The Thong Also Rises (24 page)

The boat is slim, curlicued at the end like the proboscis of an exotic insect. There are about twenty of us in various stages of heat-induced delirium, traveling on Thailand's Andaman Sea. About half are foreigners, there for the dubiously pure experience—to my left is a big blonde with a German flag sewn to her backpack and an alarming tropical disease on her leg. When I squirm away from her on the narrow plank seat, the boat rocks to and fro, provoking scowls from the tourists and smiles from the Thais.

I consult my English-Thai pocket dictionary.
Law diou
, I say to the boatman, attempting an elegant diphthong. I gesture to the shore. He looks through me like a window. My condition is not yet desperate enough for a pantomime, so I distract myself by following the movements of an elderly Thai lady seated to my right, cool and content in the generous shadow of her lampshade hat. I watch as she takes out a wooden box, removes several ingredients—a green leaf, a white nut, some black paste—bundles them together and stuffs the whole package in her mouth. In seconds she has it chewed down to a manageable wad.

The lady feels me watching. She projects a gob of blood-red saliva that shoots six feet past the side of the boat, turns and motions that I ought to try some. I politely decline in that nodding way I've seen Thais do. I'd read that betel nut chewing is a respectable pastime of older Thai women, yet don't think I've quite come of age.

First lesson learned in Thailand: Be ye not well-hydrated on a lollygagging longboat. The gentle lapping of the river against the boat's hull is as dangerously hypnotic as a self-help CD:
Relax, let go
, it whispers.
Allow every part of your body to become heavy, verrry heaavy, releasing anything you are holding on to.

I do not relax. I double-cross my legs, recruiting about twelve different muscles in a team effort to barricade my bladder. How I will later stand and exit the boat is a bridge I will slosh across when the time comes.

We near the Phranang shore. Only later am I fully able to appreciate the massive rock formations jutting out of the water, like giant elephants lumbering across the sea. Right now I have my eyes locked upon a little structure next to the pier. I can just make out two letters painted on its door: WC. I stare at it as if it were a sacred mandala.

I am the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, as Immovable as a Mountain.

The Thai lady takes a tea kettle out of a basket.

I am a Fortress, a Locked Trunk buried in the earth.

She pours some tea into a glass—

I am a Frigid Housewife, a Dead Whale.

—and holds it out to me.

Dang.

I dare not shake even just my head. I have reached a pinnacle upon which I teeter, a dilemma that has followed me throughout my life: I must choose to either keep my dignity or cut the ties that bind me, between the discipline of holding back forever and the flagrant flinging open of the gates to freedom.

I waver. I try not to wobble. I hold on for a life-altering moment while mumbling something to the German girl about keeping a eye on my stuff. I can't hear her response because I am diving into the sea, relief spreading through my body before I even hit the water.

When I surface, I have been born again under a lucky star. I swim, victorious, toward the fabled white sands of Phranang, just another American fool, slogging out of the water and over to where my new German friend waits,
pissed off, with my pack. “
Danke schön,
” I say, as she stomps away. I decide to sit on the beach and dry off a bit before I look for the night's bungalow. As I watch the stars sidle out, one by one, I feel as though I have just untied a heavy anchor that had weighed me down forever. Vast populations are fluttering in my bloodstream: dragonflies and butterflies and golden honeybees of love. The nerve endings on my skin spring to attention, exuding pheromones from every pore. The me of yore—the harlot, the trollop—would have planned ahead, would have snatched up that yummy little treat back at the teahouse with whom to indulge in my randy persuasion. Alas! I am as unaccompanied as a clam.

I'm watching the waves, and the sparkles inside me appear to be floating there as well, as if a galaxy of heavenly bodies had been flung across the sea. Then, a humanoid form rises up from the water, glowing from head-to-toe. I frantically pat myself for outgrowths of dementia. Is that a narcotic rush I'm feeling? Maybe, back in Krabi, some upcountry opium had been sprinkled in my tea! The last time I'd tripped was during a peyote ritual gone awry, the one that had manifested a ten-thousand-fold hallucination of my high school algebra teacher, Sister Ursula. She'd sprouted Hinduesque undulating arms, her millions of chubby hands each grasping chalk, and a great omnipresent mouth that bespoke:
There are Vastly Compelling Reasons to find the Roots of Unity.

The sparkle-clad figure is heading my way. I leap to my feet and run like the dickens, an instinct that has served me well when I've listened to it. I run along the beach, toward a tall, rocky outcropping. I find a cave. The fragrance of incense and a soft, flickering light beckon me into its recesses.

Dang!

Scores of wooden penises—in a multi-culti rainbow of colors and dimensions—are wedged, stacked, glued with
melted wax to the surface of a candle-lit altar. These are the most alert save-the-race likenesses I've ever seen, their angles of repose ranging between 45 and 90 degrees—a sort of
Kama Sutra
lesson in geometry. Some are decorated with squiggly Thai script. Others are rather banged up, evidence of past abuse. I spy a contingent of thumb-sized red guys with black helmet heads, all lined up in military formation, a forearm-sized member presiding over them. Meanwhile, humongous phallic shadows waltz across the walls of the cave. Something inside me churns.

“Penises,” I bellow, as if the word could open a magic door.

“Pardon me?” a deep voice answers behind me.

I jump. It's a man. A Brit, by the sound of him. He's dripping, must've just come from an evening swim. He wears the teeniest, tightest cutoffs I've ever seen on a man. Ignoring this unnerving stylistic detail—
Is it a Euro thing?
I wonder—I notice his hazel eyes and dark, well-groomed beard. He smiles and holds out his hand.

“I'm Noland,” he says. “I saw you running, figured you were another Yank who'd fallen off her trolley. Or perhaps you've come to place an offering on the altar?”

“Melinda,” I say, and shake his hand. It is warm, wet. “I'm afraid I don't have a, um, phallus with me. Do you have one I could use?”

Noland laughs. “The Thais call this the Princess Cave,” he says. “The local fishermen pile these little beauties in here to honor the sea goddess, hoping for good fortune at sea. And in the bedroom, of course. Thai legend has it that she gave birth to a man, whom she created to be her lover. He would come down to the water to meet her and they would frolic in the waves.”

I shiver. “I could've sworn I saw somebody,
glowing
, in the water…”

“'Twas I!” Noland says. “Covered in phosphorescent plankton. Dinoflagelletes, specifically, with flagellating tails.”

“Flagellating tails?”

“Like sperm,” he says, rubbing a thumb and forefinger together in a circular motion. “A bit slimy, yet kind of tacky.”

He's looking at me intently.

“The dinoflagellates, I mean,” he says, reddening.

We talk some more. Noland tells me he is an anthropologist, taking a break from field work in Malaysia. Came to Phranang to do some writing.

“About life in the bush?” I ask.

“Poetry,” he says. “Letting all the smells and tastes and everything I've absorbed for the last eight months float up to the surface, burst out of me and onto the paper.”

“I know what you mean,” I say. “I think some of those dino-flago numbers got into the drinking water. I've been sending home cryptic postcards about being brainwashed by squids, buddhas, and Thai beach boys.”

“Lovely!” says Noland.

And he is. Lovely. Especially lit by candles and surrounded by penises, which I stare at to avoid flagellating into his eyes. My heart is throbbing as ecstatically as a rave dancer, replicating itself in all the errant places of my body that I've been trying to ignore for the last several weeks. That little emergency vial of rationale I keep on the top shelf of my mind, the one that comes complete with a subliminal tape-loop of my shrink's voice, which to listen to is equivalent to wearing a chastity belt—I feel it explode from the high-voltage current coursing through me.

As my last few shreds of decency and restraint take flight,
I have an idea:A compilation of phallus terminology! It will be my life's work. I immediately get started on a mental list:
Peter, Prick, Rod, Demon Stick, Dong, Manhood, Boner, Tool, Schlong, Old Betrayer—

“Would you fancy a swim?” Noland says, vaporizing my data. But a swim is a sportingly grand idea.The reformed me (struggling to climb back on the wagon) knows I
must
stop dicking around, spit spot. I've got to get out of this penis palace before I do something rash. The sea ought to be safer than a cavern teeming with one-eyed snakes.

“Aye,” I say.

I take deep breaths, reminding myself of all the unsexy things that my shrink said lay in wait for me if I don't change my sexy ways:
Loneliness. Alienation from society. Bad credit forever
(though I'm still puzzling over its connection to sex).
Deviance is a symptom of self-hatred
, he'd once said ominously. Why, then, does the deviance factor make the consequences seem so sexy? So
outré?
Why do I so love this feeling of hating myself?

We walk down to the water's edge. I'm not wearing a bathing suit but my underwear and bra could pass as one.Though it's dark, I duck behind a palm tree. Unbuttoning my shirt and my fly in front
of a man is just too suggestive. For the first time ever I'm not trying to whip myself into any more of a lather than I am in already.

The sea is warm and calm, the glowing clouds of plankton creating a magical soup. I wade in hesitantly, shy. Shy-like. Noland grins at me from just beyond, bobbing on the surf. A fetching merman.

“Look at this,” says Noland.

He shows me something he'd learned on a trip to West Africa, how to play a water drum. He splashes a Congolese rhumba while I attempt water ballet. We discuss scholarly topics, such as the mating dances of the Trobriand Islanders. After a while, we stop talking and listen to the surf's rise and fall. Inhale, exhale. Diastole, systole. I look down at myself. I am shimmering like a tiny city, glowing with the self-generated light of millions of creatures. I look over at Noland and he's glowing, too, and suddenly I'm aware that his sparkles and mine seem to be calling out to each other, our own little emissaries, our very polite diplomats.
Hello! I see you!
they say.
I see you too!
then bowing to each other,
Thank you
(bow).
No, please, thank you!
For a long time, Noland and I just float, side by side, as tiny alliances are formed between us.