Demi 

Elle is one of the prettiest looking girls I’ve seen. She’s in her early twenties blonde petite with the face
of an angel and often with not much on... 
Where sometimes in some of my more bitter moods I might look at a girl dressed in such a way and
think nasty things to myself, I know El and she stirs up nothing but positive sentiments in me, whatever
she has on.
She’s British and running around the town I’m in, Vang Vieng, Laos, with a fellow Brit, a DJ who near
always has a backwards baseball cap on and who I’ve barely talked to over the last two months or so
that I’ve been here. 
I saw her at Viva Pub where she works in town the other night and told her of how earlier that day I’d
made a painting inspired by a really beautiful German girl who was at one of the river side bars, which
Elle also occassionally works in, and the youths in town stop at when they go floating down the river in
inner truck tubes, hired out at 60,000kip a piece, tho, I usually just ride my rundown old motorscooter,
that I’d bought awhile back from a fellow traveller for 100 dollars, to the bars, and have only gone down
the river on a tube once before.
Anyway as I was sitting in front of the bar Elle works at in town on a stool, and she was sitting behind it
on one, the other night, I said to her, ‘My god this girl was pretty Elle, like, straight up, Bottecelli couldn’t
have painted her, I couldn’t believe it…’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah… Just, yeah… She only really sat for the painting for like, 20, 30 minutes or so tho before saying
that she and her friend—she was with this other German girl— had to go, and they went back down to
their tubes.
And I continued to sit there behind my easel, and then I just thought to myself, ‘fuck it’ right? Just, go
now, while you still got a chance, right?’
And then I ran down on to those rocks bordering the first bar on the river, y’know the one on the left, on
the far side, Viva bar or whatever’
‘Yeah’
‘And I saw her floating there with her friend, and they hadn’t gotten all that far from the bar and I called
out to her, ‘hey, I just had a thought; they give out free whiskey at Viva Pub in town in the evenings, do
you know the one?’
‘Yeah, I think so’
‘So, maybe if you wanted you could swing by there tonight, they give out free booze, 10-11, and I could
show you the painting then when it’s done if you want…’
‘…So you’re getting lessons from Ste?’
Ste is a rather handsome, self-confident young man, who too, works both in the river bars and at Viva
Pub in town in the evenings and he often suggests to girls he meets on the river that they come by Viva
Pub in the evening. 
‘Yeah’
‘Do the nice things Ste does. Not the nasty ones. Girls only really like the nice ones’ 
‘Yeah’
‘…I love you but they seem to like his caddishness too’ I thought to myself, then remembered
overhearing him saying to a thin beautiful Australian girl on the river once, ‘I’ll tell you what, I want to
bang the shit out of you right now’
Nice guys finish last and all that…
Ah well…’

‘That’s a nice shirt’ El said to me of the dark purple and black plaid shirt I had on, tucked into my black
jeans.
‘Ah it’s just some old shit I threw on’
‘Have I seen it before?’
‘It just came out of the wash’
El laughed at this then said, ‘No it didn’t’
‘Mm. Yeah, you’re right, it didn’t’
‘I like it tho’
‘Thanks El’
‘You’re going to pull tonight’
I scoffed at this.  
‘Max is gonna pull tonight’
‘I don’t know’ I replied with a slight laugh, ‘we’ll see’ 

I took a kebab from the Viva Kebab stand on the curb before the bar and later watched Ste and El play
beer pong on a table before the bar as they waited for it to fill up and as they played I overheard El ask
Ste if he’d ever slept with anyone on mdma. A rather lewd anecdote followed involving Ste, another boy
and four girls... The other chap was soon to crash out leaving Ste to his own devices with the other four. 
The girl I’d painted on the river didn’t show at 10. I spoke to Ste briefly asking him about girls as I often
do and he told me in his thick Britain accent, ‘Believe in yourself man. Just be yourself, that’s all you
gotta do’
‘Thanks man’ I replied. 
Over the free drinks hour I got talking to a pretty light grey haired Australian girl, with a raspy voice
called Demi. 
She went off for a bit and I later saw her on the street before the bar and with some Dutch courage and
recklessness and also feeling a little bolstered by Ste’s advice, I went and asked her if she might like to
come and smoke a joint with me in my room.
She said that she didn’t smoke weed but we decided to go and take a beer in a corner store instead.
We bought two large beer laos from the corner store besides Viva Pub, and sat with them on the
otherwise abandoned concrete table before the store.
Demi’s eyes welled up as she told me about how suicidal she’d felt as a teenager, her late mother she’d
lost in a terrorist attack and her distant father. And I told her of how I didn’t feel particularly close to my
older sister, especially after I tried to tell her of a rather rough time I’d had as a child once and she’d
replied, ‘Max it’s too much I don’t want to know’, or something along these lines, to this effect.
Midway thru our beers I asked Demi what her little cotton wrist band said and she replied, ‘it says; I love
ket. I got it in Bangkok. 
‘I don’t take that drug anymore’ I replied.
‘Had a bad experience?’
‘Rather a good one. I’m kinda haunted, if that’s not too strong a word, by how beautiful my last
experience with it was, when I took it with a friend. And I know I’d just get too nostalgic on it on my
own’
‘Yeah’
‘Yeah it was pretty awesome, I cut a line off my friend’s hip, and she cut one off mine to make it equal,
as she’s a feminist and we had some left so it cut it off her— in the little concave between her breasts.
Shit man I felt like the Wolf of Wall Street in that moment. It was just like, some peak of my otherwise,

quite loner-esque life. And we somehow managed to make it down the stairs of our hotel, holding onto
each other and laughing, this grey concrete stairwell, both totally fucked out of it on ket. And we went
to our hotel’s bar and only just managed to stay on the bar stools, without falling off and lying down on
the ground.
Drank a beer laughing talking about how retarded it all was. Surprised we didn’t get kicked out. It was
like something out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or someshit for a minute’
Demi laughed at this, then added ‘Yeah, yeah it can be like that. I remember being at a music festival
with my sister and just being like, ‘Get me out of here. I’ve literally got cerebal pausy. I can’t move’
‘Yeah’
Demi and I continued to drink and got to talking about prescription drugs we’d been on.
I told her of how I’d been on Zoloft and seracal—but had to quit the seracal as it made me feel empty
and near suicidal. Jon came by to the corner store around then and I called out to him, ‘Jon, darling,
we’re talking about what meds were on, do you take any meds Jon?’
‘I just self-medicate, get drunk’ he replied with a slight laugh before walking off.
Demi and I continued to talk and got some more beers and after awhile I said to her, ‘would this be out
of line?’ Then lent forward and kissed her and she kissed me back. 
We finished kissing and I then said to her, ‘Fuck, I love alcohol. Just, how reckless it can make a man.
I would’ve thought about that so damn much first sober, ‘how might she react? Would it be out of line?
What if I really offended her?
Fucking beer.... I mean, if this shit wasn’t bad for you, or they like discovered that life after death or
reincarnation was a thing, I’d literally drink it like water.
But, that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns. There’s the rub, that’s where
they get you.
Ah well, man, I mean, I don’t really have anyone that I’m that close to in this life, and I guess I only really
need like a decade or so to create a body of work like Van Gogh’s.
He did all that in ten years, working most heavily, creating most of his most famous works in the last 2
years of his life too... And that’s how I sell it to myself... Some of my less responsible or healthy
choices...’
‘Yeah’ 
‘…Pop’ I then said to her as I undid one of the top buttons of her blouse, ‘I wanted to do that for awhile’ 
I kissed her some more then said ‘pop’ again as I tried to undo the button below, but she stopped me
then said, ‘no don’t undo anymore’ 
‘Ok’
We continue to drink at the concrete table and after awhile Demi went and got us some nitros oxide
party balloons from the bar.
I invited her back to my room and she said ‘You’ll understand tho if we hook up I might leave after and
come back to the bar’ 
‘Yeah that’s fine man, sure, whatever’ I replied.
Later in my room Demi smoked a cigarette as she looked out of the large window behind my springy
queen sized bed.
‘You have a beautiful view’ she told me.
‘I’ve never really thought about it that way’
‘When you smoke you definitely do’ 
‘Yeah...

There was a thunder storm once. I slept thru it— or was half asleep thru it all pouring down and flashing
away outside.
…I’m sorry about before, by the way, I’m not great at this whole life thing’ 
‘Me neither’ 
‘I… Whatever’
‘It was fine’
‘Thanks’
Later as we laid in bed together and she held me she said to me, ‘Tell me a story or a poem or just
anything’ 
‘…Alright. Alright, ok, so you can fly—or rather although you know you can fly right, you’re not doing it
yet and you’re looking out of your window. And you think, ‘ok, let’s try it’ and you start to fly and you
find yourself flying over Paris at night and you can see the Eiffel Tower with the lights on it and the lights
on the city below. And later you settle down, come to land, in a forest somewhere and you meet this
boy there in the forest and you’re sitting with him and you feel a love between you two, maybe you talk
about things that aren’t quite clear, and you kiss him and you’re making love to him a little in a tent, and
then you wake up. And you want to meet him again but you know it’s fucked’
Demi and I were together a little more in the night and it was nice to be that drunk and tired and with
someone who had a soft body and personality and she kissed me rather passionately for a bit and I
pulled back a little, trying to lead her towards something a bit more languid and lazy. 
We were very drunk and I was behind her and she said she was 90% sure about things and I said that I
was about the same, and hadn’t really done anything unsafely before. I soon stopped with her tho and
said, ‘no this is dumb this is how people get diseases’ 
She remembered she had one more prophylactic left and I suggested that we saved it for the morning. 
It was still dawn out when I first woke up and I wanted to make love to Demi as I laid behind her as I
used to much like being with Sophia in the morning that way back in Saigon with the pains in my chest
from my meth use and my heart attack worries, but I’d laid a sweater and a towel down for Demi in the
night to cushion the springs from the mattress from biting into her hip too much and they were getting
in the way of things and she soon got on top of me instead.
Not having much experience of making love to people in my life it felt different to have the weight of
someone on top of me as usually it’s just my hand and the ghostly images; some evenings I used to think
about for awhile before the sentimentality faded, and I stopped thinking about them in such a way as
much. 
I tried to blow all the whispers and thoughts away as best I could and be present with Demi—but I
suppose it takes a bit of time for me to become more comfortable with someone in my head, or I’d been
entertaining too many fantasies of my own of late and felt drained in that sense...
Demi later went back to sleep and thinking that it’s not very often that I have a naked girl asleep in my
bed I soon got to work on a painting of her as she slept.
Demi wore her bright red short dress that morning and her black fanny pack and we took breakfast in
the run down little vegetarian and vegan restaurant in town together and the conversation between us
felt rather easy and pleasant and the whispers weren’t as much as before and I suggested that I took her
out for a ride on my scooter at dusk and paint her somewhere pretty and she said maybe and that she’d
like to go back to her hostel to swim in the pool there, but that she had me on messenger. 
She went outside for a cigarette as not to smoke near the children in the restaurant, the one year old
infant daughter of the owner and her five year old friend goofing around on a tricycle, and I soon went
outside to join Demi. It was very hot out and she had some perspiration over her upper lip. 

‘Perhaps the spell of the evenings passed…’ I thought to myself.
I hesitated for a moment then kissed her lips and the kiss felt soft and nice in the heat. 
We finished our sandwiches in the restaurant, then Demi went back to her hostel and I went back to my
room where I read some more Hemingway then went to the river to sketch and hang out. El was at the
bar and she soon came over to the wooden bench I was sitting at and greeted me with one of her hands
cupped in half a heart which I formed the other half of with one of my hands, as we sometimes greeted
each other.
Apparently she’d caught wind of what’d happened the night before with Demi somehow, perhaps JT
from the bar, who’s staying down the hall from me had heard Demi and I in my room or someone had
seen us leaving or sitting together at the corner store, I don’t know.
And as we sat together on the bench El asked me about what’d happened, and I told her about how it
was nicer in the night and I felt like I’d let her down a little in the morning. She told me not to worry
about this then added, ‘Have you told Ste?’
‘Nah, man, that’s, not really my style eh? ‘Hey Ste I totally fucked a chick last night dude!’ 
‘Copy that, paste it on Ste’
I laughed at this. 
In the evening Ste and El were playing beer pong before Viva Pub in town again. And Ste had apparently
caught wind of what’d happened with Demi by then and was rather congratulatory. 
‘I dedicate this next shot to you Max’ he said to me as he aimed his ping pong ball, ‘I dedicate all of my
next shots to you’ 
Ste made the shot and his ping pong ball skimmed around the outside of the cup but didn’t go in. 
‘Looked like you had a little bit of trouble getting it in there Ste’ I told him.
El laughed at this then Ste said ‘I’m not gonna lie it does happen from time to time’ 
As I continued to sit there watching them play I thought of all the times I’d seen Ste kissing girls on the
river and at Viva and of how he’d apparently been with 184. 
‘I haven’t even been with 20 and I can’t even remember how many I’ve been with’ I thought to myself,
‘maybe some of the faces if I go thru them one by one. …Still what a ridiculous way of quantifying
things…
A handful of those would’ve been a couple of thrusts then an apology to the girl— a lot of the paintings
have been more... Prouder moments to me but no, no one ever asks you how many truly great paintings
have you made? But some inconsequential thing rather lends to a man’s allure, his image, his value
almost…
Ah well…
I do hope Demi comes again tonight tho... She didn’t text you all day but, don’t be a little bitch about
things.
Just see what happens ok? If she comes she comes, and just stop being such a little bitch about things’ 
Demi did show up at the free beer and whiskey hour and I returned to a sketch of her that I’d started the
other night, and after awhile added some blue spirals to its background. I too learned from her of how
she was leaving for Laungprabang with some friends the next day and I watched her talking to the other
boys in the bar and touching some of them a little as she did so. I finished the sketch and felt grateful for
knowing how to paint and draw which as a good friend once said to me, ‘can make it all seem less
serious somehow’ 
‘…and it can distract a man too’ I added to this in my head as an afterthought as I continued to sit on a
stool at a long raised table in the bar, which Demi was on the otherside of, ‘put his focus into the

drawing instead of looking at the girl, thinking about his hairline whatever other whispers may be
blowing around up there’
Sometime later some paranoic impulse lead me to think I’d overheard Demi saying ‘...dud root...’ with a
laugh to her friends. And after awhile she came over to me and said ‘what are you looking so sad for?’ 
‘…I’m just thinking that I’m gonna miss you when you go’ I replied.
‘Aw’ 
Demi went back to her friends. And I continued to drink the free beer from the 10-11 free beer and
whiskey hour. 
After awhile Demi went to the toilet, which one had to walk thru a large empty back room to get to. 
I drank a bit more of my beer then thought to myself ‘fuck it just try man’ and walked into the back
room to try and have a word with her after she’d came out of the toilet. 
After she came out I said ‘hey’ to her with a slight smile and wave and we went to a small black round
table with some stools around it and kissed and talked a little. A lady friend of Demi’s came up to us and
didn’t seem to notice or mind about how we might be trying to have a moment together and kept
asking Demi things, tho after awhile Demi said to her, ‘I’ll be back out in like 5 minutes or so alright?’
And the other girl left at this. 
Demi then said that she thought I needed someone to help me but she didn’t think she could be that
person. We kissed more and drunkenly and impulsively I told her that I loved her. 
She went back to her friends and I drank someone’s left over cup of beer—then thought to myself ‘fuck
it, it’s over with you’re not going to sleep with her again tonight’ and went to Rizza the fellow who runs
the kebab stand before the bar, a warm and friendly Arabic chap with a beautiful smile, and who I have
always admired for his simple honest labour, and asked him for a sheet of butchers paper which he
wraps the kebabs in then I took it to the tall long bench, before the bar and wrote a brief note to Demi
on it, then folded it up and wrote her name on the upper most square with a loveheart around it with an
arrow going thru it. I then went up to where she was standing talking with a boy, gave her the note
hugged her once more and started to walk home. 
The following day, working from a photograph on my laptop, I did some background sketching for a
portrait painting, then I rode my bike out to see Ste and David on the river. And afterwards, back in
town, back in the downstairs common room of my hotel slash hostel, I said hello to a pretty young
woman who was hanging out on her own there, sitting on a metal swinging bench, before the hostel’s
relatively small rectangular swimming pool and writing in her journal. And I offered to paint her to which
she agreed. And her name was Elise, and she was from Delaware and friendly and very pretty with her
light blonde hair and creamy coloured, natural fabric dress and paisley shawl. And the dress featured
some cleavage and I noticed a pretty minimal black tattoo between her slight shapely breasts.
And after the painting on her suggestion we’d smoked a joint together in Space bar, which sells them,
amongst other food and psychotropics; opium teas, weed pizzas, magic mushroom pizzas and the like.
And to my knowledge Vang Vieng is something of a corrupt town in terms of drugs. Marijuana and the
like is illegal and carries a hefty fine if one is caught smoking outside, however, several bars seem to be
allowed to sell narcotics here, and do so blatently, with signs out the front of their establishments
advertising mushroom shakes and the like, as they pay bribes to the police.
Back at the hotel Elise was walking a bit ahead of me as we made our way back up the stairs to our
rooms and when we came to the second floor hall she said ‘well goodnight’ to me without stopping and
continued on down the hall to her room. I am on the third floor above and I called ‘Night’ to her from
where I was still standing at the far end of the hall in the stairwell. I paused for a moment as she
continued on down the hall, then added, ‘it was Elise right?’ 

‘Yeah that’s right’ she said as she stopped at her door. 
‘Well, I had a nice time tonight, thanks for hanging out with me. Sweet dreams!’ 
‘Sure. Night’ she replied with a slight laugh.  

I spent some more time in my room reading then went to Viva Pub again later that evening. I missed the
free booze hour, which I thought was probably for the best, and looked at the many pretty girls about
the place—one petite one in a white t-shirt which she wore tucked into a black short skirt particularly
caught my eye. I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t pay much attention to me and a Canadian Asian chap
soon came along and passionately hugged her. 
‘He’s my boyfriend for the last 3 years and he hasn’t hugged me once!’ the girl laughed at me before
waking off and hugging the fellow more. 
‘I told him he was my boyfriend for three years!’ I later heard this girl say to someone with a laugh. 
A chap came up to me and asked me how I was doing. 
‘Good man; I replied.
‘So what’s your type?’
‘What’s my type?’
‘Yeah’
‘I like muscly guys with really big dicks’
‘So you’re gay?’
‘That’s right’
‘I’ll introduce you to my friend’
‘Ok, sure’
Soon the friend came over. 
‘Hey’, he said in some form of European accent. 
‘Hi man’ I replied.
A shortwhile later the friend left.
Later the Canadian Asian guy came over again. 
‘Your friend, she’s a fine piece’ I said to him, ‘She’s a nice little number’ 
‘Thanks’
‘Are you really her boyfriend?’
‘Nah’ 
‘She’s... sexy, a, nice little number’
‘The trick to it bro is just persistence you’ve got to just keep on being persistent with them and that’s it.
That’s all there is’
‘Yeah’ 
Soon the chap left again. 
I took a seat on a stool at a round table crowded with empty beer bottles and plastic cups and looked
out at the patrons of the bar.
‘Fuck, this is not the right place to be sober…’ I thought to myself, ‘a fellow could quite easily drink
himself to death in such a place…’
The evening went on and after seeing a chap in a tucked in shirt wanly dancing I later got to talking to
him and his lady friend. Noticing the thin little brown cardboard-covered journal I’d taken out with me

the chap asked me what it was for and I told him, ‘Just notes, little sketches, to do lists, nothing too
interesting man’ 
‘Could I see some of ur sketches?’ 
‘Sure’ I said and handed him the journal.  
He flipped thru a few pages of it then said to me, ‘Could I sketch you in it?’
‘I don’t see why not’ 
The chap, his lady friend and I all laughed at his rather wild and scratchy sketch of me after it was
finished then I offered to draw him and his friend, and they said sure. I did a blind contour. And midway
thru it I asked the girl to keep her hand at her chin enjoying the way it looked there and she very briefly
did so before saying, ‘no I’m not doing that, I’m not putting it there, that looks dumb’ 
‘Ok. fair enough. Don’t do it then’ I replied.
Later as I continued to work on the sketch the girl asked me, ‘Could you hurry up a little? Is it almost
done?’ 
‘Look dude’ I told her, ‘You don’t have to be here if you don’t want...
Like, no ones forcing you to be here. Your friend sketched me so I asked if I could do the same for you
guys and that’s it… If you want to leave, y’know…’
I continued to work on the sketch and a shortwhile later the young man in the pair said to me, ‘Is it
nearly finished then?’
I stopped work on the sketch then showed it to the pair half-finished. 
‘Ah my God... ah my God... that does not look like me’ the girl said with a laugh, ‘that’s a shambles.
That’s an absolutely shambles. My god’
‘Ok’ I replied. 
The girl soon walked off and I told the guy that it’d been nice to meet him.
I returned to my stool before the small round table and soon overheard the girl I’d drawn saying to
some other people, ‘...and it was a complete shambles...’
The night went on and I later went and sat down against a door leading into the main inside room of the
bar and feeling tired from the painting I’d made earlier and my day, I felt moderately content to sit and
do nothing. I looked at the girls in their revealing outfits and watched as Ste put his hand on the small of
a rather cute petite girl’s back, as he talked to her about something I couldn’t hear over the endless loud
stream of techno in the bar. I’d never seen the girl before and she looked rather alluring.  
I continued to sit by the door and look at the girls. I looked at the petite girl in the white shirt and black
mini skirt with the Asian fellow and let my thoughts idly roll to a lewd place. 
After awhile I idly watched as Jon and Adam got rather aggressive with a girl a few feet before me. 
‘Fuck off’ I caught Jon say to the girl as he violently motioned for her to leave, ‘nah, just fuck off ok, get
out of here, we don’t want you here’
‘I’m sorry but if you’re gonna be saying abusive things about people who work here it’s time for you to
go home’ Adam added. 
The drama continued and I couldn’t catch all of it over the music tho a shortwhile later I caught Jon say
to the girl ‘Nah, we don’t want you in our bar anymore you’re not welcome here. Fuck off. Go home’ 
After the two boys had left as the girl made her way back towards the main room of the bar I tapped her
side without getting up and said to her, ‘what happened?’
‘Nothing, I’m just going to the toilet’ she replied. 

I continued to sit there for awhile then thought to myself, ‘Fuck it. Better go home now…’
And then I started to head back to my hotel.