Two places the leg-touch is prone to happen--in front of the TV, and on an extended bus trip. And every time it does, I can hardly breathe. Is this guy hitting on me? Please let him press harder, or at least not move away.
The slightest touch like that, from a complete stranger, and I get so. turned. on.
It was a long bus ride. I had plenty of opportunities. I've never worn worse shorts for a bus ride--far too tight.
I still have no idea when the time is right and the leg touch is just the natural way of things in that situation. Personally, I always make that extra effort to avoid being the toucher, or even the passive-aggressive touchee. Like, if I'm already sitting there, and he sits and his leg is against mine, I'll move out of his space. Or probably further into my space, if possible, if he's crossing that invisible halfway divider line already. Because, let's face it, the leg touch happens naturally only when you've already made at least a minimal effort to have personal space. And it doesn't happen naturally for me at all.
Which is why I was intensely aware of his leg, through his jeans, pressing heat against my calf.
When we pulled in to the Southern Bus Terminal, I intended to go inside and then play it by ear. Would there be a bus to the airport? Patrick Nihimla was certain there wouldn't be, and gave me the name of the nearest subway station so I could take a taxi just to there and cut down on costs. Didn't even come into play, though. As soon as I stepped off the bus, a woman in a blue vest asked where I wanted to go, and then piled my bag into a cart and took me over to a taxi. Super unsure of myself, I haggled with er for the taxi before I even considered the fact that once I start haggling, I'm destined to buy. So no bus.
The taxi driver seemed nice, kinda tough. Young. Slick hair. He said he'd only been in Bangkok 3 weeks, though that was after I'd already said I'd been in Thailand 3 weeks. His English was rocky.
After we'd gone far enough that I was lost, but only about a two minute drive, he started asking for money for the highway and I started getting worried. Started flashing back to the two times I've gotten ripped off when a pre-negotiated and pre-paid price started going up.
"Eh," he said, "eh, she, she," and here he hit the back of his head, like, 'Come on, English.' "She got bad price, eh... Didn't ask me, highway toll thirty-five, no, twenty, no seventy-five... You just give me 100, I take care of you, OK?"
My face started getting hot. My stomach didn't drop, no lead ball, but it tightened, and started making some extra acid. Wonder what it was expecting.
"You said 500," I said, not even feeling bad yet that this was only like $17. After all, I gave him two possible destinations, the subway or the airport, and he could'a just been taking me part of the way. I only had 400baht left to get me home, which wouldn't stretch very far once converted to any other currency.
"Eh-eh-she... Just 100, for the highway. She didn't get good price!" He started, then aborted, trying to tell me how low his cut was.
"I don't have enough," I said, probably talking too quickly, a tiny bit louder. Slightly strained. "I need 150baht for the subway. If I give you 100 I might not have enough to get back home."
"Back...home?" he said, sounding for all the world like a human E.T.
"Can we just go a different way, not the highway?" I suggested.
"OK," he said, but he didn't get it. Instead, he got this real sullen, stony look on his face, and after about a minute he handed back the 40baht I'd said was all I could afford to give him for the highway.
"It's OK," he said, smiling again. Nicely. "I take care of you."
"OK. Thanks."
I was sure I was actually grateful until he pulled over and started hailing other cabs.
Maybe he just needed directions?
The first cab that stopped wasn't having any of it. The second was better, said OK to whatever Thai my guy was speaking.
He turned to me. "OK. He take you."
I was out of the car by this point, obviously, trying to keep abreast. No money had changed hands between the cabbies.
"Wait. Why don't you take me?"
"OK, OK, OK," he said, and walked back to our cab. To the backseat. Where he started picking up my bags.
"No, I already paid you. Why don't you take me?"
"OK, OK, OK," he said, carrying my bags.
I took my bags. "No. I paid you. I'll give you the 100baht. You take me."
"OK, OK, OK," he said, opening the second cab's door for me. "See? I take care of you."
I don't know how many times we went back and forth. Not many more. Eventually he gave the second cabbie 300baht, that cabbie nodded when I said the name of the airport and repeated it back to me, and I got in.
With a sigh. "How much?" I asked.
"Hmm..." He spouted some Thai. "200?"
It wasn't an offer, just an estimate. I settled back in my backseat, resigned to the deal. Mad I arranged to come to Bangkok. I never wanted to be in Bangkok. I don't think I'm up to the challenge of Bangkok. Crazy busy, people living in squalor, dirtiest nightlife possible, corruptest cops in the world.
Obviously, I've visited it in fiction.
This driver spoke zero English. Didn't stop him from starting a couple conversations, though. Asked me where I was coming from, I assumed, since he mentioned Phuket and Surat Thani, so I said I'd just spent 3 weeks in the southern island town Phuket.
Then I realized he'd named the only two places in Thailand I'm sure they have airports, other than Bangkok. Was he asking my destination? Would he take me to the old Bangkok airport that only did domestic flights? I'd read somewhere that you had to be sure to say the new one, because cabbies sometimes took unwary travelers to the wrong one.
"I'm not going to Phuket," I said, anxiously, and when he glanced back as I spoke, I made the X with my forearms, the universal (Korean) negation. "I'm flying to New York."
He smiled and said a short phrase he'd used earlier that I'm positive meant, "Oh, I don't speak that."
Watching the street signs carefully, I noticed one for an airport. I pointed and spoke but he just shook his head. The whole road in that direction was at a standstill, so I hoped, hey, maybe we're taking the back way.
Looking back on it, I realized it was the new Southern Bus Terminal you have to be careful to specify. There's only one Suvarnabhumi Airport. I just googled them so late and so hastily that I mixed them up in my mind. Real comforting in retrospect.
Because then we drove very far, for about an hour, going through different districts. We kept passing police officers, or now and then a tuk-tuk, the Thai open-sided taxi carriages, and I wanted so badly to roll my window down and ask if we were headed towards the airport. I didn't want to embarrass or piss off the cabbie, though I knew Aunt Margaret could'a finessed it. Woman's got a gift. She can probably just turn around and walk back if she realizes she's forgotten something, rather than peeking around the corner first, like that was her mission, just in case someone's watching.
I want to tighten the scene, zoom in a little bit, but on what? We got to the airport, I breathed a prayer of thanks, tipped the cabbie (just over a dollar, now that I think about it, but at the time it seemed sufficient and I was nearly broke!), struggled into my backpacks, and started reading the departure gate signs.
Thomas was waiting for someone to bum a cigarette offa. Attractive American guy, long-time world traveler, meeting up with an ex-girlfriend from whom he expected to learn Thai massage. When he heard I was headed to Buffalo, he brought up the movie Buffalo 66, which I've never seen. He mentioned over coffee that India is his favorite place, because it's so unapologetically dirty. I commented on the uniformly attractive Koreans and how the sometimes-sloppy Thais were a refreshing and prefered contrast. We got on well, and then he caught his connecting flight and I dawdled through the hours waiting to start the trip out of Thailand. I had a microphoned interview with a Thai student, asking me all about how I liked Thailand and how the culture compared to that in my home country. I had a chicken sandwich, honestly momentarily forgetting that I was vegetarian, and good thing too since it was all I could afford at that point. I did my best to stay awake, hoping to sleep on the planes. Writing kept me awake in the last hour before I could check in. And then, as a matter of fact, I was writing this account and held up the entire plane because I forgot to go through security until like 10 minutes before the departure time.
There's more to the story, like the 12-hour layover in Narita, or the guy who sat next to me on the flight to Chicago, and then there was the woman who had a first-class ticket from Chicago to Buffalo but didn't speak English and sat in my seat by mistake. My only first-class flight so far. And my bag didn't arrive on my flight, but I got it a couple hours later. And I stayed with my mom for a month, looking for jobs, eventually heading back to cashiering at the Co-op. Moved in with my friend Brandon til Sara makes her own way back from Thailand and we can live together. More to the story, but it can't be written right now and maybe never will. Suffice it to say that I'm back in Buffalo, cobbling together a life and enjoying the cold.
Heat is for passion, for the inside. Heat from the outside suppresses the heat that glows within. Stupor and languor and vacationing deserve Thailand. Real life deserves real neighborhoods, antiTourism. Buffalo is for the ghetto tourist in all of us.
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