The Story of Junk (32 page)

“Is this your mother?” the mortician said again. I nodded, furious, a cramp forming in my belly. The mortician closed the casket.

I'm the only one left, I thought at her funeral, though I kept the thought to myself. My father was there and so was my brother and a number of my mother's friends, many of whom were weeping. They looked like the shadow people cowered at the wall in my dream. They kept calling me by my mother's name. I left them standing there, and built a wall out of drugs, drugs to keep agony at arm's length. Whenever I looked back, as I did, as I had to, those people were huddled there still, the same expressions on their faces, expectant and sad, but they had drug names and drug bodies, and when I looked back again, I saw them once more, unmoving and unmoved, in a place I couldn't change or fill. Now here I sit, expectant and sad, where the river drifts in silence and my blood travels thick in my veins, pooling as it reaches the wall.

A voice breaks my high. It's Mario. “Hello,” he says, a Thai-style smile lifting his cheeks. He's standing near the rail of the deck, two brown paper shopping bags in hand. My God, how much are we carrying? These bags are enormous, almost the size of the ones you get at Bloomingdale's when you buy a full-length down coat. Mario's eyes are twinkling. I'm not even halfway through my second beer. He walks toward me and casts an eye at the road-house windows. I move off the deck to a dirt path that runs along the embankment, and he slips one of the bags in my hand. I look down. “Don't look yet,” he says, but I've already seen it—about a dozen red condoms sitting unconcealed in the bottom. They're solid, stuffed with heroin packed tight into rocks. They look exactly like votive candles with little knots where the wicks would be.

“Why do we need these huge bags?” I ask.

Mario says he doesn't know. “I wish you could have seen how they do this,” he says, still smiling.

“Me, too,” I say.

“Very professional operation,” he muses. “Very professional.”

“Shouldn't we get a cab?” I remind him. They must have given him a snort, I think. That's why he took so long. Figures.

“Let's walk,” he says.

Now
he
's dreaming. “Walk? With these? I don't think so.” I'm not about to parade around the streets of Chiang Mai with a big bag of heroin knocking at my side. My eyes shift around in my head, searching for cops and possible informers. I don't see anyone, but it's dark now and this isn't my country. I don't know what to look for or where.

“They want us to get the nine-o'clock bus to Bangkok,” Mario tells me.

“Bus? We're taking a bus?” I'm mystified. “What's wrong with the plane?”

Mario shrugs. The movement makes a sound in his bag as his bundles shift. “They gave me the bus tickets,” he says, patting the pocket of his linen shirt. “All paid for,” he smiles, pleased. “They say it's safer than the airport.” He takes my hand and we stroll along on the banks of the Ping, just two romantics of no special interest, tourists with shopping bags, hunting for bargains.

“I'm not going on any bus,” I tell him. “That's crazy. What do they care how we leave?”

Mario shoots me the darkest look I've seen on him yet. “I think we better do what they say,” he tells me.

“How much is here?” I ask then.

“Fifteen ounces,” he whispers.

Fifteen ounces? At seven to ten thousand dollars each, they're going to turn a pretty penny in New York. It's four hundred an ounce here, less than what I get for a gram, twenty-eight to the ounce. Not bad, I think. Maybe I
could
do this again. “Okay,” I say. “We'll take the bus.”

We go to my hotel room, where Mary Motion is waiting with the K-Y and the luggage. “Fifteen ounces,” she says. “Three of us. We'll divide it.” We wrap the bundles in double layers of condoms, then separate to insert them.

For years, I've been hearing about this. They say once you push the stuff in far enough, the bundles travel naturally into your small intestines, where you can't feel them, safe from the stomach acids that kill cocaine swallowers, virtually undetectable by the Feds. Customs inspectors have probes, of course, but they don't reach up that high, and even if they x-ray the stomach, no one sees a thing. When we get to New York, all we have to do is take the laxatives we bought, and the loot will come tumbling down. These laxatives are German, much stronger than what we can get in the States. Even so, it could take a few days, or a week, even two, to bring it all back home.

In the bathroom I discover the packing to be not so different than putting in any other suppository, except these are bigger, really like wearing a candle in your ass. When the first two are in, I realize I'm going to have trouble with the rest. I apply a generous portion of the K-Y jelly, and the third ounce goes in, but no matter what I do, I can't get the fourth to stay. It looks like I'm going to need help. I don't know what to do. I can't exactly ask Mario or Mary Motion to bugger me; that would really be too weird. After I struggle a few minutes more, I pull on my jeans and knock on Mary Motion's door.

“How you makin' out?” I ask.

“I'm ready,” she says, opening the door. “You?”

“I can only get three to stay in,” I confess. “What do you think I should do?”

“Want me to help you?”

“Uh,” is all I can say.

She offers to try to take one of my bundles inside her. We rewrap an ounce and she goes in the bathroom to try it. “Nope,” she calls out a minute later. “Sorry. I'm full up.”

Very businesslike then, she demonstrates a position that should help accommodate me to the process. I wish I hadn't tried to eat; I really could use a little more room. I go back in the bathroom and start again. I have to relax, I tell myself. I'm too tense. I finger myself for a while, hoping to lubricate myself naturally, but I'm too stressed to make it work. Finally, after a lot of pushing and grunting and praying, I get the fourth ounce up inside but I know there's no hope for the last.

Mario knocks on the door, says we have to get going or we'll miss the bus. In desperation, I jam the last ounce up my ass but it doesn't go in very far. I can feel it hanging, fucking turd. Well, it's not visible. I watch myself walk around in the bedroom mirror. I know I look stiff but so do a lot of tourists. There's nothing so unusual about me.

In the lobby we pay our bill and walk to the bus stop. It's not very far. Darkness has fallen and Chiang Mai is gearing up for another night of shopping. We walk close to the houses that line the road. We're afraid of running into Okay Joe. As we near the bus stop, we spot the back of a man who looks just like him. Oh, no, I think. Oh no.

But this man's Caucasian, an undernourished hippie with stringy brown hair and an unkempt goatee. How long has he been in this part of the world? To my surprise, Mario waves at him. They'd seen each other earlier, copping at the house by the river. This guy was coming out as Mario was going in. I ask where he's from. “North America,” he says. Mario tells me he's Canadian, but I think he's really from Australia. We're trying to be cool and not ask questions, but Mario says the guy has made this trip many times before, and there are things I want to know. “How long is it to Bangkok?” I ask, for starters.

“About ten hours,” he says.

Ten hours? Ten hours in a Thai bus with five ounces of heroin hanging out my ass? The thought stones me to silence.

The bus pulls up nearly full, no foreigners. The locals eye us suspiciously as we make our way to the rear. Mary Motion and I take seats together; Mario drops into another on the opposite side of the aisle, in front of the Canadian, who settles himself by a window and watches the street. The seats are covered in plastic, the kind you see in houses where the furniture's not paid for. They're built for Thai comfort, too short and narrow for any of us.

As we pull away from the curb, an expressionless stewardess in tight saffron cotton slacks and a drab yellow blouse starts passing out trays with “dinner”—a fried chicken leg that must have been cooked about a decade ago, a sprig of parsley, a carrot stick, and a hard, very hard, roll. “Guess we got on the no-frills run,” Mary surmises. I wave the stewardess past. She seems to take this as a personal affront. She has none of Taffy's robust flair; she could be one of my customers after a bad day on the street. She could be one of us, a little farther down the road.

A few minutes later she lurches down the aisle with a tray of drinks: orange juice in plastic containers. To soften her up, I take one but don't drink it. “Good thing we ate before we came,” I say to Mary.

She looks pale. Her mouth twists. She says, “I don't think I'll ever like food again.”

The driver turns on a TV monitor attached by a chain to the ceiling at the top of the aisle. “Oh, good,” Mary says. “Entertainment.”

A kung-fu movie begins. It has Thai subtitles and consists of almost constant shouts, grunts, and screams at earsplitting volume. The villains all appear to be women. Women who die early in the film show up again later, in different costume, only to get killed again, more brutally, but still they won't stay dead. When this movie ends another begins, all the same people, same plot, new weapons. This one's even louder and more vicious than the first. Blood flows every few frames. I can't believe no one else minds, but a number of our fellow travelers are dead asleep. I try to read but it's hopeless, I can't tune out the sound of mortal combat. I look past Mary out the window. Can't see a thing. I shift in my seat; my arms stick to the plastic, and I'm cold—the air-conditioning's on full. Then the bus slows and pulls off the road into an outdoor camp kitchen set under a large and splintery teakwood pavilion. The driver turns off the TV and shouts something in Thai. We have to get off. From the window we can see waiting military police. Has there been another coup, or are we in a lot of bad trouble? I look at Mario, who's staring wide-eyed at the Canadian. “Just a rest stop,” he says. “Have some tea.”

I pull myself together, suck in my abdomen, tighten my ass. I don't want to have any accidents. Outside, the driver and the hostess direct us to long picnic tables, where the other passengers are already sitting down to bowls of steamed rice and green tea. The air is almost as sticky as the plastic seats in the bus but now I don't care; at least my goosebumps are disappearing. We file silently past the soldiers, who board the bus as soon as we're all at the tables. We pantomime gratitude for the meal. They're watching us, everyone is. We stick out like sore thumbs. There's only one reason Westerners like us would put themselves through this torture, and everyone knows what it is. “How on earth could anyone think this is the safe way out?” I ask Mario. He can't even speak, he's so scared. “Really,” says Mary Motion.

Fifteen minutes pass before the soldiers emerge from the bus. Now they're checking over the baggage compartment. I look for a bathroom. It's an outdoor latrine. In total darkness I push the last ounce back up inside me but it still doesn't go very far. I want a cup of coffee pretty bad but I don't dare have one. When I leave the latrine, the others are already seated in the bus.

I ask the driver if he'll turn down the volume, I want to get some shut-eye. He nods and closes the door. We've taken on new passengers here; there isn't a single empty seat. I sink miserably back into mine. Mary says she's so tired she thinks she can fall asleep. “Me, too,” I say, and a few minutes later I start to drift off, but suddenly the sound-track volume increases again and soon it's back to the level it had been before. I catch the Canadian's eye. “How much farther is it?” I ask.

“Relax,” he says. “We're not even halfway there.”

We stop two more times during the night. The other roadside rests aren't as grand as the first—one is barely more than an oversize shack—and all they serve is tea. As day breaks I begin to see road signs to Bangkok. Still the TV blares kung-fu. I can't wait to get off. I can't
wait
. When we pull into the city, twelve hours have gone by, it's nine a.m. I think only of the sample nesting in my cunt.

The Bangkok air hits us like a wall of mud. This has got to be the most inhospitable place in the world; New York is a cool mountain stream by comparison. We get our bags and tumble into a waiting cab, move out into the worst rush-hour traffic I've ever seen. The world could easily be coming to an end. And we still have to get out of the country.

An hour later we're no nearer our hotel than when we started. We seem to be driving in circles. The driver says he's looking for the quickest route. Eventually, he finds one.

At the hotel we book rooms for half a day and go upstairs to pull ourselves together. The second the door closes behind me I'm reaching for the sample. In no time I have powder in my nose. I leave the hotel refreshed.

The airport terminal now resembles a department-store bargain basement on a luggage-sale day, teeming with people as anxious to leave as we are. Bags lie all over the floor in long snaking lines. We sit on ours and wait for an inspector to check them through.

The agent at the customs desk checks the passports of two English boys in front of me and gives them a careful once-over. He tells them to remove their sunglasses. Uh-oh. I hadn't intended to get high before plane time, but that bus trip … that air … the perspiring crowds. I take off my shades and hold my breath. If Uncle Willie could get out of Nazi Germany, I reason, I ought to get through a Thai airport. It's in my genes.

The agent questions the English boys about where they've been and what they've been doing. With some reluctance, he lets them pass—providing they never return in his lifetime. I hand over my passport. The agent doesn't even look at the date. He barely looks at me. In a minute, I'm on my way to the gate. Mario and Mary are right behind me.