kept wondering if it were cocaine. Suthep vanished and then there was
the mosquito again. In a transformed madness, the mosquito became
Kazem; and this brother kept riding him painfully while Jatupon
wondered if Kumpee, the fetid one, had run off permanently with his
"Chinawoman."
Somewhere into the night--had it been in the bathroom when he was
vomiting or when he was back under the net with a washcloth on his
head?--he could not place where he was at; and then odd thoughts came
into his mind. "If love oils are a way to make the anus and the vagina
something that they aren't designed for maybe I'm pregnant with my
brother's child? Does he love me? What is love? My bottom has spread
out like a damp shirt when stretched"
Then it was the mosquito again. He asked what were Jatupon's job
aspirations in Bangkok. "Oh, I don't know," the boy responded. "I have
thought many things."
"Such as..." it asked.
"At times I have thought that I could become a monk--one of those
real monks that live in the cave, eat only vegetables, and have no
needs or wants."
The mosquito scoffed. "What a bloody idealist. Deny your hungers
and you deny the animal that comprises so much of the human being-the
animal that developed a high degree of consciousness to fight his way
up as the dominant species, the animal that nonetheless behaves
according to instinct. If you deny the human you will have wasted your
life not living it at all. That is what will happen if you are lucky.
If unlucky, I suppose you will eventually snap like a crazed
immigration officer who begins to shoot tourists. You are an animal
not that you have to be swallowed up whole into your hungers. The
illusions of being in love, the ambitions that have allowed you to
subdue the Earth under the illusion of gaining some happy plateau after