Yesterday I was walking back from Japanese bridge along the riverside. Suddenly tamarind pods started falling from a tree above me. It shook me out of my daze. A daze induced by smog and weed. A teenage girl walked up to tree and started collecting the tamarinds. I gave her the one I had partially peeled. I headed off and looked back when I was thirty meters down the street. She had two full plastic bags of tamarinds by this time and was smiling. Only empty branches fell from the tree now. A magic tree, I thought and smiled for just a moment. And then I was back in the fumes and dirt again. The heat and the smell of shit a few metres down the road reminded me sturdily that I was indeed in Phnom Penh. I reckoned I’ve been stuck here for two years but I could be wrong. It may have been two and half years. It all just blends together these days.
I walked on past the coffin shop as a man varnished a large coffin, then past the glory of the Citadel Knife shop. I cantered right on past the galaxy of pirate DVDs rotting in the sun. Then upon the path lay pirate books that were worth reading if not already. Past one hundred tuk tuk men in stained long sleeved collared shirts, their smiling eyes calling me teacher, hopeful but content. I enjoyed the teacher label a lot.
Turning right and through the Monk city compound. Blissfully there was not a thing for sale for that silent five minutes of cruising through another world separate from the insanity. A vampire themed bar was opening on my street. I chuckled while feeling inwardly sad. It was ridiculous. The next day I saw the door they had installed was heavy black fake wrought iron. With a windowless frontage my teeth began to grind.
The interior...well it was pitch black and after gazing for a second I saw a stripper pole within the frame of the door. A windowless frontage screaming in a Transylvanian mural, "Flesh for sale!" pale Khmer flesh I guess. I was starting to look away too early when we walked the streets to investigate. I wasn't game enough to get the full picture. The full picture can blow your mind and get you drinking and morose. It can screw up your whole day. I was getting old and sensitive to the world of suffering.
"It’s the same boring fucking bullshit damn it. So bloody one eyed is this world. But on my fucking street." I muttered to myself as I re-joined my girlfriend. So it was going to be another bloody hostess bar.
"What babe?" my partner asked.
"Good weather for it!" I said gleefully and gently squeezed her hand as we dodged scooters and a rudely sized Hummer.
Blood is money
We held hands and charged onward to the market.
I don't think they liked us holding hands.
The men on the street cannot pronounce my first or last name. So they call me by my middle name, “Alan” because I guess that’s what my loan shark calls me when he reads my passport. Word travels so fast and far in this town.
I didn’t like reading men’s minds. Watching their eyes cleave to her chest as we pushed forward.
It was getting tiring and I was getting too old for this shit.
The prices were high today at the market. I blamed my white skin for the mark ups. Everybody else blamed Vietnam.
Only mangoes ever cheered me up at the market. She always bought me mangoes.