BAt 2:27am this morning, Hubster instructed me not to tell you about the dream I just had. That’s because it was me and Hun Sen chit-chatting airside at that faux-French coffee stall while waiting to board our flights. My cautious Life Partner was nervous, not entirely without foundation, about what might befall me if I spilled the beans on my Prime Ministerial phantasm. The fact that it was a dream held no truck. “You still thought it,” he said. “Even though you were asleep.” I maundered on about free speech and thought police, illustrated at length with the plotlines of Brazil (the movie, not the place), 1984 (the book and the movie) and the Spanish Inquisition (the actual thing). I assumed Love’s help meet was glued to my every word, until a Homeresque snort from the quilty gloam signaled his wuffle back to Nod. In deference to my fretful spouse, then, I’ll skip the more controversial aspects of my fantasy confab with the big man.
It was pleasant enough at Gate 5 – a teen swarm of gormless Singaporean evangelicals in matching
T-shirts were prayer-circling all the tables at the café, so me and HS bellied up to the condiment stand. I don’t think I’m giving away state secrets when I say I was off to Bangers for some well-deserved me-time and a high colonic at my favorite Arse Spa ‘n’ Botox Barn. Despite my persistent winkling, Mr. Hun kept good naturedly schtum about where he was going and why, though he did have his personal luthier in tow. Looking back now, that should have been a clue. “I hate to be a fun sponge,” he said. “But if I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Despite this coy circumspection, we nevertheless spent a jovial 10 minutes or so talking about that damn dress – he and I were on the same page – are people crazy or what? It’s SO cream and gold. And OMFG we both ordered a cheese toastie extra pickle at EXACTLY the same time. Snap! I hadn’t expected us to see eye to eye on anything, all things considered. I was thrilled to my flight socks. Spanner Alert: things were going well until a miscommunication with his security detail over my post-toastie brownie ended badly. I won’t get into the grits but it was enough to scare the living shitsticks out of me. I woke up in a cold sweat and spent the rest of the night quivering with the light on.
Sleep is a fickle mistress ‘round my crib. I’d certainly fail the Tuk Tuk Academy entrance exam, not just because I have a pretty good sense of direction and don’t know how to play chess, but because I have not one iota of aptitude for shuteye, especially when I’m parked in front of the angle grinding shop on Mao Tse Tung with my T-shirt rolled up to my boobs and my back-skin stuck to the vinyl on a 37-degree day. Those dudes are machines. Hats off.
Though we have a spectacularly comfortable mattress concoction newly gleaned from our favorite house of latex on Monivong, recently gassed air con, and a dark room at the quieter end of the house, nature’s soft nurse is elusive ‘round ours. Last nightmare’s sleeplessness is par for the course, as most of you CharmingVille Pleasurers will understand. We’re not in Kansas, or even Outback, snuggled in a swag, far from the sturm and drang of city clangs and clatter with just the whispered lullaby of emus rustling through the saltbush. Our sunkissed bods are not slung amongst the stars in a hammocky cocoon down the quiet end of Otres on a weeknight in low season. Our little tootling, tinkerpot, bow wow Hamlet is fraught with the sounds of life turned up to 11. Blissful torpor without the assistance of De La Gare’s stellar roster of sleep aids can be almost impossible to achieve, unless you’re high up in a condo in Tuol Kork. But nobody wants that.
So I hit the sack unencumbered with Z-drugs at your peril. Because if it’s not old mate next door pestling shallots at 4:23 every morning, including Sundays, it’s those tokays licking their eyeballs and invading your earholes with their lizardy bark. Next to good dreams gone bad, there’s the power going off after midnight on the hottest night of the year (i.e. every night from now ‘til November). With the electricity down, the woolly blanket of air con’s white noise slips off, the neighbourhood gennies crank up, and you emerge cotton-mouthed from Morphean slumber adrift in your own mini Mekong of sweat. Night night, dear reader, and sweet, wet summer dreams.