Before I start, my lawyers have advised me to say this: this is a work of fiction.
Now, if anyone tries to implicate me for any of the events of this story, I can just say, “Well, I said it was fiction.” And as we all know, in an international court of law, whatever you say first is the truth. It doesn’t matter what follows. Because what follows in this case, is that
THIS IS A COMPLETELY TRUE STORY.
This actually happened to me.
(*clears throat*)
Our story takes place in Thailand.
We begin on the night before the Thai New Year, or Songkran. The Thai people celebrate Songkran by having a three-day-long water fight in the streets. It’s like in Spain, when they all throw tomatoes at each other; except it’s not tomatoes, it’s water balloons.
Ever since I moved to Southeast Asia, I knew I needed to go to this thing. It took me two years to get there. I had just finished teaching a full school-year at a university in Bangkok. My work contract had expired a week earlier, and I was supposed to have left the day after it ended. Except I made my school extend my visa one more week so I could stay for Songkran. This is the level of commitment we’re talking here.
Songkran Eve for me was like Christmas Eve for a 6-year old child, only much more exciting. My levels of exuberation had peaked, and I knew I wasn’t going to sleep much that night. And so I went out, as I did most nights. During that year I spent living in Bangkok, I predict that I was out… hmm… 5.5 nights of the week. That’s an average, obviously, but that is no exaggeration. Bangkok is the most debaucherous city in the world. Or, it can be. And it was for me.
My common hangout, the absolute hotbed of debauchery, and where I chose to go on this particular night, was the fabled Khao-san Road. The night started with a chance encounter with Vinnie, my ex-girlfriend from the Thai Mafia. (You may remember her from the aptly titled The Thai Mafia Story). We hadn’t spoken since her infamous “thank you for the rape” text message half a year ago, and although she was still batshit insane, we were able to clear the air and be friends again, if only for just this one last night.
And then I invited Vinnie back to my place. The truth was, I had a huge bag of weed that I was trying to get rid of before I left the country, and I knew Vinnie could help put a dent in it. All I had to do was say I had “wee”, and we were back at my place before pronouncing the “d”.
We spent the next couple of hours smoking buds and DJing on my Vestax digital midi controller. There would be no physical farewell nor fornication fuck nor fucking fuck between us, which was fine because I was going back to Khao-san Road, which would be rife with—you guessed it—Thai pussy (both woman-pussy and man-pussy). Vinnie shared the cab back with me until my stop at Khao-san, where I bid her goodbye, and good luck in all of her future mafia endeavors.
Upon arrival, I went to meet up with my close friend Simon from France. I found him drinking at a miniature kid-sized table with a couple girls and another French guy. Right off the bat, I could tell that this other French guy was a character.
I mean, I assumed he was French. As I do with most all stinky, perverted, weasel-like European people I meet. But after awhile I noticed a nuance to his accent. Turns out he is from Luxembourg. He’s going to be a main character in this story, so let’s just call him “Lux” from here on out.
The most striking feature about Lux, was that he had no filter over his mouth whatsoever. Within 5 minutes of meeting we established that we had a mutual friend, a girl named Panny, who I just happened to be quasi-seriously dating. This is how he responded to my bringing her up:
“Oh Panny. Yeah. She’s a bitch.”
“Say what?”
“She’s a bitch. You know? A bitch. She… how do you say… she fucks guys for money.”
“Oh, you’re trying to say that she’s a ‘prostitute’. And no, I’m pretty sure she’s not. I’m dating her right now. And I’m not giving her money or anything.” I mused silently for a few seconds, following up with,
“Do you know anyone else that’s fucked her?”
“Actually, I do know a person. You are talking to this person right now.”
Wonderful. So not only could I have been dating a ‘tute, but this guy I just met on the street is telling me he was up in that butt too. Still, I was intrigued by this strange man from Luxembourg.
As we conversed more, midnight approached and the streets began their regular descent into debauchery. I didn’t know if Songkran would start right at midnight, or what. But a famous saying of my mother’s echoed in my mind. I had a chuckle to myself as only now did I finally understand the inherent wisdom in her signature catchphrase,
“Guess who’s gettin’ wet tonight, boys!”
The two girls drifted off at some point, and Simon, after having smoked 3 packs of cigarettes in one sitting, got up to leave as well. I told him I’d see him for the real party tomorrow. And then there were two.
Looking back, I’m not sure why Simon ever left us together. In our short conversation, me and Lux had clicked in all of the wrong areas: both psychotic to some degree, advocates of anarchy, habitual hedonists. And now that the party in the streets was chugging along at full-steam, we were about to dive head first into the great pussy of the night.
Within minutes, we are surrounded by Thai girls and are drinking out of any, and all, random passersby’s whiskey-filled sand buckets. After mere moments, we are drenched in sweat, hammered, and screaming, because it’s the only way to talk to someone right next to you… on Khao-san Road.
Khao-san is LOUD. There is always sound clashing all around you. DJ’s stationed at both sides of the street, vying for your attention. Rather than commit to one DJ though, most people stayed in the middle of the street and kept the dance party going there. That’s what I would do, at least. Caught in a cacophony of mayhem. I don’t consider noise “pollution”, but if I did, those were some filthy-ass airwaves.
There was one sound that I had almost never heard in all of my trips to Khao-san though, and that was the very sound I was hearing right now.
A police siren. It grows louder and louder. But here? On Khao-san? Why?
I had seen this happen two, maybe three times during my entire stay in Thailand. I refused to believe it was happening now on the eve of Songkran; cops shutting the party down early. I quickly located the source of the sound. A police car slowly trudged through the sea of people, scattering the crowd out of the street. Behind it, everything that once resembled a party was packing up and heading home. The car didn’t really look much like a police vehicle, it looked more like a pick-up truck with a siren scotch-taped to the roof, but who’s going to argue?
Lux stood firmly alongside me, and I realized we were locked into a game of chicken with the police car. We were directly in its path. It came within feet of us. Inches, even. It became clear that the cops weren’t going to stop and so we finally yielded. I made sure to give the cops a dirty look through their front window.
Lux stood on the opposite side of the car, which passed by us in slow motion. With the car in between us, Lux’s and my eyes locked. Right away, we both knew there was a tacit understanding between us.
That understanding was, “We need to jump in the back of this truck RIGHT NOW.”
I put my hands on the top of the truck bed and Lux mirrored my motions. I took a teeny tiny hesitation just to consider that this could be a bad idea, before realizing that no, it was not a bad idea, it was the greatest idea I’ve ever had. And then the two of us launched our bodies from the street, over the wall of the car, and hit the back of the flatbed truck with a THUD.
Motionless. Frozen. Not daring to move, or even laugh. Eyes fixated on the dark sky overhead. Waiting for the cops to get out and punish us. But the car just kept moving. If they didn’t know that two unwanted passengers had just boarded their vessel, it was only a matter of time before they did. This could go wrong in so many ways. My mind reeled in the endless “bad trip” fantasies.
Seconds passed. And then minutes. And yet, the car had not stopped. It was driving slow as fuck, sure, but it just kept going. This party in the streets did not want to end. And then our bodies jerked to the right, and I could tell that we were making a right hand turn at the end of Khao-san Road. We stayed put. Then there was another right hand turn. And another one. And then finally, the car came to a complete halt.
My heart raced. I clenched my teeth and waited for something to happen. For the cops to walk around the side of the vehicle and then see us. Or they’d seen us already and they were going to pop out and hit us in the dicks with nightsticks. But nothing happened.
Would it be safe to try and peek over the truck wall to see what was happening out there? There was only one way to find out. I bent my torso slightly at the abdomen, peaked my little squirrelly eyes out, and assessed the scene.
What did I see? Well, for starters, the cops had parked the car in the middle of the goddamned road. No attempt at parking in a civilized manner at all. And the reason they parked here? THEY WERE GOING ON A 7-11 RUN.
“What do you see?” Lux asked.
“They’re walking into a fucking 7-11.”
Lux waited a few cool seconds to respond.
“Probably buying beer.”
“Why… is that important right now?” When I saw them inside the store walk behind some shelves, I gave the sign. “Let’s go. Coast is clear.”
We slithered over the wall of the truck bed and returned to the ground. Run. Run away, dipshit…
Is what I assume any sane person’s conscious would say. But my conscious opted to present me with a deep, philosophical question: what’s even better than hopping into the back of a random cop car?
For those of you reading along, if you said, “Hopping in the front,” then congratulations! You’re just as dumb as I am.
Of course, the car would have to be open, and there’s no way they would leave it unlock—*CLICK*
Oh my god! They fucking left it open!
As I was climbing into the driver’s seat, Lux was already in the passenger’s side. We slammed the doors behind us and sat there looking at the street ahead. I looked back at 7-11 and the cops were at the register—buying beer! And then I looked back at the road ahead, soaking in my surroundings. And then something shiny caught my eye.
Not only had the police parked in the middle of the road to go on a beer run AND left their car unlocked, they had actually left the keys in the ignition. That’s when I proclaimed, “I’m gonna drive this mother fucker.”
I knew that, at this particular moment in the infinitely vast space-time continuum, it was my cosmic duty to drive this cop car. Denying it would not only be futile, but unjust to life itself. Hell, I didn’t have to consider it for any longer than three seconds. I simply reached out, turned the key, and the car came roaring to life. I put the car in drive and we started rolling forward.
We made it about… uhhh, 12 feet. It was the best I could do. The car kept jolting around and shit, and I couldn’t comprehend why. Luckily we had a European citizen in the car who was able to point out this vehicle was manual. Once I heard the “M” word, I happily sacrificed my spot in the driver’s seat to switch with Lux.
As Lux shifted the gears of the car, he maintained a completely blasé, nonchalant look on his face, as if he were a Thai police officer himself, just on his morning commute to work. Whereas I slouched down in my seat to hide, he sat fully upright and drove like a 16-year-old taking their first driver’s test.
Seeing his driving form, I immediately erupted in laughter. Within seconds, tears were pouring out of my eyes. Once Lux took off, he just kept driving. He made it well beyond my 12 foot mark, and he wasn’t stopping.
“Mission accomplished. We can stop now,” is what I wanted to say, but because of the severity of my laughter (borderline having a seizure), I couldn’t tell him that we needed to ditch the vehicle.
And now we were driving by legions of people all returning home after the party got broken up. They could clearly see into the car, and it’s conductor, a sweaty white guy. But somehow, Lux didn’t break character. His face showed no hint of wrongdoing. I continued crying, snorting, and hyperventilating due to laughter.
We came to the first corner and Lux turned. The street was bare and devoid of all life, minus a single parked car, far down, in the middle of the street. This was the perfect place to ditch the car. I knew it, I just needed to make sure that Lux knew it. Otherwise, he’d just keep driving forever.
I took some deep breaths, quelled my urge to laugh, wiped the tears from my face, and began to speak.
“Okay dude, it’s been a good run, but we need to ditch the vehicle. Let’s just park it somewhere along this—“
*DOOSH!*
A heavy impact rocked the entire vehicle. I felt a shockwave rock my spine. My brain fumbled to make sense of what happened. I looked to Lux for answers but he just maintained that same nonchalant expression that he had throughout. He continued driving, without acknowledging that anything happened.
Did we just run someone over? I looked out of the rear window of the vehicle and I saw a car behind us, shaking violently. We had hit that car. The car. The one, single parked car on the entire vast, open road.
And then suddenly leaving the car wasn’t our issue anymore. Getting far away from here was. I started screaming for Lux to put the pedal to the metal. We quickly quadruple our speed. Next thing you know we are blowing red lights all over Bangkok city, in a stolen police car.
END OF PART 1
If you thought this was exciting, then just you wait.
This story gets much, much, MUCH crazier.
Believe me when I say, this is just the beginning.
Thanks for reading, and make sure you are all back here for Part 2!
Coming… in one week!
One Comment
Bravo 👏