October 14, 2007
I know another guy in Lamai called Odd, who's equally good as the other , but not as strong.
He runs a clothes store.
Fairly gaudy bikinis, mini-skirts, the kind of stuff that is worn by most of the girls that the farang men get to meet.
Odd hasn't seen the stuff he's selling, however, because Odd is blind.
Blind.
He's also gay in a country which while accepting homosexuality, doesn't "do" HIV, which he has very much - oh, fuck it, let's call it AIDS - and the lack of availability of affordable drugs, means that, in a black, sightless, colourless world, he will also never again experience love; the joy of sex; the calm intimacy of being held.
I saw Odd for the first time in three years, and he remembered my voice. I was enormously flattered.
Now I'm just a little sad.
I rode past him, day after day, on taxis, drinking it all in, smelling the smells, ingesting the sights, as he sat there, huge black shades shielding his useless eyes, whilst within a nasty little load of germs raced around his otherwise decent self, determined, and resolute, to destroy him.
Tomorrow, though, 3am our time, he'll blindly open his store and hope for business.
Six hours later, me and most of you will start moaning about our Mondays.
But ask Odd why he "don't like Mondays".
He will say, as he has to me: "Justin [because he can say it], I love every day. Every day is special."
I hugged him briefly, not long enough, before I came home.
I hope he's still there in January.
