Let's Go Mad

by Rob Binkley

  “Yes and no. But, I will admit … Jack may have left me and Mom back in California, but … he was a legend. I wouldn’t mind being a legend, too.”

  “You already are a legend, in your own mind.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  Brian smiled. “So … where we going next?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t know, man…. But it feels like Jack’s telling me, ‘Keep going: Don’t settle for Utopia—it’s just an illusion. Don’t make the same mistakes I did.’ I think settling for paradise eventually killed him.”

  “Self-satisfaction is the beginning of the end,” Brian said. “That’s some profound shit.”

  “I’d like to think Jack’s started moving again … on to the next world, and the next adventure, wherever that may be.”

  I cracked open two warm beers I had in my pack and handed one to Brian.

  “To Jack,” I said and lifted my beer for a toast.

  Brian smiled. “To Captain Jack.” We both drank our beers in silence the rest of the ride. I’m not typically an emotional guy, but I will admit I got misty-eyed leaving the Philippines. But I never cried.

  Jack would have been proud. The old man never cried either.

  5

  Torn Up in Thailand

  THE DREAM WAS OVER. PARADISE was lost.

  Five months into our adventure and Brian and I were nowhere closer to finding ourselves. We were still two American man-children lost in a haze of debauchery living like a couple of demented gods. Island-hopping was no longer just an affectation or a trend; it had become a nasty habit, a lazy fetish, a primal need. If our trip back in time to bury my past didn’t kill our Cirrhosis Tour, what would? Where was the promised land now?

  I hadn’t a clue.

  Brian and I didn’t talk much during our cross-islands journey to the Manila airport. We were so exhausted we just took the first flight out of town and aimlessly flew anywhere the wind took us, which was to Singapore, our travel hub.

  “You know, I want to be challenged too,” Brian offered once we got on the plane, “but it’s never gonna happen if all we do is lounge around tropical islands with cocktails in our hands.”

  “Valid point,” I replied. “What do you say we just crash at Eric’s for a few days until we figure out what to do with the rest of our lives?”

  “Singapore’s an island, right? We only visit islands,” Brian said, putting on his eye mask, which was starting to show its age.

  “That has to change,” I said.

  “We have to change,” Brian said. “Eric know we’re coming?”

  “He won’t mind. He keeps telling us we should spend a few days in the Lion City,” I said.

  “Are there really lions?”

  “No, the guy who named Singapore mistook a tiger for a lion … the name stuck.”

  “So, tigers?”

  “The local authorities caned the tigers into extinction a long time ago.”

  “That’s not encouraging. What are they gonna do to us, then?”

  We got off the plane and roamed around Singapore like two lost alley cats. We followed the signs to all the touristy places like Arab Street and Raffles Place, which is the financial hub where all the skyscrapers reside. Brian insisted we go up and have a drink in a rooftop bar. He ordered us two Singapore slings, which cost more money than our hostel room that night. We checked out Boat and Clarke Quay, which were beautiful waterfront villages with many bars, cafés, and restaurants. Blah, blah, blah.

  Since Singapore was a former British trading post before the Japanese kicked them out during World War II, it was no surprise to find shopping was still the thing to do. There were huge shopping malls everywhere. The bus and MRT system were spotless, safe, and efficient. It was a total contrast from the Philippines. “We’ve gone from the dirty, lawless jungles of the third world to the clean, lawful concrete jungle of Singapore,” Brian said. “Total culture shock.”

  “We’ll never be challenged here,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere, anywhere tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, sure. Tomorrow.”

  A week later, I’d become my worst nightmare. I was a traveler who had stopped traveling, a seeker who has stopped seeking. My personal renaissance was on hold and it was all Brian’s fault.

  We had found Utopia and left it behind. Now I was cursing my fate, stuck in the oppressive techno-Shangri-la known as Singapore, an immaculate city/state with great sights, great food, great bars, and lovely women from all over the world. Sounds like the perfect city, right? By any “normal” standards it is, but I’m not exactly normal. You may have heard Singapore has some very draconian laws. The fine for chewing gum is outrageous, and if you get into a fight or get caught stealing, you will certainly be canned and perhaps even caned.

  From my perspective, we were wasting our time here. I wasn’t learning anything new. I was getting antsy. I was getting restless.

  Brian was getting comfortable. “Call me a capitalist pig, but I kind of like it here,” he said one night at dinner.

  “You can’t be serious. Why?”

  “Why can’t I be serious? What am I, some kind of clown to you? Do you think I’m funny?”

  “Goodfellas. Don’t change the subject. This place is nice as long as you spend money and don’t break the law, but what’s the fun in that? I thought we made a pact to stay out of first-world countries.”

  “We did, we did,” Brian said, “but we aren’t blowing through money here like we did in Australia—and we got a free place to crash, though I have a feeling Eric doesn’t exactly want us here. I’m just enjoying digging under the surface of the city, man, aren’t you? There’s an interesting melting pot of cultures going on here: Chinese, Indian, Malay—it’s delicious, I mean, just look at all this great food! Would you rather be feasting on runny rice water?”

  “No … but I guess I’d rather be backpacking around jungles and not man-pursing around a big, boring city for weeks on end,” I said, knowing it would piss Brian off since he was now carrying a man-purse.

  “It’s a satchel, asshole.”

  Brian got quiet and stared off into the distance. We walked back to Eric’s apartment in silence. Our habitual nightcrawling had ceased without explanation. I suddenly felt claustrophobic, like I was in some bad relationship—but it wasn’t Brian icing me out that was smothering me. I wanted to end my relationship with this city. I had forgotten what it was like to be confined by the laws of civilization, and I didn’t like it. I was suffocating.

  I let my pent-up feelings out in one big, dirty rant on the cleanest street I’d ever seen in my life. “I wanna get the hell outta here and find beauty in the sewers of the world—why don’t you?? Don’t you want to go somewhere challenging? Somewhere remote? That was the whole point of this trip.”

  But just like every other time I tried to inspire us to blow this fascist town, Brian shot me down. “Yeah man, no I agree, sounds good. Tomorrow, tomorrow,” he mumbled, before shutting the door in my face.

  For the past week Brian had been holed up in his room on the phone with Carrie, his ex-girlfriend back home, running up someone’s phone bill. Maybe I was jealous of the sex talk I could hear through the door every night, but who was this new Brian and what had he done with the guy I’d been traveling with for five months? I’d never seen this side of him. It was slightly sickening. Did that nameless stripper he held hands with on the bus really break his heart? Had he gotten scared back to American women by the Filipino AIDS crisis? Was he doing the unthinkable—was he finally growing up?? That’s supposed to be my job, not his. His job was to push me to new heights of insanity!

  Somewhere, my plans for this trip had gone sideways, and it was pissing me off.

  Left on my own in a city/state I was growing to despise, I decided to get in shape. I went jogging through the botanical gardens, then over to the hospital where Eric does his research on baboons and monkeys. I wanted to play with his subjects, bu
t since Eric was testing them with sexual arousal drugs, he advised against it.

  “They’re very mean,” he said. “You might get violated.”

  “Can you blame them?” I asked. “Do they at least get to masturbate?”

  “No one can prevent a primate from doing that.”

  After work, I cornered Eric and made him listen to me complain about Singapore’s collective tight ass while Brian stayed locked in his room. “Dude, this town … Am I right?” I said while splayed on his sofa with a beer in hand.

  Eric glared at me over the kitchen bar; I could tell we had already overstayed our welcome, but he was too nice to kick us out. All he could muster was, “Stop calling me ‘dude.’”

  “Duuuuude—this town … I mean, when you’re Beat at heart like me”—Eric rolled his eyes—“and someone throws down the gauntlet with a bunch of stupid laws, it’s just a matter of time before you wanna cross into some serious illegal wrongdoing. Know what I mean?”

  “Not exactly … but okay, Rob. What do you want to do—knock over a liquor store or raid a nearby village? Will that make you feel better?”

  “Yes … no … I don’t know. I just—”

  “You know what you are? You’re a rebel without a cause.” Then he left me stewing in front of the television.

  “Your humor escapes me, dude!” I yelled.

  “Stop calling me ‘dude!’” Eric yelled before slamming his bedroom door. I looked at the two closed bedroom doors. “What am I, a freakin’ leper?”

  The next day I started to rebel like a petulant teen on holiday. They “don’t like scofflaws around here,” Eric kept warning me, but what does that really mean? Naturally I considered this to be a challenge to my iconoclastic nature. I wanted to find out how far I could push it before I ended up in cuffs. This is what happens when you mix boredom, loneliness, and alcohol. Was I turning into the old Brian?

  Wandering the streets alone, I went “Rebel Yell” on the world. I dared to spit a piece of Trident gum out on one of the immaculate streets. “Thwuup!” I strutted away like a Black Panther, then I stopped and looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one cared so I littered some more and waited for the local SWAT team to come swooping in. Nothing. So I peed in an alley … Nope. I had to step up my game.

  I committed my first felony the following night. I was with Eric, my reluctant new wingman, who after a few drinks had agreed to fill Brian’s shoes. We’d been hanging out at the Elvis Room with a few KLM flight attendants. I wanted to take them back to Eric’s apartment, but they had to catch an early flight to Kuala Lumpur the next day. So by three in the morning, Eric and I were drunk, randy, and alone, roaming the streets like that wild pack of dogs that nearly ate Brian and I in the Philippines.

  We came upon an interesting looking eight-foot totem pole that was decorating the entrance of a storefront. Full of pent-up testosterone, I started to climb it. “I’m gonna summit!” I crawled up the wooden pole like a spider monkey. I used the carved faces as footholds.

  Eric, the Boy Scout who was not the type to rock any boat, properly panicked. “Get down before we get arrested!” He peeked into the closed store and saw no security guard. When he came back I was straddling the top of the pole. “They’ll take me in as your accomplice!”

  “What are you, a man or a mouse? Laws are made to be broken!”

  I began to rock the totem pole back and forth. Eric gave the pole a big shove to jar me loose, but the entire pole tipped over and crashed to the ground with me nearly under it. “You almost crushed me,” I moaned.

  Eric was jumping around like one of his primates. “Time to go! Get up, get up!”

  I stared into the eyes of one of the totem faces, “Hey, this guy kinda looks like Brian.”

  Eric stopped jumping and looked at the face. “It does, kinda.”

  “Have’ta show him.” I tried to lift the totem pole off the ground. “This thing’s heavy. Grab the other end.”

  “Why don’t you take a picture like everybody else?”

  “This thing is mine!”

  “If they catch us, we’ll spend the rest of our lives in jail.”

  “That sounds like a dare, kemosabe. Either you help me, or I’m telling your girlfriend you’re cheating on her with that sexy intern!”

  “That’s absurd! I’m not …”

  I stared at him.

  Eric sighed. “You’re a disgusting human being,” he said, and picked up the other end of the pole.

  This caper was not a smart thing to do on any level. The totem pole weighed about two hundred pounds. Eric complained as we hauled it back home and jammed it into the elevator of his high-rise building. No one saw us, we hoped.

  We were exhausted by the time we got it inside his tiny apartment. “This should be your Christmas—forever,” I said, collapsing on the floor.

  “I don’t celebrate Christmas, you idiot … I’m going to regret this. You will too.”

  “I regret nothing.” I banged on Brian’s closed door, “Rakow, wake up! You have to see this! I got you a Christmas present!” I shook his door handle; it was locked. Was he even in there? I grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat on the sofa to admire our new toy. “How great would it be if it’s some rare relic. We’d get the death penalty!”

  “Um, yeah … hilarious. I’m going to bed.” Eric left me on the sofa admiring my crime. “And you will get the death penalty, not me, after I turn state’s witness on your dumb ass …”

  His words rang in my head as I went to sleep that night on the sofa. I did not have sweet dreams. Jack visited me again. I won’t give you the details because I can’t remember any. All I remember was Dad was not amused.

  When I woke the next day, I did some research and found I had committed a major felony in one of the least forgiving countries in the world. Our big wooden statue was going to get us caned with extreme prejudice. Brian finally emerged from his room around noon. All he said was, “That doesn’t look like me.” Then he went back into his room with a bowl of cereal and shut the door.

  I started to panic. I didn’t want to go to jail. Jesus, what was I thinking? I had to get rid of the evidence so that night I planned a reverse caper to make it all right. I strong-armed Eric into helping me carry it back to the storefront where we found it. Miraculously, it went off without a hitch.

  “Find another wingman, Rob. My outlaw days are over!” Eric said as we speed-walked away.

  Eric wasn’t kidding. He wanted me out of his apartment, and rightly so. I was backsliding, and this time I couldn’t blame it on Brian. With no bad influence around I had become one myself. I apologized. “I’m sorry, you’re right … This was completely idiotic. I need to go. I’m not learning anything new here. I’m actually forgetting some shit. It’s time for me to leave before I get myself into real trouble.”

  We shook hands. “I accept your apology. And yes, you are an idiot.”

  I decided to get back on the trail the following day, with or without Brian. While Eric tested experimental sex drugs on monkeys, I planned my next adventure to Malaysia, due north.

  I had forty-eight hours until my train left, so I spent the time trying to get back into shape by running through the Botanical Gardens. I had to get more passport pages, so I jogged by the US Embassy and picked some up. My lungs were exploding more than usual. I had atrophied more than I thought.

  This fueled me with rage so I went down to the courts and played tennis manically for the next day with some of Eric’s doctor friends. I was trying to cleanse my body of all the vice-related toxins it had acquired on the road. But it wasn’t working. I was not “acing anyone’s deuce,” so I redirected my anger to Brian. Every time I smashed a volley I imagined I was beaning tennis balls off his face.

  Subconsciously I must have known something was afoot because when I came back to Eric’s I found a note from Brian that read:

  See you in Thailand?

  – B.

  The bastard ditched me to meet up with Carrie
. I knew it. I vaguely remembered Carrie; she was crazy hot and crazy persuasive. “It’ll never last.” I crumpled his note and threw it on the kitchen floor.

  Eric came into the kitchen. “So now you’re littering?”

  “Brian left.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I thought we left America to escape our shallow, cheating, money-grubbing girlfriends??”

  “Guess that was only you,” Eric said. “He left while you were getting your ass kicked at tennis. Carrie bought a ticket. She’s still in love with him.”

  “Who could love Brian?” I whined. “He’s the definition of unlovable.”

  “I dunno man … Who could love you?”

  “Guess I lost my wingman.”

  “Filling in as your wingman for one night, I think that position may go unfilled for a while.” I asked Eric where they were shacking up, but he didn’t know. All he knew was, “Copious amounts of shagging would be involved.”

  I pretended not to care. “Hope she doesn’t mind monkey herpes.”

  Eric gave me a courtesy laugh. “So … when are you leaving?”

  I wandered the streets of Singapore alone that night. I went back on my promise and bought a small bottle of Bundaberg Rum, which I justified as a money-saving tactic. In my short time here I found the nightlife to be good but expensive. I found the Elvis Room again, where people were dancing on the tables. Most of the locals only go out on the weekends since they’re too busy working hard at “living the American dream” during the week. Lucky for me, it was Saturday night.

  I spent the night drinking with a bunch of stewardesses from Amsterdam. After the bar closed, we walked around town and polished off the rest of the Bundaberg. I howled at the moon … At one point, I was so drunk I thought I saw Jack’s ghost following me in the fog like I was living some Shakespearean play. I remember asking one of the flight attendants if they saw him too—but she just laughed at me, then poof, Jack was gone.

  Was it a hallucination, or a residual effect of another Bundaberg blackout? I told myself it must have been the Bundaberg. Must have been that.