"Sith, get one of your boys to cross the Mekong. Bring back a couple of shopping bags full of pot."
Sith manages all the Thai civilians who work the mess hall. We're like brothers.
"I send. You no worry," he tells me.
I go on. "Tell him only chop the tops off the plants. I'll toss him $5 and pay for the ferry."
Thai sticks sell for $20 a pound. The Thais even empty American cigarettes and refill them with marijuana. A pack of 20 sells for $2.
But I want Laotian weed. After two hits, I cough until my testicles hurt. When I stop, the world's a different place.
Amazing.
***
Sitting on the side of my bunk I wonder, "Am I the straight guy or the guy who's high?"
Wait, that's schizophrenia.
"Jose, I'm smoking about 20 joints a day. You think that's too much?"
"Nah."
"How much you smoke?"
"About 40 joints a day. You're all right man."
In Nakon Phanom, the "working girls" nickname me "Dar Juan." In English, that's "Sweet eyes." A red line shoots permanently across my baby blues.
***
Six months earlier, I arrive in Bangkok.
I have a two-night layover before another plane takes me into the country.
I have a cabbie buy me a pound of Thai sticks for $20 and hit the nightclubs.
Beneath disco balls and the colored lights that reflect off of them, the dance floors are mobbed with women of every type, shape and size.
Mama San has a simple system. Each woman has a number. An electronic board above the dance floor displays the numbers 1 through 300. When a girl's picked, the GI hands Mama San $5 and her light goes out. She's taken.
It's a meat market.
I visit "Thai Heaven," and a few other well-known spots, but I don't leap in. I'm no yokel. I'm 21 and from New York.
***
Because I'm manic, Bangkok hits me the way water hits Alka-Seltzer. A Bronx-Irish-Catholic kid dropped into a world where everything's intoxicating, illicit or illegal, I explode in all directions.
But my first night, I start slow.
I smoke a bong and head for a massage parlor. I hike the long stairway, pay Mama San $2.50, then turn down the hall. Behind a glass wall sits a bevy of gorgeous, long-haired Thai women, smiling and waving at me, hoping to be selected.
One blows me away. She's simply stunning.
She leads me by my hand to her spotless cubicle. On the left is a massage table dressed with clean white linen. On the right there's a bathtub.
At first, she wears Hooters-type shorts. Later, she's only wearing thin bikini panties and a bra. After undressing me, she submerges me into a hot bath.
She scrubs every inch. Her expert hands roam between my toes and into places previously familiar to my fingers alone. Between the hot water, the wash and the weed, my muscles await her magic.
After the bath, she towel pats me dry. She lays me on the operating table and goes to work. She walks on my back, bends me backward and takes stress out of my neck, shoulders and body.
After, she asks,"Ow chuck wow?"
"OK," I reply.
"Chuck wow" means "happy ending." She rubs Vaseline across her palms and finishes me off. She rewashes me with a hot cloth, and then rubs me down with talcum powder.
My $2.50 spent, I could slide under a closed door. Massage parlors become a daily ritual and a harbinger of my insatiable appetite.
***
I receive few letters. A neighborhood girl writes once a month. Her father, Bob, though 20 years older, is a friend who's caught up in the 1960s. She asks if I could ship some grass to the Bronx.
I think about it briefly and weigh the dangers.
Sending drugs through the U.S. mail is a felony. Leavenworth is not a pleasant thought.
How to do it safely? No return address is a given.
What about dogs smelling packages? Mothballs?
How to say "camphor" in Thai?
***
It takes a week. The camphor cost $25.00, the grass $1.50.
I wrap the pot in plastic bags and then rewrap those bags in camphor.
What if they bust Bob picking up the package?
I tape a piece of loose-leaf paper to the inside plastic bag that reads, "I'm sending you a surprise." With a lawyer's help, Bob can plead ignorance.
After the package goes through, my mania kicks in. I deliberate going into business. I have access to opium, amphetamines, barbiturates and even heroin. One package of pure heroin could either set me up or put me away for life.
That stops me. The real problem would arise if the package got through.
Who would a 22-year-old kid sell that much heroin to and not buy a bullet behind the ear?
***
I send one other package abroad. A friend writes me. He needs money to get back to the States.
I send a kilo of Laotian weed to London.
Selling the kilo by the joint allows Joey to spend six more months in Europe partying.
***
I learn Thai, but feign ignorance. I want to know what the whores are saying.
Once the girls realize I speak the language, their fees go to $3.00. I negotiate myself into several bouts of gonorrhea. I'm at the infirmary so often, the doctors think I work there.
***
After payday, I'm glued to the poker tables. Separating the suckers from their paychecks takes four days. Some novices sit in my $1 to $10 game with a chart indicating whether a flush beats a straight, so I rape them.
A honed gambler, I fill shoe boxes with cash.
***
Everything's wonderful, until the single most unforgettable day of my life.
Bill O'Connor is a Vietnam veteran, former Bronx firefighter and pub and restaurant owner. O'Connor is currently a journalism major at UF and a standup comic. The irreverent and acerbic O'Connor performs free standup around Gainesville.
