I haven’t always been here, in this lonely state of sordid affairs. These walls were not always this close. This light, so intrusive. There was a time when my youth and zeal was enough. When it swelled above the dawn of my heart’s reservoir. Spilling, flooding, drowning. With love and hope. Who was I then? Did I know then that this day would come? This terrible day. This terrible suffering putrid day.

It’s hard to say.

My life must end, I constantly think. This is true and real… what it means to suffer. And I walk gladly into my end knowing only what is behind with certainty.

I beseech thee, oh Lord, that that is enough.

I met her at the age when life seems to supersede the present with teeming possibilities. The sun is brighter than heavenly possible, and the air snaps with crisp memories. That age when I longed for purpose, but know not of suffering. I met her and she became my suffering. I fell in love with her. I fell in love with her suffering. She became my purpose. It was enough. Then.

She came when life was confusing. I had left the Body with bitterness and confusion. Yet hope paved before me like a road.

Had I asked her then, if she understood, would she have stayed? Had I asked her then if I was okay, would she have left? My mind is tormented with such questions. How is one to prepare for suffering? How is one to prepare for that which appears more gracefully than the pedals of a flower?

To say she turned my life upside down is absurd. It was already that way when she showed up. She, if anything, helped turned me right side up. Does a ship not long to be right side up anyway? And so it was with her. So it was with me. She was simply something to hold onto. And once in hand, the turning was easy.

I simply held too tightly.

I guess I was too tired earlier to pay attention to the lovely little boy, maybe 8-years-old, who buzzed about me all morning, but now he was touching my face with such pore that I couldn’t notice anything else.

It was the end of our second day of English Camp Olympics, and I had already played more hours of soccer with the children in Chiang Rai than I have in the last 10 years. I was sunburned from the intermittent sunbreaks and stickysweaty from the 105° rain weather. My body flubbed over a plastic chair, and I couldn’t remember a time when I was more physically exhausted.

I was sitting under a gazebo of sorts and watching the final Olympic event play out between spells of dropping my chin to my chest to rest. The kids were having a sponge race and were taking large sponges, dipping them in buckets full of water and then racing to another bucket to wring out the the water. The team that transferred the most water before the time expired would win.

The children were euphoric, and I bowed my head again to rest and listen to the laughter. I would love a cold shower, I thought. Then, almost as if programmed, I chastised myself and felt shame for wanting something so trivial. How could I be so foolish? I heard a voice say. And why would God care about that? It was at this moment that the little boy started touching my face.

I opened my eyes and there he was was. He spoke in Thai, and I was too tired to pretend I understood, so I just looked at him and smiled. He smiled back, as if receiving approval, then he dipped his finger in glitter on the table next to me and lightly poked my cheek. It felt like a cold kitten’s nose, and it sent chills down my spine. He giggled when he realized I wasn’t going to stop him from doing it again. Soon, several other children noticed and began to collect around me, all of them dipping their tiny fingers in multi-colored glitter and decorating my face. The children carried on this way for twenty minutes, gently covering my face with fingertip circles of glitter.

Then, the little boy tapped my shoulder, I opened my eyes, smiled and the children erupted with laughter and applause. The principal of the school and a few others came over and took pictures of the children’s masterpiece. They asked the children what my Thai name was. The children pontificated between each other and one precious little girl softly spoke in that lovely tonal language. “Nohk yuung,” she said. The translators told me that means peacock. All the children clapped and began to say it in unison.

As they cheered, the little boy began to lift my leg, then my arm, and then my entire body. I was confused, and assumed he wanted to parade me around to the other adults – a thought which exhausted and, quite frankly, annoyed me. But he didn’t parade me around, rather, he held my arm around his neck like someone carrying a wounded friend, and he led me to sit down on a concrete fountain next to the school building.

Then the children took sponges (I think they stole them from the Sponge Race event which was still taking place), and for ten minutes, these wonderful little children who are in grave danger of being trafficked and sold into sexual slavery dipped their sponges in cold water and meticulously washed every sparkle of glitter off my body. It was almost too much to bear. I closed my eyes and began to cry.

“Here is your shower, my love,” I felt the voice of God say. “I adore you.”

I was awoken by a Texas thunderstorm. The room filled with light, then the sky broke in half with thunder. It’s 4:03 AM, and I am finally home, my first night back in Texas, and I miss Bangkok as I try to leave her ridiculous time zone behind.

Everything feels different stateside. A bedroom that’s been slightly rustled. Was this book always on the top shelf? Did I leave the blinds open when I left? It’s all the same, except that it’s not. I am different and I have changed it all.

I hope to unpack my experiences soon.

We were changing out the last of the light bulbs and saying goodbye when the girls of Home of New Beginnings came to say thank you. Nate and I were covered in paint and dripping with sweat while speaking with Ann, the strong and benevolent Thai den-mother who lives in the house.

The girls were eating lunch in the other room, but as Ann spoke to us in the doorway, they began to quietly spill into the room from behind her. They were almost all children – late teens early twenties – and it was my first time to really see the girls. During our days painting, they were off at school, or church, or learning English and we never really crossed paths. But now, collected in one room, I was able to see who I was working for these last 5 days. I began to tear up.

When Nate and I finally waved, said goodbye, and bowed with our praying hands (a wai), the girls sang with a chorus of “Khop Khun Mak Ka” (feminine Thank you very much) and wais.

I don’t know how to describe the moment except to say that it was such a gentle, respectful, kind, loving, and emotional goodbye. My stomach seized up and I bowed again. I was so thankful for the opportunity to paint their home and do anything I could to say that not everything is evil. The girls were so hopeful and sweet, and it put so much of my own pain into perspective. These girls have known nothing but abuse, rape and injustice, yet their eyes were bright and their smiles so healing.

I know God has brought me here more to heal me rather than to serve others, but this moment, was so much more wonderful than anything I could have imagined he could do. I’m here to help, but I’m here because I need healing. God is so good to me.

We were caught in the BKK rain yesterday. I loved every minute of the experience. I’m bringing my rain jacket today. Just in case.

We’re going to be painting The Home of New Beginnings today, perhaps all day, and to be honest, that sounds very nice. At least the boys will be painting. The girls will be going to the bars and clubs and building relationships with the Thai prostitutes. Everyone else on this trip has had weeks if not months of experience dealing with the issue of child/teen prostitution, but I have not, and I am finding it difficult to stay engaged for long periods of time. Manual labor will be a reprieve.

I met Bonita and Roy, the couple who started Beginnings about a year ago. Two Americans from Oregon & Texas respectively who love these young women and have provided a safe place for those who choose to leave prostitution and get an education. They are such a benevolent couple with terrifying wisdom. I look forward to knowing them more.

Also, I’m feeling tired and lonely already.

Also also, I’m ready for my skin to not be so sticky. The humidity is unbelievable. My crotch hates me.

Her dress was bright and vivid in the otherwise pallid squalor. The contrast seemed traumatic. Especially that early in the morning. Goo mornee, she said as she bent at the waist, leaning off the wall, and walked across my path. Her friend did the same. Her smile was inviting, but because of the severe language barrier and my fear of her, I avoided eye contact and held my palm towards her. No thank you, I mumbled and smiled as compassionately as I knew how. Peeg! she spat at me as I passed. It sounded like a sneeze. Peeg!

It was 6:45am, and I was walking Sukhumvit Road looking for a local cup of coffee – something not inside a wealthy westerner hotel. I walked a mile and a half on both sides of the street but couldn’t find a cafe open that early. As I walked amidst crowded people and cart vendors, cloudy stagnant water filled the uneven walkway and the smell of sewage mixed with the smell of wonderful Thai food. It was when I was tiptoeing through that I noticed long legs in high heels crossing my path.

She was probably several years younger than me, but she certainly didn’t look it, and I’ve learned that if she’s walking the street, she’s probably not useful in the brothels anymore. Her age and experience probably means she’s not desirable enough to draw men in. She now has to come to us. And I wanted her to come to me. I didn’t want to raise my hand and walk away. Maybe I am a pig, a man wandering in brokenness and disrepair.

But I did want her to know that I cared about her, that I couldn’t sleep last night because of her. I wanted to hug her and let her know that love is more than what these men pay for. And though it looks similar, it is much much different. Same Same but different, a boy said yesterday. It’s an english phrase the Thai use to explain that something is similar, but it is not the same.

I walked on as she and her friend spit insults at me, and prayed that though love is patient, its power could be conveyed in the split moment it took her to communicate her pain. Same same but different, I prayed. You can know love again.

Being brave on morning one has proven to be difficult. I thought I ordered pork. I really did. She smiled and nodded and left and it all felt a little incomplete. I rubbed my head and fought back fits of nausea. I need more water. My head feels like a drum. It’s all a little strange.

I am really in Bangkok. I am a foreigner. This is epiphany number three.

In Dallas, I didn’t think much of the trip. It’s hard to picture a foreign culture you’ve never seen. But now here by way of L.A. and Taipei, I can see.

The flight was arduous of course, and I decided that I can do nothing but be present in the moment. In life in general, but especially on a plane. Reading is difficult. Writing is difficult. Listening to music is difficult. Sitting is difficult. Sleeping… let’s just stop there.

I don’t like long flights. This is epiphany number two.

A young married couple picked me up at the airport. We hugged. I’m Michael, I said. Nice to meet you. A rather tall Thai man took my bag, sat behind the wheel on the wrong side of his car, and violently drove us to the hotel. A sign composed in english was bigger than the name of the hotel sign and hung next to the door of The Atlanta – our 50’s style hotel at the end of Sukhumvit Soi 2. No SEX-TOURISM, the sign read. Another sign by the front desk read, With prices like ours, NO COMPLAINTS.

There was also rice at breakfast. And a Thai Omelette and a Thai Salt Egg. The rice was sticky. The fans spun wildly. I sweat like the 1.5 litres of water on the table. I needed something in my stomach. I tasted the Pork first. It was seafood. Nausea. But I’m brave. I’m a lone tourist in a new world who refuses to order the Western Breakfast. So, I picked through my Sea Pork like the 7-year-old Austrian boy sitting next to me with his family, and I began to wonder.

Here, just 100 yards away, there is suffering of an alien kind. The Nana Red Light District. A place where children, mostly girls, are trapped in a life of prostitution that many of them never chose. I could have sex with them for the cost of my breakfast. 90 Baht. That’s about $3.

Nauseous, I paid for my meal and left. I think I’m here to try and help. This is epiphany number one.

“Are those reah?” Adam asked me. Though drugged and lethargic, he was very surprised. He raised his hand and waved me near. I leaned in. He put his hand to my ear. He began mashing it, folding it, and flicking it, looking for evidence while his hand shook. His face was intensely focused.

The ICU was as quiet as cold in the early evening.

“What are you doing?” I asked. He said nothing and continued to inspect my ears with wonder. I looked at Jen. She looked at me. We shrugged.

“Reah?” Adam demanded in a whisper over his swollen tongue and feeding tube. His voice sounded like a fire coughing up a chimney.

“My ears? Are they real?” I asked.

Again, nothing. He was still holding my ear, but now he was looking at my mouth. He let go of my ear and touched my lip. He gnashed his teeth, as if I was a dentist. I mimicked. He started poking my teeth, running his finger over the top of them.

“Teessh”, he whispered from behind his grimmace. His eyes were wide. His fingers were in my mouth, and he looked at Jen confused. She shrugged and laughed.

“Reah?” He asked her.

She looked at me and then told him, “of course his teeth are real.”

He looked back at me quickly. He furrowed his brow, then he looked me in the eyes very intently, as if to break my resolve.

“You fucking wissh me?”

Apparently, his medication made him hallucinate. He thought I was a werewolf he later told me.

He was in the ICU for about a week that time. His lungs had begun to bleed while working late at KMA and he had crawled into a storage closet to cough up the blood until they stopped. Thankfully, his lungs stopped bleeding just seconds before he passed out. He sat for several minutes, collected what breath he could, and then he called me.

“Hey dude. What are you doing?”

I was working late too.

“Oh. That’s cool. Can you do me a favor?”

I said sure.

“You know that closest behind my desk?”

I said yeah.

“Well, I’m in it. Can you come back here?”

Just before I hung up, he warned me, “there’s  going to be some blood”.

That night Adam was admitted into the hospital, and the next morning his bleeding continued, which lead him to the ICU.  And though this all happened three years ago, I will never forget the breathing seconds of that evening in the storage closet, crying as I cleaned his blood off of the concrete floor. I was forced to come to terms with the fact that my friend would die.  Soon. And as we sat with our backs to a wall of boxes, waiting for help, I heard the voice of God ask me if I was ready to say goodbye to Adam.

It happened tonight.  After hours of looking through old pictures with Adam’s family, i walked across the street to my car, past the very spot I watched them load him into an ambulance, the very place I saw him last, and it finally happened.  I cried.  Three days of tears.  Three decades really.

Among the pictures were moments that I had forgotten.  Moments in highschool when a group of us drove to New Braunfels to float the Guadalupe River.  Moments in college when he and I dressed as cheerleaders and danced for an audience. Moments in his home, the very place i just left, when he, Jen his wife and I ate lemons then took pictures of our sour faces.

But the pictures that truly left me breathless, the ones I held onto just a little longer, were the pictures of his youth.  The pictures before I knew him.  The picture of him atop his brother Brandon’s shoulders. The picture of him dancing with his other brother Justin.  The pictures of him playing soccer with a smaller Anthony.  The picture of him dancing with a towering Alyssa.  These are the memories that finally broke me. And I realized that though I knew so much about him, I really only knew so little.  Couldn’t we have had a photo night before he died?  Couldn’t we have let him tell these stories?

I’ve spent almost 20 years preparing for this day. The day when Adam is no longer with me.  But I’ve wasted my time.  Adam was the moment, and every attempt to brace myself for the next was all for naught.  I am no more prepared to say goodbye today than I was yesterday.  The pictures proved it.  So I left.  I got in my car and lost it because part of me is gone, never to return.  Christ have mercy.

I leaned into her. She didn’t know I was there, though it was she who chose to sit so near. I could smell her, and I drew a deep breath. I lowered my head and let it bobble while the bus meandered through the city. I imagined our lives together, here, in this moment. I must have looked asleep. Or drunk. Like so many on this line. Eyes closed. My world was dark and closer and closer the bus leaned me to her. I did not resist. [read more]

I can’t seem to pick myself up off the floor today.  Listening to this one and this one doesn’t help.

I awoke this morning to find I was in a vacant subway station.  Hollow and opaque.  Echoes whispering down the dark line tunnel.  Old click-clacks in dusty subconscious places.  A deep reverberating hum subtly shakes the floor.  It tickles my feet.  The world is dead, and I am the sole survivor standing in a place where the rustle of life and ambition once took place. [read more]

I awoke again.  Just after midnight.  The room seemed dense.  The kind of quiet found underground.  I could hear my heart beating in my head.  Pulsing.  The ceiling fan was spinning.  Remarkably slow.  I sat up and half asleep, I walked into my bathroom.  I turned on the light and blinked.  I looked at the mirror.  I wasn’t sure if it was me.  I leaned forward and studied my fleshy face.  Eyes.  Nose.  Skin.  I opened my lips and watched the skin stick and peel apart.  I could hear it.  My tongue was thick.  I whispered my name.  Then the eyes became all together different.

I’ve been dreaming.  Something I don’t normally do.  That’s not true.  Let’s start over.  I’ve been remembering my dreams.  At least since moving to Portland.  I used to think I didn’t dream.  Some mornings, I remember details as pristine as a furrowed brow in a window reflection, while others, I simply remember the feeling of a presence.  They are never happy.  These dreams.  They cull my history.  My childhood.  My fears.  My insecurities.  Coming to the surface.  Bloated bodies from the river bottom.  I’ve been dreaming about the parts of life that I am living to forget. [read more]

It is Fall again, and constantly I long for a history I will never reclaim.  The brisk air.  The sound of rustling leaves.  The memories of a home that seems now to have no walls.  Fall brings memories of a childhood awareness that life is metered by experience where time is abstract.  A complete and utter consumption in the now.  It is this awareness that I realize I have lost.  It is simplicity.  It is innocence. [read more]

At the market today, flowers were the best part. A mile I walked down the street to see them. Ninety-three degrees, the scientist said. I feel he was right. Twice I sneezed as I always do upon entering hot sunlight. Bless me, I prayed. I went to buy bananas.
[read more]