Sophie

I was working on editing a series of novels and short stories of mine, on and off, for the last 7
odd years of my life. I guess I’d started off with just one, a short story called Lucy in the
Underworld, all about a girl who took her own life to wake up in an old-fashioned, universe,
afflicted by a great plague. And I’d written the very first draft of it story inbetween journal
entries, while I was staying in a rather squalid little dormitory, in Ivry Sur-Seine, just outside of
Paris seven odd years ago.
I had dropped out of a Bachelor of Creative Writing on the Sunshine Coast, in my native
Australia, and, having a little under 160, 000 dollars in both inheritence money and from a
criminal compensation claim from when I was assaulted rather severely at my local skatepark
when I was 16, I ran away to Paris, hoping to pursue a romance with a young woman I’d met a
few months prior over some school holidays, but the lady did not want to have much to do with
me then on that second trip.
And I was going to French school in the city for a few months before I dropped out, as I rarely
paid attention and mostly just doodled in class.
And I had my own room in the dormitory, six stories up, with a view of a train yard from my
window. And my room did not have its own toilet, tho there were communal bathroom blocks,
and a communal kitchen on each of the different floors.
And both were rather squalid and rundown and rarely cleaned. And I can still remember the
urine on the floor before the toilets, and it often being on their seats too, and the toilets often
being unflushed and foul smelling.
I’d written the story, mainly with the idea of showing it to Marie, the girl I had came to visit, tho
she never got back to me, when I sent her my first draft of it.
And I met a Dutch American fellow by the name of Liam, who played guitar on street corners,
and needed a place to stay, so I offered him the floor of my dorm room for a couple of nights.
And a week or so later I went travelling down to Spain to visit him, as the rent on my dormitory
was up, and we eventually settled in Sidi Ifni Morocco, where he wrote a long road story about
our adventures and I transferred all of the anecdotes from our adventures down there into the
first proper long draft of Lucy, which I later rewrote and rewrote over the years. And I too came
to add a few other stories to my collection as time went on; one about me hitch hiking down to
Sydney to visit a girl who I had another unrequited crush on; one about a girl who found a dead
body in the woods behind her house that I eventually decided to scrap completely as I found it
to be so poorly written, one about me taking a stray puppy in while I was living in India, and a
few others.
And I would sometimes think that whatever books I had on the boil at the time were all finished
and ok, and then awhile later, I’d realized that they were actually in quite poor states of repair
and go back and have another look at them. And my final overhaul on all the various short
stories and novels, probably lasted about a good 2 years straight.
After they were all finished I sent Lucy— I’d decided to shorten its title somewhere along the
line— to nearly a hundred odd different literary agents to no avail.
And I too sent Lucy and all the other stories to friends and family members, but no one got back
to me to tell me that they’d read them or what they thought.

Anyhow, without the novels and stories to work on now, I feel as if I’ve fallen into something of
a slump in my life.
I suppose a man needs something to fill his days with, something to occupy his mind with, a
sense of purpose say, otherwise he can fall into a rather bitter and unpleasant place.
And writing, editing, had been how I’d been filling my time, for so long, and now that it’s all
finished and tidied up, I feel as if I don’t have a lot of anything going on in my life right now.
And I can fixate, rather a lot, on certain unpleasant things; say my hairline which has begun to
receed a little at the temples over this last year, and of how I don’t feel as if I look as handsome,
verile or desirable a young man, to the eyes of women as I perhaps once did, or, I can fixate
over how my old friend, Liam, a US national, who grew up with his parents in Europe, must be
living a much more romantic, exciting and rewarding life than mine, in NYC, where he lives now
with his girlfriend, and works as a folk musician, busking in Washington Square park with an
amplifier for his guitar, to much success, or I can fixate over my own mortality, brooding over
the amount of second-hand smoke I must’ve inhaled over the last dozen odd years of my life,
over the exhaust fumes I’ve inhaled, the poor quality air I’ve taken into my lungs from these
third world countries I’ve been beating around in whilst working on the novels, all the sticks of
grass I’ve smoked, holding the smoke in my lungs each time, to make myself especially stoned,
and I can think of how grey my lungs must be looking by now, and how damaged my liver must
be from all my drinking and ponder over when my final end might be coming, and what I might
have experienced or achieved before then.
And just, not having much of anything to fill your hours with, nothing to focus on, can really
leave a man in quite a state.
My mother meditates and she tells me that there’s something in that. And I would like to
believe that there is. And so I try to do it myself some mornings; just to lay there after I’ve
woken up and breathe deeply in and out for awhile, as I try not to think about much of
anything, to just not get into any thoughts that come to me, and occassionally amidst this, I’ll
say things to myself like, ‘you’re just gonna lay here for 30 more minutes ok, man, not thinking
about anything, just 30 more minutes, alright?’
And I guess the idea is to try and tap into some infantile sense of peacefulness and calm,
somewhere in man’s heart beneath all this earthly chaos.
I don’t know if there’s much in it, meditation, but I suppose to have something in your life, is
better than nothing. I don’t know.
Anyway I’m staying in Chiang Mai at the moment, as I write this. I came to Thailand about a
month and a half ago or so, feeling kind of bored of the small suburan Australian town where
I’d been living with my mother. And I’d been staying in the mountain town of Pai before this,
and I mainly came back down to Chiang Mai, to visit a lady who I met up in the mountains a
week or so back. I’d first seen the girl, jumping up and down, with two other young ladies, a
shortway down the street I was on from me one evening. And feeling in a rather good mood at
the time, perhaps for some angle I’d turned in my head, some new resolution I’d made, I’d ran
up to the girls and said, ‘Hey! Hey! What are we all celebrating?’
And they turned out to be Americans and they all seemed rather warm and friendly as they told
me of how they’d all just decided to get matching tattoos, reading ok, no problem, in Thai. They
then told me of how they’d been lost on a hike the day before and the Thai guide who’d come
to fetch them out of the jungle had kept on repeating this phrase to them. And they then

invited me to come and get the matching tattoos with them. ‘Well hell, what the heck! Why the
hell not?!’ I replied, and then we all ran off to the hole-in-the-wall tattoo shop a shortway down
the road from us.
One of the girls, a rather cute, curvaceous one, got the tattoo on her behind, and shortly after
this another one, a short cute petite girl with curly brown hair, got the tattoo on her foot as
another boy held her hand and told her a story at her request to take her mind off of the pain,
and later the third girl from the street started vomiting on the curb outside the tattoo shop,
perhaps from too much alcohol, or anxiety about getting the tattoo or a mixture of the two, I
wasn’t sure, and a group of people were huddled around where she was sitting, offering her
support.
And I asked the girl if she was ok too, and then returned to the tattoo shop, and soon the short
petite brunette girl, who by then I’d learned was called Sophie, came up to me, and asked me if
I was really sure about getting the tattoo, and told me that she didn’t want me to do something
that I’d regret. I had an almost finished large Chang in one of my hands by then which I’d been
drinking to take the edge off what I expected to be the ensuing pain. And by then the chap in
the tattoo shop had also already transferred the ink of the Thai phrase to my ankle, from a
printed out bit of paper which he’d then applied some solvent or another to.
I told the brunette girl that she might have a point and we then left the tattoo shop together.
And we then went and joined her friends in a crowded bar with fluroescent paint on the walls.
And inside very loud electronic music was playing and everyone was drinking and I soon lost the
girl and her friends. I took a few beers, and after awhile, I somewhat tipsily rode my rental
scooter back to my little 200 baht a night, cabin, up the gentle mountainside, 30 minutes drive
or so out from the centre of town.
And I saw the group in the same bar again the following night, and I had my paints with me in
my little satchel bag then, and I drew black cat noses and whiskers, on both the faces of Sophie
and her curvy friend, and after awhile I watched as a young man carried a laughing Sophie off
somewhere on his back. Later that evening, somewhat tipsy again, I headed back to my cabin
halfway up the mountainside, on my rental scooter.
The following morning, I went and ordered my breakfast of a veg omlete and coffee at the small
restaurant across the road from where I was staying. And as I sat there waiting for my meal to
come out I noticed a converted pick-up-truck taxi, with a bunch of pretty girls sitting on the
benches below its canopy in the back go by.
And feeling in a reasonably alright mood, at the time, I got up and ran after the truck, yelling
out to the people inside, ‘hey guys!’ with a wave.
To my surprise the thing actually stopped, and when I got a bit closer to it, I noticed that Sophie
was sitting in the back with a few of her friends, who I vaguely knew from around town.
‘Hey Sophie!’ I said to her.
‘We’ve just been at the waterfall’ she then said to me. There was a waterfall at the top of the
mountain, I was on, and she then added, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘I live here’
‘You do?’
‘Yeah, yeah dude, in a little cabin, like not far from here.
...You want to see it?’

‘Yeah, go’ someone in the back of the truck shouted out.
Soon near everyone, save for the boy who’d been holding Sophie’s hand while she’d been
getting the tattoo, were chanting, ‘go, go, go’ and she eventually got out.
And she went and sat down in the restaurant with me and ordered herself a coffee and I told
her of how I’d been a writer and now that all the writing was finished I intended to paint, and
she told me of how she was 19 and her and her friends were doing a semester abroad in Chiang
Mai, and of how she was studying to be a high school teacher, and we talked too of ideas about
God, and I found out of how she was a Christian, and I told her of how although I didn’t grow up
in a religious household, when I had a drug problem awhile back, and thought I might die soon,
I prayed to God that I wouldn’t doe in the immediate future, and would get better and I did.
And I told her of how I thought if there was a God up there, I’d like to pray to him for the
strength to be a better man, and then added, ‘he knows what it means’
And I looked at the pretty bright mountainside scenery around us and after awhile I said to her,
‘this is just like, too beautiful right man... And I think if there is a God, he really is one of the
best artists. Like I often think of him like that, as just this great creator, this great artist, and he’s
created all this and I wouldn’t want to like, be someone who goes up to this gorgeous painting
in some gallery and then fucks it up, scribbles over it with like, a permanent marker or
whatever, y’know?’
‘Yeah, yeah’ she replied, ‘that’s actually a really nice metaphor’
‘I don’t know if it is, but, thanks…’
I looked at a dream catcher hanging nearby in the resaurant and pointed it out to Sophie and
said, ‘Hey, can you imagine being like, an American Indian, and looking at one of those and
actually believing in it, like actually believing that there were dreams stored inside it, like not
knowing any better, like actually believing that as a fact or whatever’
‘Yeah…’ she replied.
‘Like as westerners we think it’s bullshit and a fun gimmick but they literally would’ve believed
in it... And it’s kind of charming if you stop to think about it, just that old world charm before
science and knowledge and television sets and smartphones and the internet, and they
wouldn’t even have had any mirrors back then either.
Just like yeah man, no phones, no laptops, no internet... I mean, they literally would have had
no idea of what the concept of ugliness was. They physically wouldn’t have been able to like, go
and look in a mirror and be like, ‘I look ugly’ or self-conscious about that as there just wouldn’t
be any mirrors, like the reflections in water, which isn’t much, and that would be it’
‘Yeah… Apparently attraction and hotness was based off of how much the men could kill, what
sort of hunters they were. For the women, I don’t know. I suppose the men would’ve just
known, but… I don’t know’
‘That’s kinda wonderful man.
It’d be cool if there were time machines, and we could go back into the past and just live
there... Before all this.
…Would probably be too much responsibility tho... If there were such things, like, then you’d be
like, ‘I literally have the power to stop the holocaust from ever happening so I should probably
better get on that. Then after that you’d be like, I should probably better stop 9/11 too, and
warn people not to go into the towers that day, and then the genocide in Rwanda, and the first
world war from happening, and then say the genocide in Yugoslavia, where ever else...

And you’d feel like an asshole if you didn’t like, fix all that crap’
‘Yeah. Mm. Yeah, you would have a lot on your plate’
‘That guy who had sex with the monkey and bought AIDS into the human world’
‘Yeah’ Sophie replied with a laugh, ‘And also maybe if you undid one bad thing from happen it
might somehow cause another bad thing to happen instead. Maybe if you were to go back in
time and stop Mr and Mrs Hitler from making love, then some fellow called Eisenberg or
whoever would just start World War 2 instead’
‘Mm. Is an interesting concept tho if we ever get closer to say wormholes or whatever and find
out if it’s possible…
But we’ve probably still got a long way to go before then first’
‘Yeah. Thankfully’
‘Yeah.
I remember there used to be this TV show that we’d watch like life times ago, when I was a
little bitty kid, about this guy who’d always get his newspaper one day early, then have to go
around solving all the crimes in it before they happened’
‘That’s awesome’
‘With great power comes great responsibility, or something. Would probably be a bummer. Like
there’d be days you’d just want to chill and then it’d be like, ‘nup, can’t do that, girl’s going to
get murder-raped tomorrow unless I get on that, so…’
‘Yeah’
Shortly after breakfast Sophie and I decided to go into town and get my tattoo. And as her and I
were leaving my place later that morning I told her of how I only had one helmet for my
motorscooter, which I offered to her, and when she initially refused, I insisted that she took it.
And as I drove back into town with Sophie on the back of my scooter, I said to her, ‘if you hit a
dog it’s worth 10 points’
‘No, don’t say that…
…No wait, brown ones are worth 10, creamy coloured ones are worth 15’
‘Yeah right?’
‘You know, I always thought that Jesus would’ve had a great sense of humor. Like Hebrews 4:15
tells us that Jesus is just like us, minus the sinning, so it stands to reason that he had a sense of
humor too…’
‘I… Get to the part where he does the funny thing’
‘I don’t know’
‘Wait could you give me like, a more tangible example of a funny thing he might do?’
‘…Ok so I think that like, maybe he might say to you, ‘I’m sorry but I messed up your room’ then
you’d go in there and it would turn out that he’d really cleaned it all up’
I laughed at this a little then said, ‘that’s wonderful’
‘Yeah’
A shortwhile later as I continued on into town, I said to her, ‘do you think he might be like, the
type of guy who would pull your chair out from under you when you go to sit down on it?’
‘No!’

‘What about like the type of guy who might put a tac down on your chair?’
‘No! What? Why? He wouldn’t do any of these things’
‘What about if he had one of those electric shock buzzers in his hand, and he’d offer you his
hand to shake, then zap you with it’
‘Yes, that sounds like something he might do, because his message is electrifying’
Later I parked my bike in town, and Sophie and I walked together to the same little tattoo shop
we’d been to the other night. Inside the small reception of the place, there was a computer and
I put Troye Sivian on youtube on it, to listen to while I got my tattoo.
A shortwhile later as I laid down on the little single hospital bed in the backroom of the place, I
asked Sophie if I could hold her hand for the pain and she said yes and I did so and I soon began
to bite my bottom lip too for the pain as the Thai chap began to tattoo me.
‘Tell me something to take my mind off it’ I said to her.
‘Ok, well do you know what banana bread is?’ she replied.
‘Yeah’
‘Ok, so I’m going to tell you how to bake banana bread’
‘Alright’
‘Ok, so first, what you need to do is get all the ingredients. So you’ll need some fresh bananas,
some flour, a couple of eggs...’ I looked at her as she told me the recipie in great depth.
And once this was finished I asked her, ‘Could you tell me what you ate last Thanksgiving?’
And she then began to tell me about what she’d eaten at her ex-boyfriends house in much
detail.
After this was finished, as the tattoo was still going on, I said to her, ‘and could I ask you, can
you remember a recent time when you felt love for someone?’
‘When you gave me your helmet. And when my friend Daniel told me that I was like a flower’
‘…What’d he say?’
‘Just that I was like a flower, soft, delicate, sweet smelling... There was more’
‘Oh, nice. That’s sweet’
‘Yeah’
Sophie and I went out for drinks with some others later that evening and she left Pai for Chiang
Mai the following day and I continued to hang out up there for a bit. And I soon moved down
from my bungalow in the mountains to a rather busy hostel slash resort in town, which rented
out private cabins for 180baht each with the idea that it’d be nicer to be a bit closer in to town,
and that I’d probably feel a bit less isolated amongst other young people, and also that I could
perhaps ask some of the girls at the hostel if I could draw or paint them.
Rather loud pop and electronic music played from 9 in the morning till midnight at the resort in
a continuous stream. And the staff were rather aloof and the place seemed to overwhelm me
at least a little. I remember seeing an English chap coming to the hostel’s breakfast buffet in
just a tight white t-shirt and pair of tight white underwear once.
And I got drunk most nights and Sophie and I kept in touch a little via email.
And I told her in some of my letters of how I felt a little jaded to the ostensibly rather mindless,
lust-orientated partying and drinking scene in Pai, and she encouraged me to come back to

Chiang Mai. And in one of her letters she expressed a desire to learn how to write, and so I
offered to teach her all I knew about it when I got back into the city.
And one evening when I was at least somewhat tipsy at the resort and not having much to do
with the scene around me, I turned to a blank page in my sketchpad and began to write,
‘A memory of something true and real amongst the drunken machinery of the night.
You said that you wanted to be like Christ and pictured him walking you home drunk. In all the
overwhelming reverie shone a sincerity from your little girl mind. In a flurosecent bar we
laughed and I saw paintings I hadn’t made, plays yet to be written, life wider than the sport of
its making, some future for myself, far from this drunken scene’
I read the poem back thru a couple of times, and then opened an email to Sophie in my phone
and wrote in it, ‘I just wrote a poem about you if you want to see it’ and I then dropped a few
lines and transcribed the poem, then sent her the email.
And Sophie wrote me back soon after this to tell me that she loved my poem.
And so for a day or two later when my rent ran out in the cabin, I booked myself a seat on a
minivan back into Chiang Mai.
And I got back into the town, at around 3 in the afternoon. And I soon after managed to find
myself a hotel, not far from where the minivan had dropped us all off at. The room cost 450
baht a night, which was within my price range, and I lifted my suitcase up two flights of stairs
into my room. Once inside I watched some hbo and sent a few texts to Sophie, and we
arranged to meet later that day in the evening, as she was going out with some of her friends
who she went to the university in town with. 
While waiting for her I decided to go to Thapae gate square not far from my hotel to pass some
time. I took my sketchpad with me and a pen. And at the square I soon noticed an attractive
lady in a rather revealing outfit. She was sitting with a friend and after some deliberation I
eventually mustered up the courage to approach her and ask her for a sketch. She said yes to
the sketch tho hurried me as I worked on it telling me that she had to get back to her work. And
I asked her what her work was and found out that she was a prostitute. 
Later that evening while I was waiting for Sophie to turn up at the bar we’d arranged to meet
at, I bought some roses from a street vendor, a middle aged Thai lady, for her. Sophie showed
up with a couple of female friends about twenty minutes later and her and I soon after parted
company from them and went and sat together in a terrace bar on our own. And she seemed
grateful for the roses, and seemed to be looking at me and smiling a bit as we sat together.
‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked me after awhile.
‘I don’t know’ I replied.
‘Seriously, you can tell me’
‘I guess, how I went to bed with a prostitute earlier today’ 
‘You did? Why?’
‘I don’t know, like I’d gone to Thapae gate, which isn’t far from my hotel, to kill sometime, while
waiting for this, and I saw this girl and she looked pretty, so I went up to her and asked her if I
could make a sketch of her...’
‘A Thai girl?’
‘Yeah. And anyway, midway thru the sketch she was like, hurry up, hurry up, I have to get back
to work’

‘Mm’
‘And so I was like, ‘what’s your work?’ And she told me, and then I was like, ‘ok, alright...’
I mean cause she was pretty in her little, outfit, her short little shorts and whatnot and... Ah my
god, I’m sounding like an asshole now’
‘No. Why? Why would you say that?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, it wasn’t that great. It wasn’t terrible either. She got really suspicious of
me as she was leaving and I guess I’m still kind of shaken up by that’
‘Suspicious, why?’
‘I don’t know, just, she thought I’d had a camera hidden in the room, had recorded us. She kept
threatening to call the police. Wanted to search the room... Got the desk clerk involved. Blargh.
I feel like an asshole now’
‘No, don’t. Why?’
‘I don’t know…
Yeah I mean, I wouldn’t say it was entirely, fruitless there were moments to it, but like, when
you’re making love to someone and they won’t let you kiss them on the lips, or when they’re
like trying to get you to hurry up and finish so they can move onto their next customer... It, it
had its moments tho, I don’t know. Whatever’
Sophie and I met back up with her friends, and in a new bar we all settled in I made a sketch of
Sophie and her friend, a pretty latina girl from her school, in a short denim skirt and a white and
yellow plaid little crop top.
The sketch was rather free and juvenile and Sophie asked me to explain it to her afterwards and
I then told her, ‘when you feel comfortable around someone you can get this feeling like, ‘I can
draw them, or paint them, whatever, however I want and that’s when some really pretty things
can come out... If you’d been like a girl from my hostel back in Pai, and I’d been like, ‘could I
make a drawing of you?’ over breakfast or whatever, and you’d been like, ‘ok, sure, I guess…’
and paid like no attention to me thruout it, and not looked at me or what I was doing and just
talked to your friend in your native tongue and looked into your phone, I wouldn’t’ve drawn
you quite in that way, you understand? I don’t know’
‘Yeah’ Sophie was silent for a shortwhile as she contemplated the sketch, then as she pointed
at some blue crayon lines around the edges of her and her friend in my drawing she said to me,
‘And what do these little lines here mean?’
‘They don’t mean anything I guess, just like, childish goofing, whatever’
I later lost Sophie and her friend. I didn’t want to come across as too eager, I suppose, following
her around everywhere she went, in the rather crowded strip of bars, we were on.
And later that evening, as I sat drinking a beer on my own, in a loud bar, I sent her a text asking
her if she was still about and she soon replied saying she’d gone home, but her friends were still
out in a nearby karaokee bar which she gave me directions to.
I found the guys just as they were getting into the back of a red converted-pick-up-truck taxi.
I climbed into the back of it, however, when I tried to sit down on one of the benches in the
back of it with the others, one of the young men in the group, spread his legs wider to prevent
me from doing so, then said to the others, ‘who the fuck is this guy?’
As I continued to stand on the rear ledge behind the converted tray, holding onto a nearby
railing for support, I turned to one of Sophie’s female friends, a rather pretty, slightly

curvaceous girl, and said to her, ‘I was just wondering if I could hang out with you guys for a
bit?’
‘We’re just going back to our dorm’ the girl replied.
‘Oh, is Thapae gate on the way? I’m posted up there, if we’re going the same way’ 
‘Nah dude, opposite direction’ a young man in the group replied, ‘I’d get off now’ 
‘Ok sure’
The street the cab was on was rather crowded with pedestrians, and the truck hadn’t picked up
much speed by then, so I hopped off onto the pavement and then started to rather drunkenly
make my way back to my hotel.
I didn’t do much of anything the following day, I got breakfast, then went back to my room,
where I played some chess puzzles then some chess games on my phone for awhile, as I had
the flatscreen tv at the foot of my bed on, with MTV asia on.
At around 5 or so, I opened a blank document on my computer, put the date at the top of it,
then began to write in it, ‘I’m in Chiang Mai at the moment, and things have gotten rather
confused and unpleasant in my head again... I don’t feel too confident, too self-assured about
things. Seem to be taking it all apart, dissecting it all so damn morbidly, so much.
Suppose I’ve developed something of a crush on a girl, I met up in Pai, a week or so back,
Sophie, and have since come back down to CMX to visit her.
I feel l as if I don’t want to appear too eager with the girl, like I’m messaging her every day
multiple times a day asking her if she wants to do anything.
Perhaps it might serve me for now, to give her some space, to try not to appear too eager. Just
let her contact you if she wants to...
I mean, sure part of me would gladly spend every waking moment with her, if she’d let me; take
her as my Dora Maar, or whoever for however long, and just paint her again and again, but
then this other part of me says, ‘don't be too eager, don't be too keen, don't scare her away'
My thoughts seem to chase each other around in a circle, like a dog after its tail. I think a lot of
Liam too I suppose, him getting 300 plus likes for his instagram posts. 6 is an impressive number
for anything I put up, and that’s if it’s something with zero vulnerability in it.
He’s playing a halloween party soon I read in his latest post, and also has made a cassette of his
latest album. And here I am writing more... Hell, I wrote 7 odd novels that no one seemed to be
particularly interested in, and the question does comes to mind, why bother writing any more?
But I suppose it’s this or what? Stare at my hands, stare at music videos, play chess puzzles, try
and get my rating up on LiChess... Keep material evening. Capture recapture. Play chess like a
boring asshole.
This at least allows me to try and make sense of it all, gives me something to do.
Beats checking my phone 60 odd times a day to see if there’s a message from Sophie in it yet.
I just, I really don’t want to appear too needy, too desperate with the poor girl, constantly
hounding her, ‘hey, Soph you want to grab a bite to eat?’ ‘hey, S, still think you might want to
do that english lesson today?’
‘Just, be calm’, I say to myself, ‘be calm man, let her come to you... And if she hasn’t made any
attempt to in two days then maybe make a move—maybe it’ll seem cooler if you wait for her to
text you, be more conductive to results, that way... Don’t want to convey the image that I’ve

got nothing at all to do, nothing in my life, and am just sitting around constantly waiting for her
to get back to me...
Maybe you should just start to paint...
Maybe that might help take your mind off of things, make it seem like it’s not all been for
naught; my nausea of wanting her, in any way, even if just as a special friend, I’m never fated to
be with— and my fears that not that, not anything might ever be; if such despair, leads to some
great sad painting, then it won’t all just seem random pain as the clock clicks on towards death
so much...’
I paused writing for a bit as I continued to sit up in my bed, watching MTV, and after awhile as a
Christian Aguleria music video came on, I added in the document, ‘I watch now two little girls
laying in the grass on MTV— I think it’s part of a Christian Aguleria music video.
‘Ah man that purity of my childhood…’ I think now to myself, ‘the hours that did not need to be
consciously filled up so much, as the love of my parents, the casual childhood playing already
seemed to more than abundantly do so—where’s it all gone man...?’
And in everything I do is just my inferioty complex of Liam—supposing I turn in at 9, bored and
thinking that being asleep would be nicer than being awake, as I walk back to my hotel a voice
in my ear whispers, ‘Liam would never turn in this early.. He would be full of excitement
enthusiasm, ready to push the boat out as far as he could, he would go out looking for kicks
now, he would try and find a place to play his guitar, and then try and tune a girl who was
listening to him play; she’d stand and watch him for several songs then afterwards he might say
to her, ‘hey I don’t suppose you might want to go grab a drink some place?’
Everything I do is just, haunted by him.
I suppose I mustn’t moan. Be quiet and pull your own damn self up by the boots straps and all
that. I mean there is the angle that America is as expensive as all hell, and even if you’d never
mentioned the graffiti charge, and got the visa ok, and went there ok, there would be that
negative aspect of it; 50 + dollars a night for a dormitory, 200+ for a private room. 10+ each
meal. You’d have to either become a tramp or learn to hustle, make post cards of your
favourite paintings, nice prints of them, try to sell them, as you did your street portraits.
And I could also make the argument that you can find friendly people everywhere, apparently. I
don’t know.
And perhaps you can start busking here too, sit out with your free portraits tips appreciated
sign at Thapae Gate, or where ever in the evening, approach any of the beautiful girls you see
walking by, your sketchpad held to your chest, then say something like, ‘er, excuse me miss, but
I don’t suppose I might be able to make a drawing of you?’
Don’t even ask for money right away, I mean, you don’t need it for awhile, it’s more so just the
loneliness, the isolation, your constant thinking that you wish to abate.
And you could get some postcards of your favorite paintings made, perhaps some prints of your
favourites too... That way if people are crowding around to watch you work as they often used
to, you can try and draw in some money from those people too.
Finish the evening with perhaps even 10, 15 dollars or so... Take a beer or whisky soda
somewhere, try to talk to any lonely looking girls if there are any, and if there aren’t then just
keep drinking and watch them dance.
Thinking about Sophie is just turning my stomach in knots tho, and playing chess puzzle after
chess puzzle and trying to work out whether it’s a trapped piece or a pin or a skewer or a fork

or an x- ray, and then to try and win games and get your rating up... It’s just tearing me apart
man, turning my brain into a machine, and it really feels like something must change.
As the thoughts click on, ‘oh, don’t appear too eager—but then again, they say faint heart
never won fair maiden... But yeah, don’t want to come across as too eager...
Don’t ever want to appear too aggressive either, get frustrated with her then let some
underhanded snide remark slip then... Cause then that’d really tear it...
Don’t want to be ‘million text mark’ either, sending her one message each day until she... Urgh.
And of course if I was Liam I’d never have to worry about what to say to a girl, I could just play
guitar somewhere, and chat to one of the ones who’d come up to me to tell me what she
thought of my playing. I should’ve learnt how to play the fucking guitar man.
Ah god, and part of me just wishes I could just sit her down somewhere and tell her straight
how I feel, something to the effect of,
‘I really like you a lot, and... Yeah…’ just, no trickery, no gimmicks, no angles. And maybe she
won’t ever message me again. Maybe it’s all gone south. Maybe you should just try and get
back into the painting, bit of the Picasso-y stuff, and try too to hone the realistic, Van Gogh-y
style without being too hard on yourself about it, but just to start, to ‘slap anything on’ as the
artist himself once put it. You feel better when you paint, or you’ve definitely been known to,
proud when it’s thru often, maybe. Hell, just writing this helped make you feel better about
things. Gave your rather uneventful existence a bit of form...
Perhaps you could do a trail run of the busking tonight. And if that goes ok, maybe you could
invite Sophie to come out with you... Perhaps she’d be more drawn to a guy who’s got
something in his life besides his infatuation with her. Perhaps if she saw other girls swooning
over you as you sketched them, where ever, she might, display more interest.
Hell, I’d try just about anything at this point, anything that doesn’t have me appear some
needy, over-eager dweeb; ‘hey, you still on for that Creative Writing Lesson today?’
‘Oh, sorry x happened’
‘Ah, ok, sure, no problem... Perhaps some other time’
The sort of thing Liam would never text, just chasing and begging, and not ever quite having
what any of them might want.
But busking, maybe there might be something in that, us laughing together as we drew people,
her seeing the other girls warm to me...
A plan... Some sort of lure to draw her in, and then maybe it might begin, and be beautiful and
me just painting her on all these 30 odd heavy-ass wood panels I like a dope bought with me
from Australia...’
I saved my document, folded down the lid of my laptop, and continued to watch MTV and I
soon began to play another chess game on my phone.
Later that evening, I decided to send Sophie another text, eventually settling on, ‘hey would u
care to have dinner tonight someplace?’
And a shortwhile later she replied, ‘I just had a smoothie and am still sick :(
maybe tomorrow though! Yes
Did you try and find me again on the line app?’
‘Ok feel better’ I replied,
‘Yeah, I tried like 7 billion times.
Also I’m still so down to be yr creative writing tutor’ 

‘What the heck!
Horray! We can do that during dinner, unless you aren’t much of a multitaster
What are your thoughts?’
‘I pictured the scene with a chalkboard that I’d be writing you advice on.
And I wanted to read u excepts of Richard III to show u about writing about the intensity of
human emotion and having as little as possible get in the way of what is taking place between
the characters. Also I wanted to show u a clip from Allied to show u how full scenes are
important without excessive cutting.
I could go on...’
‘Oh wow, okay so maybe a place to eat isn’t the best setting. I don’t know exactly where to go
for that though!’
‘Perhaps my hotel—don’t worry I won’t murder you!’
I waited awhile to see if she might respond to this, then when she hadn’t added,
‘Also there’s an upstairs balcony which is always deserted so maybe there’
A shortwhile later she replied to this, ‘Or there’s probably a classroom at my school!’
‘Sure, let’s do that- the murder thing was a joke- don’t really know how to act around
people—bit of a social retard at times...’
‘No I know it was a joke! lol’
The following day after breakfast I played some more chess puzzles and games, as I laid in my
bed, with MTV asia playing again on my tv.
At around 4, I opened the document I’d started the day before, dropped a line, hit ctrl+ tilde
key combination a few times to rule off my last entry, then dropped another couple of lines and
began to write in it, ‘It’s 4:12pm, and I haven’t heard back from Sophie since my messages last
night, suggesting we do the creative writing lesson today.
I don’t know what my angle is. I suppose I should try and play the cool bad boy, unconcerned,
unfazed, probably living it up chasing a bunch of other girls around town about now...
Let her come to you. Christ. I feel like I’m about to sit an algebra exam. This is not a very good,
calm, self-assured attitude to have.
‘She’s ten years younger than you for christ sake’ I think now to myself, ‘And, so? Could you
give a shit at all? How many times have you searched for ‘teen porn videos’ on the internet.
She’s not a child. She’s probably been to bed with more people than you... Liam had a 17 year
old girl... Met her whilst playing guitar in a bar in Leipzeig who were letting him stay in a room
above the place for free, if he played a set in the bar each night... Made it with her in a nearby
park, thruout which she kept on saying, oh shit, oh shit— only due to her, Greek— was it?—
accent it kept sounding like, ‘oh sheet, oh sheet’
Picasso had young girls—the problems isn’t that you mind about her age of course, it’s that she
might mind about yours—that’s what I was getting at from the start, still...
Ah, how I wish I could let go of all this tentativeness, these ideas and suspicions and notions,
this desire to walk over ice so that you don’t blow it, let it fade away...
Hell man, be more independent, let it all go, don’t get so attached. Find something that you’re
passionate about and the ladies will notice that, apparently, then come to you. And you could
always just kill yourself and you might one day. But, just, meantime, stop thinking so much. Be

more casually manipulative, blithe, rough round the edges and all that, a charming rakish raffish
bad-boy, with a devil may care attitude’
I groaned to myself then hit ctrl+s to save the document, then closed the lid of my laptop and
watched the music video which was playing on the TV before my bed; several cutesy slim asian
ladies in matching red and white outfits were performing a choregraphed dance routine as they
sang. And I then looked at my iphone beside me on my bed.
A few songs later, I picked it up and texted Sophie, ‘hey S still up for that English lesson?’
She got back to me soon after and we arranged to meet up at Thapae gate later that evening.
After meeting up we went to a nearby restaurant, which I often took my breakfast in.
We sat together in a booth, which had a glass wall, to one side, allowing a view of the cars and
motorscooters, going by on the busy main road, before the restaurant, and a view of Thapae
gate square beyond that. And when the place’s waiter came around I ordered a mixed fruit
shake and Sophie got a tuna and salad sandwich, and over the next two hours or so, working
from some notes I’d made on my laptop, I tried to teach her everything I’d learnt about writing
over the past however many years. Her phone lit up with alerts a lot thruout the lesson, and
after it was finished I left her with some homework tasks; to record a conversation on her
phone and work it into a story; to write a normal story from her life, sexed up by an idea—we
rolled one of my Rory’s Story Cubes, dice with little images on them, to give her an idea of how
she could spice up the story, and it came up with an image of a pill; to write a story from the
perspective of a boy, and lastly to convey how she felt about someone just by the details she
noticed about that person.
I told her that she could merge all these tasks into one essay if she wanted, and that there was
no word limit for it, that she could write as little or as much as she wanted.
She said that she’d try and get the homework done, but maybe ‘it might be a year or something
before she got it back to me’
‘Well that’d be good’ I then told her, ‘if I’m still in touch with you in a year’
I then offered to lend her my copy of Richard III, telling her that the play had helped me a lot as
a writer.
‘The book’s really important to me tho’ I then told her, ‘so if I lend it to you, I would like it back.
Like I can only lend it to you if you promise that you could get it back to me’
‘Maybe my school’s library has a copy’ she replied.
‘Yeah sure, you could check there too’
‘…How long are you in Chiang Mai for anyway?’
‘My visa runs out in like two weeks... Then I might skip out to Cambodia or Laos or where ever
for a bit I guess’
‘Yeah... What are you doing here anyway?’
‘Mm... Good question... Very good question’
‘Well, I’m doing school’
‘Yeah...’
‘Well, I should probably go and try and catch a red cab back to my dorm’
‘Yeah, sure. Love you’
‘...And I’m sure, I’ll probably see you round again’
‘Yeah sure, hope the lesson helped’

Shortly after Sophie had left, I ordered myself cappuccino. And as I slowly drank it, I looked out
of the glass wall before me, at the cars and motorbikes going by on the road before the
restaurant.
‘Ah christ, I feel so damn stuck man, I might as well have concrete boots on’ I thought to myself,
‘Just totally fucking wiped out and empty. Love you. Love you. You little fucking bitch.
She was smiling at you that first night. That’s when you should’ve tried. If only you’d had more
courage to try something then. Looked her in the eyes more, tried to keep her away from her
friends for longer, talked to her, listened to her, then kissed her on the cheek after awhile.
And at the start she was like, ‘what are you doing in October? We’ve got school holidays on
then’ At a point, at some point you must’ve fucked it. And I don’t even know how... Too eager
maybe, too much of a wimp, eager-cautious, not having the courage to make a move when you
might’ve had the chance... Some shit, somewhere along the line. Telling her about that
prostitute perhaps. Fuck’ I took another sip from my cappuccino as I continued to watch the
traffic go by outside, ‘I just, feel like, one of those people who has nothing in his life, so he just
desperately tries to cling onto others like a leech. Just the completely opposite of Liam;
someone desirable, and self-assured, who has a hard time fending off all the different women
who come to him, who shares love with women, rather than just, looking at them.
Ah well, fuck it, it’s over with, I guess. Could’ve been nice, if you’d played a better hand. Her on
all those panels, holding her in bed, but fuck it, it’s over with’
There was a gold-framed print of Vemeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring on the wall of the restaurnt
to my right and I looked at it for awhile then got up and paid and left the restaurant.