Now all I have to do is to keep my eye on that damned dog ...

To most expats in Bangkok, Washington Square was a cinema where movies could be seen in English, the billboard was usually spelt wrong and dogs of questionable character and motive slept on the steps. I know, because one bit me. The antirabies injections cost Bt3,000. The dogs still alive – and worth a dollar – and lies waiting for me in a fake siesta by the abandoned popcorn stand. Warning!

But there’s another, extraordinary world here hidden among the cracked and faded concrete along the eastern side of the cinema. Spread over three nondescript bars called The Silver Dollar, Texas Lonestar and The Wild Country, is an enclave of America that I always thought existed, but only in other people’s imagination.

On the surface, this compact environment is a world of country ‘n’ western, loud voices, bad vowels, the good, the bad and the facially challenged. It’s frequented by an endless stream of oil workers on R ‘n’ R, retirees who saw service in Korea and Vietnam and those who didn’t see anything anywhere except Patpong in a drunken haze at the height of the war and then stayed on for the next twenty years.

There’s endless banter recalling “home”, as well as complaints about Bangkok and the alleged deviousness of the people live amongst – or rather don’t. Local reality seems to have escaped their notice and Thailand is another country somewhere else. They have no interest in the culture other than a lifestyle that offers available women, a little business and cheap rent in a decadent exile. While many have married Thai women, you never see them. Bars aren’t for women; well, certainly not your own and certainly not here.

It’s a place where gossip is ripe, yet the truth a fluid concept and intelligence appears to hum along at a redneck pace slightly below room temperature. It’s a bonfire of profanities. It brims with large, bellicose men who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing,” as Oscar Wilde once said. To these men, Vivaldi was not a musician; he’s a gay bartender in Patpong. This environment doesn’t attract attention to itself, doesn’t advertise, neither needs nor wants the tourist trade, is self-contained, self-righteous, fascinating, and a fire escape to nowhere. And it became my home.

I lived above Texas Lonestar for over a year. I am Malaysian, and to compound this problem I’m also a guitar player with my own hair. When I checked in, I felt about as popular as a vegetarian at a Dallas barbeque.

“Hey hippy, whyya grow ya hair so goddamn long?” asked a bald ageing vet’ with a smirk.

“Because I can,” I replied with an innocent expression.

Washington Square is a place of legends, both real and imaginary; the men who tell the stories that become the legends, and the legends that become the men who tell them: Yarns from deserts in Saudi, from freezing oil rigs in Northern Russia, of battles half remembered and of women long departed but still vivid in the memory (and if slightly embellished, what the hell); stories of very serious money earned, won and lost; men with larger-than-life characters who know their own destinies but argue with them just the same; tales of Laos during the war; the Death Railway; the CIA; the Contra arms deal; Beirut; the Gulf War; Red Adair and of advice to presidents, monarchs, and dictators.

When the night manager of the Lonestar recovered I liked Miles Davies, I thought he was going to shoot me. Instead, I found an important ally. He put a black arm around my shoulder and said, “Mah maan!”

I was in. Into what, I had no idea, but I was in. When I tentatively enquired as to the validity of the stories, he shrugged and said, “Shoot boy! These guys are for real. The man sitting next to you was once the personal press secretary to Reagan. Ask him.” I did. He was. Well, that’s what he said.

The average age is early fifties and amidst the raucous anecdotes and serious drinking – “you gotta learn how to drink here, boy!” – there are men of quiet authority and Southern manners; serious achievers with thousand-yard stares and lived-in faces that speaks of hard, disciplined lives and upright integrity.

They are well-earthed, experienced, hard to impress. They have a regular pulse. Here is blood in their alcohol. They don’t look for company but will accept it as long as you don’t talk bullshit or golf. Their heroes are country ‘n’ western singers, football players, former presidents, dead generals, men who work the land and men who truck the produce.

A sign in Lonestar reads, “For those who fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know”. These are proud men and although America is resented as a place of abode – its society “shot through with drugs, violence, an’ welfare” – the country’s character is rigorously defended. Its influence on the world rest easy in their souls; its spirit and cultures as sacred as a Harley-sized Smith and Wesson.

To such men, these bars represent a taste of home; a sense of bonding and of comfort. You can smell the T-bone, feel the bourbon, fool with the women.

“You leave tip for me pleez?”

“Sure honey.Buy low, sell high.”

It’s a man’s world. Micheal Jackson is a “faggot,” Clinton a “dumbass”. The only thing they have in common with the president is a taste for cigars and where to put them. Naturally, they have never inhaled.

These men aren’t in Bangkok for any altruistic reasons. There are no budding monks, no spiritual journeys. Some to spend it, many to waste it on a lifestyle they couldn’t get away with anywhere else. I’ve seen money change hands over a single NBA game that an English teacher could only dream of making even if he taught Big Bird to Korean rich-kids for the next millennium.

And then there are those poor souls who’ve been deprived of alcohol and female company by the sheer geography of their work and arrive in town on a mission – which usually means a serious demonstration against sobriety. I’ve seen the door at the Lonestar nearly ripped off its hinges as some madman – usually six foot four, wild-eyed and crazed after six months in some scorching desert fixing giant earthmovers – hits the bar with a thirst that would make a camel blush.

One such character – let’s call him “Crazy John” – who looks remarkably like a creature left over from the eighth episode of Star Trek, drank with intent for 72 hours on arrival.

The night manager and I found him in alcoholic stupor half way up the stairs at three in the morning in a position only a yoga master could appreciate – stark naked and legs akimbo.


“Mah man, we gotta get a doctor!”

“No”, I said. “We gotta get a camera!”

And we did.

 
As in any community, the eccentrics and casualties balance out the seemingly stable and the relatively sober. These bars aren’t only a unique microcosm of America, they’re also another rich vein of expat life in this city. It may a potting shed to some, but you can find lots of things in potting sheds. I came across it by mistake and left a year later blinking in the harsh sunlight of reality. I went back to Thailand – which was just outside the door. I made many friends, many contacts, worked hard, ate sensibly and drank like a fish – deep in the heart of Bangkok, Texas. We come to new countries intending to do certain things and then a whole lot of different things happen. I like that.

Only once in the entire year did I come close to death. It was late. The bar was packed, primed and loud. It was someone’s birthday. Everyone was drunk and I kept bumping into old acquaintances who didn’t recognize me and total strangers who did. Some cowboy was wailing through the sound system and I said far loudly that country ‘n’ western was just, “Three chords and a loud of dust”.

There was a deadly silence. I froze in terror. I had realized by mistake. But it was too late. I had trodden on sacred ground. I had insulted their holy music. It was like passing wind very loudly in the Vatican and then giggling.

Suddenly the bar was humming with outrage. Someone yelled, “Shoot the sonofabitch!” which soon turned into a chorus. Visualizing a rope being thrown over a branch, I did the only thing left open to me; I rang the bell.

The drinks bill was so high it should have been delivered by a priest. I was still paying it off a year later. But hey, I’m alive. And grateful. And if you don’t believe any of this, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Now all I have to do is to keep my eye on that damned dog.