I am suffering from good health today. By that I mean my schedule is all disrupted because I feel so doggone good. Normally I arise with a backache and dizziness around 4 in the morning, drag myself to my recliner, bow my head, and whimper a prayer of thanksgiving which is barely audible and as anemic as Esau’s love for his brother Jacob. Then I sit for at least twenty minutes, wondering why I bother to get out of . . . what’s that thing called where I lay down sometimes? Oh well, whatever it is, I wish I were back in it, or on it, or maybe even under it. But I’m not, so I check my emails and Facebook and Twitter. Then I remember I have to take my pills, but my stomach is gurgling like the Maelstrom. So I leave a message for my daughter Sarah on Facebook; I do this every day when I get up since having a bad fall one night a few weeks ago so someone knows I’m alive and still able to get around.
After I manage to choke down the pills I again sit for twenty minutes wondering why I bother to take those . . . what are those little round things that taste so nasty and make me pee all the time? Oh well, thank goodness my memory is still in good shape. But my body now wants to go back to sleep, so I close my eyes to think about doing that, and an hour later I open them after deciding that I do not need to take a nap. That settled, I start to write again. Until I remember I’m hungry and I need to go to the Rec Center to swim and exercise. Should I eat first or should I go to the Rec Center first? I know if I eat first I’ll never make it to the Rec Center; I’ll have to wait around to have a bm, because if I start walking to the Rec Center I’ll get caught halfway there with a terrific urge . . .
The rest of the day is no better, but at least I have it planned out. That gives me comfort.
But today I slept soundly until six thirty, had a marvelous bowel movement, ate a hearty breakfast, and couldn’t wait to shout my prayers to heaven and then get on the ol’ laptop to start writing.
This is not me. Suddenly my libido is back. I dream about Joom. I dream about Amy. I dream about a couple of bar girls who wanted me to teach them English. I clean the stove. I put the vacuum cleaner back together. I not only wash the dishes but soak them in Clorox water first to make sure they’re antiseptic. I go shopping for Bush’s Baked Beans for lunch so I can have them with wieners and a dash of Tabasco Sauce; a fool’s errand when your bowels are as finicky as mine.
It’s one-thirty in the afternoon and I haven’t put the beans on yet. In fact, I haven’t even unpacked the groceries, which include milk and anchovy paste and cream cheese. Plus some Utah chocolate truffle candy bars, which I have never bought before. I gave up candy bars when I gave up swearing, dammit.
And now, when I should be reading and napping the afternoon away, feeling slightly sorry for myself and hoping God notices what a martyr I am to my ill health, as per schedule, I am going to write a Thai ghost story! Because it’s all about Joom. I’m sublimating something or other for something or other else, but can’t explain it beyond that. Nor do I want to. At may age I get in trouble when sex enters the picture.
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All Thais are superstitious. They believe in portents, magic numbers, auspicious days, and ghosts.
Joom frequently dreamed of the winning Lottery number and would not leave me alone until I coughed up a hundred baht for her ticket. It never won, for which she blamed me:
“You were disrespectful in front of Spirit House. You didn’t bow. So the spirit sent me the wrong dream!”
“Would you like another Leo, princess?”
That usually settled her hash.
Of course the one time I absolutely refused to give in to her fetish and fork over the baht, her number came up for two-thousand ticals.
She was surprisingly laid back about it.
“It’s not a problem, thi rag. I am not angry; only sad for you because in the next life your karma will be so bad for keeping me poor.”
“Thanks for your understanding, princess. Let me put some ice in that glass of Leo for you.”
Joom could tell instantly if someone had a good spirit or bad spirit about them. She consequently told me who I could be friends with and who I could not be friends with. I didn’t really mind, because all the people she told me had bad spirits were boorish British drunks that I didn’t want to spend time with anyway -- and most of those who had a good spirit, according to Joom, were attractive women who drank too much and liked to give free foot massages.
The bungalow I rented for us was haunted. By the ghost of the landlord’s daughter, who had taken her own life in it when she found out her husband was unfaithful. She did it with poison, and it took a long time for her to die.
Joom cheerfully told me this one night when the electricity was out due to a violent monsoon storm, and we had only candlelight.
“Have you seen her ghost?” I asked skeptically.
“I feel her brush past me all the time; and I can see her faintly in that mirror” Joom pointed to a cracked piece of glass hanging on the wall next to the bathroom door.
Just then her dog Nipoo began howling in the corner.
“She comes” Joom announced solemnly.
I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stiffen. My saliva turned ice cold as I gulped several times.
There was a crash of pots and pans from the dark kitchen. Something was running amok among the cheap tin cutlery and plastic chopsticks! Drawers banged. The kitchen tap gushed.
There was something in the kitchen, no doubt about it.
“Go say hello to your ghost” I told Joom, smiling weakly.
Her eyes were bugged out like ping pong balls. Through a rictus of whitening lips she barely replied that I was the man of the house, the one who wore the skivvies, so I should be the one to confront whatever nameless terror was making a percussion section out of the kitchenware.
Since I was the rationalist, I had to do it.
I took a candle and tiptoed into the kitchen. A pair of red beady eyes glared malevolently at me. There was an unearthly yowl and something grabbed at my hair as it sped past to the open window behind me. I let out a yell that could be heard from Chiang Mai to Phuket City. Trying to escape the fiend I barked my shins on a low wooden stool and nearly fell into the bucket of Plaa Ra that lay festering under the sink. I caught myself just in time to twist around and peer out the open window, where a wretched macaque monkey was busily stuffing the remains of our dinner into its mouth.
When I got back to the living room Joom had retreated to her bedroom with Nipoo, and was swaying in front of a painting of The Nine Famous Monks of Thailand, imploring them to keep her safe, never mind that infidel farang boyfriend of hers.
I waited for her to finish, then calmly explained the origin of the ruckus. She hugged me violently, her scarlet fingernails digging into my shoulder blades like surgical knives.
That night as I lay in my bed I kept having the same looping memory -- of Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in movie The Wizard of Oz, repeating over and over again “I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do!”
