osmoala

Kids carrying big black plastic bags were digging through dustbins searching for cans ten o'clock in the evening. Next to them tourists from the age of twenty to seventy engaging with local girls with dyed blonde hair and heavy make up. Young hippie wannabes in the bars shouting at the top of their lungs.

Nobody paid much attention to what somebody else was up to though, everyone had their own business to take care of.

It was not a lot to attend to anyway, and your daily chores you could sometimes take care of within five minutes. It was an everlasting summer. An illusion of course, but it was a persistent illusion.

Not everybody felt that way though. I had a new cold. Again. And around you there were people working all the time.

   They didn't measure their input in hours and minutes, because working was merely a part of the daily life, and you should have fun doing it – like the musicians you met on Sok San Road and you could see them playing in the restaurants in the evening, Brian, Dave, Cesar, Kevin, Slim – and no one wanted anything from you, instead they gave you something, inspiring you, because they always had a smile on their faces and a nice word for everybody.

   And Africa, she was working too, five days a week. And when she came back from lecturing her students all day she was still smiling. And if it happened that she tried to lecture me too, I would just say, ”You're still in the teacher's mode - let's go to the restaurant and have a beer." It worked, sometimes and the beers we were sipping would be Swedish Absolut, Irish Jameson, German Jagermaister, or the local draft. She never bothered to carry a grudge after the occasional argument, and I could not see the chip on her shoulder anymore. And who would care, when you had all the restaurants around you with the cuisine from Mexico to Japan, Greek. A delicious moussaka. The third moussaka was the freshest of them all. It's hard to argue about small things when you are enjoying some lovely food.

   And all I wanted to do was some cooking with my own stuff. Sometimes I would get tired of the restaurant food. You mostly know what you get. But there were some meals I had at least two times a week, well, that was the Punang curry.

   Africa laughed at me about my favourite dish, "You're in love with this Punang curry, aren't you?" I accidently had a bite of the red chili and she laughed even more. For two hours.

   Sok San Road was a fantastic place, and it was also a tragic place, in the sense that some people had lost their last hopes. It was a paradise for some and a harbour of stranded ships for others. And the garbage collecting, glue sniffing kids with no future whatsoever could break your heart.

I was taking some testosterone, so I had extended the half an hour at the gym to one and a half hours. It was fun and in the morning I was looking forward to going there again. There was a place on the concrete road, past Aura Bar and the hundred metres of dirt road, and I started going there instead of The Angkor Muscle Gym on the other side of the river. It was only five minutes away from JaMe.

   Three days after having started taking the Andriol caps I felt like punching some stupid fucker who happened to come my way showing arrogance. But it would always wear off in five days, and I regained the control over my mind and body again, sleeping well, having five meals a day and having the appetite for more life.

   One day on my way to the gym a young bull was standing on the dirt road. I stopped. This could go either way. It started sniffing at the doorway to one of the shacks and a little girl came out through the door and chased it away. It was a moment of embarrasment but I shrugged my shoulders and went inside the gym, paid a dollar, blushing a little thinking the little girl may have saved my life.

   Maybe that was when I got the cold? And maybe the cold was a metaphor for something I did not yet understand?

Africa shrugged her shoulders too. She had forgotten her shades somewhere.

   ”How much do they cost?” I asked.

   ”Around two-thousand dollars.”

   ”You lost a pair of two-thousand dollar sunglasses and you are shrugging your shoulders about it? Photographic memory is a funny thing.”

   ”Yes, they are expensive. Tom Ford. I had other things on my mind.”

   We walked back to the supermarket at The Temple and she got her glasses back.

   ”I'm so glad. I've had these for years.”

   ”Fantastic! How about an ice-cream!” We were inside the shop. ”Would you like a Magnum?”

I was eating constantly. The emerald coloured capsules made me hungry for food, amongst other things, and my muscles were sore from the training.

   ”I'm free tomorrow,” Africa said, ”because of the Chinese New Year". This year will be the year of the rat.”

   ”Good. I was born in the year of the rat. And so was James Bond. It's a good year. The rats are imaginative, inventive and prosperous.”

   ”Yeah, sure. I don't like rats.”

   ”Neither do I. But it's different if you are one of them I guess, a part of the community, so to speak.”

   ”Yes. You would know.” She laughed at me. Her eyes blue at this moment.

   It was a good sign. In a few days we were going to move to an apartment, on the other side of the river, only a few minutes walk from the school she worked at.

Sok San Road was a tourist planet for some, and a prison planet for some others. It was an everlasting repetition, an endless summer of both joy and misery. It was a street that contained the very essence of human life, happiness and sorrow at the same time. You never knew who you were going to meet when you were taking your walks.

   Africa said, back on her lunch break,

   ”I never give the poor kids any money, but I give them food sometimes.”

   ”The money goes to buy more glue?”

   ”Yes. They become irrational.” She had a puff of the Mevius option purple, her brand. ”And I want to tell you something else – the testosterone you are taking makes you grumpy. You have been grumpy for days. We'll talk about it later. But I have to go now, I'm already late.” She put out the cigarette and took off for her afternoon classes.

I thought about it. Taking Andriol was like driving a Ferrari. And, then it sometimes happened, when traffic was slow, you felt like putting the pedal to the metal. So, I simply decided to lay off the testo until I started training again. 

As soon as this cold wears off. As soon as this cold wears off. As soon as this fucking cold wears off...

I was tired of being sick with the temperature, the runny nose and the constant headaches. It was The Sok San Road Curse.

   At four in the afternoon it was rush hour on this narrow road and the traffic stood still. The fumes from the exhaust pipes from the scooters, motorcycles, tuk tuks and cars, one or two coaches with Korean and Chinese groups, comfortably taking snapshots inside the security of their vehicle – pictures they would show their relatives and friends afterwards, because they experienced their holidays through the camera lense – and there was always the gray demon, built up by dust, dust, dust.

   I never used to be sick and now I was down with my second cold in three weeks. I hated it. The headache from hell. This horror, this horror. The monologue from colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Then we moved to the other side of the river.