New Star Page 4

  14

  Vice Minister of Fisheries Dr. Nguyễn Thị Hong Minh was on hand at the Hon Gio Fisheries today to inspect worker efficiency. He met with local district leaders and first division workers of the fishery to discuss the exportation of sea bream.

  The news broadcast cuts to a shot of an awkward-looking man in Chinese-styled gold-rimmed glasses shaking hands with workers in white and gray rubberized work-suits. Cameras flash and the broadcast cuts back to a short-looking woman with shoulder-length hair, who is wearing glasses while reading off a teleprompter in flat monotone English.

  “Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải met with leaders of the National Assembly…”

  VTV News never fails to bring excitement to my life, as did editing Chu Nguyen’s book about Buddhism.

  Crossed out lines and rewritten sentences jump out from the pages of the manuscript. He wrote parts of it in Vietnamese and translated them to French then English.

  “I want to show that quantum physics has always been a part of Buddhist theory,” Chu Nguyen says, looking at his manuscript.

  I nod my head and take a sip of beer. The bia hơi we are at is known for being a hangout of local poets. Right across the street from a dilapidated unfinished multistory hotel, the green-painted cement floor of the bia hơi is littered with peanut shells.

  “They never finished that hotel,” Chu Nguyen says. “They ran out of money. Now, we poets come here to drink and compose poems about its cement and steel beams.”

  What windows that have been installed are covered in dirt and dust. The setting sun reflects off grimy attached aluminum panels. The cul-de-sac entrance awaits nonexistent VIPs as talk ensues.

  “If you keep touching the table, Tibetan Buddhist theory says your hand has a chance to go through the table.”

  “The Tibetans were onto subatomic particles?” I ask.

  “Yes. They also have a theory about teleportation, but I didn’t write about that,” Chu Lai nods.

  “Would that explain the number of crazy Indian yogis who claim to be in multiple places at once?”

  “No. They are insane,” Chu Nguyen laughs. “Insane like me. I put my house up for sale. I’m going to move to Paris.”

  “Wow,” I exclaim and clank mugs with Chu Nguyen. “To Paris!”

  Chu Nguyen laughs. “My sister married a French officer and they live in Paris. I want to see the Seine before I die.”

  I shoot Chu Nguyen a puzzled look and he continues: “The French were better than the communists. We had order when the French were here. Then, the dog henchmen took over and reorganized everything. You had peasants being promoted to high-ranking positions and professors that did whatever Uncle Ho wanted.”

  Chu Nguyen wipes a bit of sweat from his forehead.

  “It was a travesty. My family had some land and the communists took it all away except for our house in Hanoi. My mother died heartbroken and my sister went to France. And, I continued fighting the idiots until they put me in the reeducation camp. They could never kill my spirit, and now my spirit will finally leave this hellhole.”

  “Hanoi is not that bad,” I say pointing out the cute waitresses with their hair in ponytails.

  “Them?” Chu Nguyen laughs. “They are uneducated farm girls in the big city. The communists killed all creativity. Every piece of art and every book had to have that bullshit proletarian party line. We intellects still have to be suspicious. The Party has people everywhere.”

  I nod my head in agreement and take another sip of beer.

  “Look around. All these men are poets. They have no future or audience because they won’t tow the Party line. Bao Ninh was lucky. The Communists couldn’t stop The Sorrow of War from being published.”

  The big screen TV switches from the English VTV news to an English Premier League match and life all along the street moves as it has for millennia. People zoom by on their motorbikes on their way home from work. Old women and teenage girls balance baskets over their shoulder peddling vegetables and fruit.

  15

  I shake my head in disbelief, looking at a photo of the Bamiyan Buddhist statues above my desk. A group of dipshits in Afghanistan blew them up with dynamite because the buddhas didn’t match their limited view of the world.

  Now, no one will ever see them. A pile of rubble stands in their place, while a pile of rubble is what humanity seeks to become. Outdated dogmas and sects lead people down narrow paths of intolerance.

  I may be stupid, cynical or naive, but living your life according to what some imaginary friends said nearly 3,000 years ago is not a way to live. What evidence is there of some illiterate prophet who dictated his “good” book to a scribe. What evidence is there of a guy who sat under a Bodhi tree?

  Anyone can write an allegory full of temptation, blindness, disease and homophobia. I choose not to.

  One man’s morals are another man’s sins. You can go crucify me if you want, but I’m not sure you would want to make a martyr out of me.

  There will be no apparition of some lady from the sky to save you. Everyone is their own redemption. Everyone is their own savior. All thought is non-local; thoughts come and go without any idea where they come from.

  Do you honestly know what dictates your actions? I sure as hell don’t.

  You can break things down to their minuteness, but you will never have an answer because there will always be a smaller kernel than the smallest one you previously discovered.

  And those kernels are both inside you and out floating in the universe. Information is energy and energy is information. No tree, no cross and no veil can change that. All belief is a summation of accepted lies.

  Everything rises out of nothing — a hermetic something that has no differentiating or distinguishing features. I am no different than you, and you are no different than me. We both live on a common surface that arises from the passing of knowledge in the vast nothingness of space.

  In essence, we are nothing but an illusion living on a plane of nothingness, where we interact and receive knowledge from the vast nothingness of eternal space.

  The booze mixes with the codeine and weed, slurring my thoughts. Clarity only exists for a moment. The sky, indigo turning blue, obfuscates the morning star with a wave of sunlight.

  It is these moments, where all the chemicals in my brain fight it out, and these moments between despair, exhaustion and intoxication allow the world to be tolerable.

  I sigh and light another bowl of weed. The smoke envelops my lungs; the big hospital that cures the world of its ills, not in sight — I get up from my desk, draw the bedroom drapes closed and fall onto the cream sheets of my bed.

  16

  Whatever. I unlock the front gate of the house, grab my bike and head out for a spin. The humidity hangs in the night sky just above the tops of buildings. Motorbikes swarm around me, honking their horns.

  The din of Hanoi roars. People go places. People go home. What else is there to do when you leave the threshold of your world?

  In the end, we all return to that original singular nothingness of space. Until then, we pretend we are people who have aims, goals and ambitions.

  I sigh and pedal slowly along the dark streets near Lenin Park. Streetwalkers hawk their trade and get on the backs of shadowy motorbikes, no doubt headed for a nervous rendezvous in some sleazy room nearby.

  I continue to pedal under dusty silhouetted fronds, looping around the narrow streets. A tingling sensation envelops my crotch; I find myself heading back to the streetwalkers.

  My dick is getting hard, and I haven’t had a wank for days. Fuck it. I stop my bike next to a less haggard-looking pro.

  Long straight black hair down to her mid-back. Black form-fitting dress. She takes a puff of her cigarette and greets me…“Xin chào anh.”

  I smile. She has the one commodity I need. I ask her how much…“Bao nhiêu tiền?”

  “Mười đô la,” she laughs, eyeing my rusting bicycle.

  Ten dollars for a go. I ask
her if she wants to go back to my place.

  “Làm cách nào?”

  “Trên xe đạp của tôi,” I answer, saying that I can give her a ride on my bicycle.

  She laughs, saying there is no room on the back of the bike for her.

  “Get on the front,” I laugh, motioning for her to sit in front of me.

  She climbs onto the handlebar and sits across it, as I pedal back to Đại Cồ Việt Boulevard, gingerly crossing the flow of motorbikes and old Soviet construction vehicles.

  I can’t help but smile; she’s laughing and waving to the people we pass.

  She turns her head to me and smiles. “Em đã không được trên một chiếc xe đạp từ khi tôi em năm mười lăm.”

  She hasn’t been on a bicycle since she was fifteen, and I haven’t given a girl a ride on a bicycle since I was fifteen.

  It’s a match made in heaven. I continue to pedal through the narrow maze of small streets to the alley I live off.

  I stop the bike at the front gate. She hops off. I unlock the gate and the door. She follows me into the house and up the stairs, still laughing.

  We sit on the edge of my bed and begin to make out. She slides her tongue in and around my mouth, while I slide my hands under the back of her dress, unsnapping her bra.

  My hands slide around to the front and I feel her soft pert mounds. Her nipples are tight and hard.

  She pushes away and removes my shirt and shorts.

  My cock is standing erect through my boxers. She gently squeezes my dick and pulls off her dress. I grab her panties and pull them off.

  Her small black tuft feels like silk in my fingers.

  She mutters “em đi tắm” into my ear and heads down the small hallway to the shower.

  I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling fan. My dick pulses, as she comes back with one of my red towels wrapped around her body.

  “Anh đi tắm.”

  I make my way to the shower, turn on the water and quickly lather up. The whole while, my dick bounces with energy.

  I turn off the tap, dry myself and return to the room naked.

  I stand at the edge of the bed where she is sitting.

  She grabs a condom from her small bag and slides it onto my cock. The constriction of the rubber adds more pressure. I don’t think my cock has ever been this hard.

  She falls into the bed, pulling me on top of her. Like magic my dick is inside her, and I slowly thrust all around her pussy.

  She feigns pleasure, putting her arms around me, biting her lips, making eyes at me. For a pro, her vagina doesn’t feel too used; it grasps my cock as I continue to thrust.

  She squeezes her pelvic muscles in an attempt to make me succumb faster, and I pull out, moving her body to a kneeling position.

  I then enter her from behind and start the whole process again, grabbing her small pert breasts. She tightens her pelvic muscles again and I blow my load, convulsing in weeks of pent-up frustration.

  I pull out and remove the condom, throwing it into the trashcan.

  She wraps her hands around my cock, petting it.

  “Good,” she says in English and laughs.

  We both go into the shower, lathering each other, and I notice a tattoo on her inner thigh that says, “Duong.”

  I ask her what it means, and she says it is the name of her boyfriend who was killed in a motorbike accident a few years back.

  She says she is twenty-four and she and Duong were meant to get married. And, after he died she went into a tailspin, finally hitting bottom walking the street.

  My chest cavity sinks. I don’t know what to say; I hug her and she says it’s okay. She’ll get off the street someday.

  We go back to my room and put on our clothes. I hand her an extra ten dollars. She thanks me and kisses me on the cheek.

  We head back downstairs, out the door, and onto my bike. I pedal through the empty narrow streets, back across Đại Cồ Việt, to where she was plying her trade.

  She jumps off my handlebars and we kiss goodnight.

  17

  Back at work, the school is expanding despite Mark and Big Tom’s increased siphoning of funds to supplement their partying with karaoke whores. We’ve now got Development and Agriculture bank classes along with more general English students. The school itself has moved into two new buildings out in Quan Hoa District.

  Little Tom left Vietnam. He got his grandparents to bankroll a master’s degree back in the States. I’m not sure what he’ll do without cheap prostitutes.

  Meanwhile, Drew continues to pursue Tranh. She constantly seems to have another older rich Vietnamese man in the fold. Poor Drew hasn’t got anywhere with her. A reasonable man would have given up by now.

  Big Tom is back in town from Korea. He says he has a bunch of teachers in Korea who want to come to Hanoi to teach. I scoff at the idea. Students in Hanoi spend a large percentage of their salary on English classes, in most cases over half their income. Back in Korea, English is a joke. It’s something to make parents feel good, by sending their children from the age of five to language academies. In reality, they’re paying to be rid of their children.

  Yes, education is paramount in Korea. The adult language schools are nothing more than pick-up joints, and most of the foreign faculty can’t teach basic grammar.

  I told Mark this, but he thinks Big Tom has a good idea. Anyway, the school is expanding and we have two new teachers, Sarah and Chris.

  Sarah took the place of Little Tom and has become the most popular teacher. I guess that’s because of her long thin body, her white skin, her long curly red hair and her West Country/Bristol accent.

  The male students in particular linger after her classes waiting for the chance to talk to her, while Sarah politely engages them, making her way out of work, to the backpacking soiree in the Old Quarter.

  She ran out of money traveling Southeast Asia and has wound up in Hanoi as many backpackers do, trying to get an English teaching gig. Her sister Sally is a bit miffed, as she wants to keep travelling. Luckily for her, she’s drawing severance pay back in the United Kingdom.

  Poor Drew fancies her, too.

  “She must be ripped, being a corrections officer back in the U.K.,” he says to Mair and me.

  “Why don’t you go get her, tiger?” Mair asks, taking a sip of beer.

  “I have Tranh to think about,” Drew replies, rolling a joint.

  “What’s there to think about?” I ask. “Tranh has been playing with you for months.”

  “She likes me but she wants a ring around her finger.” Drew runs his tongue down the rolling paper and seals the joint. “I’m not sure I want to do that.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Mair chimes. “She’s a Vietnamese woman. She’s a psychopath.”

  I laugh and take a hit of the joint.

  “What do you mean? Ly is nice,” Drew says.

  “Ly, Rick’s girlfriend? You mean the woman who was seen flying back to Saigon with another man?” I ask.

  Drew takes a drag from the joint, exhaling a plume of white smoke into the air.

  “Ly, the woman whom I had talked Rick back from the edge over?” Mair laughs.

  Drew gazes at his shoes. The weight of his two large top front teeth seem to push his head down.

  “I had to chaperone those two back to normal relations. Ly denied anything happened, and Rick was forced to believe her.” Mair takes another swig of beer. “The poor guy has no choice if he wants the relationship to last.”

  I take a sip of beer. “You won’t catch me with one these birds unless I’m paying for services rendered.”

  Drew gets up from the table to fetch us some more beer.

  “What’s with him?” Mair asks. “He couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse if he tried.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. For a former solicitor, he seems rather naive.”

  “To look down on you for shagging whores. I don’t get that either.”

  “You ta
lking about the time at the work party were I grabbed one of the karaoke ôm girls and took her home?”

  Mair shakes his head in acknowledgment. “That’s all he has to do…hell, if he has some quasi hang-up about that, he should at least get a rub and tug. The way he pouts about Tranh is stupid. That girl will never go for him. She would have by now.”

  Drew comes back to the table with our beer, and I head downstairs to the toilet.

  A typical night at the Labyrinth, looking at the scribbled graffiti above the urinal, trying to make sense of how I got to this place.

  When you live in a land of corruption, greed and lust, you either find yourself in some self-created chasm, or you end up like Drew dreaming and pining for some puritanical idealism that is neither here nor there.

  I don’t profess to know which option is better. I just know life is better when you are able to partake in all the available carnal pleasures.

  Call me an idiot if you want. But, what good is an unfulfilled life of piety?

  18

  Chris came to Hanoi with only a backpack, looking rather gaunt. He caught a case of malaria travelling in India and spent most all of his money in Bangkok getting it treated. With the little money he had left, he bought a ticket to Hanoi, to line up a teaching gig to recoup some money.

  When he first showed up at New Star, we all thought he was a junkie. Hanoi has no shortage of junk and cheap amphetamines that are manufactured in makeshift labs all over the Old Quarter.

  After pleading his case, Rick took on Chris to teach children’s classes. The tall lanky Canadian, as we call him, has done well so far, earning enough money to buy some proper teaching clothes and finding an apartment near West Lake.

  He has also done well with the pudgy female NGO workers. He’s currently shacked up with one, taking care of the Canadian ambassador’s residence while the ambassador is away on holiday.

  Other than that, some students in my Vietnam Airlines class cut out a Vietnam Airlines plane from a photo and attached it to the poster of New York in my classroom, flying into the Twin Towers.