned into a thirty-two month odyssey in the Federal slammer. It all came crashing down when several kilos of charas were discovered in my luggage on return from an expedition. It had been one last score—of course it is always the "last"—to carry us over until the business started to turn a profit. I really wanted to quit, but now it was too late. I was no longer in control of my own destiny.
Or was I? As I replayed it during the long months of incarceration, I realized there was a strong possibility that I had invited, if not engineered, my own fall. Didn’t I notice a strong smell of charas at the shipping office in Delhi? Hadn’t the freight people seemed a little weird? And then there was that strange warning call on my return to the States. "Meester Guy, those carpets you send back to Amrika, some problem, some beeg problem. You know those carpets!" The caller hadn’t identified himself and, as I hadn’t sent any carpets, I played dumb. But all of this was enough to make a more prudent smuggler cut and run. Where could I run? Anyway, I had developed a hard rule about that sort of thing. I knew paranoia. It was always greatest when I was back at home, sitting around, waiting for the shipment to arrive. My mind could play incredible tricks. No, once committed, I had to go through with it. There were always warnings, always omens—always some white dog lying dead on the road, like the time when I crossed the border between Herat and Mashed with a death sentence-size load in the spare tires of my Land Rover. If I reacted to every omen, I might not ever get out of bed, let alone smuggle a load of charas.
About an hour after the freight forwarder dropped off the shipment, a swarm of DEA descended. This was one time when I should have listened to that inner voice of caution—I knew the driver was sweating too much in the cool autumn air. I had gone out for a jog to clear out all those bad vibes; they nailed me two blocks away, thinking I was making a run for it. Sure, in my running shorts, not a penny! But later, they actually offered this as evidence of my guilt. Mei was rousted and the flat occupied until they could get a warrant. Finally, after a frantic search, they found the stash. For some reason they didn’t want Mei. Maybe they believed me, for when they surrounded me, guns drawn, the first thing I had blurted out, reflexively, without thinking, "My wife has nothing to do with this." As you might imagine, my lawyer had trouble with that one. Or maybe there was a sense of chivalry in those boys. But what I like to think, believe, is that there was some God somewhere watching over us, because without her, I don’t think I would have made it.
Sitting alone in the confines of a solitary cell, with murderous thugs on either side—oh, they had fun with a cherry like me—reality caught up. I found myself stripped of all previous identity. All those romantic images, adventurer, artist, entrepreneur, exploded. I had only to look in the eyes of guards and fellow prisoners. What truth they reflected. It hit me hard; just another loser, another creep, and for sure another con—this time I was really in the belly of the beast. Indeed, I was one of those roach-like characters I had grown to disdain. No longer need I work to be outside society; I was out permanently. The parole officer who filed my pre-sentence report, the document which told the judge just how bad a perp I really was, hit the mark: "The defendant seems to have lost touch with the moral reality of this society…He has somehow slipped into a crack between cultures."
After the wake-up call of this collision with the criminal justice system, I was predictably incarcerated. The months dragged by. The worst was in the County jails, sitting all day, trying to stay sane, fighting the chaos of dozens of TV sets all turned to top volume, all on different channels. They were, I think, the most noxious part of the torture. There we were in our little cells, fairly peaceful and quiet…then…RUMBLE, RUMBLE…down the hall paraded the TVs, pushed by trustees on wheeled dollies. The place turned into a mad house, as waves of distorted sound bounced off puke-green tile walls.
The real pen was like going to heaven. I could actually walk outside, see the sky, flowers, and look out at a bay—even if it was only San Pedro’s. It was weird though…everything looked as if it was on a movie screen. I kept thinking…all I have to do is step through that screen and I will be in another world—but it was only a thought.
Then I wrangled my way to the "country club"…another world…heavy-duty ladies and lightweight men. The girls had mucho time, lifers, twenty years—murder, bank robbery, kidnapping, air piracy. The men—mostly "white collar" and drugs—were all counting months. The trick was to keep your thing out of the cookie jar…so to speak. That was the big NO. Some of the women made a sport of it. It was no big thing for them; they could find other ways. They liked to see how many dudes they could get shipped. When you got caught, you would be on your way pronto and to less laid back places. Even worse, they might put you on a bus, orbiting the country, touring county jails—no address, no visits, no perks, just a lot of fucking baloney and cheese sandwiches.
When I got out—and how I had lived for that moment—prospects were bleak, and friends melted away. Those who remained treated me differently than before. I was different, an ex-con with all that baggage. Mei was the one saving grace. By some unexpected miracle, she remained. At one point, in a moment of nobility, to which I regularly, if briefly, succumb, I "released" her. I can remember my very words, of course hoping upon hope that she wouldn’t take me up on my "noble" offer. "Look Mei, things are fucked and they’re going to get even more fucked. I’ll cut you loose if you want, so you can start over with…someone else, no hard feelings." What a liar I was.
I couldn’t imagine Mei on her own, unprotected by what I saw as my strong arms. This was still in a time when I thought of it as "a man’s world." In assuming she would need a replacement, I underestimated her own considerable powers. She declined to leave me, so vulnerable, so alone. In the three years of separation, while I was in the suspended state of incarceration, marking time in the prison shuffle, Mei was in the World. To survive, she took on a career, experiencing all the changes a new role in life brings. When I returned, it was to a different Mei, one who was now self-sufficient, having learned to live quite nicely without me. I had lost my power over her, and she had a new power over me. Our roles flip-flopped. I wasn’t amused. Mei refused to dump me for another man. Instead, in a way, she dumped me for herself, and although, for my material well being, this was a comfort, for my ego it was worse than if she had gone off with another man.
I am not blaming Mei. The bust was possibly even more traumatic for her. All I had to do was sit there and take my three hots and a cot. She had to survive, no longer the jet-setting filmmaker, but the wife of a con. However, these weren’t the real blows. Despite Mei’s charms, her sheltered upbringing made her closed to the outside world. I had been her only real friend, as well as sole financial support, helping her escape from the world, offering a self-contained fantasy into which she fully bought. Then with crushing suddenness, she was thrust back into the hustle.
Prison also bought me back to that hustle. Only in my case it was superficial as the lesson came too late. When I got out, I found I was accustomed to "campus" life, perhaps even institutionalized. I had little taste for the type of employment available to ex-cons. Under my circumstance and supervision, going back to my old profession was most unwise. Therefore, I decided, like most of my colleagues long before, to finally "get it together." Where I came from, this could only mean going back to school for the BA I had earlier scorned. In my mind it was all part of an unwritten social contract: just get your college degree, then the doors of opportunity will swing open. Oh, I imagined that in my case the doors would creak a bit, but nevertheless they would open.
Even in the seeming practicality of this act, there was that touch of the bizarre. I couldn’t quite let go of those dreams of distant places, even though I had forfeited my US passport and needed the parole officer’s permission every time I moved. I tried to reconstruct my image as a filmmaker and photographer, particularly as one who loved remote places. To do this, I decided to learn at least the basics of anthropology, so that I might accompany anthropologists as an expedition photographer. That was the plan anyway. Unfortunately, stripped of the ability to live within the bounds of my current reality, I continued to build my future out fantasy. Just a little market research would have told me there wasn’t much demand for such a specialty.
In consequence, with little other direction, I slid ever deeper into the bowels of academe. One scholarly hurdle led to the next, keeping my mind busy, so I could never grasp what might lie at the end. After the BA, I was accepted into a graduate program. Ivy no less! I thought I was on my way.
By that time, things between Mei and myself were rocky. She wanted a partner with equal earning power, not the forty-something, professional student. She wasn’t about to put her own career on hold to go east with me.
Alone, in a strange world, I soon succumbed to loneliness, temptation, lust, weakness, Raga, forming, what at the time I thought was to be, a temporary alliance of convenience. This was with a young, fellow student, another Chinese, but from Taiwan. She was twenty years my junior, about the same age as Mei when we had first met. Was I trying to recapture the past? Maybe! Certainly I hoped to get back some of that passion. But could I start my life over? For two years I served as this newcomer’s mentor, not only in the culture of America, but in its ways of love—or more precisely my ways. She was totally untouched, open, innocent, and I trained her in my own particular brand of pleasures—desires that, over the years, moved beyond what might be considered the "norm." In my mind, I remade her as I wanted, even giving her a name to replace her own that stumbled on the American tongue. I called her Tara.
It was a name I had come across in prison in a book on Tantric Buddhism, a rather dry, scholarly tome, but its description of the Tibetan deity Tara, struck me. I don’t remember all the details; she came in many forms, White Tara or Green Tara, each with distinct qualities. At the same time all these qualities, or aspects were part of a larger Tara. The Tibetan’s Tara, like the Virgin Mary in the West, served to absorb all the pre-Buddhist, goddess cults—yet, in keeping with its eastern origins, allowing for more than one permutation.
My Tara physically reminded me of the book’s wood-block prints of the goddess. The classic moon-faced beauty with wine-cup dimples and large almond eyes. Even her figure was like the goddess, narrow waist, yet full in the hips with ample buttocks that promised such pleasures. If Mei had been somewhat androgynous, Tara was excessively feminine. And how I hungered for that femininity.
The bust, and then prison, had stripped me of any semblance of power, real or imagined. The prospects of graduate study in an East Coast urban jungle was only slightly better. Then, from out of the blue, this young woman appeared, unspoiled by life’s cares, eager to offer up her soul. It was as if she had said, "Here take me; make me what you want." And I had, testing her in various ways, seeing just how far she would go to fulfill my pleasure. Oh, I tell you what temptation, such a succulent morsel as you might imagine, putty in the clutches of the experienced seducer. Plucking her cherry was like taking candy from a baby. What man wouldn’t have done as I? What profligate? She was so open, so in my power. Who was I to spurn such a gift? For in that moment I had forgotten karma. I had yet to meet Mara—who watched and waited.
^ ^ ^
From a great distance I hear Devara’s voice. God, I have been away…so far, far away, lost to all sense of the present. How real the past seems when the future is….
"Ah, ji Bhaai, we of Lord Shiva following, also know of Mara. Sometimes we call him Namuci. The name meaning ‘he who not let go.’ He much to us offers, but always at big price. Like in dhaba or chaikanna. They offer big meal or fancy sweet. Later bill come. We also call him Kama, God of desire, of bodily lust. In this desire Kama work his magic, keeping men in endless cycles of life and death. Devara think it strange Bhaai escape Mara through this Tara. Better you naming her Maya. She most certainly illusion, like the makri…the spider, around you a web weaving. In this web, life death all same. All driven by desire. Devara of Tara not hearing, but know not saving Bhaai from Mara. All in end must come to Mara."
Yeah, Devara, now tell me something I don’t know. I say this silently, reserving my feeble sarcasm for myself. But, almost as if in response, he gives me the oddest look.
^ ^ ^
Two years went by. I graduated, and returned to San Francisco and Mei. But Tara wasn’t easily dismissed. She stuck in my mind, heart, and most certainly my loins. I knew I was playing with fire, yet I went ahead and persuaded Tara to follow me to the Coast, not of course to San Francisco, even I wasn’t the crazy but South where I continued my study. It was one thing to have a lover three thousand miles away from Mei, but what I was about to do was to destroy my foundation. Shortly after Tara arrived, Mei decided to join me, unaware that I had secreted a lover nearby.
Time seemed to stand still. I delved deeper into my tiny corner of study, warding off boredom with this clandestine affair. It was almost like smuggling, those secretive rendezvous, covering my tracks, trying not to make any slips. It kept me on my toes. In bland academic world, she was my one flirtation with danger…a continuation of my walk along the razor’s edge, a gauge of my own powers. Did I have the juice to pull it off? Two worlds! I needed more than one to shuttle back and forth so that I didn’t have to become part of any one. Hadn’t my mentor, that crusty old cynic, Professor Whistler, warned against dyadic relationships?
"Triangulation, Guy, that’s the secret. Just like a ship, you need two or more points of reference to know where you are." What a clever piece of scholarly rationalization that had been for this inveterate roué.
Again, I found the feeling of power I had lost over Mei. That power for me was an aphrodisiac. Tara surrendered completely to my sexual whims and fantasies—nurtured over years of forced abstinence in prison—or at least for a while she was able to make me think she did. In this sensual abandon, not only her body, but also her mind, were tools for my gratification. I was able, at least for the moment, to find annihilation, to lose sight of myself. What she felt I am not sure. Perhaps, it was the dues she paid not to be alone, but along with the company she got my read on life. Outwardly she showed almost filial devotion—almost too filial for comfort although appropriate to our ages. However, she too had her own, developing agenda, one in which I was to play no part.
Near the end, she looked into my eyes: "Guy I don’t see our future." For some reason, I became very angry. I don’t know why, because I couldn’t see a future either. I just wasn’t ready to let go, not only of Tara, but also of that passion I equated with being alive, with being a man.
Just as the rewards of smuggling had crashed down, ending the career as filmmaker, those of betrayal ended my role as scholar. This was truly the work of those "daughters of desire," greed, passion, and ignorance, but of course I didn’t see it at the time.
It was too cold. We acted out of desperation, one reacting to the outrage of the other. The point was reached where we could no longer continue the assaults. We both would have done anything to stop the carnage. We just escalated our attacks until any semblance of we exploded into oblivion, nothingness.
I had done one interview in Nam…must have been in the early days when I was still doing my own work…with a Grunt who had lost a leg. He told me that he could still feel it, sometimes itching, sometimes burning, sometimes worse. It wasn’t doing him any goddamned good. But it sure gave him a lot of grief. His "ghost" he called it, torturing him because he had been so stupid to go there and lose it.
Tara was now my ghost. She was gone, I mean forever, but I could still…still feel her. Of course she was still there, just in a different form. Love like all energy doesn’t disappear, just transforms into another emotion, another form of the same energy.
In my forties, ex-felon, broke, failed in all my relationships, denied academia’s security—I was in short, too fucked. I saw people only as nodes of potential pain, traps to fall into. In a very short time, I closed my contacts with the outside world. It was all too classic, avoidance and denial: avoidance of any reality except what I could control; denial of what I had failed to control. Mei, despite the difficulties, remained, but she too was changed. Although she refused to desert me, her anger now transformed into pity, she was betrayed. Mei had every right to react as she did, hating Tara for what Tara had done to our life, to the "us" that we had been and were now no more. Even more, she despised me for what I had become.
I had to get out. Being so long in the University was in many ways like being in prison. What better place to warehouse deviate minds? Scholars, though allowed expression, could always be marginalized by the irrelevant minutiae of their study. In the University, I had a life, tasks, duties, problems, and relationships that were real on the inside, yet untranslatable to the world beyond. If I wanted to make the years of experience count, I was locked into academe. But without the union card of a Ph.D., not to mention other baggage I did carry, options were extremely limited. I promised myself to take the first job, any job. After a seeming endless number of resumes, I finally "scored," teaching English at a college in Japan. Although I was to head west, I would wind up in the East, and this time about as Far East as one can go.