Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

Speaking of sick, I had a very odd attack of jet lag/motion sickness/vertigo when I arrived. This is so much more than you asked for, so feel free to stop reading now. What that forces you to notice, of course, is the most momentary kind of experience, like the quality of the air brushing against your face. (If you’re outside, or anywhere near a major street, it’s not good.) But then when you come back to yourself there’s this feeling of relief and possibility and gratitude as well. And I’m beginning to grasp why people show up here and feel a certain kind of giddiness. My guy is one of those people, an American businessman who came here and started a whole new enterprise. Can’t say anything more, because I’m only just getting the bits and pieces of the story myself and anyway it’s under wraps for the magazine. But here’s my stupid theory, for better or worse. The sensory range of Thailand is very, very wide. It’s there in the food, in the aesthetics, the temples, the color schemes, and also of course the way the city reproduces global images so perfectly but not quite.

But it doesn’t push itself on you. There’s a kind of dreamy slowness there, too. Not like India. I was in India only once, visiting a girl I knew in college on the way home from China, and I found it unbearable, the way my taxi was surrounded by beggars at every traffic light. I can see how one could show up in Thailand and think, I could do this. Not Bangkok, maybe, but from what I’ve read there are thousands and thousands of farang s living out in the countryside and in the beach towns, whole colonies of German men with Thai wives who have taken over villages in the remote interior. For all the overwhelming qualities as a whole picture it’s remarkably unthreatening. And then, of course, there’s the lack of resentment, the lack of anger.

Rina, I have to say, it’s good to be talking to you this way. A little outside of myself. And the situation. I’ll keep going, if you don’t mind. Don’t feel obligated to keep reading, though.

Thailand is one of those places that is so much itself that it makes the rest of the world seem impossible. Let me tell you what I mean. The first day I was here, on the way home from a meeting, I told the driver I wanted to stop and get some coffee. So he took me to this bubble tea place — I guess that’s what he thought I meant by coffee . Right off one of the main avenues, across the street from a gigantic shopping mall, underneath the Skytrain. So you’ve got the ten lanes of traffic ripping by, the sidewalk is elbow-to-elbow, the sunlight cutting in and out between the buildings, the humidity descending in waves, and then inside this place it’s like a walk-in freezer crossed with a pediatric hospital, all white tile and big splashes of color, you know what bubble-tea drinks are like, Technicolor froth with those strange black balls at the bottom. Full of teenage girls in spike heels and big chunky bracelets and those ripped-up asymmetrical sweaters that look like knitting accidents. And then I see — after I ordered my plain, unsweetened oolong tea, which made the twelve-year-old at the counter very sad — a little sign at the front of the place, over a booth, with a picture of a man wrapped in what looked like swaddling clothes, and in English and Thai, These seats reserved for monks.

Do you see what I mean? It doesn’t have to be so radical a shift, necessarily — not halfway across the world. I mean a place that doesn’t lack anything, that doesn’t depend on a relation to somewhere else. You might even say that about the West Coast, about Berkeley or Mountain View or Seattle, as versus the east. Honestly, if you can live in Berkeley, why would you want to live somewhere else? You get me?

I’m not being very coherent, am I? Let me put it this way: when I left college, when I went to China, what I was looking for, without knowing it, was a place that made Baltimore seem like a bad dream. The quality of not being able to square one reality with another. That’s what I wanted. And I got that. Then — mostly because Wendy needed it — I agreed to go back. (Not to Baltimore, but close enough.) I was altered enough. Or at least I thought I was. Then, of course, I flunked out of grad school, effectively, and Meimei came along, and it didn’t matter anymore. Life was life. Now, of course, all those bets are off. I’ll say this: it doesn’t just go away, that need to erase one reality with another. Or, better yet, find a way to make them overlap. There’s a claim on me that hasn’t gone away. I think I’m beginning to understand how money is really made. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

There’s a little gulping sound coming from my laptop, some kind of alert noise I must have turned on once without realizing it. It’s coming from a browser window I left open to Facebook while I was typing this email. Someone is pinging me, I think that’s the word. I was never one for instant messaging or chat rooms and never even try to find people that way, and luckily, I’m in a chat-averse age group, the last ones who prefer an actual conversation to little furtive messages skittering across a screen. I click on the flashing blue dot, almost vibrating for my attention in the corner of the screen.

Robin Wilkinson

>What’s up Kelly? How’s BKK?

Kelly Thorndike

>Hey! I didn’t realize you were on this thing.

Robin Wilkinson

>Tamika showed me how to use it. Heard you were a little under the weather? Not turista I hope;(

Kelly Thorndike

>No it was just a little disorientation I guess. Martin has been very helpful & the staff here are great. I’m extremely well taken care of.

Robin Wilkinson

>He keeps telling the girls he’s going to bring them out next time.

Kelly Thorndike

>Not you?

Robin Wilkinson

>Can’t with my schedule. Not enough staff drs to cover for that long. Plus I need to be reachable all the time.

Kelly Thorndike

>Got it.

Robin Wilkinson

>Anyway. Makes int’l travel almost impossible. Anyway, not my thing. Drives Martin crazy. Would like the girls to go, though.

Kelly Thorndike

>Sorry to cut you off, it’s the nature of the device I guess.

Robin Wilkinson

>Had a strange dream about you the other night.

>Still there?

Kelly Thorndike

>Just waiting, sorry should have prompted you.

Robin Wilkinson

>Not much of a dream, really. We were at one of Sherry’s swim meets, and she won a lot of blue ribbons (guess there’s a first time for everything), and for some reason the announcer said, over the PA, “And now introducing Sherry Wilkinson’s parents, Robin, Martin, and Kelly.” And you were there, in the bleachers, sitting next to us. Is there something you want to tell me, Kelly? Talk about journalistic overreach. Ha, ha, ha.

Kelly Thorndike

>I think that’s supposed to be ROTFL.

Robin Wilkinson

>It’s just a matter of time before there’s “Jenny Has Two Dads and a Mom.”

Kelly Thorndike

>Love makes a family, after all.

>That didn’t come out quite right.

Robin Wilkinson

>My! Had to hold my breath for a moment there.

Kelly Thorndike

>Sorry. That was supposed to sound ironic.

Robin Wilkinson

>Give me another minute.

Kelly Thorndike

>Still there?

Robin Wilkinson

>Do you want to talk about it?