making your conquests, are hardly instincts one can extract. One
shouldn't extract them. These instincts have filled your kind with
purpose thereby making brief existences on a meaningless planet
bearable. Most importantly sexual desire keeps your race proliferating.
Tell me something a bit more practical."
"Well...sometimes I have thought I could become a money collector
in a city bus. I would be a Bangkok Metropolitan Transportation
employee--BMT."
"Well, being prime minister would never suit you. I must say that
this is certainly less extreme and easily in your reach. What attracts
you to the profession of ticket tearing?"
Jatupon imagined the money collector clicking the lid of his
metallic cylinder while shoving through the people. At times he would
sit on the monkey bar near the open door feeling the artificial winds
created by this fast moving green tube full of standing contortionists.
When new customers came in he would put their money into the tube and
extract tickets, weightless as stamps, from the same container. He
would click and click to get their attention. When the bus was
inordinately full, barefoot or in sandals, he would stand on the last
step an inch from death like a parachutist without a parachute.
"I just think that I could do it," he told the mosquito.
"Yes," said the mosquito, "but could you count change to the
satisfaction of the mass transit department of Bangkok?"
"I'm not hardly a dummy," Jatupon said angrily.
"Let's not go into that," the mosquito said. "I know you can
count. I'm just not sure if it goes beyond ten. That's all. What
other fun things could you become if needed-any type of job that can at
least grant you eighty dollars worth of free falling baht each month?"
"I don't know. I'm tired of thinking about it. It is such an
anguish to worry about surviving continually."