Green IslandCandy and Shnade Reach the Line
September 17th 2010 13:51
Shnade found himself in a one-to-one class with this dude, only he was no regular dude. He was a rich dude. With his unerring instinct, Shnade knew this dude was really rich. And here he was every week for an hour with the Shnade-man. This discomforted Shnade a bit. Here was a mark for his talents, but he just couldn’t see the angle. Shnade couldn’t sell him under-weight weed, he couldn’t sell him an over-priced ticket to one of his free band concerts and he couldn’t talk himself up into the money. All Shnade mostly did was listen.
Takashi or ‘Taka’ as he liked to be called by his foreign ‘friends’ had had an international education: a degree in the UK, a masters in the USA, followed by some NGO work in Africa. Taka had mentioned the names of the places where he had lived to Shnade dozens of times but such alien trivia was never going to stick to Shnade’s consciousness. There was just no benefit for Shnade in remembering names of places in Africa. And as for the UK, wasn’t that England or something?
Every lesson Shnade would knock around schemes in his head as Taka repeated for the umpteenth time his regret in having to work for the family business. He never said it directly but the fact that he jumped with a bright-eyed relish on anything foreign (even Shnade’s trailer park roots) made it obvious even to Shnade that here was a man burdened with duty.
Taka was being groomed for the top job in a fish company. It was from fish that all the wealth had come. Taka knew all about fish: fish products, fish selling, fish buying, fish marketing all readily and disdainfully rolled off his tongue with a mid-Atlantic accent. It was a nationwide fish business and Taka had been ordered to spend a number of years working at branches of the family fish business up and down the country. ‘Getting to know the ropes’ Taka explained. Being able to use such an idiom pleased Taka more than the job.
Shnade knew nothing about fish. He was a steak man and a burger man. He’d never really got used to all the rice and gloppy stuff the locals ate. No wonder they were all so small. They needed fries and meat.
It was no accident that Shnade had wound up ‘teaching’ Taka. He was a dream student – he already spoke English and asked for nothing more than a foreign ear to ‘bend’ in order to ‘brush up’ his language skills. Shnade cringed when he heard these faggy phrases pouring from Taka, but knew enough about self-preservation to keep his opinions to himself.
ABC English had hired Shnade as a last moment replacement for a teacher who had broken contract to go off to another city to work as an assistant language teacher in a private elementary school. The boss of ABC English was a portly, middle-aged man with zero interest in English, just money. He paid his teachers less, gave them less holiday and paid little attention to quality. People wanted to learn English and he positioned himself as the middle-man to capitalize on this demand. He left all the details of organizing the teachers and students to his hard working secretary, a ball-breaking spinster who thrived on arranging lives and lessons.
And so it was that ABC English found themselves in a position that they had been in several times before: a teacher down. Lessons were juggled until they could find a replacement. The boss couldn’t be arsed with advertising positions and had an aversion for using the internet. There was no way in hell he was going to pay for someone to fly from America or Australia to do the job. So he did nothing. Something always turned up.
And sure enough it did. Jay knew the American who had escaped the bottom rung that ABC represented and who had landed a much better job in neighbouring I Prefecture. And sure enough Jay knew of a foreigner who needed a job who he thought had a visa that was good to go (he could never quite get a straight answer from Shnade on this point). Jay wanted Shnade out from his apartment and he soon realized that this wasn’t going to happen unless he did something. Jay phoned ABC and spoke to ball breaker in Japanese about Shnade. Being addressed in her own language impressed BB and so she agreed to give Shnade a trial.
The trial was no such thing. The next day Shnade was told to teach 3 kids classes and an adult class. He was shocked. He thought he was going for an interview. He had plans to get high and hang with some ‘homies’ that day. He mentioned something to that effect to BB who just brushed aside Shnade’s reluctance by bringing out an instant ultimatum – you want the job, you do the lessons. Shnade really didn’t want the job but the legend he was creating demanded sacrifices.
BB soon discovered that Shnade was sub-par in nearly every way. His attitude was barely acceptable, his teaching skills below requirement, his deportment slovenly and his acuity to pick up the ropes stunningly poor. She knew the boss didn’t want to be bothered with details like these and so she did what she always did: made do and worked around the problem. One of her pragmatic solutions was to give the easiest classes to Shnade. The other teachers grumbled but no one had the balls to confront her about the changes. Displaying balls only got them broken.
Jay was happy even if Shnade wasn’t with the ABC job. He had thought that the employment would expedite Shnade’s removal from his apartment. He was shocked to discover that Shnade had got the job but had turned down the apartment that came with the position. How and why had he done that? Shnade explained that what with the expense of weed and a new guitar he just didn’t have the cash for a place of his own. Shnade ignored the obvious displeasure that spread across Jay’s face when this information was delivered. Jay bit his tongue and determined to do something about his uninvited guest. Jay had a girlfriend, a busy schedule and a desire for privacy. It was only his Christian outlook that held him back from openly confronting Shnade. So he decided to employ cunning to remove his unwelcome guest.
Meanwhile Shnade painfully bluffed and blustered his way through the working week. He had decided not to smoke weed at his workplace anymore. He had also matured enough to refrain from showing porn to the students. It was all a drag. The only lesson that didn’t tick slowly and painfully by was the one with Taka.
Shnade just smiled every lesson and would mention California or Arizona and off Taka would go, talking the back legs off a donkey as he called it. Shnade had stopped noticing the shining idioms. This one, however, about donkeys and legs did get him curious.
“Yo, man. I mean Taka. What was that about donkeys and legs?”
Taka repeated himself. Shnade burst out laughing.
“Man that’s some funny Monty Python shit right there. A donkey with no back legs is fu..I mean messed up.”
Taka laughed with Shnade. Making a foreigner laugh gave Taka a thrill. He didn’t really care whether the foreigner was laughing with him or at him. He just wanted to be like a foreigner for an hour a week. He didn’t like teachers who attempted to teach him something. They made him feel really Japanese. His hour at ABC English was all about escape. Escape from fish and family duty and polite discourse. Foreigners could never understand how much pressure it was being Japanese. Being able to escape all that was therapy. Taka would happily blither way for an hour in English. He could complain, he could talk about girls, he could moan about fish, he could remember the good times studying abroad. It was outside the box time.
“Can I ask you something, Nade?” Taka asked casually one lesson.
Shnade winced. Why did this rich dude never get his name right? He let it go.
“Sure, Taka.”
“Would you like to go drinking with me? I can take you to a good bar I know. They have really pretty girls.”
“Well man, yer know. I’m a bit tight for cash and well you see…”
“Not to worry. It’s on me. Go on. It’ll be how do you say, ‘a laugh’.”
And so it was that Shnade agreed to go drinking with the fish Brahmin in waiting.
_______________
The experience at the Retreat on Yaoyin beach had left a nasty taste in Candy’s mouth. Why had she even contemplated prostituting herself to such a phony? She was so much better than that. She had always known that she was beautiful and smart, but she had never really learnt to value her dignity. Before dignity had something to do with being street wise and being free from the chains of family and regular life. Now Candy grasped that dignity meant acting according to value. She wasn’t sure what her core values were, but she did know that love and lust were the proper values for sex, not money and free yoga lessons, nor for that matter was it cheap coke or a free place to stay.
For the first time in her life Candy was able to turn her intelligence loose on herself. Introversion was no longer a druggy journey of mental phantoms but instead a clear-headed examination of Candy and Candice, the young Canadian woman fleeing from credit card debt.
She was living cheaply in a basic bungalow on the island neighbouring Koh Rahmai called Koh Ma. It was a rugged rock of a place, with fewer beaches and no parties or yogis to interrupt the calm. Only divers. She was an oddity to the locals. At first they were convinced that she was just playing it cool and trying to hold out for the best deal for scuba, but eventually she had convinced them that she really had no interest in learning to dive. When that moment came Candy had been put in the crazy foreigner category by the local Thais and had been given one of the oldest and most remote bungalows on a rocky promontory for 3,000 baht a month.
Every morning Candy walked for an hour to get to the local shop where she bought food and water. She had learnt a bit of the language and was pleasantly surprised to find out just how nice Thai people were. They gave her free stuff, they invited her to share their lunch sometimes and they always gave her an inferiority complex with their disarming smiles. To Candy these people seemed imbued with wisdom: they could let it go, they could just sit in the shade and contently wait for nothing to happen. The family running the shop where she went, represented to Candy the truth behind all the big words and numbers that the peddlers of spiritual wisdom thought to profit by. These people wanted nothing from her but the few dollars that her daily groceries cost. They gave her no advice beyond exhortations to watch out for falling coconuts and poisonous snakes on the sea path. Instead they taught by example: work, family and cleaning were on a par with something tasty to eat, a glass of Lao Khao and a bummed cigarette on an evening. There were no holidays or rush times; just actions that rounded sleep. A bit of neighbourhood gossip, a dip in the sea and an hour making the kids do their homework: these weren’t onerous duties or stressful activities, these were things you did. In short, Candy saw Pi Tee and her family (including her cock fighting part-time husband) as exemplifying right thinking and right action, far superior to the realm of words and books and theory. These people struck Candy as far less greedy and materialistic than any New Age prophet pedalling colonic irrigation and second-hand words.
After two weeks on Koh Ma, Candy realized how cheaply she really could live and how little she really wanted to be in contact with people. She didn’t miss the company of backpackers at all. She was left alone in her bungalow. There was Pi Tee’s shop an hour away and there was an over-priced restaurant on a beach twenty minutes walk away. They sold weed, bad Thai food, bad Western food, slow internet and made a killing on serving the divers who made day trips out to the nearby coral reef. Very occasionally Candy would go early evening to enjoy a cold coke. She would sit on the beach to try and avoid getting sucked into a conversation with a diver who had an obvious eye to pulling her. She now hated the attention and didn’t miss the sex that much.
More often than not Candy would forgo even the small luxury of a coke on the beach. It wasn’t necessary. She did yoga, meditated and read Alan Watt’s Spirit of Zen. Every afternoon she put on her bikini and would carefully negotiate a path over boulders being battered by the churning sea to a small inlet where the water was calmer. She would lower herself into the sea and swim far out beyond the rocks and waves. There she would float on her back and think about her family, about Zen and about herself. She had learnt to let thoughts arise and drop off, to dissociate from the mental muddle her stream of consciousness presented. Thoughts were like steam from an over-heating brain.
In the evening, if the electricity was working she would write a journal. If it had rained and the electricity was down she would simply get under her mosquito net and let the sound of waves lull her to sleep. Once or twice she had thought to touch herself, to tease out an orgasm; but mostly the desire was absent in her. Sex and drugs represented a lifestyle for her that she hoped was in the past. The more she read about Buddhism, the more she saw in her own life the tyranny that desire had held over her. Whether desires were fulfilled or unrequited hadn’t seemed to make any difference: they had still sought to control, frustrate and preoccupy the mind. The only thing Candy desired was to be left alone. Her coconut thatched bungalow, her long walk to the shop and back, her yoga and her lonely swim were the cardinal points on her new compass. It was these elements that were restoring her sanity and bringing her calmness. If only it could last.
But money, money. What to do? Candy figured she could live on Koh Ma for another three months and then she would just have to rely on her parents bailing her out with the credit card company and sending her money for a flight home. Before such thinking would have been admitting defeat. Now the compulsion to keep going was put in a new perspective. It was another desire, the roots of which remained obscure to her. Candy was willing to make a trade off. Three more months on Koh Ma was worth the shit that awaited her in the future. All she had to do was a visa run and then she would have three whole, glorious months to enjoy the peace of the island before facing the music back home.
_______________
Shnade was more than pleasantly surprised with the bar. From the outside it looked totally unprepossessing. Just a door, no windows and a sign that said ‘Snack’ something. Shnade was expecting another dull bar like that one by the station that the Kindle dude had taken him to, only the word ‘snack’ convinced him that the nothing atmosphere and old lady behind the bar would be joined with the eating of some snotty looking seafood.
So imagine Shnade’s joy when they entered and a 30 something madam with cleavage in your face and a gravely cigarette voice met them with ceremony and fuss and lead them to a private tatami room. Taka gave a few orders and within minutes they had hot towels, cold beer and two young lovelies to attend to their needs.
Megumi and Ai didn’t speak a lick of English but laughed when Shnade laughed and appeared enraptured with his karaoke skills. At all times one of the girls was squeezed up to him ready to light his cigarette or order another drink for him. He was sure that they both fancied him and wondered how he could get Taka out the room so he could make a move on at least one of them. Maybe even get a show.
Taka on the other hand largely ignored the girls with mini skits and perky little tits. He was more intent on drinking whiskey and talking about his college days in the States. Shnade was a bit surprised to discover that Taka was a hardened drinker. Unlike other Japanese that he met that went red in the face after a single beer, this one was making quick head way through a bottle of black label Johnny and the only appreciable difference was a certain wistfulness and loquaciousness. Shnade pretended to pay attention as he felt up Megumi under the table and looked through the karaoke console for rock classics.
After forty minutes and three beers, Shnade reluctantly got up to break the seal. He had been mixing the beer with some of Taka’s whiskey and was feeling stratospherically fine. As he leant over to dip his big feet into his sneakers Megumi appeared out of nowhere to help shod our hero. She offered her deliciously thin shoulder to lean on and started leading Shnade down the corridor between paper doors. Shnade was feeling the full man, and the emerging legend was gathering apace as was the blood between his legs.
When they reached the end of the corridor the Shnade man made a quick fire lunge at the young hottie only to be deftly evaded, and pushed into the tiny toilet cubicle.
“Hot damn these girls are prick teases.”
Shnade pissed in and around the enameled hole and opened the door. Megumi wasn’t waiting for him. When he got back in the room Taka was murdering Hotel California and Ai-chan was patting the cushion next to her. Maybe that was it. It was Ai-chan that wanted it badly and Megumi was just resisting his undeniable charms out of loyalty to her mate.
The session went on and on. Taka was in whiskey and English speaking heaven. He occasionally said something to one of the girls and they giggled. Shnade couldn’t understand why the girls were far happier to drape themselves over Taka. Man the dude was small, middle-aged and no way as good-looking as rock-god Shnade. Perhaps they were just making him jealous, teasing him. Love play to get the passion going.
At the door Megumi, Ai and the boss with cleavage all started bowing and saying thank you as Taka took out a few big notes to pay for the evening. The girls even came outside to bow at their departing taxi.
One minute down the road Taka shouted at the taxi driver and they turned around. When they got back to the bar, Taka rushed in and came out one minute later with his suit jacket. He had obviously left it in the bar.
_______________
“I’m sorry Miss but we cannot issue you a visa.”
“Why not?”
“The visa rules have changed. Canadian nationals can no longer get visas in Malaysia for Thailand. To speak frankly..” The bloke touched his moustache as if he was about to slip out of his official persona and say something on a human level but then he changed his mind, “if you insist on re-entering the Kingdom of Thailand you have to return home then you can apply for a new tourist visa free of charge.”
“But I got a new visa here recently. I have all my belongings still in Thailand. How about if I buy a plane ticket to Bangkok will that make any difference?” Candy asked, an edge of despair creeping into her voice. The immigration guy loved his job. Behind his polite words of refusal was a clear and underlined ‘fuck you’.
“No difference. I suggest you ask for your bags to be sent to Kuala Lumpur. Next.”
Candy moved aside and let another backpacker face the smug immigration official. She was momentarily dumbfounded. She picked up her daypack and stumbled towards the entrance. The people in the line cleared a path for her. Outside she sat on the steps in the hot morning sun. The same question went round and round her brain: “What the fuck am I gonna do?”
Candy felt like crying. She had stopped smoking, but now desperately wanted a cigarette. She got up and went over to a tall blonde who was staring blankly at the passing traffic and smoking.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
The woman’s eyes focused on Candy for a second. She stared with intense green eyes at Candy and then let her hard Teutonic features soften into a smile.
“Sure. Here take two. You look like you need more than a cigarette.”
“They just turned me down for a visa. I got my stuff in Thailand. I’m running out of money. I hate KL.”
“What are going to do?” asked the woman.
Candy shrugged and walked down the road in search of a taxi.
Candy got back to her small sweat box of a room and took a shower. She was trying hard not to cry. She was on the verge of giving up on herself, of just contacting her parents or her embassy or anyone in charge and telling them to deal with it, to make her life secure and normal. Go back to Canada and face the music. All the inner calm, the reserves of independence and stillness, the seam of silence that she had mined in Koh Ma were lost to her here. Candy was breaking. She smoked a cigarette and then got dressed and went downstairs to the café opposite her guest house.
She sat staring at the busy narrow street on the edge of Chinatown. Back in shitty backpack central, like being in Khao San road it was nothing worth experiencing. It was just the same bars, internet places, whores and souvenir stands as in Bangkok. It was the same youth with clean packs and big boots, the same inveterate middle-aged fuckmongers looking for the next $20 whore and the same beaded hippies looking for the 1960s.
“What am I going to do?”
Having a plan and then seeing it cruelly dashed because of her stupidity in not checking visa rules was impossible to take lightly. Candy had counted on that extra three months. It was going to be her final time, her last chance for peace, her final moment of freedom. She hadn’t looked further than the three months. The future was all about the three months on Koh Ma. Candy closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was suspended in the ocean staring at the clouds move across the sky. She couldn’t. It was too noisy, too claustrophobic in the city. She was banished to car fumes, street hawkers, bad food and the inane chatter of backpackers. She thought wistfully of renouncing life and joining the cloistered ranks of a Zen monastery.
“I have nothing: an extra T-shirt, clean panties, a passport, a few hundred dollars and a useless credit card.” As soon as she thought it the idea came to her. What if the credit card that she had used to steal the money back in Canada still worked? She had bought it with her as a kind of souvenir. It took up hardly any space. It felt wrong somehow leaving it behind. And now it was back to the fore of her life. Could the card that had started her adventure all those months ago keep the adventure going? It was too stupid to hope but Candy couldn’t help clutching at the straw that presented itself at this dark juncture of her life. She paid for her coke and headed down the street. She was on a mission without having actually decided what she was going to do.
_______________
Shnade was dropped off outside Jay’s apartment. Taka wasn’t up for anymore drinking. The coat incident seemed to have soured his mood. Not to matter. Shnade was keen to have a couple of bowls and a few more brews and maybe tug his log. He knew Jay was away on some Christian conference. Fag. So he had the place to himself. Get in the mood, fire up the notebook and take advantage of himself. Fuck those karaoke chicks were hot.
After cracking the second of Jay’s expensive beers that he had found in the fridge, Shnade was feeling the horn and was about to turn on the computer when there was a knock at the door. Shit.
In the concrete shadows was Tomoko, Jay’s girlfriend. The way she leaned awkwardly on her blue high heels clutching at a convenience store plastic bag made it blatantly apparent that she was drunk.
“Oh Nade-san!” She wobbled and giggled. She pushed passed him and kicked off her heels in the entrance way as she entered the apartment.
“Hello, Tomoko. Jay’s not here. He’s in Osaka. You wanna drink?”
“Drink, yes drink. I have drink. Look drink.” She was on the sofa holding out the plastic bag for Shnade to peer into. Shnade peered at her cleavage instead as he leaned over her.
Seconds later they were squirming on the sofa in a long embrace.
_______________
“Sorry to keep you waiting. We checked the card. Yes it’s fine. Where do you want to go?”
Fuck it was that simple. The card was good again. That could only mean that her parents had paid off the debt. Of course they had. Yet taking more money from the card felt wrong. It was no longer the bank’s money but her dad’s money. The money felt tainted. She didn’t want to accept money from him. It was something about her family that had driven her to commit the first crime. Now she was about to use the card again. It was like committing a second crime. This crime was different. It had a face, it was personal. It was not only personal it was somehow a betrayal: a most definite betrayal. But of what or of whom? She was in a travel agency. It wasn’t the time or place for introspection. She blocked out her mental reservations.
“How much is your cheapest flight to Japan?”
Catch up on earlier installments of Candy and Shnade:
Candy Gets Religion and Shnade Gets a New Guitar (Part 7)
Shnade Gets Drunk with a Serial Killer and Candy Arrives in Bangkok (Part 6)
Candy and Shnade Move On (Part 5)
Candy Trips in the Jungle and Shnade Trips Up (Part 4)
Candy Comes in the Jungle and Shnade Becomes the Man (Part 3)
Candy in Bolivia and Shnade in Hawaii (Part 2)
Candy in Argentina (Part 1)
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