It was night time and I was sitting on a single bed in the cheap Lao hotel room I was staying in. I was
drinking a whiskey water and Peter was sitting on the bed opposite me with his own one.
I took another sip from my drink then said to him, ‘I’ll tell you Pete, It’s a terrible thing for a young man
to realise that he’s entirely alone in this world, but I guess it’s something that’s gonna hit him sooner or
later’
‘…Mm’ he replied.
‘There’s this, this band I like, right? Grey Matter and they’ve got this lyric that goes, ‘got to rely on
myself cause there’s really no one else’
It’s a terrible, terrible thing to realise that you’re entirely alone in this world, that ultimately, no one
could give a damn if you were to live or die. But it is what it is I suppose…’ I took another sip from my
drink then leant forward a little towards Peter and added, ‘So I guess a chap has two options, right? To
learn how to rely on himself or to take his own life to make all the isolation, all the people, and their
immortal ghosts go away. What was it how Mr. Curtis termed it? Those immortalists with points to
prove’
…I’ve seen, Ive seen the photos man, the videos—a soldier pointing a rifle at a weeping young Jewish
woman clutching a crying baby to her chest.
The clips from the Golden Gate Bridge of those chapps on the far side of the railings preparing to jump
to end their lives as the pedestrians walk on by, pretending not to notice.
And I feel quite certain that if many of the people I’ve known in this life, were to recognize me on the far
side of those railings they’d just keep on walking and think to themselves, ‘Ah god, is that Max? It is him
isn’t it? Ah my god… Pretend you haven’t seen him… Just keep on walking’
…My sister for sure…
You see the videos of the men on the Chinese fur farms skinning minks alive, beating them with clubs,
throwing cages crammed full of them from the tops of buses as if they’re fucking stacks of newspapers,
their bones shattering as they hit the ground a story, however high the top of the bus is, below.
Great, great cruelty and negligence the human animals seems capable of. Blasting a school for little
children to go to and learn’ I finished my drink then lent forward and picked the bottle of whiskey, up off
of the floor and poured some more into my cup, before filling it up with water a little and swirling it all
around with my finger.
‘Ah hell man, even I myself have made the occassional cry for help’ I then went on to Peter, ‘sent out
emails, made posts on instagram, just, things to the effect of; too much of everything… thinking rather
seriously of ending it all... Just to test the waters as it were, see if anyone might... But nothing, didn’t
even hear back from the email I sent my own sister’ I drank some more of my whiskey, ‘I mean,
supposing you, drunkenly say to someone in the same bar or youth hostel as you one evening, ‘I must
admit I’m feeling quite suicidal at the moment’ 
And they don’t much give a shit, or reply something along the lines of ‘Oh c'mon I’m sure that’s not true
you’re in Lao you should be enjoying yourself! C’mon you’re having a great time aren’t you?’ 
And then you’re just like, ‘Yeah, yeah, alright you talked me round’
And then they just walk off…
Or if they say, ‘well, I don’t want to die either, so I guess I’ll see you in heaven then’ then walk off, well,
that’s, something, not incredibly inspiring, but coming from your own sister, or, from Liam, say, just total
radio silence, from, someone you once thought was your best friend that you’d say, ‘oh we’re brothers’
to on MD, just no reaction to your cries for help, a sigh, indifference, shaking their head and walking
away, they’ve moved on and got their own shit going on now and you’re being kind of intense, I mean,
your email had obvious sexist overtones and it really wasn’t worth responding to.

I mean I think it was John Lennon who once said— sang, whatever— nobody loves you when you’re
down and out, everybody when you’re six foot in the ground.
People don’t warm to sad people, women don’t notice the shy guy at the bar. It is what it is.
But the hell with it Pete, if I’m alone in the world, so be it, I’m alone here and if people are cold and
distant, and women are looking for some confident slick silken jack, I can never be, then so be it, that is
what is, what can I do with that?’ I drank some more of my whiskey, ‘I approached a girl in town to ask
her if she might let me paint her the other day, ‘er pardon me?’ I said to her as I briskly walked up to
her, but, she didn’t stop walking in her brisk pace.
‘But, I was just going to ask you tho, if—‘ 
‘No’ she interjected and I then stopped walking.
Just, when you have no one and no one cares, no one’s interested in whether you kill yourself or you
don’t, where do you go? What do you do? 
I suppose I must paint Pete. Landscapes maybe. I’ve tried asking people if they’d like to sit for me and it
can be quite disheartening; ‘I was just wondering if you’d let me paint you two, just while I waited for
my food to come out’ 
‘Ok, well that’s kind of creepy, but...’
Then her friend putting in, ‘Could we see some of your other things?’ 
‘Well I kinda don’t have anything on me at the moment’ 
‘Hmm… So you don’t have any of your other stuff on you?’
I just felt like I was some bug they were looking at beneath a microscope then man. I don’t know.
It’s paint or... There’s nothing much else I know how to do. No one else to turn to. It’s that or scrutinise
my appearance before mirrors, how’s my hair? How’s my hair? Is it… like that—or that, better? Or
thinking thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts; theories, jealousies, angles, conjecture...’
‘Mm’
‘And of course the drinking, ah, oh you can paint better when you’re drunk be less precious with it, less
pensive and wary about it. And oh it’s a way not to think of Liam and your sister and all the other ghosts.
Gotta be above it all or under it, or somewhere it can’t all get to you those, thousand natural shocks
flesh is heir to.
And maybe I won’t ever have fans like Liam and shows and people who love what I’ve created. Who
want to analyse my paintings and stories and offer up opinions on them. Usually it’s just like, ‘we have
no reaction at all to this one way or the other Max’ 
And maybe I won’t live in a country amongst wild eccentrics and kind-hearted wacky larger than life
characters like him and raw unabashed humanity, I fucked up my visa application with mentioning that
pissant little graffiti charge 5 years ago that they totally gave a shit about.
But this is where I am now God damn it. I’m not him, I wasn’t born in America, I wasn’t encouraged by
my parents to be confident and go up to strangers in the street and to sing them a nice little song.
I’m not constantly meeting bold and outrageous eccentrics. 
I went, I went into the store to buy some glue to fix my shoes with the other day and I said ‘thank you’
to the woman inside as I was leaving and she made a barely perceptible grunt in response—I’m just,
another farang.
And I don’t live in that state of never feeling uncertain as to what to say to a woman, as to what to do
with an evening. 
Ah fuck I’m sounding maudlin now aren’t I?’
‘No…’
‘Just a few simple mistakes can really prove a dick in your ass’
‘What?’
‘Or— a pain in your ass, whatever, you know what I mean’
‘For example?’

‘Just… Little shit, man, mentioning that graffiti, drinking the tap water that made my hair go back in
Nepal. Drank that shit for like a month straight while I was in KTM cause someone told me it was ok.
Then someone was like, ‘maybe it was the tap water. My friend drank the tap water in KTM and her hair
fell out’ But whether it was or wasn’t I mean, here I am now so fuck it ain’t worth shit now either way. A
man must be stoic, strong, a myriad of different things before the eyes of women, half of which seem to
contradict the other. It’s not alluring tho when a man acts like too much of a self-pitying little bitch. Not
too stoic, not too maudlin’ I took another sip from my whiskey, ‘…Whatever it’s 2018, the rules are all
weird now. A fag could walk down the streets in thigh high stilhetto patent leather boots and a g-string
and people would be like, how empowered and brave. And you could make a decent dignified oil
painting and people would be like that’s so privelaged and one sided, if they reacted to it at all.
…I think, so I hear is that it all comes down to confidence, just be confident; confidence is key.
It’s all about attitude.
Save yourself first man, then the girls will come to you.
I think the reason Liam has better luck with girls than you is because he’s more confident.
Well, what’s the worst they could say, Max, no, that’s it.
I think the reason I have such better luck with girls than you is because I just don’t care as much.
Some terrible, terrible island I’m just drifting further and further out from.
Fucking Beth and, I wonder what Liam and Hildie and whoever else are doing right now and how
wonderful it must be; the sex, the laughter, the jokes, and all the rest of it and the fucking carousel starts
up again’
Peter took another sip from his whiskey then said, ‘It fades when you paint tho, don’t you think?’
‘Hell man if I even can paint again then maybe, maybe…’
‘It has before tho right?’
‘Well, yeah, there’ve been moments, sure.
There’ve been certain paintings yes, that I’ve made of women, that I’ve seen some, moral decency,
some softness, some concern in I suppose at the time, and they came out, rather well…
But as you know they’ve only ever really been abstract larks for the most part, or I did a few realistic
ones but so long ago… That one of Fran, of Katrina, the valley, the still life of my draw, the few of Marie,
and that was it, I guess, in terms of realistic painting, realistic fucking portraiture’
‘The one of Katrina was rather fine’
‘Well… When did you see it?’
‘You showed me the photo on your phone one night, remember?’
‘Ah, ah yeah, well, thanks, I guess. Did it on cardboard, and always took it out busking, doing the street
portraits with me for like 2 years so it’s rather fucked, disintegrating now, but whatever.
And I only ever made those realistic ones, half a, odd decade ago maybe, the ones of Marie, even more
prior. The little bitch with her little black dress up in Mont Martre.
Oh but women like assholes.
Whatever, I quit the game. Their rotten little game, with rotten little players, Mr. Tin Man and Ms. Blue,
Blue, Blue and— I don’t want to play anymore. But, I guess it doesn’t really matter what I have to say;
thoughts, notions, are just born of moods right? Reason led be the reins of temperament.
You get spurned so you think; What a cunt I should slice the tyres on his bike.
And someone is nice to you so you think; all people are just good at heart and all wanting to be healed
and loved.
…I should really like to move into realism Pete, and get off the damned carousel’ 
I looked at the five half-finished realistic paintings atop the thin black table, lining the wall before our
two beds. I’d sketched out the backgrounds to them in pencil and begun to add paint to some.
I took another sip from my whiskey. ‘I can’t be what this world wants me to be Peter’ I said to him, ‘Oh,

Ste went to bed with a 17 year old the other day. He loves himself and that’s why everyone else loves
him.
Alright well maybe there is no inherent value in man, and those who cannot hunt will not eat in a social
sense. Maybe I am alone in this life. That’s ok. Some individuals are; pariahs, bears on bile farms, minks
on fur farms, dogs in cages on chains.
But, well, ok, supposing I am alone, then my looks shouldn’t matter half as much. And maybe not having
any friends can be the best thing for a chap. I mean, would Van Gogh have painted Starry Night, half of
his works if he’d had friends lauding him, celebrating him?’
‘…He probably wouldn’t have ended up in the asylum in Saint Remy where he made that work had that
been the case’
‘See? See?
Would he have made his gorgeous portrait of Dr Gachet, his portrait of that weary old man with his
head in his hands, had he constantly had a bunch of normalfags telling him how great he was? No, of
course not. It would’ve gone to his head and he would’ve gotten fuckin’ soft.
A man needs a dream in his heart and a means to employ his time and that’s it.
Fuck friends. I mean; oh, I simply love friends, I couldn’t live without them.
I could give a shit, one day they’ll burn or rot, before then will they offer me fire or ice? Who’s to say?
No, I should think you need something to do so you don’t go crazy with thought and memory and that’s
it. Could all the ideas of this world purchase one smile of a young girl?
But these, five, Peter. Fuck... They just seem so, imposing, man just, sitting there on that table, ‘the
blank, half-finished canvas has a certain idiotic stare that can mesmerise some artists so much that they
 turn into idiots themselves...’ 
But, but, but... what I think it all ultimately comes down to my friend is... And perhaps this is just the
whiskey talking, but...’ I drained the last of my glass, ‘but, I should think that the first brushstroke on any
painting is always, always the hardest one, but just as soon as you’ve made that first stroke, you really
must know that every stroke there after will be slightly easier sometimes even coming to you with the
grace of, loving a dear friend and you just must know too that on every painting you’ve made the most
basic preliminary sketch to there’s a definite, finite amount of strokes left until the painting will be
finished, and it’s hard to know before you’ve started on the painting but that’s as much a fact as this
Earth being round’ I made myself another whiskey water and then one for Peter, ‘And so all a man really
needs then is just the damn courage to make that first daunting horrible stroke... 
And the hell with scrutinising it all so as to best avoid making any possible mistakes and— I’ll tell you if
one wants to be active he can’t be afraid of getting it wrong now and again. Just, slap any old thing on
when you see a blank canvas staring at you like some damn imbecile! 
And the hell with whatever’s dead and gone and in the past. Fuck it. It must be forwards, forwards,
forever forwards.
I just, I can still remember the feeling. man, of the first proper realistic painting I ever made, several odd
years ago of Marie, in Paris. I shouldn’t have talked bad on her, everyone wants to be in peace. How can
I hate on anyone for following their journey? She was a beautiful girl.
I started it, I first started that painting, man, after we missed the last train home and she said I could
crash at hers in her little, room sans toilette, beneath the place she was working at as an au pair. And I
went on this rant of how all men were equal and equally deserving of joy, from the bum in the gutter to
the hot shot in the fine suit on the Champs Elysees and she then kissed me on the cheek, and said,
‘Often I have thought this, but never have I heard anyone say it before’ And we were on her bed, in her
otherwise abandoned little dorm room, and never having fucked a girl before then I thought, ‘Oh, this
doesn’t set any sort of precedent, she’s just being nice’
And she later showed me her shoebox full of photos, and there was one of her in a floral dress, bouyed

up a little mid-jump on a trampoline, out of frame in the shot, with greenery in the background, and a
smile of all life and warmth on her soft face, half veiled in her dirty blonde hair.
And I said to her, ‘this one, right here, could I paint it?’ And she said, mais oui bein-sur. And offered me
some of her, watercolour card and her paints and brushes, and I decided to sketch it out in pencil first,
and as I did I listened to her tell me of this cassette tape in German, that told her of witches, that she
went to bed with as a child, and of how she cut her wrists for a spell when she was feeling lost and
confused in high school.
And I remember her asking me to look away as she undid her bra, then pulled her sleeping shirt on…
And perhaps in some parrell universe that little kiss she planted upon my cheek would’ve grown into
something more but, not here bud, not here.
And I can still remember myself taking notes on the white strip of rubber on my vans on the metro
home that morning as I had no other surface to write on and just wanted, to get it all down man.
I just felt like, I had so much to write about, y’know?’
‘…What about the back of the watercolour card? Couldn’t you have taken your notes down there?’
‘…You know what? Probably, come to think of it, but for some reason that didn’t occur to me at the
time.
But yeah, I remember a few evenings later in my little attic room where I was staying with a host family,
for a bit— not too long as it was rather expensive— I remember, putting the finishing brushstroke on
the painting of her; this bright splash of green at the top of a tree, and I can remember it exactly that
light green stroke, or near exactly, whatever, and then catching the train to French school the following
morning with the painting under my arm, and just feeling like a fucking prince man; ‘I want to make it
with this girl, and paint her, and I’ve already done one, and live young and wild and free in Paris, and…
Just like my idols and this might be the start of something big’
…Anyway, I showed it to her after French school later that afternoon and she said ‘I love it’ then kissed
my cheek again.
‘You can have it’ I told her.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, sure, it’s yours’ 
And yeah sure, bud, it’s rather nice when you’ve done the painting for a girl who actually gives a shit,
but fuck it right?
I’ve done far too damn many of these Picasso-esque abstract childish larks with acrylic paints, and I
think it’s about time that I just, just fucking said, fuck perfection, and just tried to fall in to it with the
Van Gogh thing.
—Just these, lame, bitch-ass videos on youtube with their horrible whispers; The do’s and don’ts of nose
painting, just, the correct way to paint a nose with oils and you have to master the thick over thin rule
perfectly or your painting might crack and be irrevocably ruined and all your hard work will have been in
vain—just a bunch of fucking dogmatic fags who don’t know or feel shit about painting.
And have found a way to monetize doubt for their youtube channels or various products their trying to
sell, just the terrible groaning of some great machine.
And I will no longer look into it Peter. So I don’t mix fucking half lineseed oil with half, blah-de-blah-de
blah spirit, cause they can’t just nut up and say paint thinner or turpentine the pompous fucks.
I just, I don’t know how much longer I might have here, Pete, the way I’m fucking drinking to put away a
school bus, and all the pollution in the air, the grease in the food.
There’s just no romance to drinking the way I do if you’re not some sort of tortured genius...

…I take solace tho in the fact that Van Gogh, started when he was 27, worked thru until he was 37 then
left this place, with any luck rode death to a star as he once spoke of. Made most of his works in the last
2 years of his life too. There’s a certain comfort to that maybe that a man only really needs 10 years to
create a body of work similar to Vincent’s. But I should, I should, very much like to start in earnest soon.
The hell with these youtube fucks, just…’ I took another sip from my whiskey.
‘…Y’know sometimes, I wonder, is there an immortal part of man, y’know?’ I went on to Peter, ‘A, soul,
something that might survive him after he croaks, or is this just it; you’re born, you have a brain with
which you perceive the world around you with, and then when it shuts down you can’t perceive a damn
thing no more so you don’t?
…A little daunting n’est pas?’
‘…I, don’t know what to tell you…’
‘…It’s a nice thought tho right?
Some sort of soul, an after life…’ I laughed a little here, then took another sip from my whiskey, ‘Y’know,
I totally squandered this life, didn’t make love to a bunch of girls I probably could’ve if I’d had the
courage to make a move but, that’s no matter; I’ll get another roll of the dice after this so we’ll see how I
fare then. Round two’
‘Yeah, would be nice’
‘Because I can tell you I’ve lived this life like a complete and utter asshole man’
‘Haven’t we all?’
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Some sort of trippy DMT spirit realm before you get bought wailing
into the world to your new mother’s arms or just, nup kid, you were using your brain to think and feel
shit with, it’s gone, you can’t do that no more.
-Aw’
Peter held up a pair of crossed fingers
I laughed a little then said, ‘Right?
All the roads a surer man would’ve strolled bravely down. All the opportunities a normal man would’ve
capitalized upon… Don’t worry kid. Plenty more where all that came from! Better luck next time! Your
new life will be starting in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Hopefully might come back as some gorgeous girl, who everyone loves and wants to be with.
Something. I don’t know, does that make me sound like an asshole? I’m fairly far gone by this point’
‘Me too Max, me too’
‘Anyway, on that note, it’s getting late, I think I might turn in man’
‘Yeah. I feel that. I’ll just brush my teeth first alright, then the bathroom’s all yours’
‘Sure’
After Peter was finished in the bathroom, I then brushed my teeth and then turned in.
And awhile later I woke up half-asleep in my bed. And the room was dark.
‘Are you still up man?’ I said to Peter, incase he was.
‘Yeah…’ I caught him reply drowsily from his bed.
‘…Can you imagine if you were immortal, man?
All the skills you could hone if you’d simply, never age… Like Dorian Grey. Learn how to make money…
How to paint like Renoir, to play various instruments; dedicate a decade to the guitar and one to
mastering realism, and one to mastering the piano, and one to mastering Arabic and Hindi and French
and…’
‘Painting is drawing, you know that, right? And what’s drawing? First the eyes, then the nose, then the
lips, then the ear, and you’re halfway there. So you’re holding a fucking paint paintbrush over a pen or

pencil and then going around doing all the shading-in over a fleshtone base with a brush with some
sienna, or umber or whatever on it, rather than with a pen, who gives a fuck, y’know?’
‘Mm’
‘I’m sorry but are you landing on Normandy? No. You’re doing the same thing you always do in a slightly
different way. Grow up’
‘Thanks man’
‘You got it’
I turned onto my other side.
I’d come to find myself sharing a prison cell with an elderly man and I watched as this lady in a fur coat
came to visit our cell. And she stood outside the bars. And talked to the elderly chap, and handed him a
parcel she’d bought him, and then she began to dance for him. And the old man seemed to really love
her.
And then I was waking up in the morning and Peter was no longer in my room.
My life in Vang Vieng went on, I read, and tried my hand at the realism, and one evening made love to a
local prostitute.
And the following afternoon I found myself sitting behind my easel in my room, working on a self-
portrait from a small rectangular mirror I’d purchased, as Peter sat up on his bed with his back against
the wall and read one of my Hemingway’s. And we were both drinking whiskey sodas and the door to
my room was slightly ajar for the paint and turpentine fumes.
And as I continued to work on my self-portait I said to Peter, ‘I told you I made love to a woman
recently…?’
‘Mm’
‘I had to pay her but still… And I, don’t know how I might put this delicately, but, well let’s say, too much
of my own company led me to finish things in a, somewhat unconventional way’
‘…I won’t ask’
‘Sure.
I think, I was, naturally fairly tight at the time’ I continued to work on my painting and a little while later
I added to Peter, ‘…But, yeah, anyway, I don’t know, this idea came to me last night while it was all
happening, and like I said, I was a little soused so it’s hard to place too many specifics of it, but
ultimately at some point in the evening this idea came to me that women are processing the world
around them with the same set of emotions as men’
‘Well yes, we all feel things darling’
‘Well, hold on a second, alright? You might scoff, and say, ‘oh, yeah right, some big revelation Max’ But
for awhile I saw them as just like, Gods, ultimately; oblivious to all boredom and loneliness, if not woe.
I mean as much as an asshole as that might make me sound, when you near ever see a woman say,
sitting down on her own to eat in a restaurant, or walking somewhere on her own, and you imagine how
just to open up Tinder on your phone you’d have someone to hangout with that evening, without having
to be much of anything first. I mean you can get to thinking as Morisson once said, ‘women seem wicked
when you’re unwanted…’
And you can, from a place of abundance think what a worthless sexist, creep. But, I think anyone could
find themselves in anyone’s shoes if, circumstances accomidated.
But then, I don’t know man last night I just felt something, like I don’t know, maybe because I was
wanted they all seemed, less wicked for a moment, if only for what was in my wallet, but tant pis.
And I kinda just got this feeling like, ‘yeah I was with a woman and I climaxed and everything and I’m, a

member of their club now. One of them instead of some negative creep, some bitter cipher, on the
sidelines, who’s not even worth considering at all’
And I now just think like, ‘that was it? What it takes to be a man, however many kisses, slides into
oblivion, that’s to be what seperates, the loved, productive, lionized member of society, from the
unsettling, negative creep?’
And all these constructs of man too, one to be gentle and demure one, and the other to be strong and
stoic, and masculine, whatever the fuck that means, between what the slider and the slidee, and no one
really to take it up with besides 10,000 years of human evolution? But all mores just spun out from that,
the slider and the slidee.
Dolphins or dogs didn’t seem to find a way to make things all this damn complex.
I wonder if, old dolphins even have a word, a series of clicks, whatever to differeniate between the two.
Perhaps they have a word for a male’s… And then from there…
But effiminate, the masculine?
It’s hard to say. I know Orca’s have a word for whaling ships and the olders have kited them away from
their young.
…What was that thing old Darby Crash said? When I was small I obeyed their every word, handed down
to me by some, thoughtful blur now I am big much bigger than he I see there is no God bigger than I, no
God giving me time.
…What would the machine, gladly weigh me down with a bunch of pages from a bunch of old books? Or
tell me now that I am a man, a member of their general synod now, and this is what it took? Not the
paintings, not anything I’d written, nor any of my cries for help but this, this was what was to crystalise
me?
And yeah, it can lend a man a certain confidence, that perhaps before was lacking, you can slap yourself
a high five then say, ‘yep, just like the rest of ‘em bud, no sweat’
The way things ended I doubt I’ll see her again tho, it was just… Cash in hand, door in frame, something
like that’ I continued to paint, ‘Just… Confidence, is, the only thing… What it all comes do to is just
confidence really.
Confidence is key.
You just need a little confidence, that’s it.
I really like confident guys.
And of course that dirty little fucking word doesn’t have half its screech as to those without it’ I
continued to paint, ‘So, one of them, and not really at the same time, man, I suppose, something like
that. A glimpse into a garden that I woke up on the otherside of…’
I continued to paint and a little while later Peter said to me, ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing…’
‘Ok?’
‘…But, if there’s one thing depression, the machine can’t stand it’s progress’
‘Ok’
‘So there it is, the more progress you make the more it’ll lose its hold over you’
‘Yeah. Thanks bud’
‘Sure’
I continued to paint and a little while later I said to Peter, ‘…I tried with Lucy, with Max, to write
something beautiful, some polemic against war, but no one cared man. No one read it. I tried really…
To…
And I can’t, I don’t have it in me to send ‘em out to a bunch of dogmatic, fuckhead agents again, all with
their own foibles and dogmatic demands, and anything that’s not double-lined-spaced will be
immediately deleted unread and… Ugh.

And no one read any of them, not my sister, not Liam. Just, radio silence. I tried man, I tried.
I mean, you yell at the top of your lungs. And no one listens to you, so… I don’t know. It is what it is,
can’t let it get you down tho right?
I mean, I thought they were fine stories but… No one gave a shit… So here I am… Still going, still here.
And would it be worth a damn if anyone reads them after I’m dead? Who knows…?
But yeah, I really fuckin’ tried man. Let it be stated for the record that, Maxwell Williams did fucking try,
to write something beautiful and to say, a violent dictator should not be running a country, where he’s
just killing, killing, killing, whoever he wishes with, complete impunity, I… What to do? I tried…’
‘…Well, at least you can paint now…’
‘Yep’
I continued to paint and awhile later I put the last brushstroke on my self-portrait. I appraised it for a
shortwhile afterwards then said to Peter, ‘It such a queer thing to know… That I’ve quite possibly
created one of the finest works of my career. Y’know, potentially up there with Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr
Gachet, or Gaughin’s Two Tahitian Women.
And no one may very well give a shit.
This is probably something similar to what Van Gogh must’ve felt on completing a lot of his works, pride,
yes, but a certain sadness in that no one’d ever appreciate it. Just that haunting knowledge of how a
chap is, ultimately on his own in this world. Ah well…
Ah well…’ I continued to contemplate my work, ‘But sill... Still my friend, that feeling of yes, yes this may
in fact be possible, as old David once put it, that stage in a painting’s life where there are only a half
dozen-odd, less, little things left to fix up here and there…
A few little brush strokes here and there and all the ideas and all the machinery and all the distant joys
and sighs, slowly fading away… Waking sleep my friend, a hearty handshake with the reaper himself…’
I continued to appraise my work for a little while longer, then added to Peter, ‘I felt for a moment then
almost like I was my own man, y’know? Like I wasn’t just some cipher living in the bright shadow of
Liam, but my own man, you see?’
‘Mm’
I drank a lot to celebrate the completion of my painting, and later, as Peter slept, I went out on my own
to Viva Pub, the backpacker bar down the road from my hotel.
I woke up sometime the following morning with something of a headache and I laid in bed for quite
awhile trying not to think about anything,before eventually getting up. Peter was not in the room then
and my new painting was leaning against a wall to dry, but I couldn’t see my collapsible little metal
tripod easel anywhere. ‘Ah fuck’ I muttered to myself, ‘did I even take it to Viva Pub last night or what?
Is it here somewhere? Or did I collapse it with the idea of taking it but not, or…?
Ah where the fuck is it? Where the fucking hell is it?’
I looked about my entire cramped little room for the easel but it, nor its little black carry case were
anywhere to be found.
‘Fuck’s sake, fucking hell man’ I muttered to myself, ‘that was my fuckin’ easel man, how the fuck is a
man even supposed to paint without his fucking easel? You need it, like you need brushes and paints
and a surface to paint on. Ah, where the fuck is it?’
I took my breakfast of a tofu sandwich at the vegetarian restaurant in town, with the cold teenager
daughter, of the man and woman, who run the place, who works as a waitress there and never smiles at
me, or speaks to me anymore than is absolutely necessary to take my order when I come in.

And after breakfast I then went to Viva pub and asked around there for my easel but apparently no one
had seen it, and I then went for a walk thru town, and down to the river, then returned to my room
awhile later.
And back in my room I noticed that I was running low on good painting rags, and while cutting up an old
paint-stained pillowcase, with a box-cutter to make more rags with I sliced the index finger on my right
hand right open.
The pain was very intense and there was a fair amount of blood running down from my finger as I held
my hand up in the air.
‘Ah fuck!’ I said to myself, ‘Ah- shit. Fuck…
…Mmnn’ I groaned to myself for the pain.
I then went outside, and after closing my door with my good, uncut handed I noticed that there was
some greasy substance on my door knob. ‘Ah god man, what the fuck is this?’ I muttered to myself, as I
held up my soiled hand, ‘Grease on my fucking door knob? What? Why?’
‘Some fucking asshole has fucking smeared grease around my doorknob or what?’ I thought to myself,
‘Or is it cum or what they fuck is it? They were pissed off with my noise and wanted to punish me or
what? Or some other thoughtless fucker has just… God damnit man, fucking people…’
I then went downstairs and told Yen, the beautiful Vietnamese receptionist with the 3 year old daughter
and husband who also works at the hotel, of how I’d accidentally cut my finger and she put some cotton
wool on the cut, then wrapped it with cloth, which she then taped shut, with some black duck tape at
the top and bottom.
Later that day, with the idea of working on a landscape of the overcast limestone mountains, visable
from the rear balcony at the back of my 4 th story hall, I set a woodpanel atop the metal frame of an old
tall round metal stool, which was missing its cushioned top, and had a low rail for a backrest to it, that I
figured I could rest the panel against, and I too jammed a paintbrush, in an empty screwhole in the top
of the stool’s round frame, so as to prevent the woodpanel from sliding forwards. And I then fetched my
painting stuff and sat on another stool before the woodpanel. And I tried to work like this for a little
while, sketching out the scene in pencil, but I found the stool I was on to be too high, and it caused me
to need to lean forward too much, and my woodpanel too wasn’t as secure as I might’ve liked. And I
didn’t have any sort of table to rest a capful of oil, a glass full of turpentine on, my brushes and the rest
of it on.
And after working for a little while I muttered to myself, ‘Fuck this. The height isn’t right and its moving
around too much. C’mon, this is dumb, you won’t be able to do it like this, give up’
And so I gave up on the idea of painting the mountains without an easel, and there after rather shifted
my focus towards constructing a new easel out of my travel chess set, some nails, a piece of wood and
another unused wooden panel.
Later that evening I went to Viva bar again to take some beers. And midway thru the evening I found
myself sitting on the couple of steps before the bar, and working on a painting on some watercolour
card of a girl who was sitting beside me on the steps, with her friends, another girl and a boy.
Without my easel and my smartphone with the light on it taped to the top of it I couldn’t really quite
clearly see what I was doing.
The lady friend of the girl I was painting kept putting her hand on the boy’s thigh as she talked to him. 
And midway thru the painting I noticed a girl in fishnets and a black backwards baseball cap who earlier
that day, I’d asked for a painting from, to be gently rejected by, and I rather enthusiastically waved at

her, tho she didn’t wave back. And I didn’t have my glasses on so I wasn’t able to tell if she simply didn’t
notice me or rather did and decided not to respond. 
After I’d finished painting the girl on the steps beside me in a rather basic fashion, I started to add some
blue to my cardboard pallet from a tube I’d bought with me in my tote bag, so as to do the background
with. And after adding the blue to the painting for a shortwhile in the dim light however, I noticed that it
was my tube of cobalt blue hue paint and so would not much work for conveying a sad blue background.
‘I’m really into infinite loops at the moment’ I overheard the young man who was sitting with the girls
say to them, ‘ok, so like, you know that film Matilda?’
‘I love that movie’ the girl I hadn’t been painting who’d been touching the boy’s leg replied.
‘So I’d just have that scene where she’s looking at the tv and her dad’s yelling at her, then I’d go back to
having her looking at the tv and her dad yelling at her and just loop that over and over, for like 2, 3 hours
then in the end just have the tv explode’ 
‘I love the way your brain works’ the girl I’d been painting then said to the boy.
I then watched as the girl in the fishnets gently kissed a boy who was then standing before the stool she
was sitting on.
I worked a bit more on the background before I stopped. ‘This is dumb’ I muttered to myself, ‘I mean,
what the fuck is this, cobalt blue?
What sort of fucking retard comes up with the idea of creating a tube of cobalt blue paint? I mean,
c’mon... 
Fucking nobody in the history of this world has ever said to himself, ‘what I’d really like now is a tube of
cobalt blue paint’. No, no, of course not, cause how hard is to add a little bit of black and white to some
blue, if you’d even fucking need cobalt, how often does that colour even come up? I mean, seriously,
they’ve only ever said to themselves, ‘what the fuck is this colour? Why isn’t a primary blue? Where’s
my primary blue? Who the fuck wants cobalt blue hue? God damnit I hate people…’
I continued to work for a shortwhile then muttered to myself, ‘can’t even see what the fuck I’m doing
without this damn easel. Fucking disappeared into thin air and I don’t even know if they sell them in this
base artless country’ 
‘There’s nothing in anyone’ I thought to myself, ‘just a desire to get drunk, have fun and get laid’
I stopped working tho I continued to sit on the steps and after awhile a young lady came and sat beside
me.
‘What are you working on?’ the girl asked me as she looked at the painting in my lap.
‘Just a portrait of that girl over there’ I replied.
‘Oh, it’s good’
‘Thank you. I can’t finish it. I didn’t have the right blue, and she’s not exactly the most obliging model’
‘What’s wrong with it? It looks fine to me’
‘It’s not primary. It’s got to be primary.
I lost my easel too and I used to affix my phone with the light on on it to the top of it like this’ I did a
little mime here, ‘and then I could actually properly see what I was doing, paint at night, in dim lights,
right?
I would have been able to finish it tonight with the light on it, even with this shitty off-primary blue, if I
had my easel with me but…
I tried to make my own one, a replacement one out of an old chess board and some wood and nails but I
can’t affix my phone to the top of it so I can’t really paint at night and it’s just really not the same
product… Not as portable… No carry case, can’t shut the lid for the nails sticking up. No collapsible struts

so you can’t raise or lower it… You can’t even properly close the lid now with the nails sticking out of it.
Can’t add the light, and…
Ah hell, listen to me go on… I can’t stand myself….’ 
The girl continued to sit beside me in silence for a shortwhile then without a word she got up and left.
I took another couple of large beer laos at Viva pub and later that evening I rather drunkenly returned to
my room.
Back inside of it I looked at the half-finished blood splattered rags on the floor before my bed.
‘Might as well finish cutting them…’ I muttered to myself.
My box cutter wasn’t in my pocket and I couldn’t find it anywhere around my room either.
‘Ah fuck’s sake’ I then muttered to myself, ‘I really liked that one too. Fucking cunt. Fucking little piece
shit cunt of a fucking thing’
I laid down on my bed, and soon thought to myself, ‘You’re drinking yourself into an early fucking grave.
Just, whatever women seem to want, you just don’t seem to fucking have it. So just give up kid. Women
select and men prove themselves worthy of selection. And any woman can tell an alpha male from a
beta trash male and will filter out the waste. Ground in the stew and flushed away.
…You live in a perpetual state of fucking chaos and disorganisation and it’s all just going to hell. And it
just seems to be about all I can do to just grind my way thru each day so that I can enjoy sleep at the end
of it, and the all too short respite of that. 
Ah, my fucking razor man. My fucking razor dude. I really fucking liked that shit. Can’t fucking buy them,
those ones in this dumb little fucking town. Fucking hell man. Shit’
As I laid there I thought more about the attractive women I’d seen at the bar; the girl in fishnets and a
girl I’d seen Ste, who works at Viva Pub, kissing on the steps earlier that evening. 
‘There’s just guys like Ste and Liam’ I thought to myself, ‘who know what to say to girls or perhaps rather
don’t care much if they say the wrong thing and feel comfortable in their own skin and have the courage
to try with women which they consequentially respond warmly too and I’m not, such a man and I may
never be him and without this fucking easel I can’t even fucking paint to take my mind off of things
anymore and I just—
Just the type of guy who would have found a way to have escalated things with every single single girl
you’ve found yourself alone with; Shelly and that other chick from Pokhara when they came up to yr
room to see yr paintings, that night. Or Shelly when she came into your room to see your painting that
afternoon and was wearing those leggings. Or Twi, when she said to you over dinner that evening ‘the
saxophone is a sexy instrument’ and with every single one of them they would’ve rolled the dice and
seen what came up and half the time, if not more, it would’ve probably worked. But no man, you’re a
fucking pussy and you can’t be that guy, as men make the first move and men are self-assured and
assertive and if you can’t be that person fuckin’ hang yourself and do us all a favour ok? No one gives a
shit.
You can’t even kill yourself by jumping out of your window because the fall isn’t high enough, and you’d
just land on that tin roof below and break your legs and if anyone even came to your aid in this fucked
up country’
Later that evening I got up in the night to use the toilet. The door to my bathroom wouldn’t open all the
way, as it was blocked partially by my open suitcase, with many things in either side of it, which was
crammed into the little space below the end of the narrow table in my room.
‘Ah God damnit I am so fucking sick of living in this shitty little rathole of an apartment man’ I shouted to

myself, then squeezed my way thru the partially open bathroom door and urinated in my sink and the
unpleasant smell of my bathroom made me wretch a little. I ran the faucet briefly, then squeezed my
way back out thru the partially open bathroom door, shut it behind me, then returned to my bed.
‘I still feel tired thankfully’ I thought to myself, ‘probably must have at least another 4 hours or so of
dreaming left. Can’t be more than halfway thru... yeah’
The following morning, on my way to breakfast, I stopped and asked Yen if I could receive post at the
hotel, hoping to purchase a new easel off of eBay and have it sent there. She said that the hotel couldn’t
receive post but I could have things sent to the post office in town then pick them up from there.
I’d bought a rather rundown motorscooter for a hundred dollars, a shortwhile back after seeing an add
for it up in Viva Pub, and I rode it to the vegetarian restaurant where I usually had breakfast, and after
breakfast while riding around on my scooter, looking for the post office, I noticed some metal beams on
the side of the road. I stopped and picked them up with the idea of fashioning a new easel out of them,
then rode with them to a nearby bike garage. It was quiet inside and the gentlemen inside, who was on
his phone did not seem interested in helping me construct the easel so I tried taking the bars to the
hardware store a block or so down from my hotel instead. 
After some miming to the two non-english speaking youths sitting behind the large cooler out the front
of the store, they helped me tie the three beams together with some white plastic twine. A fourth rusty
old little square iron bar to act as the easel’s crossbeam was soon provided for me by the youths along
with two short lengths of wire to affix it in place. I mimed for pliers and one of the boys soon produced a
nail from the store. He looped one of the lengths of wire in half then slipped the nail thru the loop and
used it to tighten the wire, securing one side of the crossbeam in place; he then went on to secure the
crossbeam to the other strut of the easel with the other length of wire in this same fashion.  
I offered the boys a tip for their help which they wouldn’t accept, thanked them, then took the easel to
a construction site beside the hardware store for some further amendments; some bolts replaced the
wires and plastic rope and a few excess bits of metal were angle grinded away from the stand.
One of the two converging bars forming the arc of the easel was behind the other, and concerned that
any woodpanel or canvas I mounted onto the easel might, without an even surface to rest against,
wobble about as I applied pressure to it, I did a slight mime to this end, to the fellow who’d helped me
on the site. He thought for a moment before using his power drill to fasten a bolt, with a rubber behind
it halfway up the arc, so as to level out the rear bar of the easel.
After this was finished, I offered the chap a tip but he waved his hand and shook his head at me with a
wan smile, refusing to accept it.  
As I walked back across the road with my new easel, I saw a small girl child riding on the front of a
parent’s motorscooter puttering by and I waved at her and she waved back with a smile. 
Back at the hotel I asked Yen for a hairtie and she provided me with one, which I then used to secure the
rear strut of the easel to its arc so that I could both keep it in place and bend it backwards and forwards.
Youths in Vang Vieng often pay 60,000kip, or roughly 8 American dollars, to rent an inner truck tyre
which they can float down a stretch of the Nam Song river on. And as they float down the river, workers
stationed at bars along it, throw empty water bottles on ropes out to them, to pull them into the bars.
Inside the bars western employees, both male and female, often wear tights and singlets and collections
of beer can ring pulls on big chains around their necks. Edm music often plays in these bars and the
crowd often drink and play beer pong there. 
And later that day as I headed to the first of these river front bars on my motorscooter, hoping to do a

spot of painting there, I decided to stop into a service station as I was running a little low on gas. I
signaled with my hand before turning into the station as the left indicator on my bike was not working. 
And the young lady attendant at the station almost put diesel fuel into my bike by mistake and we both
laughed at this and I then mimed my tank exploding.  
After I’d finished paying her I then said to her, ‘thank you ma’am have a nice day’ 
Perhaps fiteen to twenty odd minutes drive out of the centre of Vang Vieng, there is a concrete drive
that leads away from the main road, and down towards the section of the river where the tubing and
canoing starts from, and after a little while this drive ends, and the rest of the road down to the river is
then just made up of dirt with quite a few entrenched rocks sticking out of the ground, and quite a way
down this road I pulled my bike into the organic farm, which is also a restaurant and parked my bike in
the cement, bike yard of it, then I started walking the rest of the way down to the river, and towards the
end of the dirt road, there is a large sign which reads ‘Do’s and Don’ts of Lao Culture’ and the sign is
metal with a brown background, and raised over two metal poles, and features several coloured
cartoons relating to Lao customs and ettiquette as well as explanitory writing below. And the first of
these cartoons features a large drawing of a shirtless stubbled chubby young man in boardshorts
clutching a young woman in a revealing outfit. And the fellow clutches a joint in one of his hands and has
a leering smile, and both of the pair have words written in permanent marker on them; the man has, ‘I
kick yr ass…’ written over his stomach, and the lady has, ‘Wanna??’ written on her hip.
And the other cartoons on the sign feature leering westerners putting their feet up on tables while locals
look on aghast, brashly rubbing locals heads and flippantly throwing trash out of bus windows, and the
like.
The first of the three river front tubing bars is on the far side of the river and a shortway up from it there
is this rudimentary iron boat teethered to a wire over the river.
And the boat consists of a metal frame, with some metal barrels welded below it for bouyancy, and
some railings and benches line the rear and side edges of the boat, and there is a rudder one can turn at
the boats front to channel the flow of the current below it.
There is a plank that leads out to the boat when it’s docked on the far side of the river but not one on
the other side closest the road. So when the boat is docked on this side of the river one must take off his
shoes and socks, roll up his trousers and wade out a few yards into the water to meet it.
Which I did, then I turned the boats rudder and rode it over the river with my new easel and all my
painting stuff in my tote bag.
However once at the bar, which was made out of wood, and raised half a story or so above the ground
and had some steps leading up to it, I felt rather shy. Without any alcohol in my blood I did not feel to
approach the attractive young ladies, in their bikinis who’d been tubing down the river with their
friends. 
I thought about approaching some of them and asking them if I might be able to paint them but the fear
of rejection seemed too much. Also I only had large perhaps A2 sized panels left to paint on, and one
cannot quickly fill such a space in 15 minutes or so before a stranger wishes to head on down the river
to the next bar. 
I larked around painting over a rather bitter aborted abstract portrait of a lady staring into her phone id
drunkenly started in my room a few nights before, but my heart wasn’t much in my new attempt, and I
felt that an abstract portrait needs a subject, someone who stirs up some emotion to be effective and
there didn’t seem to be much in the way of emotion in me that I was working from, but rather just a
desire to get rid of the aborted painting from before. I had no subject sitting for me, nothing much
stirring in my soul, nothing much that I wanted to say, just boredom and blankness in my heart, and
after awhile I aborted the work. I then drank a beer on my own, and awhile after it was finished I started

to work on a landscape of the river and the far bank beyond it before me. I stayed awhile after everyone
else had left the bar, continuing to work on the piece. And I didn’t catch the boat back over the river
with some villagers until the light was beginning to fail. 
I had an old green plastic fruit crate zip tied to the luggage rack, that my scooter had come with, welded
to the back of it, for storing my various effects in. and I put my tote bag full of paints, my painting and
my new easel into the back of this crate, or whatever one might call it, before heading home. The front
light on my scooter barely worked and awhile back I’d removed an old rechargeable headlamp from its
elasticised strap then tapped it to the front of my helmet and I turned this light on as I drove on up the
drive in the dim light. 
As I rode back into town I hit a pothole rather hard and as I was listening to music on my iphone as I
rode, I didn’t notice that my easel had fallen out of the fruit crate with the impact until at least a half a
minute or so later, at which point I then stopped, turned and slowly rode back along the road looking
out for the easel in the dim light until I found it, with its rear leg flattened at the back as a truck or some
other heavy vehicle must’ve ridden over it. 
I picked it up and put it back into the fruit crate, and at around that point I noticed that the easel had
been rubbing up against my painting and it was also rather severely damaged. I got back onto my bike
then continued on for home. 
When I got back into my room with all of my things, Peter was sitting on his bed beside mine, writing in
his journal. 
‘Ah man…’ I said to him, as I set my things down below my little thin table at the far end of my room.
‘What’s up?’ he replied.
‘Everything. Nothing’ 
I sat down on my bed. And a shortwhile later laid down on it and let out a sigh.
‘…I fucked up my easel man, after all that, after all that work I put into making it, trying redeem things I
fucked it up. It came off the back of my scooter and a truck rode over it. 
I was finally starting to feel good about, on top of things and now this’
Peter got up and appraised the easel.
‘Still seems to stand ok’ he said of it.
‘No it’s not ok, alright? It’s fucked, it’s all crinkled up at the back man, it’s looks like shit’
‘You can’t just say another story bled into it?’ 
‘No’
‘Correct me if I’m wrong but the truck only ran over the rear beam’
‘Yeah. And?’ 
‘Well, if it really bugs you that much, then just replace that then and the rest of it’s still ok’
‘Mmm’
I watched as Peter sat down on the tiled floor down from our beds.
‘…It’s just, it’s more than just the fucking easel man’ I went on, ‘That and the fucked up painting were
just the two last straws that broke the camel’s back, alright? 
Just isolation; body image issues- my hair. I don’t look as much like a handsome young man, anymore as
I did before, the type of man women look at, find attractive.
And so you’re just constantly looking at all the other young men with their normal hairlines on the river,
and rearranging your fringe before mirrors before you go out any place anyone might see you. 
And just, you know how shy I am man and I wish I was the type of guy women were drawn to; a better
man, more bold and confident and comfortable with himself, someone who fucking liked himself, and
was mid or early twenties with a full head of hair and someone a little rough-round the edges and
brusque and wild, like, Ste or Liam and; ok, ok guys so the technique to this game is just to pretend like
you’re fingering a butterfly. 

Let me see your minge, right now. 
Can I slap my dick against your ass? I’ll tell you what, I’ll just do it real quick alright?
I want to bang your brains out, right now.
And he’s not a bad guy he’s never once talked down to me, he’s always made an effort to include me I
just wish I could be that damned reckless and wild, man, that damn indifferent to rejection or having
crossed the line- a fucking wild loose bad boy, not at all pent up in his fucking head and worrying if his
hair is alright all the time. Fuck. 
I just, hate everyone, and they do not give a shit about me and it’s just, what can you offer? Not much.
Ok, then, what do you expect?
I can tell you if you weren’t a pretty girl, if you went to Viva Pub, with a box cutter, sat out the front and
cut your wrists upon, you could bleed out and no one would come and help you or tell you to stop.
Maybe give you a wide bearth incase you happened to be a psycho or not wanting to get blood on their
clothes but that would be it, you would bleed out. I would put money on it.
Fuck, I need a drink’ I got up and at the table, I made myself a whiskey water.
‘You want one?’ I then asked Peter.
‘Why not?’ he replied, and I made him one, then we both sat down on our beds facing each other with
our drinks.
‘Honestly, man’ I then said to him, ‘honestly it’s just fear, a terrible fear of rejection I feel out there on
the river. I’ll see a girl who looks pretty and who I might like to paint or be with, or befriend or whatever,
and I’ll just think, or perhaps more so feel, ‘she might reject you, she might be cold’ 
Or even if you try then it’s always just the same boring old chit chat;
What’s your name? 
Where do you come from?
Oh, Australia which part? I worked in X for awhile. 
Where as Ste someone else would sex it up soon and but my heart’s just not in it man, my heart’s not in
it and I can’t be him, and that’s what they want, that’s what this terrible machine wants, and it all just
seems fucked.
You can’t sit in one of those bars feeling low and miserable waiting for a friend or help because it’s not
gonna come man. If you were a girl yeah quite possibly;
Oh, you’re shy, that’s so cute, lol. No it’s ok. Don’t worry, I think it’s cute. It’s fine to be a little shy.
But if you find those same traits in a man, he can hang, big, die, starve in the streets. He’s nothing.
I mean talented writer? Talented artist? Happy? Sad? Suicidal, or not? None of these questions are of
any consequence. No, as a man, the only question that counts is, is he confident or not?
And I just want to leave, man, I just want to leave.
And no one fucking approaches you to see what you’re painting at the river, no one could care they just
want to get drunk and sleep together and have fun. Ah, Christ, how I can rabbit on’ I drained the last of
my whiskey, then said to Peter, ‘You want another one?’
‘Please’ he replied, and I set down the glass on my bed and got up and went to the narrow table at the
far end of my little room where I’d left my water bottle and bottle of Tiger whiskey. ‘Should’ve got these
the first time’ I then said to Peter, ‘long day, bit scattered’
And I then noticed my damaged easel still out on the tiles down from our beds and I put it back down

below my narrow table. ‘And can you not leave shit lying around my room?’ I then said to Peter, ‘I
could’ve trip over that in the night, you know how often I have to get up in the night to piss’
‘Sorry’
‘It’s alright’
I then got up and took the two bottles back to our beds and made the two more drinks for us.
And we sat back up on the beds facing each other. ‘I still remember that time I asked that girl in Viva Pub
where she came from and she just stuck her tongue out at me with a smile then walked off’ I then said
to Peter, ‘I hate this part of the world. We’re not wanted here. Farang. We’re just a very relucant ends
to stimulating the economy. A necessary evil. Brash, unpleasant. And the travellers, what are they?
Reticent reserved introverted Koreans, or thoughtless and brash westerners; girls on holiday with their
friends and lovers, or boys just trying to get drunk and laid. It’s all going to hell. It’s all going to hell’ I
took another sip from my drink, ‘you know my sister Beth, went to six different proms. And I didn’t go to
one. Every weekend it was a fucking different party or gathering, with the Eddies boys and… I still
remember when I used the word ‘legend’ to refer to someone, or something or another in the car when
I was like 16 and she, from the back seat with a friend told me, ‘not to use that word as I wasn’t cool
enough to use it’
I mean it is what it is, women are the ruling class and I get that. But I mean from your own sister you’d
expect, I don’t know, some warmth perhaps from an older sibling, but it’s just that awful divide, what a
ruling class comes to expect from the peasantry. There’s nothing in man. There’s nothing in man.
I mean she or none of the rest of the machine should rightly owe me a damn thing. It’s ok, it’s ok.
And I appreciate that they’d sooner face a firing squad than read a single line, I wrote. It’s fine, it’s fine.
I looked at my self-portrait on my desk.
‘That self-portrait was a fucking fluke…’ I then muttered to myself, ‘I can’t paint. I can’t fucking paint. I
can’t do it. It was a dumb fucking dream for a fuckhead like me. This world isn’t what it used to be. You
can’t just travel around and paint, you need visa, and fucking, there’s plastic and buildings and cement
and wire everywhere now, cause there’s nothing in man, again so he just throws all his trash on the
ground. It’s all going to hell. I can’t paint. Fuck it all’
Peter took another sip from his whiskey then said, ‘do you remember the sound the spoon would make
when you tapped the white paint out onto the cardboard pallets, so as not to contaminate the pot by
stiking used brushes into it?’
‘Of course I remember that sound. That was my favourite sound besides maybe Nao’s laugh or Hildie’s
sighs.
I just…
…All the pretty girls in their bikinis at that bar… Ah fuck.
They say the less you want it the easier it is to find but I just, could not want it more, love and
companionship and all the fucking rest of it…
And Tessa asking me to take a photo of all the other crew members and her as I was painting and I said
‘can’t this guy?’ like indicating to the Lao ferryman right?  and she was like, ‘no we want him in the
photo’ and I just told her ‘no, man, I don’t feel like it’ 
I mean, I’ve been in this town for what? A good month or so by now, and been to that river bar a good
five times at least and Viva in town besides where they all hangout and work in the evening and I just
said to her, ‘no, I don’t want to’  and I soon heard her relay this to her friend, the Dutch girl in a bikini
and floral shirt who works there— I forget her name now— ‘yeah, I asked Max to take it but he said no’
and she then came up to me and asked me to move all my painting stuff as they wanted to take a photo
on the steps, then said she’d give me 2 minutes to do it. And so I was like, ‘ok’ and slowly, reluctantly

started to get up to do so, like the little bitch that I am who won’t ever, stand up for himself, and I heard
the other girls talking of how they had no one to take the photo now, and so I y’know caved and went
back up to Tessa and said I’d take the photo for them and just God damnit man, fuck. Just, my easel was
the only friend I had and even that’s fucked now.
Ugh…
Ok guys so the technique to this game is just to pretend like you’re fingering a butterfly.
How can you stand on a table before a group of people and say that? 
Let me see your minge, right now.
And then they just giggle and think, ‘wow what a brazen bad boy, he just does not care and he’s so hot,
with his abs and his singlet and just plays by his own rules doesn’t he? I wonder what he might be like in
bed’ 
And that’s what it takes and I just can’t be that fucking person man, I can’t fucking be him’ I took
another sip from my whiskey, ‘just fuck it all man, fuck it all to hell. I quit’
I continued to drink and awhile later on looking at a half-finished attempt at a realistic painting that I
didn’t much care for on the table before our beds I said to Peter of it, ‘Shit man, their hair’s too black, all
just one colour mat black, no vivid short brushstrokes like old Vincent would’ve done. I can’t paint
realistically. It was a dud dream, a few flukes and that was it’ I took another sip from my whiskey, ‘You
know Liam’s sharing a flat with Emmanuel now? Who’s basically the living embodiment of a fucking gap
commercial. Road trips and drinking and fucking, gorgeous women lounging about the flat in their
underwear, which he takes his glamorous bohemian artsy black and white photographs of and German
girls in the kitchen doing blow and the city that never sleeps, of crazy eccentrics and these streets will
make you feel brand new lets hear it for New York. And, I should’ve never’ve mentioned that graffiti
charge on my fucking visa application. Fucking burecracy man, fuck.
I just I want to go home, but there’s nothing there, I’d be even more bored there than I am here man,
fuck. I want to give up, man, I want to give up. I want to fucking quit, man, I can’t play in this game any
more and I want to quit’ I took another sip from my whiskey then added, ‘I’d snap that fucking painting
in half if wood panels weren’t so damn scarce here, if I didn’t already have shit painted on the back of it.
I guess I can just fucking white wash it with primer if they even sell primer in this fucking base artless
country and have another crack at something else on it later, whatever, whatever man, fuck it, I’m going
to bed.
Night Pete’ I then added, draining the last of my whiskey before setting it down on the floor before my
bed.
‘Night…’ he replied.
I was drunk enough by then to get to sleep rather easily. And later that night as I laid in bed half asleep
in between dreams I noticed a heavy thunderstorm raging outside from the large window, filling up the
top half of the wall behind the two beds. 
The storm was very loud and it eventually woke me.
‘Peter’ I said, but he didn’t reply anything.
‘I’m turning the light on, ok?’ I then said to him. There was a switch beside my bed and I turned it on to
find out that Peter was not in his bed. His blanket was rustled and I guess he must’ve gone downstairs or
out somewhere or another. I checked my phone which was resting on the floor below my bed, charging,
and there was a new email from Beth in it. After reading it I threw my phone as hard as I could at the
wall before my bed.

‘Great now some fucking normalfag is gonna come and tell me to shut up for making noise’ I then
thought to myself. I got up and strided over to my desk and picked my half-finished realistic painting up
off of it then snapped it in half over my knee, then rather violently put the pieces down onto the ground.
‘Fucking hated that painting anyway’ I muttered to myself, then sat down before the table and began to
gently weep. There was about a third of my Tiger Whiskey left in the bottle and I still felt rather drunk
from before. I began to drink the Whiskey neat from the bottle until the bottle was empty, then bent
down and rummaged about in the box beneath my art table, which contained all my art supplies until I
found the little yellow-plastic-two-part-slide-shut box containing all my spare razor blades.
I took a razor out of the box, then went with it into the bathroom. The toilet had its lid down inside and I
sat on it and continued to weep for a shortwhile, before I proceeded to violently slice open first the
wrist on my right hand, then the wrist on my left one.