Fake monks are the opposite of socks. Next thing you know there are two of them, and where they come from nobody knows. Round Marital HQ there’s a mustard-rockin’ posse of booze-breathing Chinese chubsters in gaiters and mala beads, their anti-chakras oozing venal benevolence, their eyes aglint and peeled for rubes sweating backpacks and elephant shorts. Since I’m too gutless to run after every policeman yelling, “Stop! Thief!” I’ve taken it upon myself to dash after those other grinning fakirs bawling “Fake Monk! Fake Monk!” They speed to a trot, head down, suddenly late for nefarious fake-monkly doings down the “pagoda”. Despite my verbal shoe slinging, they’re infuriatingly smiley regardless, as though being chased through Psah Kandal by an unhinged asthmatic harpie in plush Kermit slippers and bulging floral PJs is exactly the kind of ignominious cross a super pious holyman has to bear if he wants dibs on a magic cloud when his mortal wheel has turned its last.
I also like to taunt those Pinoy card sharks who routinely nab me in Aeon. One recent Sunday when I’d gone 20 minutes too long without food and hydration after a Daiso tat marathon, a beaming and becapped Filipina fraudster made a beeline for me just as I was shunting a tray of sushi into my jittery maw. No-one, least of all a tubby catholic poker cheat in acid wash shorts should ever, ever come between me and my food. “Waaauuuw”, she said, grinning theatrically, oblivious to my invisible force field of “fuck off” just ahead of her, “I larpyourherestyle”. Actually, she only got as far as “I larpyourherest-”. As soon as she was in eyeshot I withered her with a powerful “begone, shyster” glarebeam. I knew she knew I knew. She careened away between the tables like a pinball, if it was wearing one of those inexplicable moustache t-shirts.
These feckless hustlers get on my tit end. But I guess at least they’ve got a job. Since I gave up the global big bucks for a life of artisanal tinkering tethered here in CharmingVille I’ve watched my nest egg dwindle to a few sorry twigs. Sure this place is cheap and interesting but I’m always hankering for the great Out There. My landing gear is perpetually up. This time last year I was swanning round the balmy Tuilleries clutching a frosty jeroboam, bumbag jangling with euros for the Metro troubadours. Later, while CharmingVille stewed in its own juices and the Hubster persevered through another Pchum Ben alone, I took off on the Annual Spitzburgen Sturgeon Muster with a bawdy phalanx of 20-something deckhands and a crate of tax-free Dubrowka. How we laughed and laughed as the waves tossed us up and down the bitter Barents, jostling us together in a funk of wet knits and nipple-high rubber waders. It was a thrilling escape – like all the other holidays I indulged in while the bank balance was groaning with benjamins. I globetrotted like the end of the world was nigh.
Oh how the mighty have fallen. The most I get to do these days, as you’ll know from last week’s report, is a six dollar turn round some godforsaken mid-river heat sink, or failing that, a night in at Marital HQ watching Gordon reruns and playing rolled-up paper soccer with the New Pet.
Straining at the yoke of this penniless tether-end, it was an insensitive note from Tripadvisor asking me to review the Eyjafjallajökull glacier that had me snatch up my limping credit card and “borrow” 40 crisp new orange hundreds from our household shrine (soz, mischevious ghost children), thence to de la Gare to self-prescribe some kick- arse HRT and a cheeky side of SSRIs. Just as I stepped into traffic a rainstorm intervened. As I sheltered under a downstairs awning I was joined by an excellent neighbour who shares my ache to swashbuckle and my detestation of shoestrings. With us was a coconut man. As I supped my 50cent drink my friend described us as “privileged poor” – educated, anglo middleclass midlifers with computers and aircon and a weekly brunch somewhere noice but without the readies to pony up for a pool condo, health insurance, a Lexus or a 3 week vaycay to Macchu Picchu. We don’t have regular jobs anymore, but get by with bits and bobs here and there. We go to the gym and swim and head for the coast on the weekends. We eat mangoes and coconuts and wear fuckall, all year round. We have a perfectly, enviably good life and should be thankful therefore. “For fuckssake stop whining”, he said. He was right. Even without a Gofundme, (which I might still try) for the cost of an airfare and a good pair of shoes you can work for room and board as a Fog Collector in Chile, or a Husky Wrangler in Finland. He’d just come back from a month with a Seaglass Beachcoming Collective in the Faroes. Farout, I thought. All is not lost. I looked across and saw a bald, bedraggled chinese dude, far from home, dressed up as Tripitaka and hustling tourists for a buck in the drizzle. Maybe I should save those red riels and buy me a ticket to write T-shirt Slogans in Guangzhou, bang squids on a rock in Skandili, or herd woolly lambkins on the rugged, bracing slopes of windswept Ok.