19th
Evil Creatures in Southeast Asia, Part 2
Part 2
The first few days of our time in the Orient had been going famously—it was all champagne and roses, delicious Pho and horny Thai groupies. We had no idea we would ever rise to this level of fame, even in a small and poor foreign land. We still hadn’t met our benefactor, but he was referred to in hushed voices by the various bureaucratic hangers-on we had acquired—they said he used to be a general in the VC, but they refused to speak his name.
Our drummer and keyboardist were brothers from a town called Battambang, former members of a short-lived group of pop hitmakers called Luc Pha Huy Du’o’ng Vat. Their group had broken up when sudden fame led the lead singer and guitarist to a gruesome suicide involving his pet white tiger and a can of bear mace. They spoke English but didn’t talk much, preferring to sit silently after gigs and drink bottle after bottle of warm Campari.
We had just finished the last of our shows at the Jade Dragon, though, and Trinh was anxious to usher us away to our next destination in sunny Bangkok. He had grown fearful of us after our altercation with the saxophone player in an opening band escalated into a full-on amphetamine-fueled curbstomping. We had also killed and eaten a large python in the living room of the home he shared with his wife and young children.
While I was off discussing the works of Marcel Proust and Jean-Michel Basquiat with a bright and perky college girl visiting from Paris, and plying her with gin and tonics (“quinine, to ward off the malaria”), Cass and Warsame took the opportunity to question our promoter about the obvious absence of any Vietnamese dates on our tour schedule.
Later they told me that he refused to speak of it and made an odd gesture, probably some folk magic to ward off evil spirits. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with us after that.
But at the time I was too preoccupied to deal with the odd spectre looming at us from the shores of Da Nang—the young girl’s Indonesian boyfriend, a 6’4” beast of a human with a giant silver crucifix hanging around his enormous neck, had caught us necking furiously in a bathroom stall and was preparing to torture me in ways that would make the Khmer Rouge look effete and good-natured.
He was lifting me up against the wall and preparing to pound me, his girl shrieking in the background (Jesus, had a really just given this girl two hits of acid? Her night was headed downhill, and fast), when I whipped out my brand-new seven inch balisong knife and carved a big “E.C.” in his chest. He was sputtering on his hands and knees, so I kicked him in the face. I thought about making off with his lady, but then I realized that after the bad jolt she’d just had, she’d definitely be a screaming loon for the next twelve or so hours, and considering the long drive I had ahead of me (and the fine white DMT powder I had burning a hole in my pocket), I didn’t need that on my hands.
I burst back into the main nerve of the celebration, blood sprayed on my face, white-knuckle gripping my butterfly blade, and rallied my band with a garbled cry for haste and extreme danger. Warsame was wrestling with our drummer’s pet monkey and Cass was foaming at the mouth while he tried to pry more money for dope and hookers out of Trinh’s wallet. I grabbed them both by the collar and dragged them to the parking lot, where our van was already loaded, “Bangkok or Bust” scrawled on the side in wild spraypaint.
“Relax,” I said.
“The monkey’s coming with us, and there will always be more money for fine heroin and Thai ladyboys.
“Always.”
