A Short Story

Deep frying scorpion tales in sweet sauce, drinking tea on the porch, odd insects, new ones not discovered, high pitched twitching sounds, other-wise silent in the jungle, birds are still strong voices in the universe. 

The village had no electric, you never heard the news, no hot showers, no TVs, computers. Henry missed writing and music the most, he didn't care about talking to anyone, the tribal people loved Henry, he was old, had white hair and a beard, harmless, an old uncle who could pay his way. 

Henry rented a house there, he could ride his Honda Dream into Pai to get supplies. 

Eventually he bought a  Honda generator and built a shelter for it under his village house so he could run a lap top computer, write and get stories out.

The world hadn't ended, Henry didn't believe the world was going to end at all, he knew that sacred hearts aflame and the league of  angels watched over us, and would take us all the way to Paradise, Paradise? I would rather live on Hollywood Boulevard, but once you get a taste of paradise, you might change your mind, everybody headed to paradise, too bad or too good, maybe full of the best thing ever, never as fun as Hollywood Boulevard.

So many different ways to approach writing, Henry spending a lifetime angry, blaming the system, whatever the system was, he didn't know. Wanting to approach writing in a different way. Writing in repentance, brilliant, you could throw up a lot of smoke or confuse people, looking brilliant to millions of readers, hmm, hehehehe, LOL. 

Henry wondered if Bukowski was brilliant like Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer.  Bukowski learning his craft by studying journalism while young in community college.  Bukowski wrote all the time, finding a voice, a horse-headed brain-child with the balls the size of grapefruit. Disenchanted,  light years away from the brilliants, Mailer, Vidal, Kerouac, John Cheever,  Capote, Tennessee Williams, closer to Steinbeck, who he liked, but never, never as good as Cheever, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, by far the mast of 20th and 21st Century literature.

Maybe being gay had something to do with it, Henry's favorite writers regardless, not giving a flying fuck, the three gay angels, the best of the best, Cheever and Williams by far better than Capote, Truman a master of his craft, deep thinker who enjoyed psilocybin.

Bukowski beat down early from the start, plenty enough by hard times, bitter, writing angry when society needed angry realistic writers. Pounding out his word like a drumbeat or smoke signal on the typewriter, a lot of people hearing it.

There is room for all kind of writers in this world, some are better than others, some are masters, others just work at it, aspiring to be, developing their craft, it is art, therapeutic, it is a good thing, we all need to have art forms as hobbies, it can save you from yourself.

It took Henry a long time to learn allot of things, especially that working regularly and being passionate about what you do is utmost.

Henry decided to order a Waffle at the hippy cafe in Pai. He didn't like talking to anyone. A small down in the Thai hills that had become 3 star hide away for young back packers and older expat artist. Pai was full of second hand book stores, henry had read it all, preferring to write 14 hours a day to reading.  If you read Shakespeare, what-a you gonna do? Write like him? Who in the fuck could read it, and how could you write like him anyways? 

Leaving town headed home, a herd of  baby Water Buffaloes were blocking the road, lead by a group of young monks in orange robes, bald. The Buffaloes were pure brown, blending in with the ferns, vines and red dirt. People love animals, they are innocent and talk with their eyes and bodies. You get the feeling they have huge hearts and fear us but would talk to us if we stopped eating them.

He had a date that night with a beautiful Asian women, He was nervous about meeting her, knowing she would turn him on, knowing she needed help, she was  up against it, having to make hard choices in her life. They met at Starbucks, later he met her daughter, fat. It is tough as hell being obese, especially for women and children, everybody. He would have easily taken on the beautiful mother without the kids, the fat daughter he had no idea what to do with. It was hard to love fat people even though you knew they suffered so much, being obese, the ultimate modern self- torture.

Henry, a world apart, not wanting anything, loving the free world, with allot of different mind sets, Henry had his own and it was way out there, an  odd insect, feeling the distinct pain of others. Knowing he could do little, offer a little bit, what he could for now. Feeling the rawness of it, powerless, life is cruel.

Henry, 62 years old, it was too late for him to complain and he knew it wouldn't help, , not kidding himself, going through life into old age and coming face to face with the raw choices people make everyday in the third world. Heart wrenching stuff, your first reaction is to blow it off, the sadness of having to go somewhere else in the world and  sell you pussy to survive,  just awful, making the planet a worst place to live. The world such a grand place, you gotta love it.

Henry a wasteland, stuck in time, facing mortality, useless to anyone, lazy, just wanting to get high all the time, fucking around trying to write, doing it anyways no matter how many people read him