sidewalks and himself taking his suitcases through the bedrooms of
naked girls as if, like one of the kings of the Chakri dynasty with his
many wives, he were to declare to them "Honeys, I'm home." The
dreaminess belied a gloom. If Jatupon were to think of one positive
trait about himself that late afternoon he might have thought that the
ejaculation of his semen, which he conducted alone, disgorged extremely
far-- so far he had sunk into a shaky gray within himself that he
couldn't see outside of any void unless it had a rope attached to it.
Even the fetid air intimidated him. He felt intellectually obtuse. He
was like a dog carried by an owner (a woman in a skirt, riding side
saddle on a motorcycle) that squealed its head off when the motorcycle
skid and floundered onto one side.
Staring down as his brothers, his owners, pulled the invisible
leash, he knew that they condemned him, the laggard; and nominally,
that condemnation made him feel compelled to look down more often than
he would have done otherwise. Still, when they crossed over to
another sidewalk bustling with pedestrians he was forced to look up
since he was inadvertently bowling his suitcases against the pins of
strangers. In so doing, he noticed a store windowsill besieged by an
orderly society of ants. He was beginning to acknowledge that Buddhist
principles were curtailed by reality: a few ants allowed to live with a
human became a hundred easily; multiplying mosquitoes brought disease
and pain, and one's immune system killed bacteria, viruses, and
protozoa because murder was stamped into the natural order that no
human will could bypass. And yet this demonstrated that the Earth,
herself, was alive and full of creative potential. It was this
mesmerizing dynamism that most lured his eyes.
The city was fetid as his older brother's shoes in the back of his
girl friend's car (the car that had brought them here); and yet its
billboards and tall buildings were opulent. He imagined them glazed in