it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Dear Kevin,

Friday afternoon when I changed my bike tire all by myself the first thing I wanted to do was tell you that I did it, because I thought you would be proud of me. You always used to get frustrated with me when I made you do it because it's so easy and I should have learned. But I never needed to, I always had you to help.

Yesterday morning I awoke to the news that the previous night, around 6pm, you were found dead in the basement of your friend's house. I then spent the entire day either crying hysterically or completely numb. I'm not sure what's better because they both seem pretty shitty.

This isn't something that should surprised me, you had your problems and you never seemed to get a hold on them but it looks like they finally got you. You knew you wouldn't live until you were old, used to tell me all the time, but I tried to pretend like you didn't mean it.

I keep trying to imagine a life where I can't text you stupid things that Lola does, or tell you something about baseball, or ask you a question, or hear your laugh or tell you that you crazy lady. I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that I'll never receive a text from you saying that you os'd your popcorn, or that the cubs suck, or that a certain band is awesome and I should check them out. I'll never hear you tell me to give Lola a big kiss from poppa ever again, and you'll never be able to give her a big kiss again.

And it all breaks my heart, but it more than breaks my heart. It leaves a hole where you lived in heart, not where memories of you/us lived but where you lived and stayed and never left. Those memories take up a large part, but you took up the largest.

I threw you a "wake" at Stella's last night and it was amazing. So many people came out to, people that I couldn't invite because I didn't know and people that I did and everyone just hugged each other. Heather even hugged me, which I wasn't so into but you would have thought was funny. Nickey and I even had some moments and I feel like maybe we'll have some more. You would have liked that so much. Sue and Rozi showed up, all of the bike people. Some got pretty rowdy (Winkelman, Jove, Johnny were the most drunk of the bunch) but some were very somber. James was inconsolable and Nate wasn't too much better. At some point I ran out of things I could say to them.

Everyone kept telling me they were sorry for MY loss, which I wish they hadn't. It was our loss. Everyone in that bar lost you, even Stella who was pretty upset. She said 'so young. i keep asking about him. Where Kevin? Where Bobby" in her adorable Polish accent.

People kept telling me how much you loved me, that you loved me more than anything in world, that you adored me, and I know they were trying to help but I already knew all of that. And the truth of the matter is I loved you like that too. People thanked for for everything I did for you, and told me how appreciative they were, that when you started dating me they thought that 'this is it. She's going to save him.'  But I couldn't save you. I tried to fucking hard to save you for so long, but you didn't want to be saved. You wanted to live your life the way you wanted to live it and you wanted me to be ok with that and let you. But I couldn't let you because I couldn't imagine this very moment when I'm sitting alone in my living sobbing because you don't exist anymore. More than one person said that when we broke up they thought that that was it, that it was all going to go downhill. I was your stability, and sadly it looks like they were right. I never wanted that. I just couldn't fight with the demons anymore, they were winning and it was killing me.

Brent told me that your spirit still exists, that you had such a great spirit that there's no way it's gone. I told him that it wasn't good enough. That I don't want your spirit. Your spirit will never tell me that my thighs are getting fat just to be an ass. Your spirit will never tell me that the cubs suck and when I tell you some random baseball fact or about yelling at someone on bike bike "that's my girl." I'm not your spirit's girl. Lola isn't your spirit's dog. fuck that.

I told Lynn that I don't know how to exist in a world where you don't. That I don't know how to wake up every day and know that you aren't there. For a second this morning, just like less than a second this morning, I didn't think about it. But then I tried to open my eyes, which are basically puffed shut, and it hit me all over again and probably will all day, all week, all year, all life.

I wish I could have saved you.

I wish you could have saved yourself.

I will always love you, you bastard.

hello from korea, eerr....america

I started this in Korea, but then they called me and told me that I had to leave (early) so...

I've been sitting in this hotel, Hotel June, almost all day. The airline gave it to me for free. I was going to take a city tour but I missed the bus. The room has heated floors, a jacuzzi tub and a computer in the room. It was nice to get a little rest before the final leg of my trip home.

I've been traveling for almost 20 hours and have about 16 hours left. My flight out of Chiang Mai was kind of interesting because they put me and another guy in the international terminal, even though we were traveling domestic, because we were continuing onto other countries. When it came time to board I think we both thought we were either in the wrong place or that our flight was going to be empty. Neither of those things were true.

I flew Bangkok Airways and they weren't so bad. I made sure to get aisle seats the whole way back so I can get out when I need to. I was alone in my row so I sat by the window, though.

We were on a big plane but still got to walk down stairs onto the tarmac and wait for the rest of the, very slow, passengers. It was probably about ten degrees hotter in Bangkok than Chiang Mai and way more humid. I did not regret my decision to stay in Chiang Mai the whole time.

The Bangkok airport is not set up for proper waiting, at least not the international terminal. The initial waiting area is set up in a long, narrow chair lined hallway. The chairs are uncomfortable, there are no bathrooms as it's also elevated above the actual waiting area that they let you in a half hour before boarding. Gee, thanks. I did meet a couple of ministers who were traveling around southeast asia who were quite nice. They were a married couple and the woman and I watched the saddest nature show while waiting where a baby monkey died and it's mom refused to let it. She held her dead baby and sat vigil with it for days and then finally left it and another monkey found it and tried to wake it up. Oh, nature, you're so sad sometimes.

The flight itself from Bangkok to Seoul wasn't too bad, but I also fell asleep before we even took off. I was awoken by some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced and then some woman in the row in front of me vomiting repeatedly into her barf bag in the loudest manner possible. I usually do very well with turbulence but the sound of this woman puking made me want to puke. Barf-o-rama came to mind.

I couldn't find the Asiana desk in the arrivals hall at Incheon and missed my city tour bus. That's how I ended up in the heated floor, jacuzzi floor, buttons in Korean that controlled everything hotel room. I walked around a little but I ate at the hotel and took a nap and a bath. Paul told me that I should have called, but he had said he was working and my phone battery was dead anyway.

I'm back in the states now and have to start working. I almost completely avoided jet lag. Tuesday night I couldn't sleep until 4am and got up at 7am. Last night I took a sleeping pill and was asleep by midnight and up at 8. it's all good.

ok. alright. sheesh

Yesterday Melissa, Warner, Sven and I did a cooking class at Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre, which was pretty stinkin' awesome. Everyone else was worn down and hung over from the previous night's karaoke/dancing at Reggae Bar, but since I skipped out on the late night portion I was doing alright. We got to go to a market located near Tha Pae gate that I didn't know existed to look for ingredients for the day's dishes.

We got to cook in a covered patio area with woks lining the walls. We each had a choice of five sets of three dishes, we we all made five things. I chose pad Thai, panang curry paste and the actual dish itself, coconut soup with chicken (basically tom ka), cashews and chicken, papaya salad and mango sticky rice. All of the dishes were pretty easy to make and we each got a cookbook containing all the receipes from the day, including the ones we didn't make. I'm pretty stoked about trying them at home.

A bunch of us went to dinner last night at this india restaurant near the night bazaar called Le Spice. It was pretty delicious and reasonably priced so that was good.

I was on a hunt for prayer beads for Michael. It's all he asked for, but didn't ask until yesterday morning, and I couldn't find any for the life of me. We went to three night markets and found nothing. We found a ton of pants, shirts with weird sayings, overpriced bracelets, weird nicknacks, etc, but no beads. Of course the one person who it's absolutely required for me to get something good for, I can't find what he asked for. He's doing me this giant favor and I'm super grateful, the least I can do is get him some stinkin' beads.

Melissa and I left Warner and Sven to go to rooftop bar and we went to Zoe. They have super cheap mojitos, which would have been nice to realize a little earlier. I might have drank one too many. There was a dj and balloons everywhere and little village kids trying to sell us flower lays when they should have been sleeping. We watched fire throwers outside of Reggea bar and sat on couches at some tucked away bar nook.

On our walk home we passed a Wat that had some sort of disco ball near one of the temple buildings because there was light being refracted all around it. That wasn't the important part of this Wat, though, I had a display case and what looked like a little store in it. Being 2am it was obviously closed, but I saw prayer beads in there. We were asked to leave by some dogs and walked the rest of the way home.

While on the couches last night I noticed that my right shoulder was starting to hurt a little bit. It's not that out of the ordinary for me to get weird little pains so I thought nothing of it. Well, this morning I got up for my massage at school as was unable to lift my arm at all. I can maybe get 10 degrees should flexion and maybe 20 degrees abduction. Duan couldn't even help me as every time she tried to move my arm I wanted to scream. My hand is occasionally getting numb and the whole arm feels heavy. This is exactly how I want to feel during my 30+ hour trip home that starts tonight. Weee...

It's so hot outside and I can't put my hair up. I have to sit in a chair and lean all the way forward so I can use my right arm. Good thing I'm left handed.

I went back to disco Wat this afternoon and had to wake a monk up so I could buy the beads, but mission accomplished.

I should probably pack.

and...done

I am officially done with my three week course at TMC. Today was a very light day, we learned how to make and massage with an herbal ball. This is not a technique I will probably ever use, I found it incredibly boring the rub Melissa with the ball, but what it did was prove that I probably can do this Thai massage thing. The treatment involves using the ball from 5-10 minutes and then doing massage on the area that you just warmed with it. In that time you sorta improvise using the techniques we learned in the previous levels. I think I did a pretty good job which boosts my confidence just a little that I'll be able to put together a 50 minute massage using what I know. Yay!

I had to call Thai Kitchen Cookery Centre today to confirm my reservation for tomorrow because they never wrote back answering any of my questions and I wasn't even sure if they had received my request. It's a good thing I did because she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about and it took about ten minutes to try to explain to her what I wanted, where everyone needed to be picked up from and how many of us there are.

I also had to put more minutes on my phone, which involved me getting a receipt from 7-11 with a bunch of Thai writing and a numbers. I didn't know what it meant or how to put the minutes on my phone and it took two employees to get it done. Pain in the ass.

Tonight is dinner with Georgianna, Warner and Melissa at Salsa Kitchen and then karaoke.

It's getting so hot here that I'm really looking forward to spring weather. It's the best time for bike riding, as less people are out and you don't sweat as much.

massage and things

Today was my second to last day of class and I think that Melissa and I kinda have senioritis. I don't think it helps that this week we've been learning specific complaint treatments and that very little has been new...sure there has been a new position here and there and there are a couple of things that we learned that I'm planning on throwing into my routine but overall I won't be using a lot of it. The sprained ankle treatment almost made me yell at the teacher, it's just not right. Our information said that we are to ice the ankle for the first 24-48 hours, fair, but then use a warm compress after that.  And the treatment itself is to be done in the subacute stage and involves all this ankle movement and compression and stretching. I know that if I had a sprained ankle I wouldn't want any of those things done to me.

It also doesn't help that we've lost Duan to the teacher training program and are now learning from Ratree. She is, like Dao, very very nice, but doesn't pay attention. Her English is pretty good but sometimes isn't in the right order or we lose her point somewhere. Yesterday when Melissa was working on me she missed a whole part of the knee treatment but Ratree wasn't paying any attention and didn't call her on it. I, as the receiver, wouldn't have noticed because the rest of the treatment felt great, but as a person trying to learn as I'm getting massaged I noticed that something was missing. It just would have been nice if she had caught it. Duan would have. Ratree was a little more attentive today, but we were also doing pretty simple treatment, like a treatment for old/sick people which is a lot of really light work with a lot of wiggle room as far as the treatment itself goes.

When I got home from school I sat in a deep, low chair in the common area of my guest house and when I got up my leg/hip got tweaked again and so I decided to go to the blind massage place that's located just down the road from me. Daniela had went and said it was amazing and inexpensive so I decided to check it out.

It was definitely inexpensive, with tip it cost me about $4 US. The girl who worked on me was a tiny thing who liked to give a lot of pressure, which I very much enjoyed. There was absolutely no speaking between us and had I not been getting several massage per day for the past three weeks in class I probably wouldn't have know what to do. I couldn't tell her that it was my right hip and low back that were bothering me and I wish they would have gotten a little more love.

The room had about five other people getting massaged by blind people. I was watching the guy to my left give his massage and was pretty glad I wasn't over there. He was using a lot of knee and elbows in ways that I don't think I could have taken. One thing that this massage was missing, as all the other massages that I snuck peeks at, was the stretching. She did a body twist, which was nice but a little too gentle for me, and a leg stretch but that was it.

One of my favorite parts of the curriculum at TMC is the stretching. The compressions and fine and all, but the stretches are what really makes the whole massage. This massage was a lot closer to what we learn that the massage I got at the place last week, but at least she did a lot of stretches. Sure some of them were not what I wanted and felt a little unsafe, but it was in there.

I'm going to limp the market now. Fisherman pants here I come.

So close...

To the end of my time here. I'm currently in my guest house's lobby because my power adapter is completely done. There will be no more pictures on here until my return next week.

I can't believe that my time here is almost done. I feel like I haven't even begun to learn what I want to learn and that I would need to stay here for months more to do so. I ran into one of the Pauls last night and we talked about studying with Pichette some more and his school. I want to do both and am going to check out the weekends at the school in Chicago and hopefully come back to study with Pichette. I'm just really hungry to learn this right now.

When I first started doing massage I never did continuing education and was just ok getting by with what I had learned in school.  Now I feel like I need to get better, to expand my knowledge and become more than a therapist who gets by on deep tissue and Swedish alone. I really love Thai massage and want to learn as much about it as I possibly can.

This new drive is really going to get expensive.

It's getting pretty hot here. It was a little above 100 the other day and the rest of them while I'm here are supposed to be right around 100. I want to go to the zoo on Sunday before I leave but it might be too hot unless I go really early. They have pandas, though.

I'm taking a cooking class on Saturday and still need to go to the Saturday night market and the market in front of the mall tonight. This weekend is going to be busy until I get to the airport.

Last night a few of us had girls night. We ate dinner at the Blue Diamond, which is this super delicious vegetarian friends restaurant, located on Soi 9 off of the main road around the old city. It doubles as a restaurant and bakery and specializes in vegetarian Thai food, although everyone recommended the salads. Most of us got sandwiches because they had avacado, which is hard to come by, and they bake their own bread. I also ordered a papaya salad, which I've grown to really love while here. I was never a fan of papaya but these salads...they're spicy and sweet and just so delicious.

We had a lovely dinner and then walked to the bowling ally. Bowling. In Thailand. It's definitely something I never thought I would do. But we had such a great time. I bowled a 158, 145 and 135. I get tired by the third game. I also did something funny to my leg on my very first turn. The power of sleep and stretching seems to have fixed it.

My taxi to school will be here in a second. I hate not having my computer.

monday not so fun day

I had another frustrated that I can't speak Thai day that turned into the taxi drivers are a bunch of a-holes day. The power adapter on my ibook is pretty jacked up and stopped working this morning so I went to three "authorized mac" stores today looking for a new one, but none of them had it. It was about 105 degrees today and walking all over the place for no reason at all after a long day at school was not my idea of a perfect afternoon.

I did, however, finally go to the Night Bazaar, which was overpriced and crowed but I did get my elephant ring and a super cute shirt. I looked for gifts for everyone who helped me out with Lola, but didn't find anything. I came up with some ideas, though.

At dinner our waiter messed up almost everything and Melissa had to have a stern talking to the bartender, who was the only person who spoke enough English to explain the food situation to. Then, we were completely unable to get a taxi, well we could but  they were all treating us like a bunch who tourists who didn't know any better.

There are these red taxis, which I may or may not have mentioned before. They sorta look like trucks that would take you to your day labor job and they're supposed to cost a 20 baht flat rate.  We much have spoken to at least six different taxis who asked us how much we wanted to pay and when we said 'you're a red taxi. you cost 20 baht' they all tried to get more, so we just kept walking. Thankfully we eventually found one who would accept his proper fare.

We did get to see two baby street elephants. It took a lot of will power for me not to touch them or give their owners money to feed them. These guys walk the babies around the old city with bags of sugar cane and you can give them money to feed the elephant. The only problem is that elephants need more than sugar cane to live, and that when they get older these guys don't want them anymore and then they need to be rescued. They're not treated very well and are probably pretty unhappy. But man, did I want to touch them.

I missed Nui today, which is so silly because I was only with her for about 8 hours and she did lead a stampede while I was on her back. But I still miss her. Man. I'm turning into a crazy elephant lady.

I never wrote about Friday, when a couple of notable things happened.

It was Gina and Tom's last night in town (frown) and I met them for dinner. Gina had spent the previous day with Pichette the previous day and I was interested in hearing what she learned. Pichette is a man who lives outside of Chiang Mai who is kind of a Thai massage guru. He's almost legend here with the massage students and they go to great lengths to see him. He teaches his students to be more intuitive and to use their bodies properly. I'm really interested in coming back and studying with him, as it will be completely different from TMC's incredibly structured program.

Gina introduced me to some people whom she met there, including Paul Fowler and Paul Weitz, who own Chicago School of Thai Massage. The Pauls and I talked a little bit about their school and studying with Pichette and it definitely gave me ideas about what I want to do in the future. Their program is 162 hours, but I'm not sure how much would overlap with what I've learned so I'll probably take a weekend course and then do further study with Pichette.

Gina, Tom and I went to Zoe in Yellow, which I had read about in Bess' blog. It was actually a really nice place, very chill. We talked with the owner for a bit. I feel like you never do that in the states, just hang out with the owners (unless it's Gold Star)

 

The owner of Zoe in Yellow, Gina, Me

This was not the main event for the evening. That would come at Lavender Hotel where me, Bindya, Alfredo and Georianna saw the dirtiest ladyboy show...

There was no cover, just a one drink minimum. The drinks cost 200-250 baht, which is pretty pricey for here but getting into a show would normally be double that.

We were seated near the back, probably because we were not looking to purchase any of the merchandise. There were eight shirtless boys swaying on stage when we got there. Most of them looked incredibly bored, they all looked young. Each of them had a number hanging from their belt buckle so that if someone wanted to take them home, it would be easier to place their order. 

The lady boys themselves were pretty impressive. One of them was so pretty that we actually asked out waiter if everyone performing was a ladyboy, that they didn't sneak a girl in there. He insisted that they were all boys. Amazing!

The performances were mostly pretty great. There were a couple where the ladyboy wore huge gowns and sang a slow song that were really just boring. 

That is not the interesting part. There were about three "acts" in there that had nothing to do with lady boys. It was a basically a live, gay sex show. The first one was relatively tame. There was some touching but not actual sex acts were performed. The next, I think there was some oral in there. But the last one...man....really anything you could think of was happening up there. We were all pretty shocked and wished it would end sooner. I mean, we sorta expected it. We had heard that this one was pretty raunchy but I don't think any of us were prepared.

 

our intro

 

impressive dancer

  

she was the prettiest

  

all of our ladyboys

 

our ladyboy show group after the show