All Is Fair In Love And War Part 1
Present Day
I am in love with her but I chose another. I broke all of the Captain’s rules: don’t stay in one place for too long and don’t get attached. I had mongered for too long. The sheet of ice that coated me had been melted by their warmth. I was not ready for these petite beauties. They are a different breed, like nothing I had ever encountered before. My heart told me to choose Evelyn and my head told me to choose Reya. I am back home now alone, putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
September, 2019, USA
Just lost my job. Sitting in my house disillusioned with life. I was bored. I had a couple affairs with American women that went nowhere. Got an email from my father who informed me that when my grandfather passed away he had left me and my brothers an inheritance. He couldn’t send me the money directly because he owed the U.S. government for a fuckload, due to unpaid child support. He had expatriated and fled to the land of the rising sun after a nasty divorce.
He laundered it somehow and got it to me. I now had 15,000 USD and a burning desire to take a trip and clear my head. I had travelled previously to Japan, Thailand and Cambodia. I was an old hand at mongering. I first visited Pattaya in 2009. On my second trip I fell in love with a bargirl named who was Orn 23. I promised her I would return. When I returned home I read enough Stickman submissions to dissuade me from sponsoring her. The following is an account of the last time that I saw her.
January 22, 2011 Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand
We sat there together at the airport. She would cry off and on. I kept trying to stand up and walk away, but I couldn’t move. Then I would stand up to go and she kept telling me to stay just a little bit longer. “2 more minutes”, “2 more minutes”. I tried to think of something to say that would make our time together mean something, something to make her stop crying…..but I couldn’t find the words. This went on for a half hour, both of us delaying the inevitable. I stood up. She looked up at me. I looked into those eyes and they swallowed me up. She started to cry again.
I held her as she cried.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be your knight in shining armor. I can barely manage myself.
We both knew we would probably never see each other again and if we did it would be a long time.
“When you come back?”, she asked.
“A long time.”
“I wait for you, Jack”
No you won’t, you’re not gonna wait that long, don’t you fucking lie to me!
“OK, you wait for me, I’ll come back.”
She asked me, “When you come back, same same?”
“Yes same same”, I could see in her eyes that it hurt her.
I said, “You take care”. I hugged her and then turned towards the departure gate. It took all I had in me to walk away.
Before I turned the corner I looked back and there she was, those beautiful eyes looking back at me, tears running down her face.
Our eyes locked for a second then I walked away.
I’m sorry, Orn.
In her purse was a note that I left her, something that I just couldn’t say to her. “I love you, Orn, I will come back.”
I don’t know if I’ll look for her when I go back. Again, just like last time, a voice inside my head is telling me I’m better off alone…
I got side-tracked when I got home, I fell in love with an American girl. Her name was Jenny. I brought her to to Phuket in the winter of 2012. Orn found out through the bargirl network that I was in Thailand and she was sad that I didn’t visit her. She insisted on staying in touch with me. She ended up getting a Taiwanese sugar daddy, and I was happy for her. He took care of her well and took her around Asia. Me and Jenny broke up in Phuket. I wear my heart on my sleeve and it always gets beat to shit.
I got back on the heroin for a year. Then I quit and got a new job and forgot about South-East Asia for awhile.
Fast forward to 2015. I had loved and lost again, another American girl. Her name was Danielle and she was 26. I descended into an existential depression, quit my job, got back on the heroin and isolated myself in my apartment for 6 months.
One morning I tried to off myself with a lethal dose and failed. I woke up and thought “OK, what now?” I was out of money, had no job and was about to get kicked out of my apartment. I checked my email and it was my father. He needed help building a house in Japan. He had lost the other we built in the great earthquake of 2011.
He bought me a ticket and I skipped town owing the landlord 4,000 USD in unpaid rent. I spent the next 3 months working with my father. My father’s friend Hiro-San invited me to stay with his family. They wanted to learn English. He loved the USA. He had traveled there when he was young. He had also been to Pattaya. I became his confidante. I was the outsider that he could tell his secrets to. He was my father’s age. He had a wife and a 19-year-old daughter. They couldn’t understand English and many times he would tell me in English in front of them that he wished he had never got married. One time he pointed to his daughter and said having her was the biggest mistake of his life. He said it subtly with a smile, the Japanese way.
We would drink whiskey and watch John Wayne movies, and I would translate for him. I had an outbound ticket to Bangkok. As my departure approached Hiro-San began scheming ways to get me to stay. He would bring girls over for dinner and try to marry me off. Many of them came with their mother as chaperone This one girl I kinda liked and we all went to karaoke. Me and Hiro-San were the only men and we were with four women. The night was a blur and I vaguely remember Hiro-San slamming down glass after glass of whiskey for me to drink. I was dripping with sweat and screaming gangsta rap into the microphone. The last thing I remember was Hiro-San drunk as a fish singing John Denver. I went to the bathroom and when I returned my date and her mother had ran away. In hindsight I was glad that they did as I dodged a bullet. That girl would have been a boring wife and her mother was a prude.
We returned to the family home. As we all sat in the living room Hiro-San declared to me that when he married his wife she was attractive and kind, but now she was fat and a bitch. His wife understood the gist of what he was saying. I looked to her and she hid her anger to save face. I looked to the daughter who giggled and said he was in trouble.
Hiro-San envied my freedom. I had become estranged with my father due to my heavy drinking and philandering. I wanted to stay in Japan and make a life there. Hiro-San was a carpenter like me and my father, and he would have given me a job. My father and my stepmother didn’t want me there I was a liability and I would ruin their name. I resented them for it. My father pulled 5,000 USD out of his safe and gave it to me. I bid him and my stepmother farewell with only a nod. That was the last time I saw them. My father had offered me a ride but I had declined. I felt closer to Hiro-San. He had accepted me unconditionally. He and his family drove me to the airport and saw me off.
I arrived in Bangkok. Orn canceled at the last minute. She said she was sick and couldn’t see me.
I knew it was a lie. She had really loved me before. I had broken her heart, and she didn’t want me in and out of her life. I got over it quickly, I was in Bangkok loaded with cash.
I took a stroll down Soi cowboy and barfined the hottest gogo dancer I could find. The next morning I hopped on a bus to Pattaya. I mongered through South-East Asia with cold detachment, knowing many but loving none.
I ended in up Sihanoukville, Cambodia with a half Chinese stunner named Abee who was 25. She worked at a casino and freelanced at the beach bars. She was the hottest girl on the beach. I spent two weeks with her and then I was out of money.
I headed back to Phnom Penh as depressed as fuck. I had nothing to go back to in the USA and my father had banished me from Japan. I was a stray dog again.
I went to the firing range selected a type 54 9mm pistol, a Chinese copy of the Tokarev. The attendant handed me the loaded pistol, a calm came over me and I could feel the killing power of it. I hesitated and looked at the attendant and he got suspicious. He was standing so close to me I couldn’t do it. I emptied the clip downrange and left.
Fast forward to November 2019. I had a dream about Orn so I messaged her and told her I wanted to go and visit her. She said OK. I began planning a trip to Phuket. A couple days later she got cold feet. She said she couldn’t handle me coming there and leaving her again. The sweet girl, her heart couldn’t take it. I needed a new quest, not for a girl for paradise. I had failed to find it in the places I went before so I set my sights on the Philippines.
My only experience with Filipinos was when a couple invited me back to their house in Phnom Penh and tried to drug me. I booked a one way ticket to Angeles City for December 18th. Orn messaged me and said she was sorry and would see me. I told her it was too late. I had already bought a ticket to the Philippines.
The author can be contacted at : Jackwhiskey39@yahoo.com
