Shame www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

I just assumed he was a taxi driver.  The way he hurried into the place, shoulders rounded, a small plastic bag swinging off his wrist.  A girl with a backpack had followed him into the front patio of the guest house and was waiting, studying a map.  It was only when he left, minus the plastic bag, and then returned again, a few minutes later that our suspicions arose.

We were enjoying a port and stilton night.  A silly evening, serving as a little reminder of home after 9 months absence.  It had been planned while we were in Tioman, to give us something to look forward to in Kuala Lumpur.  Back at the Number 8 guest house.  Where, a month previously, Alex’s passport, credit cards and cash had been stolen from our room.  An audacious little thief had walked into our room one morning, while I lay asleep, and snatched it from the bedside table.  We were now in possession of a clear passport, and were just waiting for the new credit card to arrive.  Then we could finally move on, head towards the mountains, hide amongst the Himalayas.  But there was just a little more waiting to be done.

In our absence the guest house owner had installed security cameras, and caught three people trying the door knobs of rooms, looking for an opportunity.  Two were guests of the hotel, one had been staying while we were last here, the likely culprit, the other a taxi driver.

There was an uncomfortable look about the man walking back in.  A shadow cast across his demeanour.  Quick moving eyes and a tight unwilling smile.  Alex and I exchanged a look, suspicious and concerned.  He walked in after the man.  A few moments later he was back.

‘He’s just wandering around upstairs.’  Alex said.

‘That’s weird.  There’s something weird about him.’  I said.

‘I checked our room.  It’s definitely locked.’         

‘Did you say anything?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘What would I say?’

I shook my head at Alex, and went in to look for the man myself.  I couldn’t find him.  As I sat back down again outside, with a view into the reception area, he reappeared.  He wandered out of a side door, made a cursory look at a notice about the wifi password on the reception desk, glanced around, and exited out the back.  I got up again.  The fortification of port ensuring this thief would not be getting away with it.  The girl from reception was watching him, eyes narrowed.

‘Is he staying here?’  I asked her.

She nodded.  ‘I don’t like him.  He come with only plastic bag. No luggage.’

We followed him out the back.  He was sneaking around the back rooms.  When he saw us he straightened himself.

‘What are you doing?’  I challenged.

He walked towards us, his eyes unable to make a connection with mine.

‘I was looking for a chair.  There isn’t one in my room.’

‘A chair?’

He nodded.

‘What room are you staying in?  And under what name?’

‘805.’  He gave a name I couldn’t understand, but I asked the receptionist to check.  She confirmed it.

‘Sorry.’  I said.  ‘There have just been a few robberies.  You seemed to be wandering around, I made an assumption.  My name is Wendy.’  I held out my hand.

‘Xali.’  He said shaking my hand. 

We walked outside together.  I sat with Alex and he walked to where the rooms at the front were.

‘Something’s not right with him.  I just accused him of being a thief, and he still shook my hand.  He didn’t seem upset.  It’s weird.’  I said.

‘You can’t just accuse people of being thieves Wendy.’

‘You thought he was odd too.  Otherwise why did you follow him in.  I bet he tries those doors in a minute, when he thinks no one is looking.’

Xali called me over to him.  I ignored him.  I didn’t want to listen to him try and justify himself, to attempt to make a friend of me.  He walked inside and sat on the sofas in reception.  The owner approached him.  Shortly Xali left with his plastic bag, head low, ostracised, no longer welcome.  I followed him.     

‘So where you going now?  Try the doors of some other hotel rooms?’  I asked.

Xali stopped and leant up against a wall.  He shook his head.  Middle aged, Asian, defeated.  Intense sadness sat heavily in his eyes.  I saw shame gnawing at his soul.  The hostility I felt towards him waned, leaving just a pretence of it.

‘Will you help me Wendy?  I need help.  Please help.’

‘What?’ 

‘I have 3000 ringits (£600).  I need you to tie me to a chair.’

‘What the fuck.  Are you being serious?’

Xali nodded                                                                           

‘I need to you to tie me to a chair, only for an hour.’ 

There was a long pause.  He turned his face away from mine.  His shoulders rounded more, enfeebling him further. 

‘I’m a heroin addict.  I want to stop.  I get violent.  I’ll pay you.  Please don’t tell the man you are with.’

‘I can’t see any track marks on your arms.’

‘I smoke.  I am a respectable man. My wife and family don’t know.  In Singapore I have my own business.  Please, I need you to tie me to a chair.’

His sorrow was tangible, oppressive. 

‘I have come here for 2 nights, to get clean.’  He continued.

‘What’s in your bag?’  I asked.

Xali opened his plastic bag.  Inside was a thick coil of tough plastic rope.

‘You really were looking for a chair.’

Xali nodded.

‘Why are you telling me?’ I asked.

‘You seem open.  I like the way you talk.’  He replied.

I went and bought a couple of beers from the Chinese shop across the road, and sat on the curb with Xali as he told me his story.

He was 50, and owned a plastic mouldings company.  Sixteen months ago, he met some clients who he wanted to win business from.  He did what they did, to fit in with them, to win the contract.  They smoked heroin.  He couldn’t stop after the deal was completed.  So far he had managed to hide it from his wife and family, but the addiction was demanding more from him.  It was his plan to come to Kuala Lumpur for the weekend and find someone, female, not Chinese, to tie him to a chair, for the couple of hours the come-down ravaged him worst. 

On his forearms were inch long, wide cuts, healing badly.  Wounds from his last attempt to restrain himself, as he had struggled to work himself free.  He pressed me to tie him to the chair.  I wanted to help.  But Alex’s voice in my head chastised me, ‘What if he dies Wendy, that’s a manslaughter charge.  Don’t be an idiot.  You can’t tie strange men to chairs in cheap hotel rooms.’

His shame, that I had mistaken for the shady behaviour of a thief, was painful to watch.  But there was nothing I could do to help.  I told him I was sorry, and left him on the curb, staring into the gutter. 

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Dunkin' Drunk'un www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

‘She looks like trouble.’  Alex said.

I knew exactly who he was talking about.  The girl with the thin red belt.  She was undulating provocatively against a young dopey eyed man in a union jack t-shirt.  The undivided, evening’s attention.  

We had ring side seats.  Two buckling plastic chairs at the dive shop’s outside bar.  Around 40 Singaporean university students had gathered, at the invitation of Mike, Owen’s younger brother.  Owen being the owner of the dive shop, who had gone to a dive exhibition on the mainland.  It was meant to have a Hawaiian theme.  However, only Lisa and Sven, the bar managers, had bothered.  Flower lays, palm frond grass skirts, and coconut bras. The guests weren’t there for the theme.  They were there to get completely hammered and release the silly humping monkeys hiding inside them.  Things had gotten exuberant with a surprising rapidity.  Andy and Susanne had said it would.

We had been sat with Andy and Susanne earlier in the evening. The tension between them restrained, but palpable.  They are two of the dive instructors.  For two years they had been ‘living the dream’ together.  Picking up dive jobs around South East Asia.  

‘Just you wait.  Give it 15 minutes and they are going to be a mess.’ Susanne said in a soft German accent.

‘Yup, it doesn’t look it now, but 15 minutes, 20 at most.’  Andy agreed.

The mood amongst the party seemed subdued.  People were talking politely to each other.  The BBQ food was being shared out in an orderly manner.  No one was dancing.  Drinks were being sipped.  

Four tall blondish girls arrived, and positioned themselves in the middle of the party.  Incongruous amongst the Asians.  

‘Who are they?  They’re dressed like they have just finished a hard days data entry, rather than relaxed holiday-ers on a tropical island.’  I said.

Black pumps, thin tight knit cardigans, low sensible ponytails.

‘They’re some on my students.’  Susanne replied.  ‘Doctors from Germany.’

Around 15 minutes later, there were squeals from the bar as the tequila hit it, and the first casualty of the evening slumped in one of the plastic chairs.  

‘Right I’m off.’  Susanne said.  ‘You coming?’

Andy nodded reluctantly. 

Screeches, squeals, laughter and bullying encouragement hit high above the music.  Red Belt and her friends were at the bar, on the tequila shots.  One, two, three.  Union Jack had followed her.  She used his nerdy safety to dance with raunchy abandon at him, as others cheered on.  One of the locals, in a white t-shirt stretched over a middle aged bulge, was taking advantage of the revelry.  He bumped his way into the group of friends, and flapped himself aggressively towards the girl.

‘You know he is just trying to brush his dick against her arse.’  Alex said.

‘Yeah, there’s always a few around.  See a girl dancing and think they’re game for a salacious groping.  The pestilence of the dance floor.’  I replied.

The party was undoubtedly underway.  The boys were peeling off their t-shirts flinging them, like strippers, into the dance floor.  Another early casualty, two slumped victims of the free bar.  They were being used as props in which to pile beer cans, as unknowing participants in simulated sexual orgies, or the unfortunate at the bottom of a multiple person bundle.  Someone was being sick off the edge onto the beach below.  Girls were dancing, to rapturous applause, on the bar.  The grotesque abandon of alcohol.         

‘Look, Andy’s back.’  I said spying him looking a little lost in the fray.

‘That’s unusual.  Things must be bad.’  Alex replied.

We looked at each other, wise and knowing, eyebrows raised.

Red Belt lurched off the dance floor, eyes swimming, belly held.  Union Jack followed her, steading her as she stumbled.  They made their way over to a group sat by one of the beach huts opposite the bar.  Sam and Daniel’s hut, another dive instructor couple.  Alex laughed.

‘Oh no, she isn’t.  Is that her?’  I said.

‘Yup, she’s vomiting all over Sam and Daniel’s front step.’

Sam, stern, marched over to the vomiting girl.  She marched back into her hut.  A moment later she returned with a bucket of water to slosh the sick away.  Red Belt vomited again.  Sam went and got another bucket of water.

The dance floor was expanding, we were in danger of being danced on.  We went to sit with Andy, Daniel and a few others watching the quickening pace of alcohol intolerant youths, descend into drunken difficulty.

‘I reckon they’ll all be in bed by one.’  Alex said.

‘What’s the time now?’  I asked.

’11.15’  Daniel replied.

‘Midnight.  They’ll all be in bed by midnight.’  Andy counter-offered.

Andy looked resigned.  Empty.  The ending of his relationship with Susanne creating an emotional vacuum.   He tried to fill it by talking of a fleeting love for a girl moving with seductive confidence on the dance floor.    

  

There was a splash.  A scream.  A panic.  Coming from the teaching pool.  Daniel darted, Andy and a few others that worked there followed.  A ruckus, a call for a doctor, loud tears, bustle, commotion.  Daniel came back and threw his wet phone across the table.

‘What happen?’  Someone asked.

‘Fucking idiot pushed me into the pool while I was trying to help.’  

He walked into the dive shop.  An angry crash and smash. The music from the bar stopped, the revellers thinned out.  One of the cardigan wearing German’s ran towards the ruction.  As fraught people hurried in and out of where we were sitting, snippets of panicked, quick, serious sentences stitched the situation together for us.

‘CPR.’

‘Can’t swim.’

‘Thought she needed refreshing.’

‘Went down twice.’

‘Mike dragged her up by the hair.’

‘Drowned.’

It was Red Belt.  Someone had thrown her into the pool.  She had sunk rather than swum. No one did anything until Mike ran over and threw himself in.  He dropped her the first time he tried to bring her to the surface.  Daniel was first there to help.  Someone pushed him into the pool, for a joke.  Phil, a rescue dive student happily recounted his new knowledge on secondary drowning to us, as the fracas moved in and out of our sphere.

Red Belt was carried through a few moments later, dripping, limp, hyperventilating.  Lucky for her, and her foolish assailant, 3 first aid trained dive instructors and 4 German doctors were drinking in the bar that night. She was bundled into the dive shop, followed by a mattress, sheets and calls for water.  

‘Rusty, make sure no one goes in there.  No one.’  Andy said reappearing.

Rusty, the pestilence of the dance floor, stood guard at the door, menacing anyone who went close.  From pervy pest to proud protector.  No one got past Rusty.

We went to the bar, to distance ourselves from the distress.  Andy joined us.  No longer empty.  Filled with solemn perspective.

‘She was almost gone.  Almost.’  He said.

Phil put in a music request for ‘Do not resuscitate’.

We asked Andy who had thrown her into the pool.  He pointed at a nervous looking boy in blue shorts.  Blue Shorts walked towards us.  I spoke audibly about the stupidity of throwing vomiting girls into deep swimming pools.  What idiot would do something like that?  Blue Shorts asked if the cigarettes on the bar were ours.  No.  Andy asked him if he knew who had thrown Red Belt into the pool.  Blue Shorts shook his head and shuffled away without a cigarette. 

Someone else was sick on Sam and Daniel’s front step.  We watched as the remaining unconscious boy in the plastic chair was carried away by six of his friends.  Union Jack had long gone.

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‘Put a pillow under his back to wedge him on his side in bed.’  Andy called after them.  And then to us.  ‘I don’t want him to drown in his own vomit.’

Tioman - ABC beach

Tioman.  Tee.  O.  Maan.  The soft sound of those soothing syllables massage out the last of any stresses and strains hiding in the fibres of my muscles.  Minutes, hours, dates and days swim together in an endless cycle of a sleepy passing.  The rise and fall of the sun is the only concession to the movement of time, that and the intermittent grumble of my belly.  Silence and stillness hang in the air like ripen fruit, broken only by the thud of a coconut dropping to the sand, or the occasional impatient twitter of a brightly coloured bird.  Even the sea is subservient to the ambience, its serene swash kissing the sultry sands.  

The beach is a sandy swathe of rocks and trees offering a textured morphology, and, thankfully, saving it from commercial development.  Small wooden huts sit back from the water’s edge, on the wide green leafed grass that slopes inland towards the rainforest covered hills of the islands centre.  Monitor lizards perform their duties, patrolling their patches with an arrogant waddle-wiggle, keeping the kitten population in check.  There are few cats with a full tail on this island, battle scars, narrow escapes from the flick and snap of the lizards tongue.   

Across the thin path, just wide enough for a motorbike and sidecar, a myriad butterflies skip with jerky elegance from one exotic flower to another.  And the remaining kittens bounce after them, their stumpy tails bobbing behind them.  Along the path are a few simple restaurants, usually shut, offering various noodle and rice concoctions, and some shops, usually un-manned, selling essential sundries.  There are no t-shirt sellers, no beach hawkers, no tour pushers.  Neither are there touts, scammers, drunken louts, gap year cretins, litter, hotels, KFC’s , shopping malls, or obnoxious fat ostentatious Russians.  In fact there is very little to mar the natural integrity of this beautiful beach setting.  

The sea is warm, clean and clear.  Standing in its refreshing coolness, out of the sear of the sun, looking through the soft wrinkle of its movement, pipe fish can be seen darting between my ankles.  There are reefs that can be easily snorkelled to off the beach, big bulbous yellow corals, like giant popcorn, swell from the sea floor.  Psychedelic parrot fish flash brightly in little schools, and playful clown fish peek nervously from the softer corals that submissively move with the currents.  

They say that one notches down a gear or two staying here; mine have pretty much ground to a halt.  I can feel the sea air quickly rusting them, eroding the unnecessary machinery of worry.  Here’s hoping I won’t find a need to notch them back up anytime soon….I don’t think it will happen.  I like the pace here.  I say pace, more a slow fall into utter relaxation.  Tee.  O.  Maan.

N.B.  I have since discovered that the cats tails are a result of inbreeding.  But I prefer the image of a life and death stumble along the sands between a big lizard and a little cat.          

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www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

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·         you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material

You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com