Swimming to Cambodia

by Spalding Gray

  Next to him were the Cambodian refugees from Long Beach. They had been hired to come along to be authentic reference points. If there were any questions to be asked about the authenticity of the film’s locations, they could be asked. And since Pol Pot had killed all Cambodian actors, they had to play some of the roles, too, although they weren’t actors; they weren’t trained in any way. They were refugee social workers from Long Beach.

  Then there was Neevy Pal, a Cambodian who was related to Prince Sihanouk and a student at Whittier College. Neevy was sitting in front of me and trying to organize all of the Cambodians in the bus because she felt The Killing Fields was a neo-colonialist film, that the British were looking right through the Cambodians. They were polite to the Americans and to each other, but they looked right through the Cambodians and treated them like refugees. So she was pissed, and she was trying to organize all the Cambodians into a sort of Consciousness-Raising Group.

  Just to my right was this guy who was, I believe, an electrician—a Spark—or one of the cooks, and he was saying, “Spalding, what are you doing on this bus? Where’s your driver? I would complain to British Equity if I were you.” Meanwhile, there was a battle going on over the air conditioner. One minute it was up and the next it was down, and it was cold up front and warm in the back. He kept saying, “I would complain to British Equity if I were you. Where’s your driver, boy? Where’s your driver?”

  And I said, “I’ll tell you the truth, I’m not in the film anymore—”

  “Oh, along for a freebee, are you? Oh, that’s good work if you can get it. Well, that’s good work then, isn’t it?”

  So, I was there feeling a little bit like I was in—Vermont, because the air conditioner was on so high. I had my raincoat on and my scarf wrapped around my neck. It was 110 degrees out, monsoon whipping down through those meaningless palms, and about seven hours into the trip we stopped for lunch.

  I think it must have been the only restaurant on that entire road to Phuket and by the time we arrived all the actors, who had come in their private cars, had filled up the main dining room so I sat outside with all the Cambodian refugees from Long Beach. I ordered baked fish and just as it arrived a monsoon came up so fast that it just swamped my fish before I could get it under cover. I just left it and ran inside where I tried to order a fish to go.

  After the monsoon passed I found myself standing, slightly soggy, by the Artists’ Bus and there was Ivan (Devil in My Ear) in the parking lot, and he came up, looking a little Mephistophelean (he had a gray beard, handsome man), and he said, “Spalding. I’ll be damned if I’m going to ride the rest of this next seven hours without being stoned. Will you join me in some Thai stick?”

  I said, “Umm, all right, you know, I’ll give it a try, um, since I haven’t been drinking or arguing with Renée, all right, I’ll do it.”

  So we took (puff-puff) just a couple of (puff) tokes and I had this mild paranoia come over me, just mild. I said, “Ivan, by the way, what are you doing on the Artists’ Bus? I notice that you’re on it, too.”

  “I don’t know how I got on it,” he said. “I didn’t even know they were calling it the Artist’s Bus.”

  And I suddenly had a paranoid flash that there was another bus that we were supposed to be on, a much better bus, a perfectly air-conditioned Trailways bus gliding over a smooth macadam highway, filled with every kind of artist: Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, John Lurie, Bill Irwin, Eric Bogosian, David Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg.

  They were all there—with hookahs—talking interesting talk and lounging on these very comfortable mattresses and—worst of all—they were laughing! But then I just let all that go. I knew that it was just fantasy, just silly-billy paranoia and I thought, come on Spalding, either you’re on the bus or you’re off the bus. Be Here Now. And I found that I was on the bus and it was the right bus, the only bus and it was timeless, and I could have been in Thailand or Vermont. Inside, because of the air conditioner, it was like Vermont, and I put on my raincoat and wrapped my scarf around my neck and got out my little flask of Irish whiskey. Outside, it was like Thailand. In fact, it was Thailand. It was hot and the monsoon whipped down through meaningless palms like no travel poster I’d seen anywhere and it all looked like a Wallace Stevens poem:A gold-feathered bird

  Sings in the palm, without human meaning,

  Without human feeling, a foreign song.

  Inside the bus, Ivan had loaned me his stereo Walk-man and I was finally catching up with Beethoven’s String Quartets in Thailand. And looking out the window, monsoon pouring down, all of a sudden—in some timeless moment in the middle of the trip—we rounded this corner and there it was, this incredible vista of the Indian Ocean. I was totally not expecting it, I didn’t expect it so soon or so late or so ... I just didn’t expect it.

  It was like an oriental Hudson River School painting. The ocean was crashing in, this great white surf, the largest waves I had ever seen, under great, black monsoon skies, white birds blowing sideways, rainbows arching, palm trees ripping, Oh My God!—almost. About a number nine on my scale of ten for Perfect Moments. Had I been out there in my ocean briefs, I would have had to go home that afternoon.

  Shortly after that we arrived at the Phuket Merlin, and it was so tacky, the rattiest hotel we’d been in. It wasn’t near the water at all. I came into the hotel—we had been traveling for about fourteen hours—and out came this guy working on the film crew, a Thai, and he had this bucket filled with what looked like a mound of phosphorescent fungus glowing blue. And he said, “I’ve got them. I’ve got them. I’ve got all the magic mushrooms, all anyone needs.”

  Just blooming blue, they were glowing blue, these incredible magic mushrooms just giving off an aura of blue. I thought, there’s no way I will take any substance from a man who smiles so much. He made me paranoid, he was so happy. It should be against the law, all that happiness—it was shocking. I was afraid that if I ate those mushrooms I’d never come back. That I’d end up staying on as a happy schoolteacher in Thailand.

  The next day was a day off. I was staying with Tom Bird because I was trying to save all my money. I had $600 in Thai bhat saved up and I figured that if I didn’t have a Perfect Moment, I would buy one. So I was staying in Tom’s room, we were sharing a room, and on our day off some of us went down to what we had heard was Shangri-La—this most incredible beach.

  Now I had thought this was just tourist hype. Every time I’ve traveled to foreign lands, I’ve always heard that Shangri-La was just around the corner. So we rented a car and we wound down through the water buffalo and the rice paddies and we came out on this exquisite beach. Ooh. No tourists. No flotsam. No jetsam. No cans. No plastic bags. Just water buffalo posing like statues in the mist at the far end of the beach. They were just standing there like they were stuffed. They looked like the Thai entry in the Robert Wilson Olympic Arts event. No ships out there in the Indian Ocean, huge surf—perfect Kodachrome day. The sun hadn’t quite broken out and it was bright but not too sunny.

  In the distance were some thatched huts where you could go have a little brunch and everyone went over there to order their fresh fish and pineapple and beer, and Ivan and I—like two kids—charged right down into the water. I couldn’t believe it, it was body temperature, not too warm, just perfect. You could stay in it all day if you wanted to. I was charging in and out. Ivan went right out, right into the big stuff, but I stayed close to shore.

  I was a little nervous about sharks. I have a lot of fears, phobias, and sharks and bears are at the top of the list. In fact, I’m the kind of guy who even checks out swimming pools before I go in. I often think some joker has put a shark in the pool as a practical joke. Also, I still had all my money tucked in my ocean briefs and I couldn’t think of a good place to stash it. So I asked Ivan where I should put it and he said, “Oh, just leave it up on the beach where my cameras are.”

  He was a bit of a sadist playing into my masochism, and just as I was about to go into the water he sa
id, “You know, in Africa when I put my cameras on the beach, the natives would just run right out of the jungle and take them. What are you going to do? Chase them into the jungle. Noooooo.”

  I was looking back at my money and coming and going, and then he said, “Well Spalding, Spalding, listen man. On our next day off I’m going to teach you how to scuba dive. You’ll see fish you’ve never seen before, you’ll have Rapture of the Deep, man, and it will be incredible.”

  And I said, “Oh my God, at last. It’s like an initiation. I’ll become a man.” I’ve always wanted to overcome my fears with another guy, you know, skin diving and all that. I’ve always wanted to try scuba diving but I was afraid of sharks coming up from behind. And now Ivan would help me through my fears and become my scuba-guru.

  Ivan said, “We’ll go. And Spalding, you will see fish of all colors—you have never seen anything like it . . . but there are these Stone Fish . . . and you don’t want to step on one of them Spalding, because you’ll be dead in seven seconds. There’s no remedy, so wear your sneakers.”

  He reminded me of when I was a kid with Kenny Mason. Once when I was sledding in Barrington, Rhode Island, Kenny said, “There’s lions in those woods.” I was seven years old and I believed him. In Barrington, Rhode Island, lions in winter. I ran all the way home, crying.

  So I was feeling like that seven-year-old again and I was running in and out of the water like this excited kid because I couldn’t believe that I was there in Paradise with Ivan. I didn’t think I deserved to be in such a beautiful spot and I’d run out of the water and down the beach to try to get an overview. I’d run down the beach and look back to try to see us there in the surf and each time I’d miss myself and then run back to try to be in it all again. Then down the beach and back and down the beach and back and the third time back . . . Ivan was gone. He had been out in the big surf and he was gone, and I thought, oh no, holy shit. He’s drowned. Ivan has drowned.

  I mean, these things do happen, people do drown. I’ve read about it, and I read this warning issued by the film which said, “Don’t swim in Phuket.” There had been a number of drownings in recent years from the strong undertow, and the very first thing that went through my head—and it went very fast, the whole thing went very fast—was, of course. He’s drowned. Making a film about this much death, some real person actually has to go.

  The next thing that went through my head was, it’s not my fault! He was suicidal!

  And the next thing was, quickly! Find the most responsible man you can. There was no way I was going to swim out in that water, I couldn’t get out into that big surf. The first person that came to mind was John Swain, the Paris correspondent for The London Times. He had been there when the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh. He was perhaps the most narcissistic of the reporters, because he had come to Thailand to watch himself be played by Julian Sands. And so I just did it. I just screamed, “JOHN! JOHN SWAIN! COME QUICKLY, I CAN’T SEE IVAN!”

  And everyone dropped their chopsticks and began to run. Some came across the swamp, some ran over the wooden bridge, and the first person to reach the beach was Judy Arthur, the publicist. Judy had been a life-guard so she had the good sense to run along the high part of the beach. I was down by the dip of the lip of the sea and couldn’t see out, and the others were trying to calm me down. My knees were shaking and I was on the verge of throwing up and people were saying, “Listen, Spalding. Take it easy. Take it easy. He won’t drown, he’s from South Africa.” I was walking up and down the beach trying to interpret this, trying to figure it out, when Judy Arthur spotted Ivan way out. He had drifted down. Judy saw his head way out there and she called him in.

  And I said, “My God, Ivan! Ivan, listen man, I thought you’d drowned. I really did.”

  He said, “Spalding, I’m really sorry, man. Listen, don’t worry about me, I won’t drown. I’m from South Africa.”

  Then everyone went back to brunch and I said, “Ivan, don’t do that again, please.” After promising he wouldn’t, he turned to me and said, “By the way Spalding, when you called, how many came? Did Judy Freeman come?”

  And I said, “Yes, Judy Freeman came, Judy Arthur came, all the Judies came. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  So we walked over to brunch and suddenly I realized that I was with all these Real People, and I was feeling more and more like “The Little Drummer Girl.” I was with these real foreign correspondents. Up until then I’d been hanging out with actors—they’re no one. They’re conduits. They’re not as threatening as Real People. It’s one thing to build a role from a text, just build it and develop it. It’s another to be playing someone—you know—playing Mark Twain or Harry Truman all the way across the United States, and never being them.

  But Mark Twain and Harry Truman are dead. And I was playing a guy who was alive. He works for the American embassy in Bangkok and he’s a Princeton graduate and speaks six languages including Khmer. I graduated from Emerson College and am still wrestling with American. And these people are all like foreign correspondents, people who can just get on a plane and go with no sense of loss. One minute they’re in Beirut, the next they’re in a nuclear submarine off the coast of southern France, now they’re here, eating and talking about their experiences. They see the whole world as their stage.

  John Swain, for instance, was arguing with people about whether or not there’s any cocaine in the Khyber Pass. They were having an enormous discussion over that. Then Judy Arthur started talking about her sixth trip to China. Chris Menges, the cinematographer, was talking about his film, a trilogy he’d made tracing opium from Burma to Harlem. And he said there was a price on his head in Burma; the opium warlords who run the place wanted to kill him because he was with the good guys, and he had eighteen months of rushes on the back of a donkey that he couldn’t get out of Burma. He was talking about that. Then there was Ivan, talking about how primitive the Amazon is. He was down there making a film about cocaine.

  “Spalding, man! You should just go down there. It’s unbelievable. It’s truly wild. No Buddhist inhibitions, like here in Thailand.”

  Then there was Roland Neveu, who had just flown in after photographing Beirut. He had been in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came in, and now he was here testing out his new underwater camera—just dropped in to say, “Hi ho mates,” and have a beer before heading for a nuclear submarine off the coast of southern France.

  And there was Minty Clinch, a publicist, who was talking about hitchhiking through Patagonia. Skip the hitchhiking; I couldn’t even visualize Patagonia. And there was this beautiful woman who was on a forty-day fast. She was half Thai and half Scottish. What a mix. Oh, la-la.

  Her mother had come over from Scotland to marry a Thai man—just the opposite of the way it usually is. They were both doctors, and they had this baby who turned into this fasting woman. She had these almond eyes, these Thai eyes and this Thai complexion, but this WASPish-Anglican bone structure and freckles, and she was very beautiful.

  She was there fasting for forty days. She had first learned to fast at a Texas fast farm, and now she was here in Thailand doing it on her own, while watching us eat.

  And then there was me, who was looking at this incredible bee that looked like a cartoon of a bee because it was so big and fluffy, and its stripes were so wide, and I was saying, “Wow! Look at that bee.”

  And everyone said, “It’s just a bee, Spalding.”

  Soon, lunch was over and it was time to go back in swimming. Ivan and I rushed down to the beach like the two kids who couldn’t wait an hour after eating.

  And Ivan said, “Hey, let’s toke up.”

  I said, “All right. God knows I can let my Kundalini out on this beach.” It used to get stuck in my lower Chakra, but I knew I could just run it off on the beach.

  I took two tokes and had a mildly paranoid episode about my money and where to hide it. At first I started digging holes in the sand, but then I changed my mind and went to hide it under the rubber m
at in the van. Then I thought that this focus of all my concentration on hiding the money was setting up mind waves that could be read by the Thais and that they would find the money. And God knows they needed it more than I did. So, at last I just took it and left it, fully exposed, on the beach.

  I could see Ivan way out in the big surf calling, “Spalding! Spalding! I see you like the little waves. You don’t know what living is until you get out here into this big stuff!” I really wanted to get out there.

  I kept going out a little further and each time, I would think of my money being stolen and I was less afraid of sharks. It just sort of happened naturally. I realized I was out a little further and a little further until all of a sudden I was out further than I had ever been in any ocean, in any world, anywhere. I was beyond Ivan even. I was so far out—I could tell that I had never been in this situation before because of the view of the shoreline. I had never seen the shore from that point of view before. It was so far away that I felt this enormous disconnection from Mother Earth.

  Suddenly, there was no time and there was no fear and there was no body to bite. There were no longer any outlines. It was just one big ocean. My body had blended with the ocean. And there was just this round, smiling-ear-to-ear pumpkin-head perceiver on top, bobbing up and down. And up the perceiver would go with the waves, then down it would go, and the waves would come up around the perceiver, and it could have been in the middle of the Indian Ocean, because it could see no land. And then the waves would take the perceiver up to where it could look down this great wall of water, to where Judy Arthur and John Swain were body surfing—like on a Hawaiian travel poster—far below, and then—“Whoop!” The perceiver would go up again. I don’t know how long this went on. It was all very out of time until it was brought back into time by Ivan’s voice calling, “Spalding! Spalding, come back, man! I haven’t tested those waters yet!”