MANICHAEAN
10-08-2013, 03:06 AM
Trying To Call It A Day.
Mort Shoonbecker was a born loser. He was both a generic loser and a specific loser, having spent most of his so called “formative years” losing out to other guy’s, mainly over women and, although at times you might have thought he had hit rock bottom, he still continued to dig. The pathos now lay in the fact, that although diagnosed two months earlier in Detroit with an inoperable brain tumour and resolved in his cups to end it all, he could not even get that right.
The leading causes of fatalities in Americans come as no surprise; heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, in that order. Mort, in his fifties, overweight and out of condition qualified for them all. Almost all of these factors are related to either environment, bad food, obesity, or a cocktail of the three. Perhaps that’s where Mort screwed up again, for in rejecting the good old American way of blowing your brains out, he opted to be either loved to death or living to death. In other words, he went to Thailand.
Here men over a certain age hit their second youth on a 125cc motor scooter. These born again farangs reincarnate their youth, while singing “Born to be Wild” whilst careering full throttle down Sukumvart Street in Bangkok at two am until they plow into a lone tuk tuk coming the wrong way towards them. But then, as I said, Mort was a born loser, and whatever celestial force was looking after him, he survived such encounters.
It was the same with the sex. Morbidly obese to the tune of 30 excess kilos, ten beers in the gut and hooked to an eighteen year old pole dancer whose total command of classical English consisted of “Me love you long, long time handsome man,” two Viagra’s coursing through his system to re-awaken a dormant libido which finally burst alive like Mt St Helen spuming out pent up lava, exceeding the speed limit for heartbeats per minute, to die in the saddle, to OD on lust? But no. In fact he started to lose weight, his clogged up circulation improved, and post coital, invariably viewing the recumbent naked figure beside him, he likewise slept like a baby outside the very gates of Heaven. A good night’s work.
Graham Green wrote in “Our Man in Havana” that suicide was where someone reckons that the odds of ending it all are better than going on.
But let’s face it; whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you wish you were dead. But then, once past that, things can only get better. Add in drinking, drugs, water ski accidents on Pattaya beach, and murder, guys like Mort have to ask, “Does anyone in Thailand die of natural causes?”
And there is only one answer.
Not if they can help it.
Mort Shoonbecker was a born loser. He was both a generic loser and a specific loser, having spent most of his so called “formative years” losing out to other guy’s, mainly over women and, although at times you might have thought he had hit rock bottom, he still continued to dig. The pathos now lay in the fact, that although diagnosed two months earlier in Detroit with an inoperable brain tumour and resolved in his cups to end it all, he could not even get that right.
The leading causes of fatalities in Americans come as no surprise; heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, in that order. Mort, in his fifties, overweight and out of condition qualified for them all. Almost all of these factors are related to either environment, bad food, obesity, or a cocktail of the three. Perhaps that’s where Mort screwed up again, for in rejecting the good old American way of blowing your brains out, he opted to be either loved to death or living to death. In other words, he went to Thailand.
Here men over a certain age hit their second youth on a 125cc motor scooter. These born again farangs reincarnate their youth, while singing “Born to be Wild” whilst careering full throttle down Sukumvart Street in Bangkok at two am until they plow into a lone tuk tuk coming the wrong way towards them. But then, as I said, Mort was a born loser, and whatever celestial force was looking after him, he survived such encounters.
It was the same with the sex. Morbidly obese to the tune of 30 excess kilos, ten beers in the gut and hooked to an eighteen year old pole dancer whose total command of classical English consisted of “Me love you long, long time handsome man,” two Viagra’s coursing through his system to re-awaken a dormant libido which finally burst alive like Mt St Helen spuming out pent up lava, exceeding the speed limit for heartbeats per minute, to die in the saddle, to OD on lust? But no. In fact he started to lose weight, his clogged up circulation improved, and post coital, invariably viewing the recumbent naked figure beside him, he likewise slept like a baby outside the very gates of Heaven. A good night’s work.
Graham Green wrote in “Our Man in Havana” that suicide was where someone reckons that the odds of ending it all are better than going on.
But let’s face it; whatever doesn’t kill you will only make you wish you were dead. But then, once past that, things can only get better. Add in drinking, drugs, water ski accidents on Pattaya beach, and murder, guys like Mort have to ask, “Does anyone in Thailand die of natural causes?”
And there is only one answer.
Not if they can help it.